Top 5%, LR at T25 - no offers Forum

[Anonymous User]

And no offers will be coming. I've mass-mailed a ton, but nothing really there, either.

What do I do at this point? Do I need a miracle for biglaw?

[Anonymous User]

What market are you in and where have you been focusing your job search? Have you tried mid size firms and slightly smaller places? Have you worked every personal contact you have available? What does your school career services recommend?

[Anonymous User]

Do I need a miracle for biglaw?

Yes? If you struck out at OCI and mass-mailing isn't doing anything, I'm not sure anything short of a miracle will get you to biglaw.

Also, I'm going to guess ND/UIUC.

[Anonymous User]

start calling the firms you mass mailed to and tell them you are still really interested. It worked for my midwestern firm last year.

I think you will be ok. How is OCi going? Do you have any more interviews? Start talking to lawyers in your hometown and see how the situation is overthere.

[Ty Webb]

Get a time machine. Go back in said time machine and improve your social skills.

[Helmholtz]

Get a time machine. Go back in said time machine and improve your social skills.

damn, harsh

[ndirish2010]

How many CBs did you have? Did you get decisions from all of them yet?

[Anonymous User]

And no offers will be coming. I've mass-mailed a ton, but nothing really there, either.

What do I do at this point? Do I need a miracle for biglaw?

I'm in essentially the same boat. What I've done (very recently) is apply to every NALP firm, every firm listed in chambers in what I want to do, and email a couple of partners I thought I connected with and asked them what firms they would recommend in the area. I expanded my geographic range, but I'm encountering a lot of skepticism and questions about ties.

I've had 6 CBs and been dinged in 5 of them. All but one were taking 2 SA's or less (and the other one took 5-6).

[Anonymous User]

And no offers will be coming. I've mass-mailed a ton, but nothing really there, either.

What do I do at this point? Do I need a miracle for biglaw?

I share the opinion that, if you're top 5%, LR and not socially dysfunctional, you should be able to land a job, no sweat.

I would write the partners you interviewed with and ask them, candidly, if there was anything you did wrong, and what you could do better. Some employers are more than happy to help you out like this. Ask Career Services to help draft a letter.

[Anonymous User]

And no offers will be coming. I've mass-mailed a ton, but nothing really there, either.

What do I do at this point? Do I need a miracle for biglaw?

I had similar stats (#1 at a T50, transfer to T14, LR at T14) and no offers by this point. Eventually, my mass mailing worked — I got four interviews in early-to-mid-October. I have to assume these were because the firms yielded slightly too few acceptances and had to go back to the drawing board with looking at resumes. I assume I had become a much better interviewer by that point — I got three offers from these interviews.

My story is almost certainly an outlier, but don't give up.

[Anonymous User]

Write e-mails to your school's alumni at the firms you have not heard back from. Politely explain that you are writing to them as an alumni of your school, that you are very interested in their firm and applied and have not heard back. Ask if they can help you arrange an interview.

I went from silence to a 50% response rate and a dozen screeners/callbacks.

[Anonymous User]

I know it doesn't make you feel better, but I have the exact same stats as you and I have no offers yet either. I've only had 2 CBs (1 is silent and the other is taking place at the end of September). I got these through personal connections. I've had no success through mass mailing. Good luck to you and I hope it works out!

[Anonymous User]

I'll tell you what I wish that I had known last year as a 2L coming out of OCI with lots of callbacks but no offers: contact alumni from your law school or undergrad at big law firms, and ask them how to crack into their market or even firm, or, in other words, NETWORK.

Last year I had 6 call backs and didn't receive an offer. I wish that I had done more "networking", but I didn't understand how it works. Now I'm a 3L, and I've done nothing but network. I've had 4 biglaw callbacks in the last two weeks as a 3L from pure networking, and I'm hoping to get an offer out of it! But, from the 200 letters that I mass mailed back in July, I haven't heard a peep.

So start pouring through firms' attorney directories, find someone to connect with, and send them a personalized email asking them for help. You might be able to contact and connect with 5-6 different people at different firms in the same time it takes to send out 100 mass mails, but doing the networking is MUCH more effective.

[Anonymous User]

Any 1L's or 0L's out there, start networking in your home market before you leave for law school or during Christmas break of 1L. Even if you don't want to practice in your hometown, e-mail partners at firms that are alumni of your law school. See if they want to grab "lunch or coffee" to talk about law school/career advice.

Also do this with ANY attorney connection that you might have through your family, friends, etc. (Even doing this with attorneys who work at respected smaller/boutique firms ---- they often came from big firms or work regularly with big firms and can put a good word for you).

Then you keep in touch with them every few months with updates on school, life, etc. If you had lunch with a partner in Chicago who loved the Bears, e-mail them something celebratory after a big win. Things like that to just keep in touch. Because of all this, I had a few back-up offers in my pocket before OCI.

You could do this in your target market, just might be harder if you're not living there. But maybe it just means seeing if they could chat on the phone about how they went from ZYX law school to ABC market, and other law school advice.

Either way, if you make this effort, it can pay off. If a firm is trying to choose between you and someone else with similar grades/background, you will have distinguished yourself by your networking and ability to think/plan ahead of everyone else. The more that a firm has connected with you (even if it's just a partner taking you for lunch during winter break), the more that they have reason to trust you to work for them.

[Anonymous User]

I'm not the OP, but I have the same stats and also no offers. For me, it hasn't been a question of social skills. Through unique family circumstances I don't have ties to anywhere and that has really hurt me in the Midwest and secondary markets.

[Grizz]

And no offers will be coming. I've mass-mailed a ton, but nothing really there, either.

