UVA Law Students Taking Questions Forum

[bertstare]

How important are ties for NYC?

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[swinger]

How important are ties for NYC?

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Please be who I think you are.

[vamedic03]

Does anyone know where I can find the number of UVA students that received SA positions with Boies Schiller & Flexner?

Ask career services... I know several people summered there Summer 2010. I know several people who turned down CBs or offers from BS&F.

[paulinaporizkova]

How important are ties for NYC?

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aaaha this made my day

[thesealocust]

General PSA: UVA never has, and likely never will, publish internal or external lists of how many summers go to any given firm. You can get a rough sense of firm preferences by searching bios of current associates, but it's very rough. It's really not very useful information anyway. Even the most selective firms make a few offers every year, even the least selective firms only make a handful.

[bgdddymtty]

No new evals posted today in courses I took, but the grades for Brown's Evidence class are now up. Y'all might want to check SIS to see if you got any presents of your own.

[vamedic03]

Is it crazy to maybe guess that people will wise up this year and bid NYC much harder compared to DC than in the past? Or is the DC heavy bidding going to occur regardless?

I wonder if there becomes a point where the economy improves enough to pass a threshold where it no longer makes sense to bid conservatively (thinking NYC vs. DC) given the increased competition in NYC and maybe larger summer classes b/c of the economy.

This is impossible. The difference in selectivity between NYC and DC is not a result of NYC being unpopular. Quite the opposite - more people are probably interested in pursuing work in NYC than in DC across top law schools. The difference is that NYC has (1) substantially more law firms, (2) each of which hire substantially more summer associates.

I can actually list off the top of my head every DC firm that will hire a summer class of dozens. Covington usually hires something like 60-80, then WilmerHale, Hogan, and Arnold & Porter are likely to hire somewhere from 30-50. Every single other law firm in DC is likely hiring 20 or fewer, and usually the latter.

In NYC, I don't think I could successfully count all of the firms who hire 70-80+ summer associates every summer. You've got a dozen or so NYC based firms that routinely hire 80++ summer associates, then dozens of firms which are either slightly smaller or slightly smaller offices of firms with HQs in other locations that are still hiring 20++ summers.

Anyway, the reason it's easier to get hired at a firm in NYC than DC, all else being equal, is structural and mathematical in a way that UVA student bidding choices could never meaningfully impact. Washington DC law firms face enormous demand compared to the constrained supply of summer positions they have to offer, while NYC law firms face enormous demand for a comparatively huge supply of summer positions. Obviously you still have to be doing pretty well at a great law school to get a big firm job in NYC, but as long as the big firm dynamic across the country is so biased towards NYC, those jobs will be more bountiful and thus easier to secure.

Bad news - I think your numbers are overestimates for DC firms... Looking at the NALP forms - Covington has ~50 in DC this summer and Hogan has only ~20. Among the top 10 or so firms in DC, there are only about 250-300 SA positions. In contrast, DPW, S&C, and CSM combined have more than this # of SA positions in NYC.

[Morgan12Oak]

sooo in other words, if you're top 20-25%, bid NYC across the board and profit. done.

[BruceWayne]

....

[Wellsfargowagon]

Does anyone know where I can find the number of UVA students that received SA positions with Boies Schiller & Flexner?

I worked in the D.C. office last summer and knew two people who summered in Armonk in 2009. Feel free to send me a PM if you want to talk specifics.

[Morgan12Oak]

I wasn’t saying that top 20-25% can’t crack DC. It can, it’s just that every NYC bid is going to yield a much higher expected result than the one in DC. As in you can spend 30 bids on DC and maybe get 6 preselects whereas your 30 bids in NYC might yield 15 preselects. So top 20-25% can crack DC, but at some point you start playing the oddsgame, and there’s a significant increase in the odds of striking out. I think top 20-25% is probably the danger-zone. Meaning its good enough to warrant DC bids, but for those that do extensively, I think a lot of the strike outs will come from there.

[crossingforHYS]

So.....has anyone done the public law program? or moot court?

I was debating doing the public law program---but I assume it prohibits your from interviewing at OGI right?

and is moot court for a 1L worth it? I love moot court (did it in undergrad---I know, not the same thing but I would still love to try it?)

[bgdddymtty]

and is moot court for a 1L worth it? I love moot court (did it in undergrad---I know, not the same thing but I would still love to try it?)

Are you sure you did moot court, or was it mock trial? The two are worlds apart. Moot court is appellate advocacy--no witnesses, evidence, etc., just dryly arguing the law before a panel of judges.

If what you're talking about is mock trial, we have a trial advocacy team, and it's one of the best in the country. At most schools, 1L's don't get to compete. On our team, no such prohibition exists, although we had so many new members this year than many 1L's didn't get to do an extramural tournament. To alleviate this issue, the team created an intramural tournament, the Commonwealth Challenge. I competed, had a lot of fun, and found it very beneficial. PM me if you want any more details.

