Columbia Law School EIP 2013 Forum

[Anonymous User]

here's to 70K already down the drain with no hope for employment

Damn. No CBs, or no offers?

[Anonymous User]

Any 3Ls in here, hear anything

[Anonymous User]

I have yet to hear from some EIP screeners - Baker Hostetler, Curtis-Mallet, Kelley Drye, and Dechert - am assuming dings at this point, can anyone confirm CBs?

CBs from BakerHostetler and Dechert last week

CB from Curtis Mallet last week

[Anonymous User]

Frustrating when firms take long to get back to you after CB's....Makes me so scared. Any others joining me in the zero offer train so far?

[Anonymous User]

Frustrating when firms take long to get back to you after CB's....Makes me so scared. Any others joining me in the zero offer train so far?

I vote all of us just open a bar

[Anonymous User]

Not the person who posted before about 70k down the drain, but I can now say that I did not get a single CB.
Good luck to everyone out there.

[Anonymous User]

Not the person who posted before about 70k down the drain, but I can now say that I did not get a single CB.
Good luck to everyone out there.

Neither of these two, but same situation here.
I need a support group

[Anonymous User]

Not the person who posted before about 70k down the drain, but I can now say that I did not get a single CB.
Good luck to everyone out there.

Neither of these two, but same situation here.
I need a support group

I was not quite in this situation last year but only had around 2 or 3 CBs that I did not convert to an offer, so in the end the same place. If you have not already started, mass mail every single firm in NYC and any other market you want. Even the ones that were at EIP that you did not interview with. This is NOT the time to relax before the school year starts.

[Anonymous User]

Not the person who posted before about 70k down the drain, but I can now say that I did not get a single CB.
Good luck to everyone out there.

Neither of these two, but same situation here.
I need a support group

I was not quite in this situation last year but only had around 2 or 3 CBs that I did not convert to an offer, so in the end the same place. If you have not already started, mass mail every single firm in NYC and any other market you want. Even the ones that were at EIP that you did not interview with. This is NOT the time to relax before the school year starts.

Where did you end up?

[Anonymous User]

Not the person who posted before about 70k down the drain, but I can now say that I did not get a single CB.
Good luck to everyone out there.

Neither of these two, but same situation here.
I need a support group

I was not quite in this situation last year but only had around 2 or 3 CBs that I did not convert to an offer, so in the end the same place. If you have not already started, mass mail every single firm in NYC and any other market you want. Even the ones that were at EIP that you did not interview with. This is NOT the time to relax before the school year starts.

3L here. During last year's EIP, I had over 20 screeners and got no CBs. I mass mailed when I realized that I was going to have no CBs from EIP. I did get 2 CBs from mass mailing.

I just want to add that you need to keep in contact with OCS and make sure to participate in fall OCI. I had callbacks with several V firms that contacted OCS in Sept/Oct and got 2 offers from that. Since OCS knew I was still looking, they forwarded my resume to the firms that asked OCS for students. I ended up accepting an offer from fall OCI with a great firm.

Although it's embarrassing and nobody wants to talk about striking out at EIP, please talk to Career Services along with mass mailing.

[Anonymous User]

Has anybody heard from a Sidley CB?

[Anonymous User]

Proskauer offer, CB on the 19th

[Anonymous User]

any dpw dings? cb was last weds still heard nothing.

[Anonymous User]

I got a DPW ding by email a few days ago. CB was the week of EIP.

[Anonymous User]

Any news of hogan lovells, Chadbourne, Katten, or other non-V20 firms that have given offers?

[Anonymous User]

Any news of Hogan Lovells, Chadbourne, Katten, or other non-V20 firms that have given offers?

Offers from Kaye Scholer and Dechert here

[Anonymous User]

Any news of Hogan Lovells, Chadbourne, Katten, or other non-V20 firms that have given offers?

Offers from Kaye Scholer and Dechert here

When did you interview with/hear from Kaye Scholer?

[Anonymous User]

For the Kaye inquirer: CB Tuesday, call Friday

For Dechert it was CB Monday, and I think they called like 24-48 hours later

[Anonymous User]

Has anyone who had a Paul Hastings cb on Thursday heard back?

[Anonymous User]

Has anybody heard from a Sidley CB?

NY office - CB last week, offer next day.

