JazzOne wrote:You're a bigger flight risk to a firm if you have attractive alternatives. You don't have to believe me or anyone else, but law is a pretentious field, and legal hiring is not a meritocracy. If you choose not to believe those with experience in the field, then you'll find out the hard way. Being confident that your experience in other fields gives you an advantage in legal hiring can be perceived as arrogance, and hiring partners don't want to deal with some pain in the ass old chap who thinks he knows everything. If you want to break into this club, you have to play by someone else's rules. This is a superstar system where firms gobble up all the young talent. There is plenty of young talent to allow firms to pass on you without a second thought.
As I said earlier, an associate providing for a family is probably much less of a flight risk than a 24yo who is single. The married associate is unlikely to want to drag their kids to a new school, find a new family friendly neighborhood, find a suitable home. I fail to see why that can't be sold as a strength, nor do I see why selling it as a strength would be arrogant.
I don't see anyone here suggesting their past experience will allow them to perform better as a lawyer than any other graduate. That might be arrogant. Showing that you have worked the hours that will be expected and that you have worked on important projects with younger and older colleagues taking the lead demonstrates your ability to be a functioning part of a team.
Anyone thinking they'll be treated like a 5th year associate or partner because of their prior experience is clearly on a hiding to nothing. I just don't see any evidence of that in this thread.
After working a few years post-UG I headed back to grad school. I could've sworn for the first week or so I could actually feel my brain growing! Take that dementia!
