HLS 2012 EIP Thread Forum

[Anonymous User]

What is the consensus on how many Hs/DSs make one competitive at the top tier DC firms?

[Anonymous User]

What is the consensus on how many Hs/DSs make one competitive at the top tier DC firms?

8+ Hs for the very top firms. Probably 7Hs and 1+ DSs will get you in there. This assuming you are not an earth-shattering interviewee. I'd say 6Hs with multiple DSs is the floor unless you're genuinely an amazing interviewee.

[Anonymous User]

Can anyone give the straight dope on employer evaluations of the DS? Is it more like an H+ or 2xH? My personal opinion leans toward the latter since only 1-3 people DS vs. say, 30+ in a 1L section get Honors, but I'd interested in other views.

[PMan99]

What is the consensus on how many Hs/DSs make one competitive at the top tier DC firms?

8+ Hs for the very top firms. Probably 7Hs and 1+ DSs will get you in there. This assuming you are not an earth-shattering interviewee. I'd say 6Hs with multiple DSs is the floor unless you're genuinely an amazing interviewee.

You just listed the same GPA 3 different ways

[Anonymous User]

What is the consensus on how many Hs/DSs make one competitive at the top tier DC firms?

8+ Hs for the very top firms. Probably 7Hs and 1+ DSs will get you in there. This assuming you are not an earth-shattering interviewee. I'd say 6Hs with multiple DSs is the floor unless you're genuinely an amazing interviewee.

You just listed the same GPA 3 different ways

Same GPA, but firms don't see GPA -- firms see the transcript with individual grade notations. A 6H 2DS is higher variance than 8H. Maybe with 8, 9Hs the Ps look like flukes and a 8H/2P with 2 DSs looks just as good as someone with 10Hs, but I know a 4DS/6P does not look the same as a 8H 2P, and a 6H4P with 2 DS does not look the same as a 8H/2P, although still better than a 4DS/6P.

As a general rule of thumb, DSs are more useful the fewer Ps you have on your transcript. In most cases I'd treat them as H+ not 2H.

[Anonymous User]

I've also come up with a list that I'd love feedback on. 4H/6P and am bidding exclusively in NY. Interested in corporate work.

1. Weil
2. Latham
3. Jones Day
4. Akin Gump
5. Kirkland & Ellis
6. Sidley Austin
7. White & Case
8. Paul Weiss
9. Gibson Dunn
10. Simpson Thacher
11. Shearman & Sterling
12. Fried, Frank
13. Cleary
14. Davis Polk
15. Cadwalader
16. Milbank
17. Proskauer
18. Debevoise
19. Willkie
20. Linklaters
21. Skadden
22. Sullivan & Cromwell
23. Cravath
24. Ropes
25. Clifford Chance

Thoughts?

Signed,
Hula Hoop

Anyone? Am I missing firms? Is it a good order?

[Anonymous User]

I've also come up with a list that I'd love feedback on. 4H/6P and am bidding exclusively in NY. Interested in corporate work.

1. Weil
2. Latham
3. Jones Day
4. Akin Gump
5. Kirkland & Ellis
6. Sidley Austin
7. White & Case
8. Paul Weiss
9. Gibson Dunn
10. Simpson Thacher
11. Shearman & Sterling
12. Fried, Frank
13. Cleary
14. Davis Polk
15. Cadwalader
16. Milbank
17. Proskauer
18. Debevoise
19. Willkie
20. Linklaters
21. Skadden
22. Sullivan & Cromwell
23. Cravath
24. Ropes
25. Clifford Chance

Thoughts?

Signed,
Hula Hoop

Anyone? Am I missing firms? Is it a good order?

I don't know that there's really much that you can do wrong with above median grades bidding in one market, which is probably why you didn't get much feedback. You could bid the Vault rankings 1-35 and it wouldn't be insane.

The only things that spring to mind (and I am just talking about totally random thoughts - I'm saying it to continue the discussion, not so that you should believe me) is that you might want to stack your bids in the order of success at getting interviews. There were some firms that interviewed 45% of bids and they are lower down on your list than firms that interviewed 70%.

Also, clifford chance has been mentioned on this board as being a hell hole. Gibson Dunn is maybe a little high for a firm that is pretty selective and is better known for litigation.

