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I'm probably in the top 5 students (GPA only a few hundredths lower than last year's #2 student) at my T35 school with a strong reputation in our region. I'm confident that I will be able to land a biglaw summer gig. However, my situation is all screwed up due to transferring from the evening to the day division. I'm actually going into my third year, but the registrar treats me as if I am going into my second which is why I get to interview for SA positions. In terms of credits I'm somewhere in between the two, although closer to a 3L than a 2L.

Next summer, I plan on interning at a law firm. The thing is, if I can figure out a way to squeeze in enough summer credits to get a half residence credit either through weekend classes or who knows what, I will also graduate next August. So my summer associate position will end right around when I graduate. Knowing that summer associates are greater than 95% likely to get offers, I assume I'll get an offer.

However, if I do get an offer, it will be to start the following year. This leaves me with nearly a year between graduating and starting work. I dislike public interest/government work and do not want to sit still until the following July, so here is my question- do any biglaw firms offer nontraditional start dates? Maybe like a January start date? I used to work at a Big4 in tax, and I know that we had a mid-year start date for new associates who were working on masters degrees.

I'm just so unfamiliar with the legal recruiting world. Thanks for the help!

Anonymous User wrote:I'm probably in the top 5 students (GPA only a few hundredths lower than last year's #2 student) at my T35 school with a strong reputation in our region. I'm confident that I will be able to land a biglaw summer gig. However, my situation is all screwed up due to transferring from the evening to the day division. I'm actually going into my third year, but the registrar treats me as if I am going into my second which is why I get to interview for SA positions. In terms of credits I'm somewhere in between the two, although closer to a 3L than a 2L.

Next summer, I plan on interning at a law firm. The thing is, if I can figure out a way to squeeze in enough summer credits to get a half residence credit either through weekend classes or who knows what, I will also graduate next August. So my summer associate position will end right around when I graduate. Knowing that summer associates are greater than 95% likely to get offers, I assume I'll get an offer.

However, if I do get an offer, it will be to start the following year. This leaves me with nearly a year between graduating and starting work. I dislike public interest/government work and do not want to sit still until the following July, so here is my question- do any biglaw firms offer nontraditional start dates? Maybe like a January start date? I used to work at a Big4 in tax, and I know that we had a mid-year start date for new associates who were working on masters degrees.

I'm just so unfamiliar with the legal recruiting world. Thanks for the help!

Well firms offer those kind of start dates for Michigan summer starters sometimes... but I think you'd probably need to convince them you're going to be graduating in December 2012 or whathaveyou. Could you stretch out your coursework a bit?

That's comforting to hear. December 2012 is my fall-back graduation date if I can't figure out how to make summer classes work out with the internship at the same time. I'm hoping to find Saturday classes but our school only offers them occasionally during summers (did last year, didn't this year), so yeah I think I could easily just graduate in December.

I kind of wish I didn't quit my job and switch from evening to day. The boredom and downtime are killing me; thinking of having another 6+ months to wait after graduation is terrifying to me.

i guess the starting date varies firm by firm, so ask the employer.

i have similar situation, so i got some Qs, or cmts --
1. why would you choose to graduate in Aug? why not take it easy and graduate in Dec?
2. Aug also doesn't make sense because you wouldn't be able to take Bar in Jul. you would take Bar in next Feb anyway.
3. which leads to the next thing, after taking the Bar in Feb, your ideal start date would be Mar... not Jan.
4. so in the time btw post-Bar and your biglaw start date, can you do something other than public interest? most ideally some short term, small firm job that's related to your practice area.