LinkedIn Rant (Please move if it's in the wrong forum) Forum

[Anonymous User]

I've also heard it encouraged, both from TLS and OCS. I did it because of that, though I've since taken it off. Yeah, it seemed pretty retarded, but what can you do? Based on results, I don't think it hurt me (or at least dramatically).

[ClubberLang]

I've also heard it encouraged, both from TLS and OCS. I did it because of that, though I've since taken it off. Yeah, it seemed pretty retarded, but what can you do? Based on results, I don't think it hurt me (or at least dramatically).

It's a transparent attempt to get the law review boost without doing law review. I imagine most people who see it on a resume don't care, but some will. If I ever see this on a resume I'm going to ask the person to tell me about his or her experience being invited to law review.

[zot1]

I've also heard it encouraged, both from TLS and OCS. I did it because of that, though I've since taken it off. Yeah, it seemed pretty retarded, but what can you do? Based on results, I don't think it hurt me (or at least dramatically).

It's a transparent attempt to get the law review boost without doing law review. I imagine most people who see it on a resume don't care, but some will. If I ever see this on a resume I'm going to ask the person to tell me about his or her experience being invited to law review.

Personally, I think it's silly. I only care to know that you will actually do it, not that you could have done it.

[FloridaCoastalorbust]

Solid rant. Guy/girl is a huge douche for sure. Please out this person, as others have requested, to further our noble profession.

[Anonymous User]

I guess somewhat relevant to this topic:

Is it commonplace to put Received an invitation to participate on [insert school]'s Law Review on your resume if you transfer?

This would kind of strike me as odd but what do i know

That's actually pretty normal. I assume it'd come off eventually but it should definitely be on there when applying for jobs during law school.

Respectfully disagree. I think filling out a one page resume with things you didn't do is kind of pathetic. It would certainly raise some eyebrows for the wrong reasons.

I get this point, but from reading way too much of this website for way too long, I think doing this is expected/accepted, at least for 2L OCI.

I don't expect/accept it for 2L OCI. I think it's a bad look.

If you're the applicant, what could the upside possibly be? I've never understood why some folks do this.

They're doing it because OCS is actively telling them they should. Although, if it's pissing off the interviewers, then OCS is really fucking up.

[stego]

I've also heard it encouraged, both from TLS and OCS. I did it because of that, though I've since taken it off. Yeah, it seemed pretty retarded, but what can you do? Based on results, I don't think it hurt me (or at least dramatically).

It's a transparent attempt to get the law review boost without doing law review. I imagine most people who see it on a resume don't care, but some will. If I ever see this on a resume I'm going to ask the person to tell me about his or her experience being invited to law review.

Personally, I think it's silly. I only care to know that you will actually do it, not that you could have done it.

Why do you care if somebody checked citations for a few hours?

[lavarman84]

I've also heard it encouraged, both from TLS and OCS. I did it because of that, though I've since taken it off. Yeah, it seemed pretty retarded, but what can you do? Based on results, I don't think it hurt me (or at least dramatically).

It's a transparent attempt to get the law review boost without doing law review. I imagine most people who see it on a resume don't care, but some will. If I ever see this on a resume I'm going to ask the person to tell me about his or her experience being invited to law review.

Personally, I think it's silly. I only care to know that you will actually do it, not that you could have done it.

Why do you care if somebody checked citations for a few hours?

It's a lot more work than that. It's busy work but you typically have to put in quite a bit of time. That's what employers generally value...the fact that you put the time in. Plus, if the OCI interviewer was on law review, it's kind of like being in the same fraternity. He/she understands the struggles you're about to go through and sympathizes.

And I guess there's an argument that it improves your attention to detail and ability to handle mindless busy work (which still happens in real jobs I've been told). Plus, it's valuable for clerkships.

[rpupkin]

If you're the applicant, what could the upside possibly be? I've never understood why some folks do this.

