Anonymous User wrote:Besides literally reading every post in the past threads (which i've just about done anyway), how can I find more about the mechanics of the bidding process? You guys seem to so know much about it just having gone through it, but everyone on my side seems absolutely clueless. I want to know so I can implement some sort of strategy to my bids. Is it sort of just balancing desire to be at the firm with number of interview spots with number of people you think will bid for that firm? That's what I'm gleaning so far, but it seems more difficult to do when you want to bid something besides Chi/NY.
Ask OCS (don't) or ask us (do). IIRC someone wrote up a bidding process overview last year, but can't find it atm, so I'll just run through it super quickly:
On the mechanics side: it's straight lottery. No pre-select. The top x number of bids on an office get a screener--however many slots they have, basically. Once OCI starts, there is an add/drop system where you can cancel screeners you're no longer interested in and pick up ones you didn't get that other people cancelled (and, sometimes, firms will leave a couple slots open just for this, it seems). If there's a time conflict between bids I believe the higher bid will win and the lower bid will just not result in a screener. You can also show up really early in the morning and drop off your resume and ask if an interviewer would be willing to do an interview with you over a break, at the end of the day, etc.
Generally you want to bid the popular firms highest because 1) they fill up faster, and 2) it's harder to pick them up in add-drop. But I'd also sliiightly caution against just trying to maximize quantity of screeners over quality, which doesn't mean, like, overall prestige, but how much you want a particular firm (practice group strength location, etc). I missed a couple firms I really wanted to at least interview with because of micromanaging in the bidlist trying to get the most screeners possible; once you get over 25-30 or so, there's not a huge amount of return to doing more unless you have crazy stamina for these. So it's kind of a balancing act. You maybe want to put some firms you really don't want to miss a little higher than needed to ensure the screener, but not too many or you'll miss the bigger ones with larger class sizes (and thus higher likelihood of getting an offer). But you also don't want to just pick popular firms if it means missing out on the ones that are strongest for what you want to do.
Speaking way too generally, I'd say firms fill up in roughly this order: 1) Chicago large class size 2) NY large class size 3) best non-crazy-selective DC 4) rest of Chicago 5) rest of NY 6) rest of DC 7) LA
literally everything else 9) firms with very high GPA cutoffs (MTO, Irell, W&C, etc). I'm sure opinions differ on this, but that's roughly what I noticed last year and looking at bidlists from previous threads. If you have a question on where to bid a particular firm:
look at the past threads. Seriously, look at them and run a search on the firm you're trying to find out about. There's variation year-to-year depending on who bids what in each class, but not that much, since a lot of the advice gravitates toward the same bid cutoffs.
HTH. That's the quick-and-dirty. But ask more specific questions and folks here will answer--we all got great help from upperclassmen when we were going through this, too. Your initial impression--balancing desire+slots+popularity--is right. My one piece of advice would be to 1) don't under-rate desire or let popularity dictate everything, and 2) on the other hand, don't feel like all is lost if you miss a favorite. Things will pop up while you're interviewing that will change your opinions on firms. My top-3 preferences at the end of CBs was super different from at the beginning.
edit: y'all keep posting right after me which makes my whole "post now, proofread later" thing look real dumb.
