Tell me about the time you realized your career services was useless Forum

[Wild Card]

Offered a single twenty-minute mock interview at the end of which the suggestion was to practice.

My law school had tons of affinity groups offering mock interviewing and I regret not taking advantage of them.

[Anonymous User]

I had the exact opposite experience with my career counselor. There were six career counselors at my school and you were just randomly assigned one as a 1L. Five of the six were idiots and their credentials were mostly a year or two in big law and then either burned out or got fired and, for some reason, the law school hired them. But the career counselor I got assigned was a former partner at a big law firm in DC and COA clerk. She told me exactly what I needed to do to get a DC offer as a 1L, helped me a make a realistic bid list that landed me a bunch of offers (many at firms where I was below the GPA median), and then connected me with judges that she thought would be interested in my application which resulted in two clerkship offers from two applications. I'm a first generation professional from a small town and don't know any lawyers so I would have absolutely drowned if it wasn't for her. I always think about how much different my career could have turned out if I was just assigned a different career counselor.

UVA or Georgetown? Jealous of your experience lol

Prob not UVA

Yeah this doesn't line up with UVA. In fact, almost everyone at OPP at UVA is widely regarded as excellent. I never had a classmate say they had a bad experience with them, though reviews of the public service and clerkship office were more mixed.

[Anonymous User]

My T6's OCS is notoriously a nightmare. Warned everyone repeatedly not to do pre-OCI and then the people who disobeyed and did it got what they wanted; the others did not.

Penn?

As a Penn student this lines up with my experience. So many OCS staff and not one has any idea what’s going on.

[Anonymous User]

SLS' Levin Center is famously bad--especially at 1L outreach. I came in really interested in public service work and basically got hard-slammed by them into doing biglaw. Our actual career services team was okay? I guess? Like they weren't bad, though TLS/reddit was more useful for researching firms.

[Anonymous User]

After I struck out at OCI someone in my school quietly set me up with a member of the administrative staff (I think on the fundraising team?) who helped me practice interview. She was great and I was able to get a job in 3L.

Still think about how it was just...understood...that career services offices didn't have anyone who could help me.

[Anonymous User]

My T6's OCS is notoriously a nightmare. Warned everyone repeatedly not to do pre-OCI and then the people who disobeyed and did it got what they wanted; the others did not.

Penn?

As a Penn student this lines up with my experience. So many OCS staff and not one has any idea what’s going on.

Completely agree.

[Anonymous User]

I had the exact opposite experience with my career counselor. There were six career counselors at my school and you were just randomly assigned one as a 1L. Five of the six were idiots and their credentials were mostly a year or two in big law and then either burned out or got fired and, for some reason, the law school hired them. But the career counselor I got assigned was a former partner at a big law firm in DC and COA clerk. She told me exactly what I needed to do to get a DC offer as a 1L, helped me a make a realistic bid list that landed me a bunch of offers (many at firms where I was below the GPA median), and then connected me with judges that she thought would be interested in my application which resulted in two clerkship offers from two applications. I'm a first generation professional from a small town and don't know any lawyers so I would have absolutely drowned if it wasn't for her. I always think about how much different my career could have turned out if I was just assigned a different career counselor.

UVA or Georgetown? Jealous of your experience lol

Prob not UVA

Yeah this doesn't line up with UVA. In fact, almost everyone at OPP at UVA is widely regarded as excellent. I never had a classmate say they had a bad experience with them, though reviews of the public service and clerkship office were more mixed.

For posterity for anyone searching this thread I can confirm UVA OPP ranges from "fine" to "excellent" while public service is mediocre at best. The people who run the clerkship office are legitimately nasty and unkind. Like it's honestly wild. Everyone at UVA I have talked to has had the same experience.

[Anonymous User]

I had the exact opposite experience with my career counselor. There were six career counselors at my school and you were just randomly assigned one as a 1L. Five of the six were idiots and their credentials were mostly a year or two in big law and then either burned out or got fired and, for some reason, the law school hired them. But the career counselor I got assigned was a former partner at a big law firm in DC and COA clerk. She told me exactly what I needed to do to get a DC offer as a 1L, helped me a make a realistic bid list that landed me a bunch of offers (many at firms where I was below the GPA median), and then connected me with judges that she thought would be interested in my application which resulted in two clerkship offers from two applications. I'm a first generation professional from a small town and don't know any lawyers so I would have absolutely drowned if it wasn't for her. I always think about how much different my career could have turned out if I was just assigned a different career counselor.