[Anonymous User]

Had a Hogen Lovells CB on Monday, still haven't heard anything.

[Anonymous User]

I am a CLS alum, a midlevel at a top firm. I just spent much of the past couple of weeks doing CBs. I figured I would share my impressions, since BiTD someone did that on a thread like this and it was helpful to me. Recognize y'all are mostly done, but hope this helps.

1) If other firms are like mine, they will try to match you with at least some CLS folks. The CLS folks you interview with, especially the younger ones, WANT to give you a good rating. So just don't f*ck it up.

2) Most of you are not good interviewers. I wasn't either.

3) So since most of you aren't going to win a charisma contest (we are all, in the end, folks who decided to go to law school), and your interviewer probably isn't super charismatic, either, get it out of your head that you're going to dazzle folks. Don't monologue. For the love of god, don't have obviously scripted answers. Is kiss of death.*

*that being said, if your résumé begs an obvious question, I assume you have a prepared response and if it seems like you don't, I'll take off a (metaphorical) point. But the art of it is in delivering a canned answer without seeming scripted. Is not easy. But is necessary.

4) Speaking personally, I make a judgement within about 2 minutes as to whether you are a nut job. I view identifying the crazies as my main job. I then want to test your common sense - are you "professional" - meaning, are your answers uncontroversial and conservative? Again, don't wow me, just show the ability to shoot shit smoothly. That takes another 5-10 min or so. After that, Ive made my call and I'm more worried about recruiting you - the tables are turned.

5) you'd be stunned how many people are incompetent at the aspects of being an associate other than the brains. People flake out, or can't be trusted, or play games. I don't really care if I like you, and I don't really care if I can be up in your business at 3AM, because frankly, if we're working at 3AM, you will be in your office and me in mine. What I want to answer is - if its Friday at 9PM and shit comes in, and I email you, will you pretend to not hear your BB? Will you hope the other first year on the email answers first, and sandbag the response? Will you do a crappy job to get it off your plate so you can go to frying pan on Saturday? If the answer to any of those is yes, that's a real bad thing - and frankly, for most people the answer is yes. Most sane people, anyways. But to be a good associate you need to be more than a little crazy, and at least at the interview, if you can't at least reasonably convince me that you have that craziness in you, you've failed to show common sense and failed #4 above.

6) if I think you want to clock 3 years, pay off your debt and bail, that's not a good thing. If I see lots of social justice type stuff on your resume, or lots of pro bono, that's something i am going to press you on. pro bono/social justice is not inherently a negative point, and some of the lawyers i respect the most at my firm are big on it, but you have to be very careful to build a narrative as someone enthusiastic about "core" biglaw work.

7) if you tell me you are seriously considering an inferior firm because of culture or fit, I will ding you because you are an idiot. For saying it, and for thinking it. I generally won't ask about that, but some partners will. Some interviewees volunteer it, which is insanity. Happened to me twice last week.

Good luck all. May everyone find a landing spot that is best for them.

[Anonymous User]

I am a CLS alum, a midlevel at a top firm. I just spent much of the past couple of weeks doing CBs. I figured I would share my impressions, since BiTD someone did that on a thread like this and it was helpful to me. Recognize y'all are mostly done, but hope this helps.

1) If other firms are like mine, they will try to match you with at least some CLS folks. The CLS folks you interview with, especially the younger ones, WANT to give you a good rating. So just don't f*ck it up.

2) Most of you are not good interviewers. I wasn't either.

3) So since most of you aren't going to win a charisma contest (we are all, in the end, folks who decided to go to law school), and your interviewer probably isn't super charismatic, either, get it out of your head that you're going to dazzle folks. Don't monologue. For the love of god, don't have obviously scripted answers. Is kiss of death.*

*that being said, if your résumé begs an obvious question, I assume you have a prepared response and if it seems like you don't, I'll take off a (metaphorical) point. But the art of it is in delivering a canned answer without seeming scripted. Is not easy. But is necessary.

4) Speaking personally, I make a judgement within about 2 minutes as to whether you are a nut job. I view identifying the crazies as my main job. I then want to test your common sense - are you "professional" - meaning, are your answers uncontroversial and conservative? Again, don't wow me, just show the ability to shoot shit smoothly. That takes another 5-10 min or so. After that, Ive made my call and I'm more worried about recruiting you - the tables are turned.