Justice Homes

[Anonymous User]

I don't know that there's really much that you can do wrong with above median grades bidding in one market, which is probably why you didn't get much feedback. You could bid the Vault rankings 1-35 and it wouldn't be insane.

The only things that spring to mind (and I am just talking about totally random thoughts - I'm saying it to continue the discussion, not so that you should believe me) is that you might want to stack your bids in the order of success at getting interviews. There were some firms that interviewed 45% of bids and they are lower down on your list than firms that interviewed 70%.

Also, Clifford Chance has been mentioned on this board as being a hell hole. Gibson Dunn is maybe a little high for a firm that is pretty selective and is better known for litigation.

Justice Homes

Thanks for the advice. Good to know about Clifford and Gibson. Are there particular firms lower on the list that you think I should move up? I wanted to have some target firms closer to the top but also wanted more selective firms up top because I was worried that if I didn't get a screener it would be difficult to schedule one by contacting them directly since my grades aren't great (thinking Cleary, DPW)? Maybe that's not the right approach?

Hula Hoop

[Anonymous User]

I've also come up with a list that I'd love feedback on. 4H/6P and am bidding exclusively in NY. Interested in corporate work.

1. Weil
2. Latham
3. Jones Day
4. Akin Gump
5. Kirkland & Ellis
6. Sidley Austin
7. White & Case
8. Paul Weiss
9. Gibson Dunn
10. Simpson Thacher
11. Shearman & Sterling
12. Fried, Frank
13. Cleary
14. Davis Polk
15. Cadwalader
16. Milbank
17. Proskauer
18. Debevoise
19. Willkie
20. Linklaters
21. Skadden
22. Sullivan & Cromwell
23. Cravath
24. Ropes
25. Clifford Chance

Thoughts?

Signed,
Hula Hoop

Anyone? Am I missing firms? Is it a good order?

I don't know that there's really much that you can do wrong with above median grades bidding in one market, which is probably why you didn't get much feedback. You could bid the Vault rankings 1-35 and it wouldn't be insane.

Yeah, this. I don't have anything to add because there's just not too much to say about a bid list of above median in NYC that doesn't do something ridiculous like just do V15. Good luck, though.

Taco Cabana

[Anonymous User]

...

[Anonymous User]

If anyone was curious, last year HLR called on Friday, 07/22. That would correspond to next Friday, 07/20.

[Anonymous User]

http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... 3&t=123792

Try Monday the 18th last year, and the 3rd Monday of July the previous year too.

[CrapShoot]

Advice from a 3L who did this last year:

1. DO NOT LISTEN TO EACH OTHER. Seriously. EIP became the greatest example of the blind leading the blind I have ever seen. Rising 2Ls, you literally have NO idea what someone's chances are given their grades and their preferred firms / markets. Why would you? Just like the person asking for your advice, you haven't gone through this process either. So when fellow rising 2L commenters tell you your list looks good, you have X% chance at a firm/market, just realize that their advice is based 100% off of other rising 2Ls making the same baseless comments. Undoubtedly they will try to justify their advice as being informed by some special insight they have been given - but friends, it's all lies. Just stop and think about that for a second. EIP is one big misinformation fest, so just take everything that is said on this site with a grain of salt (and by grain of salt I mean literally disregard every "substantive" piece of advice you receive on TLS from fellow rising 2Ls about how good or bad your list is or your chances are).

2. Find a few trustworthy friends who you think have a similar (or at last in the ballpark) grade profile to yours and are applying to similar firms. Agree to speak frankly and honestly about the process as it's happening, and that will be your best source of information about when you can expect to receive (or should have already received) callbacks and, eventually offers. This forum actually also has value when it comes to seeing when people are hearing back from places.

3. Grades are not the be-all and end-all of law firm recruiting. While they are helpful when anonymously assessing ourselves and our peers on this forum, real live actual law firms only give them so much credence. OCS will publicly disagree wildly with this statement, but it's a true one. Are there exceptions to this rule? Yes, but those exceptions are, ironically, completely contingent on your PERSONAL circumstances. This means that grades are the be-all and end-all for those candidates that do not have much to offer other than their grades! This means a) you came straight from undergrad and/or have no meaningful work experience to speak of, and/or b) you can't interview very well. If you have some interesting work experience, or if you are socially capable, your grades will matter much less than OCS will lead you to believe. Sure, if you are only interested in applying to the few DC firms famous for appellate litigation and you don't have 5Hs, you know it's going to be tough (but let's remember, there are a lot of DC firms). But saying things like Wachtell only calls back people with 7Hs or more is factually inaccurate.