What do I do at this point? Do I need a miracle for biglaw?

I'm in essentially the same boat. What I've done (very recently) is apply to every NALP firm, every firm listed in chambers in what I want to do, and email a couple of partners I thought I connected with and asked them what firms they would recommend in the area. I expanded my geographic range, but I'm encountering a lot of skepticism and questions about ties.

I've had 6 CBs and been dinged in 5 of them. All but one were taking 2 SA's or less (and the other one took 5-6).

To be fair, the size of firm SA classes doesn't really matter unless the firm tends to call back a TON for those 1 or 2 slots. It does matter in the sense that they're looking for a VERY strong personality fit.

[Anonymous User]

I'm not the OP, but I have the same stats and also no offers. For me, it hasn't been a question of social skills. Through unique family circumstances I don't have ties to anywhere and that has really hurt me in the Midwest and secondary markets.

The importance of this is understated on these boards. If you're not at a T14+Fordham, NYC biglaw generally gives you the finger no matter what your rank is. This means you're stuck duking it out in dilapidated legal markets like Atlanta and Chicago where it's like Thunderdome trying to convert a callback into an offer. Many of the firms in secondary markets with small summer classes appear to be calling back 10x as many students as they have spots to fill.

Not having ties to these markets turns the odds from tough to Hail Mary status. I'm in a similar boat to the above posters and have been taking callbacks wherever I can get them (completed 9 so far in 5 different markets), still no offers but am hopeful. Many of these have been in southern markets which move at a snail's pace.

tl;dr- Having 6+ CBs in NYC is nothing, and I mean nothing, like having 6+ CBs in smaller markets in terms of conversion rates. People can shove it with the "aspie" namecalling- myself and other socially capable people are having a hell of a hard time right now and we're not mouthbreathers by any stretch.

[Anonymous User]

I'm not the OP, but I have the same stats and also no offers. For me, it hasn't been a question of social skills. Through unique family circumstances I don't have ties to anywhere and that has really hurt me in the Midwest and secondary markets.

The importance of this is understated on these boards. If you're not at a T14+Fordham, NYC biglaw generally gives you the finger no matter what your rank is. This means you're stuck duking it out in dilapidated legal markets like Atlanta and Chicago where it's like Thunderdome trying to convert a callback into an offer. Many of the firms in secondary markets with small summer classes appear to be calling back 10x as many students as they have spots to fill.

Not having ties to these markets turns the odds from tough to Hail Mary status. I'm in a similar boat to the above posters and have been taking callbacks wherever I can get them (completed 9 so far in 5 different markets), still no offers but am hopeful. Many of these have been in southern markets which move at a snail's pace.

tl;dr- Having 6+ CBs in NYC is nothing, and I mean nothing, like having 6+ CBs in smaller markets in terms of conversion rates. People can shove it with the "aspie" namecalling- myself and other socially capable people are having a hell of a hard time right now and we're not mouthbreathers by any stretch.

"Not the OP" person again. I did a CB in a midwestern city with > 750,000 people where the firm openly told me they had called back 12 people for every 1 position (and there were less than 10 of them). OBTW, it was my first time ever stepping foot in that city.

[nymario]

"Not the OP" person again. I did a CB in a midwestern city with > 750,000 people where the firm openly told me they had called back 12 people for every 1 position (and there were lessfewer than 10 of them). OBTW, it was my first time ever stepping foot in that city.

Yes, I'm a Nazi. Just following orders.

[Anonymous User]

"Not the OP" person again. I did a CB in a midwestern city with > 750,000 people where the firm openly told me they had called back 12 people for every 1 position (and there were lessfewer than 10 of them). OBTW, it was my first time ever stepping foot in that city.

Yes, I'm a Nazi. Just following orders.

--ImageRemoved--

Maybe grammar is to blame for striking out?

[Anonymous User]

tl;dr- Having 6+ CBs in NYC is nothing, and I mean nothing, like having 6+ CBs in smaller markets in terms of conversion rates. People can shove it with the "aspie" namecalling- myself and other socially capable people are having a hell of a hard time right now and we're not mouthbreathers by any stretch.

Depending on the market, 6+ cb's outside of NYC is something.

According to NALP, last year's conversion rate on cb's was 50%+ in Dallas and 60%+ in Houston (highest in the country).

I'll grant you that this can vary widely from firm to firm and the NALP data isn't all that reliable b/c of a limited sample size. I just had a cb at a firm that brought in twenty candidates in for six positions. That'll still be a 30% conversion rate at that firm.

I know four students at my school who have completed between three and five callbacks and all us have at least one offer (two of us already have three offers).

[blurbz]

Where do you get city-specific data like that on NALP?

[nymario]

Where do you get city-specific data like that on NALP?

http://www.nalp.org/uploads/Perspectives_Fall_2010.pdf

(jump to page 15)

[blurbz]

Thank you!

[Anonymous User]

OP here. Almost all of my interviews at OCI were in one market, a market that I have no ties to. I didn't have a good answer to the "Why this city?" question at all, probably because I have never been to the city in question. More than anything, I think this has hurt me the most. Career Services explicitly told me that was the major problem. I only had one interview that went very poorly; apart from that, my interviews were OK to great. Admittedly, I'm not the most sociable person, but I'm not socially retarded, either. I'm not arrogant by any means; if anything, I lack confidence.

I've had a few callbacks that I thought went well, but I ended up getting dinged. Career Services has basically told me to network my ass off, though part of the problem is that they don't have many alumni in the two areas in which I have ties.

I really want to work in biglaw, but time is ticking, and I feel somewhat hopeless that I'm going to be able to find something.