They're doing it because OCS is actively telling them they should. Although, if it's pissing off the interviewers, then OCS is really fucking up.

To be clear, I'm not going to auto-ding a transfer for putting "received an invitation for law review" on a resume. But it doesn't help. I mean, how could it?

Think about this for a second. There are basically three reasons why a law firm would possibly care about law review: (1) because it means that, when the applicant is a junior associate, he or she can list "law review" on his or her firm bio; (2) because it means that the applicant will have tolerated at least one year of dreary busy work, which frankly isn't terrible preparation—at least mentally—for much of the work one has to do as a junior associate; and (3) because, for schools that don't rank but which allow students to grade-on to law review, it serves as a rough proxy for top-10% class rank.

If you've just been "invited" to law review but aren't actually on law review, reasons #1 and #2 don't apply at all. That leaves reason #3, which is of little to no value for a transfer student. I already know you had good enough grades to transfer from your TTT (or whatever) to a much better law school; I don't need an additional indicator that you ranked highly in your 1L class. (And regardless, most transfers can—and should—put their 1L class rank on their resumes anyway.)

In short, all the "received an invitation for law review" does is remind me that you're not on law review at your new law school. Now, perhaps you're not on law review because you didn't try to write on. But let me share an assumption I make: If someone cares enough about the marginal prestige of law review to put down "received an invitation for law review" on a resume, then they almost certainly tried (and evidently failed) to write on to law review at their transfer school.

Again, this is a really minor thing; it's not something that I (or likely anyone else) would ding a transfer applicant for. But it just seems like all downside to me. Unless someone's career services office has a justification that I haven't thought of, I wouldn't do it.

[Anonymous User]

Ok so you guys have me wondering about my approach on linkedin. Is it bad/douchey to post the scholarships you got from schools that you did attend? Also, any thoughts on listing your high school?

[zot1]

I've also heard it encouraged, both from TLS and OCS. I did it because of that, though I've since taken it off. Yeah, it seemed pretty retarded, but what can you do? Based on results, I don't think it hurt me (or at least dramatically).

It's a transparent attempt to get the law review boost without doing law review. I imagine most people who see it on a resume don't care, but some will. If I ever see this on a resume I'm going to ask the person to tell me about his or her experience being invited to law review.

Personally, I think it's silly. I only care to know that you will actually do it, not that you could have done it.

Why do you care if somebody checked citations for a few hours?

Because practice helps students with attention to detail and it shows my you're willing to do not-so-fun work.

[pancakes3]

If you're the applicant, what could the upside possibly be? I've never understood why some folks do this.

They're doing it because OCS is actively telling them they should. Although, if it's pissing off the interviewers, then OCS is really fucking up.

To be clear, I'm not going to auto-ding a transfer for putting "received an invitation for law review" on a resume. But it doesn't help. I mean, how could it?

Think about this for a second. There are basically three reasons why a law firm would possibly care about law review: (1) because it means that, when the applicant is a junior associate, he or she can list "law review" on his or her firm bio; (2) because it means that the applicant will have tolerated at least one year of dreary busy work, which frankly isn't terrible preparation—at least mentally—for much of the work one has to do as a junior associate; and (3) because, for schools that don't rank but which allow students to grade-on to law review, it serves as a rough proxy for top-10% class rank.

If you've just been "invited" to law review but aren't actually on law review, reasons #1 and #2 don't apply at all. That leaves reason #3, which is of little to no value for a transfer student. I already know you had good enough grades to transfer from your TTT (or whatever) to a much better law school; I don't need an additional indicator that you ranked highly in your 1L class. (And regardless, most transfers can—and should—put their 1L class rank on their resumes anyway.)

In short, all the "received an invitation for law review" does is remind me that you're not on law review at your new law school. Now, perhaps you're not on law review because you didn't try to write on. But let me share an assumption I make: If someone cares enough about the marginal prestige of law review to put down "received an invitation for law review" on a resume, then they almost certainly tried (and evidently failed) to write on to law review at their transfer school.