4. YOU WILL GET A JOB! For real, you will. And if by some tragic circumstances you are one of the 5 people who don't (again, OCS will hate me for saying this), it will have nothing to do with your resume or grade profile.

5. Ask 3Ls questions. These are the folks who most recently went through this process - a process that will likely be very similar in terms of # of offers to your process. And in that vein, I am happy to answer any questions people have about the New York market, since that is the market in which I applied and found a lot of success. Just remember, my advice, while significantly better than the advice you'll receive from your peers, is still based on my personal experience and the experiences of friends across the grade profile spectrum.

[Anonymous User]

http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... 3&t=123792

Try Monday the 18th last year, and the 3rd Monday of July the previous year too.

Oops. Good catch. So it could be coming this Monday. Good luck all.

[Anonymous User]

Advice from a 3L who did this last year:

1. DO NOT LISTEN TO EACH OTHER. Seriously. EIP became the greatest example of the blind leading the blind I have ever seen. Rising 2Ls, you literally have NO idea what someone's chances are given their grades and their preferred firms / markets. Why would you? Just like the person asking for your advice, you haven't gone through this process either. So when fellow rising 2L commenters tell you your list looks good, you have X% chance at a firm/market, just realize that their advice is based 100% off of other rising 2Ls making the same baseless comments. Undoubtedly they will try to justify their advice as being informed by some special insight they have been given - but friends, it's all lies. Just stop and think about that for a second. EIP is one big misinformation fest, so just take everything that is said on this site with a grain of salt (and by grain of salt I mean literally disregard every "substantive" piece of advice you receive on TLS from fellow rising 2Ls about how good or bad your list is or your chances are).

2. Find a few trustworthy friends who you think have a similar (or at last in the ballpark) grade profile to yours and are applying to similar firms. Agree to speak frankly and honestly about the process as it's happening, and that will be your best source of information about when you can expect to receive (or should have already received) callbacks and, eventually offers. This forum actually also has value when it comes to seeing when people are hearing back from places.

3. Grades are not the be-all and end-all of law firm recruiting. While they are helpful when anonymously assessing ourselves and our peers on this forum, real live actual law firms only give them so much credence. OCS will publicly disagree wildly with this statement, but it's a true one. Are there exceptions to this rule? Yes, but those exceptions are, ironically, completely contingent on your PERSONAL circumstances. This means that grades are the be-all and end-all for those candidates that do not have much to offer other than their grades! This means a) you came straight from undergrad and/or have no meaningful work experience to speak of, and/or b) you can't interview very well. If you have some interesting work experience, or if you are socially capable, your grades will matter much less than OCS will lead you to believe. Sure, if you are only interested in applying to the few DC firms famous for appellate litigation and you don't have 5Hs, you know it's going to be tough (but let's remember, there are a lot of DC firms). But saying things like Wachtell only calls back people with 7Hs or more is factually inaccurate.

4. YOU WILL GET A JOB! For real, you will. And if by some tragic circumstances you are one of the 5 people who don't (again, OCS will hate me for saying this), it will have nothing to do with your resume or grade profile.

5. Ask 3Ls questions. These are the folks who most recently went through this process - a process that will likely be very similar in terms of # of offers to your process. And in that vein, I am happy to answer any questions people have about the New York market, since that is the market in which I applied and found a lot of success. Just remember, my advice, while significantly better than the advice you'll receive from your peers, is still based on my personal experience and the experiences of friends across the grade profile spectrum.

QFMFT

[delusional]

Advice from a 3L who did this last year:

1. DO NOT LISTEN TO EACH OTHER. Seriously. EIP became the greatest example of the blind leading the blind I have ever seen. Rising 2Ls, you literally have NO idea what someone's chances are given their grades and their preferred firms / markets. Why would you? Just like the person asking for your advice, you haven't gone through this process either. So when fellow rising 2L commenters tell you your list looks good, you have X% chance at a firm/market, just realize that their advice is based 100% off of other rising 2Ls making the same baseless comments. Undoubtedly they will try to justify their advice as being informed by some special insight they have been given - but friends, it's all lies. Just stop and think about that for a second. EIP is one big misinformation fest, so just take everything that is said on this site with a grain of salt (and by grain of salt I mean literally disregard every "substantive" piece of advice you receive on TLS from fellow rising 2Ls about how good or bad your list is or your chances are).

