biglawrefuge - a website to track OCI for law students and lawyers Forum

[fisheatbananas]

Restrict signup to .edu emails only

Some of us have graduated and no longer have .edu's but may be interested in contributing.

and, re: anonymous posts and schools, I think moving to traditional law school groupings makes sense (split the t-14 into 4, then just do bands of 10 for tier 1, then just straight up t2/3/4?)

i signed up with my personal email as well. although i have a .edu but i thought i'd like to use the site even after i graduate and my .edu account is no longer accessible

[dwyf]

Restrict signup to .edu emails only

Some of us have graduated and no longer have .edu's but may be interested in contributing.

and, re: anonymous posts and schools, I think moving to traditional law school groupings makes sense (split the t-14 into 4, then just do bands of 10 for tier 1, then just straight up t2/3/4?)

i signed up with my personal email as well. although i have a .edu but i thought i'd like to use the site even after i graduate and my .edu account is no longer accessible

Good point, and also - anonymity. Not only did I want an anonymous username, I didn't want a traceable email address for when I out my firm for actually asking me to do work during my summer.

[fisheatbananas]

Restrict signup to .edu emails only

Some of us have graduated and no longer have .edu's but may be interested in contributing.

and, re: anonymous posts and schools, I think moving to traditional law school groupings makes sense (split the t-14 into 4, then just do bands of 10 for tier 1, then just straight up t2/3/4?)

i signed up with my personal email as well. although i have a .edu but i thought i'd like to use the site even after i graduate and my .edu account is no longer accessible

Good point, and also - anonymity. Not only did I want an anonymous username, I didn't want a traceable email address for when I out my firm for actually asking me to do work during my summer.

is anyone going to see the email you signed up with other than the site moderators though? i thought people would only see your username if you want to post under the username instead of anonymous, but never your email

[codeandcodes]

Restrict signup to .edu emails only

Some of us have graduated and no longer have .edu's but may be interested in contributing.

and, re: anonymous posts and schools, I think moving to traditional law school groupings makes sense (split the t-14 into 4, then just do bands of 10 for tier 1, then just straight up t2/3/4?)

i signed up with my personal email as well. although i have a .edu but i thought i'd like to use the site even after i graduate and my .edu account is no longer accessible

Good point, and also - anonymity. Not only did I want an anonymous username, I didn't want a traceable email address for when I out my firm for actually asking me to do work during my summer.

is anyone going to see the email you signed up with other than the site moderators though? i thought people would only see your username if you want to post under the username instead of anonymous, but never your email

No, your email is hidden from all other users. Only your username is visible.

[fisheatbananas]

Restrict signup to .edu emails only

Some of us have graduated and no longer have .edu's but may be interested in contributing.

and, re: anonymous posts and schools, I think moving to traditional law school groupings makes sense (split the t-14 into 4, then just do bands of 10 for tier 1, then just straight up t2/3/4?)

i signed up with my personal email as well. although i have a .edu but i thought i'd like to use the site even after i graduate and my .edu account is no longer accessible

Good point, and also - anonymity. Not only did I want an anonymous username, I didn't want a traceable email address for when I out my firm for actually asking me to do work during my summer.

is anyone going to see the email you signed up with other than the site moderators though? i thought people would only see your username if you want to post under the username instead of anonymous, but never your email

No, your email is hidden from all other users. Only your username is visible.

ok im relieved to hear that

[codeandcodes]

Hey guys,

I've published a FAQ about biglawrefuge here:
http://www.biglawrefuge.com/articles/1-biglawrefuge-faq

Have a read!

[Anonymous User]

What about including stats for transfer students?

[fisheatbananas]

What about including stats for transfer students?

+1 agree that this would be useful

[codeandcodes]

What about including stats for transfer students?

+1 agree that this would be useful

I think for stats for transfers, you should register under your the school to which you've transferred. There's no easy way to keep track of those one-offs at the moment and there aren't too many cases of that each year, so don't think it will skew the stats.

[codeandcodes]

Hey guys,

I've published a FAQ about biglawrefuge here:
http://www.biglawrefuge.com/articles/1-biglawrefuge-faq

Have a read!

Also, feel free to post additional questions in the comment box (you can do so anonymously). FWIW I was at a v5 firm, so can give background there.

