V15 Partner/OCI Interviewer Answering Questions... Forum

[El Pollito]

Anon OP, were you ever asked in an interview what your parents think about you moving to NYC? That's always a fun question to answer and one I'm sure many men get as well as women. I mean, that just has to be a shared experience, right?

ew

[xael]

Sure did make me feel welcome at those firms I'll tell you that

[xael]

"Sorry partner before I stay late I need to ask my chaperone if that's ok"

[jbagelboy]

I'm confused - this anon is asking whether men get less offers at OCI than women with similar academic credentials?

Probably. Because men tend to be more awkward, less attractive, and due to a number of other structural pressures, women pursue less signaling opportunities and as a result those that do become a more valued commodity than another tall kinda obsessive white dude who wants to be a corporate lawyer.

But this shouldn't matter to a normal person at all. I'm sure your firms are fine. What do you mean "ranking". I don't know what rankings you profess to care about but it's probably misguided.

Anon here again.

I meant rankings according to Vault. But again to reiterate, my concern is not ranking. Any indication of that is just to show that getting big firms to pay attention to students at my school is not the issue.

I was indeed only concerned about male vs. female with regard to offers, and specifically, male vs. female with regard to offers at lower ranked schools.

I mean, I understand you're trying to cabin the discontent, but somehow I doubt you'd have come onto TLS to lodge these complaints if your only offers were at cravath and davis polk and your female LR acquaintances all had 8+ offers at "V50-100s".

[Anonymous User]

I'm confused - this anon is asking whether men get less offers at OCI than women with similar academic credentials?

Probably. Because men tend to be more awkward, less attractive, and due to a number of other structural pressures, women pursue less signaling opportunities and as a result those that do become a more valued commodity than another tall kinda obsessive white dude who wants to be a corporate lawyer.

But this shouldn't matter to a normal person at all. I'm sure your firms are fine. What do you mean "ranking". I don't know what rankings you profess to care about but it's probably misguided.

Anon here again.

I meant rankings according to Vault. But again to reiterate, my concern is not ranking. Any indication of that is just to show that getting big firms to pay attention to students at my school is not the issue.

I was indeed only concerned about male vs. female with regard to offers, and specifically, male vs. female with regard to offers at lower ranked schools.

I mean, I understand you're trying to cabin the discontent, but somehow I doubt you'd have come onto TLS to lodge these complaints if your only offers were at cravath and davis polk and your female LR acquaintances all had 8+ offers at "V50-100s".

I promise you my firms are very highly regarded. They're just not the firms I was interested in for various reasons (culture, the work they do, etc.)

I understand lots of people don't get the firms they want, or any at all. But the females at my school just seemed to do considerably better overall. It's not just me. It's all the males.

[smaug]

You seem kinda insufferable so that's probably your problem, pal.

[PourMeTea]

But the females at my school just seemed to do considerably better overall.

GOOD.

[El Pollito]

You seem kinda insufferable so that's probably your problem, pal.

Prob will get no offered and blame striver bitches

[foundingfather]

itbdvorm,

how do ex-prosecutors do in biglaw? maybe a few years after graduating, possibly after clerking

i'm considering working at the state attorney's office for a while to polish dem der trial skills and see where I go from there.

i'm big into litigation, and one of my profs suggested going that route if I want to be a big-shot litigator. confident in court, knowing the rules of evidence well, etc

It's unusual to go into big law after working in a DA or a PD office. Big law firms generally won't be interested in you.

When a prosecutor looks to go into private practice, the target is usually a local boutique that specializes in criminal defense work.

By the way, your prof isn't wrong: you will get great litigation experience as a prosecutor. But that experience is unlikely to lead to a big law associate position.

this seems right to me. that said, ex-AUSAs do very well. know several who went straight to partner at very good firms after years in AUSA office.

that sounds great. thank you guys

[itbdvorm]

Wow - I go away for a few days and lots of action here.

FWIW, I don't think there's necessarily a big difference in outcomes between men and women (other than the fact the profession as a whole has a lower percentage of women, especially at the more senior ranks, which people are often trying to improve).

What you're really looking at is the fact that at many firms that are willing to meet w/a few folks at a T2 school, they're only going to give 1-2 offers in the aim of 1 summer. So the margin for error is SMALL. Who knows what it may be. But once you're at the callback stage, the "advantage" of your credentials has probably been eviscerated. So the fact that these women are better interviewers (even if just a little) probably means that, yes, they get more offers.

[somewhatwayward]

And yes, I go to a T2. But when 5-10 students with worse academic credentials at your T2 all have as many or more offers than you do and at the same firms that you didn't get an offer at, and then you realize that everyone of these people was a woman, it just raises an eyebrow--and hence my question for OP.

This is reminding me of an LSAT question. TCR is (C) the male student didn't consider that a factor other than gender could account for the results, including random chance. Anyway the bottom line is that most entering classes are basically balanced gender wise so if more women get offers at your school then more men are getting offers at some other school.

Also I don't think anyone has mentioned that even at a T2 firms don't distinguish between top 2% and top 5% and probably not even within the top 10%....there is no reason to think that the top 2% person will make a better lawyer. In fact so far I have observed basically no correlation between grades and success in big law, at least in my firm at the junior level. At the CB stage, grades matter even less...trust me no interviewers or hiring committees are saying "well I really like her but she IS slightly less-credentialed..."