If you really were talking about moot court, PM billyez. I'm sure he'd be happy to give you perspective on how that impacted his 1L year.

[thesealocust]

sooo in other words, if you're top 20-25%, bid NYC across the board and profit. done.

That's ridiculous. So you can't bid DC unless you're top 10 percent or something? The number of students who get firm jobs in DC doesn't line up with this.

You're completely misreading the context. Many people with roughly median and above grades got large firm jobs in DC. That being said, EVERYONE (everyone - every single student) who relied heavily on the DC market had worse performance than those who relied on the NYC market. That is to say two students, each with 50 bids, could see something like 8 interviews and 1 offer if bidding on DC or 15 interviews and 3 offers if bidding on NYC. I'm pulling those specific numbers out of my ass, but anybody at the school for the past two years can confirm the trend.

So if you have any given GPA, you probably have an X% chance at landing at least one offer in DC, and a much larger than X% chane of landing at least one offer in NYC.

Thus, all else being equal, somebody top quarter maximizes their chances of getting 1 or more offers by bidding on NYC.

I know a large number of people personally who left OGI with exactly 1 offer, and a large number who were sadly on the other side of that line. The name of the game is getting at least one, because lateraling or even securing other employment after 3L year is much, much easier once your foot is in the door. You'd be amazed how many legal careers start in NYC and then move elsewhere. I know you don't like the city, and I respect that, but ignore its forcefulness in the legal world at your own peril.

[Morgan12Oak]

Yeah, thats basically what i was saying. Even if the expected value of offers of someone who is top 20-25% bidding in DC is greater than 1, I’d rather not be the victim of variance.

[crossingforHYS]

and is moot court for a 1L worth it? I love moot court (did it in undergrad---I know, not the same thing but I would still love to try it?)

Are you sure you did moot court, or was it mock trial? The two are worlds apart. Moot court is appellate advocacy--no witnesses, evidence, etc., just dryly arguing the law before a panel of judges.

If what you're talking about is mock trial, we have a trial advocacy team, and it's one of the best in the country. At most schools, 1L's don't get to compete. On our team, no such prohibition exists, although we had so many new members this year than many 1L's didn't get to do an extramural tournament. To alleviate this issue, the team created an intramural tournament, the Commonwealth Challenge. I competed, had a lot of fun, and found it very beneficial. PM me if you want any more details.

If you really were talking about moot court, PM billyez. I'm sure he'd be happy to give you perspective on how that impacted his 1L year.

I was talking about moot . PM'd anyway !

[joeshmo39]

I was also on moot and mock trial, so people can PM me if they have any questions/want another viewpoint.

[BruceWayne]

sooo in other words, if you're top 20-25%, bid NYC across the board and profit. done.

That's ridiculous. So you can't bid DC unless you're top 10 percent or something? The number of students who get firm jobs in DC doesn't line up with this.

You're completely misreading the context. Many people with roughly median and above grades got large firm jobs in DC. That being said, EVERYONE (everyone - every single student) who relied heavily on the DC market had worse performance than those who relied on the NYC market. That is to say two students, each with 50 bids, could see something like 8 interviews and 1 offer if bidding on DC or 15 interviews and 3 offers if bidding on NYC. I'm pulling those specific numbers out of my ass, but anybody at the school for the past two years can confirm the trend.

So if you have any given GPA, you probably have an X% chance at landing at least one offer in DC, and a much larger than X% chane of landing at least one offer in NYC.

Thus, all else being equal, somebody top quarter maximizes their chances of getting 1 or more offers by bidding on NYC.

I know a large number of people personally who left OGI with exactly 1 offer, and a large number who were sadly on the other side of that line. The name of the game is getting at least one, because lateraling or even securing other employment after 3L year is much, much easier once your foot is in the door. You'd be amazed how many legal careers start in NYC and then move elsewhere. I know you don't like the city, and I respect that, but ignore its forcefulness in the legal world at your own peril.

I'm probably going PI, so it's not as critical to me as it would be to someone who was biglaw or bust. Because of that I'm going to focus more on bidding firms that are in locales where I actually want to work. Luckily for me (and one of the reasons I chose to attend UVA) UVA is basically the best school to attend for working in my home secondary market (after Harvard and Yale). I'm going to use all of my top bids on my home (secondary) market. However, because we get 50 bids, out of necessity (there are only about 15-20 firms from my home market coming--and I won't bid on about 2 of them), I will be using a lot of bids on NYC.

With that said, what are the ginormous "easy" (grade wise) NYC firms? Cadawalder? Milibank Tweed? Dewey Labeuf?