2. Find a few trustworthy friends who you think have a similar (or at last in the ballpark) grade profile to yours and are applying to similar firms. Agree to speak frankly and honestly about the process as it's happening, and that will be your best source of information about when you can expect to receive (or should have already received) callbacks and, eventually offers. This forum actually also has value when it comes to seeing when people are hearing back from places.

3. Grades are not the be-all and end-all of law firm recruiting. While they are helpful when anonymously assessing ourselves and our peers on this forum, real live actual law firms only give them so much credence. OCS will publicly disagree wildly with this statement, but it's a true one. Are there exceptions to this rule? Yes, but those exceptions are, ironically, completely contingent on your PERSONAL circumstances. This means that grades are the be-all and end-all for those candidates that do not have much to offer other than their grades! This means a) you came straight from undergrad and/or have no meaningful work experience to speak of, and/or b) you can't interview very well. If you have some interesting work experience, or if you are socially capable, your grades will matter much less than OCS will lead you to believe. Sure, if you are only interested in applying to the few DC firms famous for appellate litigation and you don't have 5Hs, you know it's going to be tough (but let's remember, there are a lot of DC firms). But saying things like Wachtell only calls back people with 7Hs or more is factually inaccurate.

4. YOU WILL GET A JOB! For real, you will. And if by some tragic circumstances you are one of the 5 people who don't (again, OCS will hate me for saying this), it will have nothing to do with your resume or grade profile.

5. Ask 3Ls questions. These are the folks who most recently went through this process - a process that will likely be very similar in terms of # of offers to your process. And in that vein, I am happy to answer any questions people have about the New York market, since that is the market in which I applied and found a lot of success. Just remember, my advice, while significantly better than the advice you'll receive from your peers, is still based on my personal experience and the experiences of friends across the grade profile spectrum.

I don't know why you think that you're telling us anything that we don't know. We were smart enough to get into Harvard (LOL); we're smart enough to know when we don't know something. The problem is that no one is offering to give us any useful information. OCS, professors, the BSA, all spout bullshit platitudes about how we will get a job, and we should only take advice from people who actually know - but either no one knows, or they're too busy playing whatever role the administration scripted for them to be of any use at all. We are left to our own meager devices, and (I hope) we realize that it's the blind leading the blind, but since that's all we have, that's what we're doing.

I hope that you really will stick around this topic, as not all of us are around 3Ls whom we can ask. It would be even better if you could ask some other 3Ls to join, so that we'll have a general spectrum of ideas that we can draw conclusions from.

[Anonymous User]

HLR invites going out.

[Anonymous User]

Anyone know if more invites are going out today/tomorrow?

[mcweanis]

nobody else has heard anything ?

[Anonymous User]

only 2 reports on tls seems awful low; combined with no mass ding email, have to wonder if more are going out at some point

[Anonymous User]

FWIW: Individual older members of HLR make calls to the incoming members. From the HLR guy I talked to that was supposed to happen yesterday, but there's always going to be reasons that people fail to do that on the same day. So there's still some chance but if you didn't get a call yesterday I wouldn't be incredibly hopeful but it is potentially a nonzero chance.

edit: for clarity, i didn't talk to a hlr guy about getting in, i just work with him

[Anonymous User]

Deadline to accept is Wednesday at 5 pm.

[Anonymous User]

dang literally NONE of my friends got in, out of fifteen applying. lame.

[Anonymous User]

Ugh, can they just ding us already.

[Anonymous User]

Hey guys.. wanted to run something by you all with bidding coming up. My grades are mediocre(1H/9P), at best, and I am considering bidding Boston and another secondary market where I have ties, but no NYC. I am an URM, a good interviewer and have a few leadership positions in orgs on campus but I dont know how much that helps with poor grades. Am I being absolutely insane not making one of markets NYC?? (OCS forbids bidding 3 markets so I assume that isnt an option)