HLS EIP 2016 Forum

Pneumonia · Post by **Pneumonia** » Tue Jun 21, 2016 2:03 pm

Tag. Happy to discuss Texas for those who are interested.

Anonymous User · Post by **Anonymous User** » Tue Jun 21, 2016 2:05 pm

Tryna make an informal list of the most-selective D.C. firms so I don't waste too many bids on them. Who is missing from: A&P, GDC, Cov, Kirkland, Wilmer, W&C, Jones Day, Latham?

Anonymous User · Post by **Anonymous User** » Tue Jun 21, 2016 2:07 pm

How fucked are 2 LPs

Just looking for market not anything prestigious

TripTrip · Post by **TripTrip** » Tue Jun 21, 2016 2:48 pm

Anonymous User wrote:How fucked are 2 LPs

Just looking for market not anything prestigious

Not fucked. A lot more people have straight Ps or below than let on. It's more frustrating, but if you bid out an entire market and practice confidence in your interviews you can do just fine. The majority of 1-4 LP-havers still walk away with an offer.

Single-Malt-Liquor · Post by **Single-Malt-Liquor** » Tue Jun 21, 2016 2:50 pm

Anonymous User wrote:How fucked are 2 LPs

Just looking for market not anything prestigious

If we're talking 2LPs and no Hs then I'm not gonna lie, you need to get your hustle on. Mass mailing NYC, your home market, and Boston (Bos is competitive but the lower ranked firms are more than happy to grab a Harvard student when they get the chance assuming fit.

You also need to be in touch with OCS they know what firms are more likely to overlook or at least give you a chance to explain that way there's no firms on your bid list where you are DOA.

Time. To. Hustle.

Anonymous User · Post by **Anonymous User** » Tue Jun 21, 2016 3:18 pm

Anonymous User wrote:How fucked are 2 LPs

Just looking for market not anything prestigious

Just to give you an idea, I had 2H, 1LP, rest Ps.

I focused only on DC and nearly struck out. I only got 2CB, 1 offer both low Vault and one wasn't market pay.

I also mass mailed about 12 firms, got 1 CB out of that, didn't wait to see if an offer, because I accepted the one from EIP.

All of this is to say, be very careful. I knew I was playing fast and loose going hard on DC, but I made sure I had some safer "low" ranking firms there and mass-mailed proactively. Even still, I felt like it was a close call.

Anonymous User · Post by **Anonymous User** » Tue Jun 21, 2016 3:18 pm

[duplicate]

TripTrip · Post by **TripTrip** » Tue Jun 21, 2016 3:20 pm

Anonymous User wrote:Dumb question I guess. But Dope currently shows choate as being almost 100% corporate. Was I wrong to think they were a full service firm w/a lit dept?

You're correct. This is one of those situations where NALP forms are hard to work with since they aren't filled out consistently by every firm. Choate includes "Business/Corporate" as a NALP descriptor for its litigation practice group. It's obvious to a human reading the form that it's a litigation group (since that's what the firm calls it), but since the left column has consistently named categories chosen by NALP and the right column changes from firm to firm, usually it's better to use the NALP category. Here that broke because they seemed to have just checked all the boxes. Thanks for pointing it out.

For future reference, if you click on a pie chart it will send you to the page it got the data from. Try it here:

Annihilist · Post by **Annihilist** » Tue Jun 21, 2016 3:26 pm

TripTrip wrote:
Anonymous User wrote:How fucked are 2 LPs

Just looking for market not anything prestigious
Not fucked. A lot more people have straight Ps or below than let on. It's more frustrating, but if you bid out an entire market and practice confidence in your interviews you can do just fine. The majority of 1-4 LP-havers still walk away with an offer.

You know; for all the "benefits" of having an opaque grading system, I really wish they published how common LPs were. Because, having received one in both 1L and 2L, it can feel like I'm legitimately ranked in the bottom 1% sometimes.

TripTrip, obviously a low priority, but do you happen to have LP distribution data from the EIP data that you can/should share to make us all feel like we have more company down here than we think?