UVA or Georgetown? Jealous of your experience lol

Prob not UVA

Yeah this doesn't line up with UVA. In fact, almost everyone at OPP at UVA is widely regarded as excellent. I never had a classmate say they had a bad experience with them, though reviews of the public service and clerkship office were more mixed.

For posterity for anyone searching this thread I can confirm UVA OPP ranges from "fine" to "excellent" while public service is mediocre at best. The people who run the clerkship office are legitimately nasty and unkind. Like it's honestly wild. Everyone at UVA I have talked to has had the same experience.

This is shocking to me? I thought UVA would have a great office for clerkships since the school placement is great and the school seems to have great advising otherwise. Penn's clerkship advisor is nice, albeit unhelpful (and overly cautious, will point everyone to random state intermediate appellate clerkships).

[Anonymous User]

I had the exact opposite experience with my career counselor. There were six career counselors at my school and you were just randomly assigned one as a 1L. Five of the six were idiots and their credentials were mostly a year or two in big law and then either burned out or got fired and, for some reason, the law school hired them. But the career counselor I got assigned was a former partner at a big law firm in DC and COA clerk. She told me exactly what I needed to do to get a DC offer as a 1L, helped me a make a realistic bid list that landed me a bunch of offers (many at firms where I was below the GPA median), and then connected me with judges that she thought would be interested in my application which resulted in two clerkship offers from two applications. I'm a first generation professional from a small town and don't know any lawyers so I would have absolutely drowned if it wasn't for her. I always think about how much different my career could have turned out if I was just assigned a different career counselor.

UVA or Georgetown? Jealous of your experience lol

Prob not UVA

Yeah this doesn't line up with UVA. In fact, almost everyone at OPP at UVA is widely regarded as excellent. I never had a classmate say they had a bad experience with them, though reviews of the public service and clerkship office were more mixed.

For posterity for anyone searching this thread I can confirm UVA OPP ranges from "fine" to "excellent" while public service is mediocre at best. The people who run the clerkship office are legitimately nasty and unkind. Like it's honestly wild. Everyone at UVA I have talked to has had the same experience.

I am not at all saying that you are this candidate, but I had multiple friends who classified my law school's (not UVA, but peer school) career service/clerkship office as "nasty" or "extremely unhelpful" when in reality the CS (and especially clerkships) were just telling them the reality that they were competitive for the positions they wanted. I still don't think career services is helpful and at times is detrimental, but people also can't expect career services or clerkship offices to get them jobs they aren't competitive for.

Again reiterating that I don't think you are that person, just wanted to add some more perspective to it.

[Anonymous User]

Clerkship offices everywhere are notoriously two faced. If you're qualified for a clerkship they will recruit you and convince you to apply so they can boost the stats. If you aren't they will be nasty to you and put you down.

[Anonymous User]

Clerkship offices everywhere are notoriously two faced. If you're qualified for a clerkship they will recruit you and convince you to apply so they can boost the stats. If you aren't they will be nasty to you and put you down.

Penn's is not like this. Everyone in our OCS office is extremely nice—too nice, to the point of almost never giving negative feedback and confusing people about expectations for firm jobs/OCI.

[Anonymous User]

Clerkship offices everywhere are notoriously two faced. If you're qualified for a clerkship they will recruit you and convince you to apply so they can boost the stats. If you aren't they will be nasty to you and put you down.

Similar to the point above (and the point below). Would you rather them give unrealistic advice? Seems like saying sorry no you're just not qualified is better for the school and the candidate. I'm not sure I would classify that as two-faced by recruiting the highly qualified and rejecting the unqualified. In a lot of ways it emulates the real world for employment.

[Anonymous User]

Clerkship offices everywhere are notoriously two faced. If you're qualified for a clerkship they will recruit you and convince you to apply so they can boost the stats. If you aren't they will be nasty to you and put you down.

Notre Dame's CDO/clerkship committee fits this description exactly.

[throwawayt14]

Schoolwide clerkship success is based mostly on willingness of students to clerk across the country, without regard to politics, and the connections that the individual's professors have with judges. Hence why UVA and UChicago are exceptional in this regard, even if the UVA clerkship office isn't that helpful. Yale's clerkship office does absolutely nothing, and obviously, that does not stop anyone there.

UVA's office is helpful in giving the GPA ranges for students hired by particular judges, which does at least give students some useful information when applying.

I found my clerkship offices to be most useful connecting students with alumni tbh.

[Anonymous User]

Clerkship offices everywhere are notoriously two faced. If you're qualified for a clerkship they will recruit you and convince you to apply so they can boost the stats. If you aren't they will be nasty to you and put you down.

