Anonymous User wrote:Anonymous User wrote:I'm the poster who has a 1L SA that was known from the start not to turn into an offer. I'm worried that firms just assume that I was no-offered. I try to bring it up as much as possible, "they don't hire their 1L SAs and tell us to go elsewhere" but at this point I'm thinking maybe firms just think thats an excuse or a cover for a cold offer. Who would have thought that having a 1L SA would come to bite me in the ass.
I am continuously baffled at how law firms operate.
I'm assuming I simply am not in those recruiting meetings, and I do not know what to value in a candidate.
But you'd think that a 2L with 1L SA experience received: (1) great training, (2) formal writing experience and (3) excellent feedback on how to improve written/analytical skills.
A candidate with the above three to me seem much more attractive than a 2L without any of that experience.
Are new law firms basically assuming that the no-offered 1L cannot improve, and cannot sharpen his/her skills? That's a terrible and unfair assumption to make.
The flaw in your reasoning is that you assume that "training and experience" is relevant for entry-level hiring. I don't know where you got the idea that firms are hiring SA's based on these factors, but they aren't. If BigLaw hiring was concerned with training and experience, 3Ls, recent graduates, and laterals would be favored in hiring and this is objectively not the case. While previous work experience is often talked about as a desired characteristic, it's for professionalism / non-substantive reasons, not because the candidate has learned something about performing the actual day-to-day tasks of a junior associate. Firms are looking for moldable talent. This is also why there is an unstated understanding that older candidates are heavily disfavored.
A previous no-offer raises a red flag because, unless the firm doesn't bring you back for financial reasons, the firm is telling you and the world that you couldn't be molded to fit the firm's expectations over that 8-12 weeks. Whether it is an inability to improve work product to meet expectations or adapt your personality to meet expectations, it's the implasticity that presents the problem for the firms. They don't care if you know anything coming in the door, they just want you to be capable of learning what they want you to know and how they want you to act. If you couldn't do that somewhere else, why would a new firm assume you could do it with them?
Obviously it sucks that people who get no-offered might not get a second chance, but in a world where the majority of law students will never even get a first shot at BigLaw, I don't know why it's so hard for you to understand why firms operate this way.
