Top Law Schools

...

I work for a law firm and interview people. I glance at their resume, and think to myself one of two things - "oh, clearly this person wants to live/work in the same location as my law firm" or "huh, I wonder why this person wants to live/work in the same location as my law firm." If it's the latter, I may or may not ask, particularly depending on if the resume otherwise sings ties to another location. Your answer may or may not sound like bullshit after I ask you. If it sounds like bullshit, I may hesitate to recommend you for an offer.

That's really all ties are. There's no formula or anything.

metroidbum wrote:Obviously where your immediate family lives, where you grew up, and where you went to school all count, but how far in the family do ties go? grandparents? aunts/uncles/cousins, etc?

And how much space do your ties cover based on where you grew up/live? If you lived in one state in the midwest, does it cover all of them? if you were raised in Virginia, are you considered to have ties to the whole south?

Allow me to answer your second question as it pertains to the south, particularly, the deep south.

Answer: not far. If you told ppl in my home state of MS that you had a tie to Virginia, they would view that as you saying you had a tie to Massachusetts, California, Ethiopia, Antarctica, or some place like that. Honestly, even ties to Birmingham, AL would not be a tie to MS. Perhaps other areas of the country are different.

Anything that can demonstrate you want to work in an area

so yeah it's really dependent on the situation

But it's usually more specific (aka you don't have ties "to the Midwest" or "to the south")

I think if the city where you have ties has a legal market it can be tougher to move to a nearby city, even if that nearby city has a bigger legal market. For example, LA firms seemed a little skeptical about my ties, even though I'm from San Diego and went to undergrad in Orange County. But I imagine that if I had grown up in Palm Springs they wouldn't have had the same concerns.

Tiago Splitter wrote:I think if the city where you have ties has a legal market it can be tougher to move to a nearby city, even if that nearby city has a bigger legal market. For example, LA firms seemed a little skeptical about my ties, even though I'm from San Diego and went to undergrad in Orange County. But I imagine that if I had grown up in Palm Springs they wouldn't have had the same concerns.

In general, I think the definition of ties varies with the market. What might be ties in San Francisco might not work in LA. I've been told that ties to St. Louis equals ties to Kansas City but the converse doesn't really hold.

Say, I am from the west coast, but have a gf and also her family who live in the east coast, say georgia, so would moving to georgia for law school and hope to settling down there after law school near my gf's family be considered a tie?

deebanger wrote:Say, I am from the west coast, but have a gf and also her family who live in the east coast, say georgia, so would moving to georgia for law school and hope to settling down there after law school near my gf's family be considered a tie?

thesealocust wrote:I work for a law firm and interview people. I glance at their resume, and think to myself one of two things - "oh, clearly this person wants to live/work in the same location as my law firm" or "huh, I wonder why this person wants to live/work in the same location as my law firm." If it's the latter, I may or may not ask, particularly depending on if the resume otherwise sings ties to another location. Your answer may or may not sound like bullshit after I ask you. If it sounds like bullshit, I may hesitate to recommend you for an offer.

That's really all ties are. There's no formula or anything.

Also keep in mind some ties are stronger than others

It's not like a check box the recruiter checks on a form

thesealocust wrote:

deebanger wrote:Say, I am from the west coast, but have a gf and also her family who live in the east coast, say georgia, so would moving to georgia for law school and hope to settling down there after law school near my gf's family be considered a tie?

thesealocust wrote:I work for a law firm and interview people. I glance at their resume, and think to myself one of two things - "oh, clearly this person wants to live/work in the same location as my law firm" or "huh, I wonder why this person wants to live/work in the same location as my law firm." If it's the latter, I may or may not ask, particularly depending on if the resume otherwise sings ties to another location. Your answer may or may not sound like bullshit after I ask you. If it sounds like bullshit, I may hesitate to recommend you for an offer.

That's really all ties are. There's no formula or anything.

Hey! thanks for answering, so would my reason fall in the "oh, clearly this person wants to live/work in the same location as my law firm" category or "huh, I wonder why this person wants to live/work in the same location as my law firm?

There is no good answer to your question. The more strained your ties the harder the job hunt in that location will be, it's a continuum and also very dependent on your interview abilities, highly specific details, and the people/firm you interview with.

What's a person to do if they are genuinely "done" with living in his/her home state? I imagine saying "I'm just sick of living in state X, and this city has job opportunities" doesn't do great in interviews either.

squee116 wrote:What's a person to do if they are genuinely "done" with living in his/her home state? I imagine saying "I'm just sick of living in state X, and this city has job opportunities" doesn't do great in interviews either.

Your best bet is to move and establish ties somewhere new before law school, or go T14 and target NYC and DC, which care a ton about school and grades but almost not at all about ties.

Imagine you're interviewing candidates for a job far away from where the person has chosen to go to school/lives. Imagine that person sitting there and saying to you "I totally want to live in X city and work for you." Then imagine you look down and, as far as you can see on their resume, they've never lived, worked, or visited that city. That would seem like a strange thing to say, right?

If you grew up somewhere, have family there, worked there, etc., then as an interviewer you'd probably feel a bit more comfortable believing them.

So, when considering this sort of thing, put yourself in the interviewer's shoes.