5) you'd be stunned how many people are incompetent at the aspects of being an associate other than the brains. People flake out, or can't be trusted, or play games. I don't really care if I like you, and I don't really care if I can be up in your business at 3AM, because frankly, if we're working at 3AM, you will be in your office and me in mine. What I want to answer is - if its Friday at 9PM and shit comes in, and I email you, will you pretend to not hear your BB? Will you hope the other first year on the email answers first, and sandbag the response? Will you do a crappy job to get it off your plate so you can go to frying pan on Saturday? If the answer to any of those is yes, that's a real bad thing - and frankly, for most people the answer is yes. Most sane people, anyways. But to be a good associate you need to be more than a little crazy, and at least at the interview, if you can't at least reasonably convince me that you have that craziness in you, you've failed to show common sense and failed #4 above.

6) if I think you want to clock 3 years, pay off your debt and bail, that's not a good thing. If I see lots of social justice type stuff on your resume, or lots of pro bono, that's something i am going to press you on. pro bono/social justice is not inherently a negative point, and some of the lawyers i respect the most at my firm are big on it, but you have to be very careful to build a narrative as someone enthusiastic about "core" biglaw work.

7) if you tell me you are seriously considering an inferior firm because of culture or fit, I will ding you because you are an idiot. For saying it, and for thinking it. I generally won't ask about that, but some partners will. Some interviewees volunteer it, which is insanity. Happened to me twice last week.

Good luck all. May everyone find a landing spot that is best for them.

Thanks for the input. At your particular firm, do you know how the hiring decision works? Do all 4 interviewers say yes or no, and only the people with 4 yes votes make the cut? Is one of the interviewers typically on the hiring committee? If 3 associates loved you, but the 1 partner who interviewed you says no, is that an auto ding? Who makes up the hiring committee? Thanks in advance. Just curious how it works.

[Anonymous User]

I don't know the details of the hiring sauce. I do know that I once gave a strongly negative review for a 1L Kent and the guy ended up getting an offer. So you don't need to impress every fourth year, if you have grades like Ruth Bader. That being said, I would be surprised if you could get an offer if a partner gave you negative feedback, based on nothing but my general sense of how things work.

I am a CLS alum, a midlevel at a top firm. I just spent much of the past couple of weeks doing CBs. I figured I would share my impressions, since BiTD someone did that on a thread like this and it was helpful to me. Recognize y'all are mostly done, but hope this helps.

1) If other firms are like mine, they will try to match you with at least some CLS folks. The CLS folks you interview with, especially the younger ones, WANT to give you a good rating. So just don't f*ck it up.

2) Most of you are not good interviewers. I wasn't either.

3) So since most of you aren't going to win a charisma contest (we are all, in the end, folks who decided to go to law school), and your interviewer probably isn't super charismatic, either, get it out of your head that you're going to dazzle folks. Don't monologue. For the love of god, don't have obviously scripted answers. Is kiss of death.*

*that being said, if your résumé begs an obvious question, I assume you have a prepared response and if it seems like you don't, I'll take off a (metaphorical) point. But the art of it is in delivering a canned answer without seeming scripted. Is not easy. But is necessary.

4) Speaking personally, I make a judgement within about 2 minutes as to whether you are a nut job. I view identifying the crazies as my main job. I then want to test your common sense - are you "professional" - meaning, are your answers uncontroversial and conservative? Again, don't wow me, just show the ability to shoot shit smoothly. That takes another 5-10 min or so. After that, Ive made my call and I'm more worried about recruiting you - the tables are turned.

5) you'd be stunned how many people are incompetent at the aspects of being an associate other than the brains. People flake out, or can't be trusted, or play games. I don't really care if I like you, and I don't really care if I can be up in your business at 3AM, because frankly, if we're working at 3AM, you will be in your office and me in mine. What I want to answer is - if its Friday at 9PM and shit comes in, and I email you, will you pretend to not hear your BB? Will you hope the other first year on the email answers first, and sandbag the response? Will you do a crappy job to get it off your plate so you can go to frying pan on Saturday? If the answer to any of those is yes, that's a real bad thing - and frankly, for most people the answer is yes. Most sane people, anyways. But to be a good associate you need to be more than a little crazy, and at least at the interview, if you can't at least reasonably convince me that you have that craziness in you, you've failed to show common sense and failed #4 above.