Honestly I would have kinda preferred this? At YSH, the clerkship office just gave everyone super, super generic advice about where to apply (as broadly as possible - no advice on COA v. District, among districts, and certainly not among judges on a specific bench) and did not help at all in terms of who are good profs for LOR, which classes are important to take, or what a writing sample should look like.

This treatment was crazy universal - I got it, my friends around median got it, and my friends who had over 4.0's had it.

Our fucking fedsoc chapter is better at providing granular advice on judges/courts than our CSO, lol.

[Anonymous User]

Northwestern has to take the cake for the absolute worst CSO within the T14 (are we even still a T14?). I'm going to expand on this when I have some time but wanted to drop this here to bait my fellow wildcats.

[Anonymous User]

Northwestern has to take the cake for the absolute worst CSO within the T14 (are we even still a T14?). I'm going to expand on this when I have some time but wanted to drop this here to bait my fellow wildcats.

Do you at least get median callback GPAs. Because Penn doesn’t.

[Anonymous User]

Clerkship offices everywhere are notoriously two faced. If you're qualified for a clerkship they will recruit you and convince you to apply so they can boost the stats. If you aren't they will be nasty to you and put you down.

Similar to the point above (and the point below). Would you rather them give unrealistic advice? Seems like saying sorry no you're just not qualified is better for the school and the candidate. I'm not sure I would classify that as two-faced by recruiting the highly qualified and rejecting the unqualified. In a lot of ways it emulates the real world for employment.

If they did it politely it would be one thing. But they usually don't give you an honest answer and instead just ghost you or are rude.

Also, my point was that if anyone says "my clerkship office is really great" that just mean you fit category A, it doesn't refute others' bad experiences.

[Anonymous User]

Northwestern has to take the cake for the absolute worst CSO within the T14 (are we even still a T14?). I'm going to expand on this when I have some time but wanted to drop this here to bait my fellow wildcats.

Do you at least get median callback GPAs. Because Penn doesn’t.

Yes but the data is not at all helpful, is outdated, and often contains only 3 data points per firm. So you're not even getting helpful or informative medians or means.

[Anonymous User]

Going to add that a northwestern career services employee told me to put my lsat score on my resume. Keep in mind I had several years of relevant corporate work experience prior to law school and my 1L GPA was competitive. And I had two pre-OCI offers that this employee knew about. So it's not like she could be under the impression that I need help selling myself.

There is no reason to tell anyone to list their lsat score on their oci resume.

[Anonymous User]

In general median GPA data is highly misleading because it tells you who got a callback but not who didn't. For example if 3 people got a cb and they were 4, 3.6, 3.2 with median 3.6 or even all exactly 3.6, you might think 3.6 GPA = cb. Wrong. It could be that of 10 students, 3 go a cb. If the 10 were distributed say 2x 4.0, 3x 3.6, 5x 3.2 then what really happened is that for a 4 it's 50%, for a 3.6 it's 33%, for a 3.2 it's 20%.

[Anonymous User]

Going to add that a northwestern career services employee told me to put my lsat score on my resume. Keep in mind I had several years of relevant corporate work experience prior to law school and my 1L GPA was competitive. And I had two pre-OCI offers that this employee knew about. So it's not like she could be under the impression that I need help selling myself.

There is no reason to tell anyone to list their lsat score on their oci resume.

omfg... did this person have a law degree

[Anonymous User]

Going to add that a northwestern career services employee told me to put my lsat score on my resume. Keep in mind I had several years of relevant corporate work experience prior to law school and my 1L GPA was competitive. And I had two pre-OCI offers that this employee knew about. So it's not like she could be under the impression that I need help selling myself.

There is no reason to tell anyone to list their lsat score on their oci resume.

omfg... did this person have a law degree

Yes, I think all of the career services advisors at Northwestern have law degrees. The vast majority of them went to T14 law schools.

[Anonymous User]

I thought I was totally screwed as an incoming first year when my mid-sized firm deferred our class in the fall of 2017. Career services was like yep you are screwed and did not help me much. They were very impressed at my resolve and hustle. I landed a Big Law job without much of their help by January of 2018. I was lucky I worked as a summer associate and 3L law clerk in a specialized practice area basically. I still have PTSD from how stressful that experience was.

[Anonymous User]

Upper T14. My office told me to 1) not do pre-OCI because of the risk of exploding offers, 2) balance out wanting selective DC firms with less grade selective DC firms. When it didn’t go well they said “oh well some of these firms wouldn’t have offered you a callback because your grades are higher than they normally get and they think you’ll go elsewhere.” These schools should fire half of their career counselors