[codeandcodes]

Hi everyone! You may have seen me bumping up a few OCI threads with references to http://www.biglawrefuge.com. This OCI cycle is just getting started so nows a great time to put in your information.

For those of you who haven't been back to biglawrefuge lately, here are some stats.

100 law firms
100 law schools
107 job postings
408 users!
10 law firm reviews

As this OCI cycle continues and more data is entered i will be posting up more interesting stats as I mine the data.

[codeandcodes]

Hey guys,

http://www.biglawrefuge.com now aggregates interview data! If you add your interviews to your job postings, biglawrefuge will aggregate stats like this:

Interview Type Total Interviews (#) % pending % successful % unsuccessful
On Campus Interview 3 0.0 33.3% 66.6%

So in this case, 3 people had on campus interviews, 1 of them turned into a successful job outcome and 2 were unsuccessful. You can see this on each company page: http://www.biglawrefuge.com/companies/13

You can use this metric to gauge the success rates for applicants. I.e. If I get a callback from firm X, what % of candidates got an offer? Hope that this helps someone.

[codeandcodes]

Hi everyone,

Another update!
You can now browse by interviews for each law firm! This is an easier way to see callback/OCI interview/phone screen information. You can try it here:
http://www.biglawrefuge.com/interviews

- codeandcodes

[codeandcodes]

Hey guys,

For those of you who are more interested in my day to day experience of running biglawrefuge (e.g. marketing, lessons learned, challenges), you can follow along with my blog here:
http://codeandcodes.com/2015/08/11/week ... e-learned/

It's non-legal in nature and way more stream of consciousness than my published content on biglawrefuge.

- codeandcodes

[kcdc1]

I would consider merging the jobs/interviews/review data sets to the extent that you can. From a user perspective, it's all basically the same information. If I pull up Firm X, I am interested in learning about careers at Firm X, which means all of the information in jobs/interviews/reviews is of interest to me. Same if I pull up a list of firms -- I want to know about the differences between them, and the division between information gathered from a "job" entry and a "review" entry is not material to me. As a consumer, the divisions between information categories feel artificial and confusing.

Likewise, as a potential data contributor, the category divisions are confusing. If I apply to Firm X, conduct background research, go through a screener, a callback, and then grab coffee with an associate or two before ultimately deciding against working at Firm X because of Issue Y, I might be willing to contribute a lot of good information to your website about Firm X. But if I submit a "job," the only data you're currently likely to receive are my GPA, date of application, decision date, and ultimate outcome. You might be able to get more useful information from me, but you're not asking for it.

[fisheatbananas]

ive been enjoying your blog posts so thank you

not trying to be negative here but are you going to send out the 'weekly digest' email every week? if yes could we have an option to unsubscribe from those please? i know youre trying to get more people on the site which is great (no sarcasm) but just personally i get a lot of emails and so i always appreciate unsubscribing from anything thats not absolutely necessary and urgent since itll just take up space in the inbox. maybe others would agree as well

[codeandcodes]

ive been enjoying your blog posts so thank you

not trying to be negative here but are you going to send out the 'weekly digest' email every week? if yes could we have an option to unsubscribe from those please? i know youre trying to get more people on the site which is great (no sarcasm) but just personally i get a lot of emails and so i always appreciate unsubscribing from anything thats not absolutely necessary and urgent since itll just take up space in the inbox. maybe others would agree as well

Absolutely, will add this feature soon. You'll be able to access it from your profile page.

[fisheatbananas]

ive been enjoying your blog posts so thank you

not trying to be negative here but are you going to send out the 'weekly digest' email every week? if yes could we have an option to unsubscribe from those please? i know youre trying to get more people on the site which is great (no sarcasm) but just personally i get a lot of emails and so i always appreciate unsubscribing from anything thats not absolutely necessary and urgent since itll just take up space in the inbox. maybe others would agree as well

Absolutely, will add this feature soon. You'll be able to access it from your profile page.

sweet. thanks!!

[codeandcodes]

I would consider merging the jobs/interviews/review data sets to the extent that you can. From a user perspective, it's all basically the same information. If I pull up Firm X, I am interested in learning about careers at Firm X, which means all of the information in jobs/interviews/reviews is of interest to me. Same if I pull up a list of firms -- I want to know about the differences between them, and the division between information gathered from a "job" entry and a "review" entry is not material to me. As a consumer, the divisions between information categories feel artificial and confusing.