6) if I think you want to clock 3 years, pay off your debt and bail, that's not a good thing. If I see lots of social justice type stuff on your resume, or lots of pro bono, that's something i am going to press you on. pro bono/social justice is not inherently a negative point, and some of the lawyers i respect the most at my firm are big on it, but you have to be very careful to build a narrative as someone enthusiastic about "core" biglaw work.

7) if you tell me you are seriously considering an inferior firm because of culture or fit, I will ding you because you are an idiot. For saying it, and for thinking it. I generally won't ask about that, but some partners will. Some interviewees volunteer it, which is insanity. Happened to me twice last week.

Good luck all. May everyone find a landing spot that is best for them.

Thanks for the input. At your particular firm, do you know how the hiring decision works? Do all 4 interviewers say yes or no, and only the people with 4 yes votes make the cut? Is one of the interviewers typically on the hiring committee? If 3 associates loved you, but the 1 partner who interviewed you says no, is that an auto ding? Who makes up the hiring committee? Thanks in advance. Just curious how it works.

[Anonymous User]

I am a CLS alum, a midlevel at a top firm. I just spent much of the past couple of weeks doing CBs. I figured I would share my impressions, since BiTD someone did that on a thread like this and it was helpful to me. Recognize y'all are mostly done, but hope this helps.

1) If other firms are like mine, they will try to match you with at least some CLS folks. The CLS folks you interview with, especially the younger ones, WANT to give you a good rating. So just don't f*ck it up.

2) Most of you are not good interviewers. I wasn't either.

3) So since most of you aren't going to win a charisma contest (we are all, in the end, folks who decided to go to law school), and your interviewer probably isn't super charismatic, either, get it out of your head that you're going to dazzle folks. Don't monologue. For the love of god, don't have obviously scripted answers. Is kiss of death.*

*that being said, if your résumé begs an obvious question, I assume you have a prepared response and if it seems like you don't, I'll take off a (metaphorical) point. But the art of it is in delivering a canned answer without seeming scripted. Is not easy. But is necessary.

4) Speaking personally, I make a judgement within about 2 minutes as to whether you are a nut job. I view identifying the crazies as my main job. I then want to test your common sense - are you "professional" - meaning, are your answers uncontroversial and conservative? Again, don't wow me, just show the ability to shoot shit smoothly. That takes another 5-10 min or so. After that, Ive made my call and I'm more worried about recruiting you - the tables are turned.

5) you'd be stunned how many people are incompetent at the aspects of being an associate other than the brains. People flake out, or can't be trusted, or play games. I don't really care if I like you, and I don't really care if I can be up in your business at 3AM, because frankly, if we're working at 3AM, you will be in your office and me in mine. What I want to answer is - if its Friday at 9PM and shit comes in, and I email you, will you pretend to not hear your BB? Will you hope the other first year on the email answers first, and sandbag the response? Will you do a crappy job to get it off your plate so you can go to frying pan on Saturday? If the answer to any of those is yes, that's a real bad thing - and frankly, for most people the answer is yes. Most sane people, anyways. But to be a good associate you need to be more than a little crazy, and at least at the interview, if you can't at least reasonably convince me that you have that craziness in you, you've failed to show common sense and failed #4 above.

6) if I think you want to clock 3 years, pay off your debt and bail, that's not a good thing. If I see lots of social justice type stuff on your resume, or lots of pro bono, that's something i am going to press you on. pro bono/social justice is not inherently a negative point, and some of the lawyers i respect the most at my firm are big on it, but you have to be very careful to build a narrative as someone enthusiastic about "core" biglaw work.

7) if you tell me you are seriously considering an inferior firm because of culture or fit, I will ding you because you are an idiot. For saying it, and for thinking it. I generally won't ask about that, but some partners will. Some interviewees volunteer it, which is insanity. Happened to me twice last week.

Good luck all. May everyone find a landing spot that is best for them.

This is an interesting take, however, I think it's been much harder to get a CB than you make it sound. I am far from a nut job, quite a good interviewer, Stone, didn't commit any of the faux pas you mentioned. I got 2 CBs out of 17 interviews and some resume drops, and waiting to see if either one turns into an offer. Just saying.