[thesealocust]

It's easier to list firms that are (relatively) 'hard' w/r/t grades than those that are easy. V10(ish) in NYC isn't impossible with median grades (though obviously not that likely). I'd leave off Cravath, S&C, Davis Polk, and maybe Cleary if you aren't comfortably top third to top quarter, and I would include more mid-Vault firms than V10/V15 type firms, but there just aren't many that should absolutely be avoided. Some like Quinn, Boeis, & Patterson Belknap are more selective than you might guess based on just vault type rankings and should also be avoided.

Here's a handy list of NYC firms by size: http://www.law.com/jsp/nylj/PubArticleN ... 2495788232

White & Case, Schulte, Proskauer, Jones Day, Shearman, Cadwalader, Fried Frank, Milbank, dla piper etc. are among the firms with giant NYC offices that aren't extremely picky with respect to grades. As a group they probably prefer people with median to top quarter grades, but they also likely make offers to people even below and the very large class sizes is a big advantage in terms of how many callbacks and offers they are likely to be making.

[Wahoo1L]

It's easier to list firms that are (relatively) 'hard' w/r/t grades than those that are easy. V10(ish) in NYC isn't impossible with median grades (though obviously not that likely). I'd leave off Cravath, S&C, Davis Polk, and maybe Cleary if you aren't comfortably top third to top quarter, and I would include more mid-Vault firms than V10/V15 type firms, but there just aren't many that should absolutely be avoided. Some like Quinn, Boeis, & Patterson Belknap are more selective than you might guess based on just vault type rankings and should also be avoided.

I think this is a bit overly optimistic. Based on the data that I've seen, it seems very unlikely to get hired by a V10 if you have below a 3.5. Out of the V10, only Skadden, Weil and Simpson Thatcher have dipped below around a 3.5. Also, firms just outside of the V10 like Paul Weiss and Kirkland haven't really gone below a 3.5.

Firms like White & Case, Dewey, Weil, Willkie Farr, and Cadwalader seem to be less grade selective and have large class sizes.

[billyez]

So.....has anyone done the public law program? or moot court?

I was debating doing the public law program---but I assume it prohibits your from interviewing at OGI right?

and is moot court for a 1L worth it? I love moot court (did it in undergrad---I know, not the same thing but I would still love to try it?)

I'm assuming that when you say, "public law program", you mean the Law and Public Service program, right? You can apply for it your 1L and 2L year. I don't believe you'd be "forbidden" from doing OGI if you were selected. Your guaranteed a PILA grant and have to take a few classes about the ol' public service side of life...and I believe you have to do a research paper as well. It should be noted that just because your interested in public service, that doesn't mean that your precluded from seeing how things are on the other side. Heck, word has it that there are a decent number of folks on the PILA board who were going into firms.

You also asked me about whether the whole moot court thing could affect your academics - something that's been asked before - and I see little reason to restrict my opinion to only a PM.

It's a valid concern. But the short answer is "no". The longer answer is "not unless you let it." When it comes time to write a brief, those who are serious about it or going to dedicate a lot of time to it and you'll be practicing, sure. But I'm of the mindset that if a couple of weeks of studying for this and a weekend at a tournament is enough to genuinely ruin your academics, you weren't doing this whole law school thing right in the first place.

I knew people who did Moot Court, Trial Ad, or both. Some did extremely well on exams. Some did perfectly fine. Some did absolutely terrible. There's no common variable for success or failure on exams. You'll know whether you know how to attack them correcly or not soon enough, but not before then.

[thesealocust]

I think this is a bit overly optimistic. Based on the data that I've seen, it seems very unlikely to get hired by a V10 if you have below a 3.5. Out of the V10, only Skadden, Weil and Simpson Thatcher have dipped below around a 3.5. Also, firms just outside of the V10 like Paul Weiss and Kirkland haven't really gone below a 3.5.

Yes and no. The reason I think it's smart to bid on them is because a lot of people avoid them for the reasons you're describing. I remember DPW interviewed 80 people, and there are only like 90 people in the entire class with above a 3.48, certainly not all of whom are bidding on NYC firms. I also know of people, off the top of my head, at 3 V10-V15 type NYC firms with just above median (i.e. well below top quarter) grades. I know many more people with stronger grades at those firms, but I think they're smart bottom-of-the-list bids, especially with 50 choices to work with.

Basically I'm not saying getting the job is likely, I'm saying that circumstances conspire to make it (a) possible and (b) the interview somewhat easier to get. And since the group of firms we're talking about is really only 5-10, I feel like it's a good compliment to an overall bidding strategy.

Of course this is all very abstract, we're not even talking about a specific set of grades and credentials, so it's hard to say anything too concrete.

[YCrevolution]

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[quakeroats]

How many firm offices are coming to OGI in the fall?

[YCrevolution]

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