Again, this is a really minor thing; it's not something that I (or likely anyone else) would ding a transfer applicant for. But it just seems like all downside to me. Unless someone's career services office has a justification that I haven't thought of, I wouldn't do it.

maybe the TTT OCS officer is just salty and wants to sabotage the transfer? i assumed it was credited to do this as a grade signal but like you said - GPA and rank are already on the resume so it really doesn't add much value. you can also make the argument that it might signal that the applicant did write-on and possesses some baseline level of writing/bb competency? i'm deferring to you on this entirely though.

[ClubberLang]

I've also heard it encouraged, both from TLS and OCS. I did it because of that, though I've since taken it off. Yeah, it seemed pretty retarded, but what can you do? Based on results, I don't think it hurt me (or at least dramatically).

It's a transparent attempt to get the law review boost without doing law review. I imagine most people who see it on a resume don't care, but some will. If I ever see this on a resume I'm going to ask the person to tell me about his or her experience being invited to law review.

Personally, I think it's silly. I only care to know that you will actually do it, not that you could have done it.

Why do you care if somebody checked citations for a few hours?

Law review has some value in developing writing skills, more so from writing the note than cite checking. Being invited to something but declining has literally no value. It's a signal that you were a good student at your old school, which should be apparent from the fact that you transferred up, your transcript, or 1L rank. In the unlikely event that you earned your spot at the 1L school during the write on, I guess in that case the invitation has some nominal value, but probably not enough to overcome the downsides. You could just use the write on as your writing sample.

The potential downsides are that you'll interview with a gung ho former law-reviewer who's pissed that you are trying to claim the activity without having done it, or that you'll interview with someone who thinks it is poor reflection on you as a candidate that you have one page to sell yourself and the best you can come up with is things you didn't do.

[Effingham]

Ok so you guys have me wondering about my approach on linkedin. Is it bad/douchey to post the scholarships you got from schools that you did attend? Also, any thoughts on listing your high school?

Yeah, it's still bad. List it on your resume for oci, but definitely not to brag to your friends on linkedin. High school can be valuable for insular markets, I didn't list it, but I always mentioned it in my cover letter.

[Phil Brooks]

Ok so you guys have me wondering about my approach on linkedin. Is it bad/douchey to post the scholarships you got from schools that you did attend? Also, any thoughts on listing your high school?

Yeah, it's still bad. List it on your resume for oci, but definitely not to brag to your friends on linkedin. High school can be valuable for insular markets, I didn't list it, but I always mentioned it in my cover letter.

I think it's fine to list external scholarships, because finding and writing tailored applications to them involves initiative and resourcefulness. I also think it is always good to show employers that you are money-conscious and did not throw $250k to a school (hence why it's even more douchey and stupid to list that you turned down money, like the poster in OP did).

But listing an internal scholarship from the school is basically the same as listing your LSAT score.

[Danger Zone]

And I guess there's an argument that it improves your attention to detail and ability to handle mindless busy work (which still happens in real jobs I've been told).

*looks up from literally retyping numbers on a 200 bullet list because boomer partner does not use automatic numbering*

*nods approvingly*

[gaddockteeg]

TLS, please indulge me.

An undergraduate classmate of mine added me on LinkedIn the other day. He is at Yale Law School. On his profile under "Honors and Awards" he listed that he received full-tuition scholarships to Columbia, NYU and Chicago, but that he declined all of them.

This annoyed me. For one thing, this person should own his choice of school; I wonder if later on in life he will say, "This is my spouse, but just so you know, this other beautiful person said she would have married me too." Second, by drawing attention to the fact that he turned down so much money, he is declaring either, "Haha suckers, I can afford it," or "I am a prestige whore."

Am I being over-sensitive? Would an employer be impressed upon seeing such material on a resume/profile?

Rant over.

LMAO this dude sounds like the worst. You're justified in being annoyed.