Big law from UVA w/ no journal or moot? Forum

[spglasses]

Rising 2L here slightly above median. I didn’t join a journal, and I’m not on moot. I do have a summer PI job, a part time summer RA, and some pro bono stuff as work experience + extracurriculars. I’m also probably gonna join a clinic next semester.

How badly did I screw up my chances at landing big law?

[ExperssioUnius]

Can't you still do Lile Moot Court starting this fall?

Also, if I've heard correctly, isn't OGI moved back to January 2021 such that you have a semester to get grades up, which could be a bigger boost than normal since you only have 1 semester of actual grades?

[spglasses]

Can't you still do Lile Moot Court starting this fall?

Also, if I've heard correctly, isn't OGI moved back to January 2021 such that you have a semester to get grades up, which could be a bigger boost than normal since you only have 1 semester of actual grades?

I’m not sure about moot but I’ll look into it.

Yes, OGI was moved back. So I’m hoping I can raise my grades too.

Im just worried that I made a big mistake by not doing journal, especially since it’s supposedly really easy to land a secondary journal at UVA. So me not being on one might raise some red flags at OGI.

I was hoping my RA and pro bono work could offset that. Thoughts?

[BrainsyK]

At the absolute nadir of the Great Recession, UVA dipped to 48.1% FC+BL. It probably won't be as bad this time when it comes to hiring--though the unemployment numbers are actually worse at this particular moment.

Yeah, you may very well have jeopardized your chances. When you're cutting it that close, the biglaw jobs that you get (assuming you get one), aren't going to very desirable. See pay cuts and layoffs.

I would jump on some kind of journal or moot court if possible and gun hard next semester though honestly, I think that firms will just look mostly at 1L grades anyway. People may say that the sample size is too small, but to the extent grading is random or not, it's just roughly as random or not in both 1L semesters so I don't see how one semester worth of 1L grades is necessarily worse than two. This especially given that 2L grades can be manipulated.