Likewise, as a potential data contributor, the category divisions are confusing. If I apply to Firm X, conduct background research, go through a screener, a callback, and then grab coffee with an associate or two before ultimately deciding against working at Firm X because of Issue Y, I might be willing to contribute a lot of good information to your website about Firm X. But if I submit a "job," the only data you're currently likely to receive are my GPA, date of application, decision date, and ultimate outcome. You might be able to get more useful information from me, but you're not asking for it.

This is really good feedback, thanks for this. Right now, the only consolidated view is really the companies page (www.biglawrefuge.com/companies/1,2,3, etc) which only shows the latest data on a company. I want to add in a comparison feature so you can take two firms and compare them side by side. That will be coming in the future.

I struggled with an intuitive naming scheme for "job posting" because it's really a job datapoint, but that sounded overly technical. This is all really good stuff to mull over and I'll try to think of a better interface to entering in information, and as you are a user of the site I really appreciate the valuable feedback. It will continue to get better!

[kcdc1]

I struggled with an intuitive naming scheme for "job posting" because it's really a job datapoint, but that sounded overly technical.

Regarding data collection, my suggestion would be to engineer the site to collect as much and as detailed information as possible, and then manipulate that data into useful consumer packages on the back end.

For example, you might like to be able to output a graph showing GPA/class rank thresholds for Cravath from T6 schools. Right now, you're asking people who apply to Cravath for GPA, class rank, and whether they go to a T6 school. You're starting by asking, "What information do I want?" You might instead ask, "What information do my users have?"

[codeandcodes]

I struggled with an intuitive naming scheme for "job posting" because it's really a job datapoint, but that sounded overly technical.

Regarding data collection, my suggestion would be to engineer the site to collect as much and as detailed information as possible, and then manipulate that data into useful consumer packages on the back end.

For example, you might like to be able to output a graph showing GPA/class rank thresholds for Cravath from T6 schools. Right now, you're asking people who apply to Cravath for GPA, class rank, and whether they go to a T6 school. You're starting by asking, "What information do I want?" You might instead ask, "What information do my users have?"

I don't aggregate by "tier" of school yet, but I do aggregate stats on a school by school basis. From my analysis, it doesn't look like a lot of users know about this. But you can see average GPA stats per school/per firm. Here's an example for Columbia Law School: http://www.biglawrefuge.com/schools/4/companies

[codeandcodes]

I struggled with an intuitive naming scheme for "job posting" because it's really a job datapoint, but that sounded overly technical.

Regarding data collection, my suggestion would be to engineer the site to collect as much and as detailed information as possible, and then manipulate that data into useful consumer packages on the back end.

For example, you might like to be able to output a graph showing GPA/class rank thresholds for Cravath from T6 schools. Right now, you're asking people who apply to Cravath for GPA, class rank, and whether they go to a T6 school. You're starting by asking, "What information do I want?" You might instead ask, "What information do my users have?"

I don't aggregate by "tier" of school yet, but I do aggregate stats on a school by school basis. From my analysis, it doesn't look like a lot of users know about this. But you can see average GPA stats per school/per firm. Here's an example for Columbia Law School: http://www.biglawrefuge.com/schools/4/companies

Sorry about the errors, fixed now!

[codeandcodes]

Hey guys, a few new exciting updates on biglawrefuge.

We have our first third party article submission, Day in the Life of BigLaw Lit, Part 1http://www.biglawrefuge.com/articles/4- ... lit-part-1, by http://www.biglawrefuge.com/profiles/biglawlit, a biglaw litigator. Biglawlit gives a very different perspective on the day to day life in biglaw compared with my own experience.

ALSO, I've put in some achievements into biglawrefuge like posting your first job datapoint, law firm review, interview, etc. There are 16 in total! Collect them all.

FINALLY, I've added contribution scores for every user! Login http://www.biglawrefuge.com/ to see your score and how you stack up against the other users!

[codeandcodes]

For those of you following along, week 3 thoughts re: biglawrefuge: http://codeandcodes.com/2015/08/16/week ... itballing/

Also, my rationale behind adding contribution scores and achievements. Get some!

[North]

Do you have firms broken out by office? I worked in a satellite office of a fancy NY HQ'd firm and I know for sure our standards are a bit lower. It'd make the overall picture less acurate to have that data all lumped into one set.