OCI Kvetching Time! Forum

[Danger Zone]

This thread is TLDR, but I just wanted to pop in to say that the OP offers at least two reasons that H>Y. Go Crimson!

I didn't get that from this thread at all. My take away was that OP got several callbacks in a small market after sending some emails and got an offer without much effort after completely blowing off NYC as an option.

Not all 555 students at Harvard are going to pull this off.

Not all 555 students at Harvard are going to be whiny little bitches about it, either.

You should read some other forum threads. TLS is definitely not lacking in dumbshit and/or entitled HLS alums.

Yeah, I really was just looking for an excuse to call OP a whiny bitch.

[A. Nony Mouse]

Just out of curiosity, to the OP, and to the CCN student who also felt not enough firms came to OCI: How many firms are we talking about? I don't care about from where (DC/NY/whatever), but what's the overall number?

[84651846190]

I felt like a colossal douche for doing so, but I actually made an attempt to explain to the partner why they would have been better off not coming to Yale at all

This is the best line in the thread. My god you're insufferable.

[Anonymous User]

Just out of curiosity, to the OP, and to the CCN student who also felt not enough firms came to OCI: How many firms are we talking about? I don't care about from where (DC/NY/whatever), but what's the overall number?

Not OP, but there were 131 registered employers this year, after a few cancellations for lack of interest. Of those, probably around 10 are public interest employers, and some are different offices of the same firm. I'm fairly confident there were still over 100 distinct firms. Last year, around 140 students accepted positions with FIP firms, so I'd guess only about 150 students participated.

[Danger Zone]

Just out of curiosity, to the OP, and to the CCN student who also felt not enough firms came to OCI: How many firms are we talking about? I don't care about from where (DC/NY/whatever), but what's the overall number?

Not OP, but there were 131 registered employers this year, after a few cancellations for lack of interest. Of those, probably around 10 are public interest employers, and some are different offices of the same firm. I'm fairly confident there were still over 100 distinct firms. Last year, around 140 students accepted positions with FIP firms, so I'd guess only about 150 students participated.

I think my TT had ~25 firms. Not even all the firms within a few miles of my school came here. THAT'S embarrassing.

[A. Nony Mouse]

Just out of curiosity, to the OP, and to the CCN student who also felt not enough firms came to OCI: How many firms are we talking about? I don't care about from where (DC/NY/whatever), but what's the overall number?

Not OP, but there were 131 registered employers this year, after a few cancellations for lack of interest. Of those, probably around 10 are public interest employers, and some are different offices of the same firm. I'm fairly confident there were still over 100 distinct firms. Last year, around 140 students accepted positions with FIP firms, so I'd guess only about 150 students participated.

Thank you. I was just curious what "not enough firms" actually meant. I don't mean to suggest that HYS people aren't allowed to complain (after all, you got the numbers to get in and I didn't, and the whole reason to go to those schools is for better employment opportunities), but it might be worth keeping in mind that the OP's complaint is going to strike a lot of law students as a very first-world problem (my lower T1 had ~40 employers max the year I did OCI).

[seriously: I don't mean to encourage the sentiment around here that holds that HYS people aren't allowed to complain about anything, ever - that's not fair; HYS aren't perfect and HYS students aren't exempt from struggling just because they attend those schools. But I'm not sure "not enough firms come to OCI" is quite the hill for an HYS student to die upon.]

[also: totally just speaking as me, not in any modly capacity]

[smaug_]

"not enough firms come to OCI" is quite the hill for an HYS student to die upon

I agree with the sentiment generally, but at CLS at least, I know that there were some markets where many firms didn't come to EIP and where they do almost all of their hiring through other on campus interview programs. That means for those markets it is far harder to find an SA position otherwise. Overall, as long as you still bid NY you should have been fine (on average) but I could see where a student expected to go back to market X and struck out because employers from that area didn't attend.

[A. Nony Mouse]

I guess this gets into the perennial debate about how "national" some of the "national" schools really are. Because at some point (I'd argue probably outside the T14, though I'm speculating), really only the firms in the school's own market (maybe defined more or less broadly) show up, so being able to expect firms from non-local markets is again a matter of perspective. (I think there were 3 out of state employers at my OCI, all from bordering states, none from national markets - which, again, is what you'd expect going to OCI at my school, but just offered as context.)

Perhaps what this all really means is that someone planning to attend (say) a NYC school who wants to work in (say) Chicago or California after graduation really needs to 1) research what firms from those markets come to the NYC OCI before committing to attending that school and/or 2) expect not to go through OCI to get their job and gear up that part of their job search as soon as they can.

[OneMoreLawHopeful]

Perhaps what this all really means is that someone planning to attend (say) a NYC school who wants to work in (say) Chicago or California after graduation really needs to 1) research what firms from those markets come to the NYC OCI before committing to attending that school and/or 2) expect not to go through OCI to get their job and gear up that part of their job search as soon as they can.