The last thing I will add is if you aren't happy with your firm, even after the summer, do 3L hiring (get an offer from 2L firm just in case). There seems to be a trend of some good firms being conservative in hiring 2Ls and then picking up some extra people as 3Ls.

On the topic of whether women make better lawyers, I will say that the worst junior associates I have worked with (the ones who drop the ball, just don't "get it," are sloppy, don't communicate, etc) have all been men. However there are plenty of good associates who are men and of course tons of partners who are men too.

[Anonymous User]

I just received every single one of the dings from all the firms I interviewed with. That means the official finale of my recruiting season. I have applied over 200 firms, covered every single firms on nalp with not one screener back. I honestly dont know what else I can do in terms of hustling.

[itbdvorm]

I just received every single one of the dings from all the firms I interviewed with. That means the official finale of my recruiting season. I have applied over 200 firms, covered every single firms on nalp with not one screener back. I honestly dont know what else I can do in terms of hustling.

a) have you talked to career services? that's unusual.

b) need more info about your profile. are you at a big school, small school, t14, ttt? are you top of the class, bottom of the class? where do people from your school/your profile normally go?

c) you can do more. you can ALWAYS do more, until you have a job. THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN YOUR LIFE. don't give up.

[Anonymous User]

I begin as an associate at the end of September. I'm going to be at a small satellite office of a large firm. I didn't clerk or summer at the firm so I'm not sure what to expect.

One of two associates in my practice group lateraled (so it will be me, associate, and four partners). Is this a good thing or bad thing?

[Desert Fox]

[Anonymous User]

25% CB to offer rate in NYC means you are shitty at interviewing actually. The average female AND male will do a lot better than that.

Not from TT

[jbagelboy]

25% CB to offer rate in NYC means you are shitty at interviewing actually. The average female AND male will do a lot better than that.

Lol. Sigh. I think I was only like 40-45% in NYC. I guess I'm more horrible to meet than I thought

[Anonymous User]

25% CB to offer rate in NYC means you are shitty at interviewing actually. The average female AND male will do a lot better than that.

Lol. Sigh. I think I was only like 40-45% in NYC. I guess I'm more horrible to meet than I thought

I'm probably wrong about this, but I feel like cb-->offer rate for cls/nyu in NYC might be lower than for non NYC schools. Not that it is harder for them, but because firms don't have to offer a ton of people for them to fill their class of cls/nyu (since they are more likely to stay) and because there are just more of them, and it's so cheap for them to call back because of no travel costs.

For comparison, a lot of large NYC firms that come to s typically have close to a 95% cb-->offer ratio here, and they, at best, get 2 people (and most get none). Like, yeah, rank matters but they also just have to do that in order to get lucky

[TheoO]

For CLS, the average, based on last year's stats, is about 50-60% for individual firms. It's probably higher for Stanford, for both the reason that it's harder to get Stanford people to come to NYC and because there are far fewer. And, as you mentioned, it's more expensive to bring them in, but I don't think this is nearly as important as the other two reasons.

[itbdvorm]

I begin as an associate at the end of September. I'm going to be at a small satellite office of a large firm. I didn't clerk or summer at the firm so I'm not sure what to expect.

One of two associates in my practice group lateraled (so it will be me, associate, and four partners). Is this a good thing or bad thing?

Which part? That the other associate lateralled? Neither, a non-thing.

A bit odd that a PG has 4 partners and 2 associates (one of whom is a first-year), but clearly that means they have some high hopes for you. Good luck.

[jbagelboy]

25% CB to offer rate in NYC means you are shitty at interviewing actually. The average female AND male will do a lot better than that.

Lol. Sigh. I think I was only like 40-45% in NYC. I guess I'm more horrible to meet than I thought

I'm probably wrong about this, but I feel like cb-->offer rate for cls/nyu in NYC might be lower than for non NYC schools. Not that it is harder for them, but because firms don't have to offer a ton of people for them to fill their class of cls/nyu (since they are more likely to stay) and because there are just more of them, and it's so cheap for them to call back because of no travel costs.

For comparison, a lot of large NYC firms that come to s typically have close to a 95% cb-->offer ratio here, and they, at best, get 2 people (and most get none). Like, yeah, rank matters but they also just have to do that in order to get lucky

Yea, I mean, there are a lot of factors at work here, but you're probably right. I think geography is one of them. For example, I had 100% cb -> offer in LA and SF, which probably isn't true for S and Cal students. Once they've decided to fly me all the way out there, why not. It's also a class size game; I got offers at the firms with 90+ SA class sizes in NY (except cleary) and was categorically rejected by the others.

[star fox]

25% CB to offer rate in NYC means you are shitty at interviewing actually. The average female AND male will do a lot better than that.

Lol. Sigh. I think I was only like 40-45% in NYC. I guess I'm more horrible to meet than I thought

Nice humble brag lol

[Anonymous User]

I have a CB in an hour with a firm that my grades are WAY under their traditional cutoff. I'm not special in any way I can discern. Any advice beyond the usual?

[rpupkin]

I have a CB in an hour with a firm that my grades are WAY under their traditional cutoff. I'm not special in any way I can discern. Any advice beyond the usual?

Here's some advice: stop thinking about the fact that your grades are way under the firm's traditional cutoff. Be confident.

[El Pollito]

they called you back for a reason