I don't really think this is necessary. I'm at UC Hastings, and the national firms that came to our OCI were all happy to consider applicants for other offices of the firm. It's Hastings, so you still need to be top 10%, but every year a handful of students get jobs in an east coast office of a firm that comes to OCI (I know at least 1 student was an SA in DC this summer).

As a result, it seems like students at HYS who really wanted to work in, say, LA, should be able to apply to the national firms that are at their OCI and just request the LA office. I highly doubt that firms which come to Hastings are willing to consider you for an East Coast office, but firms going to HYS are unwilling to consider students for their West Coast offices.

The real problem is what happens if (like the OP), you're interested NOT in working for a Texas office of a national firm, but rather working in a Texas firm that doesn't have nationwide offices. Since that's a limit of firms you can work for, but not on geographic locations you can work in, I don't think it's as big a problem, but then again, I have never ever wanted to live or work in Texas, so I'm biased.

[2014]

We had just south of 400 offices show up I think, but that is pretty inflated by some interviewers covering multiple offices.

My only real complaints from the schools end is that we are too late in the process and some firms, especially those that we don't feed into consistently, might be close to full before most of us had even arrived for a CB. I know it's impractical to have OCI a full 2 months before school starts (we start 9/30), but maybe a condensed schedule like NYU's would be better to free up the 2nd week for CBs. The scheduling was rough too, surely there is some way to make the algorithm prefer to group people's interview times closer than one every like 3 hours which happened nearly every day.

From the firm perspective I have plenty of qualms but that isn't the audience here.

[Anonymous User]

it seems like students at HYS who really wanted to work in, say, LA, should be able to apply to the national firms that are at their OCI and just request the LA office. I highly doubt that firms which come to Hastings are willing to consider you for an East Coast office, but firms going to HYS are unwilling to consider students for their West Coast offices.

The way this happens at Y (and presumably at H&S) is that when an office registers for FIP/OCI, it lists which other offices of the same firm it will also interview for. Strangely, sometimes only a limited subset of a firm's offices are listed. Also, some firms have each office register separately and only interview for that office, but don't have every office register (e.g., Kirkland & Ellis Chicago).

You can email a firm to ask if they'll interview for an unlisted office, but the only time I tried that the firm said 'no.'

[Anonymous User]

Perhaps what this all really means is that someone planning to attend (say) a NYC school who wants to work in (say) Chicago or California after graduation really needs to 1) research what firms from those markets come to the NYC OCI before committing to attending that school and/or 2) expect not to go through OCI to get their job and gear up that part of their job search as soon as they can.

I don't really think this is necessary. I'm at UC Hastings, and the national firms that came to our OCI were all happy to consider applicants for other offices of the firm. It's Hastings, so you still need to be top 10%, but every year a handful of students get jobs in an east coast office of a firm that comes to OCI (I know at least 1 student was an SA in DC this summer).

As a result, it seems like students at HYS who really wanted to work in, say, LA, should be able to apply to the national firms that are at their OCI and just request the LA office. I highly doubt that firms which come to Hastings are willing to consider you for an East Coast office, but firms going to HYS are unwilling to consider students for their West Coast offices.

The real problem is what happens if (like the OP), you're interested NOT in working for a Texas office of a national firm, but rather working in a Texas firm that doesn't have nationwide offices. Since that's a limit of firms you can work for, but not on geographic locations you can work in, I don't think it's as big a problem, but then again, I have never ever wanted to live or work in Texas, so I'm biased.

This is spot on and was a big problem for me at my CCN. It seems like if you want NY, LA, SF, DC, or CHI, you'll have plenty of options at OCI. But I think I was only able to score interviews with 6-7 TX firms (basically only big 3 and national satellites like Latham, Sidley, Weil, and Jones Day). I also didn't have much luck mass-mailing the more regional Texas offices.

[Elston Gunn]

This thread is TLDR, but I just wanted to pop in to say that the OP offers at least two reasons that H>Y. Go Crimson!

Er, no. I'd say fully 90% of YLSers could have a V10 if they wanted it, and the other 10% probably could have if they prepped more/took the process more seriously. And OP, who as far as we know doesn't even have ties to the area he was mailing, managed to snag offers at what are probably top firms in the area (since those are the only ones that come to FIP). Even in DC, by far the toughest market, places like Hogan offer a huge percentage of YLSers they interview.

I'd be shocked if it's that easy at HLS.

[Anonymous User]

Apparently being tongue-in-cheek is lost on Yalies. Score 3 for Harvard!

(Also, in all seriousness, I'd be surprised if any other school gets the number or diversity of employers at OCI that you see at H. Getting the job is another question entirely, but I'm willing to say that HLS streamlines the process of getting interviews moreso than its peer schools).

ETA: this is hlsperson1111, didn't mean to post anon.