Like, I know that in a large class it's about 0-7%. And that we all guess that median is somewhere between 3-4 Hs. But, somehow that doesn't seem to feel concrete or comforting. Because although getting an LP indicates you were in the bottom 0-7%ile of a single class, it says nothing of your rank in the entire year as a whole.

wwwcol · Post by **wwwcol** » Tue Jun 21, 2016 3:52 pm

Anonymous User wrote:Tryna make an informal list of the most-selective D.C. firms so I don't waste too many bids on them. Who is missing from: A&P, GDC, Cov, Kirkland, Wilmer, W&C, Jones Day, Latham?

Without knowing your grades, W&C is probably the only one on this list not worth bidding on. If you have 5H or more, then AP, WH, GDC, KE are all within the realm of possibility if you have other non-grade factors going for you (but definitely reaches).

JD and Latham are definitely not selective enough to be in the "don't waste a bid category."

TripTrip · Post by **TripTrip** » Tue Jun 21, 2016 5:21 pm

Annihilist wrote:
TripTrip wrote:
Anonymous User wrote:How fucked are 2 LPs

Just looking for market not anything prestigious
Not fucked. A lot more people have straight Ps or below than let on. It's more frustrating, but if you bid out an entire market and practice confidence in your interviews you can do just fine. The majority of 1-4 LP-havers still walk away with an offer.
You know; for all the "benefits" of having an opaque grading system, I really wish they published how common LPs were. Because, having received one in both 1L and 2L, it can feel like I'm legitimately ranked in the bottom 1% sometimes.

TripTrip, obviously a low priority, but do you happen to have LP distribution data from the EIP data that you can/should share to make us all feel like we have more company down here than we think?

Like, I know that in a large class it's about 0-7%. And that we all guess that median is somewhere between 3-4 Hs. But, somehow that doesn't seem to feel concrete or comforting. Because although getting an LP indicates you were in the bottom 0-7%ile of a single class, it says nothing of your rank in the entire year as a whole.

I can't share the exact distributions (I also don't have actual distributions, just self-reported ones), but I can say that more than 1% of students end 1L year with more LPs than Hs (a GPA below 3.00).

nothingtosee · Post by **nothingtosee** » Tue Jun 21, 2016 5:48 pm

TripTrip wrote:
Annihilist wrote:
TripTrip wrote:
Anonymous User wrote:How fucked are 2 LPs

Just looking for market not anything prestigious
Not fucked. A lot more people have straight Ps or below than let on. It's more frustrating, but if you bid out an entire market and practice confidence in your interviews you can do just fine. The majority of 1-4 LP-havers still walk away with an offer.
You know; for all the "benefits" of having an opaque grading system, I really wish they published how common LPs were. Because, having received one in both 1L and 2L, it can feel like I'm legitimately ranked in the bottom 1% sometimes.

TripTrip, obviously a low priority, but do you happen to have LP distribution data from the EIP data that you can/should share to make us all feel like we have more company down here than we think?

Like, I know that in a large class it's about 0-7%. And that we all guess that median is somewhere between 3-4 Hs. But, somehow that doesn't seem to feel concrete or comforting. Because although getting an LP indicates you were in the bottom 0-7%ile of a single class, it says nothing of your rank in the entire year as a whole.
I can't share the exact distributions (I also don't have actual distributions, just self-reported ones), but I can say that more than 1% of students end 1L year with more LPs than Hs (a GPA below 3.00).

What a tease

Anonymous User · Post by **Anonymous User** » Tue Jun 21, 2016 5:52 pm

TripTrip wrote:I can't share the exact distributions (I also don't have actual distributions, just self-reported ones), but I can say that more than 1% of students end 1L year with more LPs than Hs (a GPA below 3.00).

I'm actually really surprised by this. No one I know has ever admitted to an LP, even in confidence. So where does this idea of 3-4 Hs being median come from? Is it really just a guess? Maybe it's just my section but that honestly seems high.

hlsperson123 · Post by **hlsperson123** » Wed Jun 22, 2016 11:13 am

Anonymous User wrote:
TripTrip wrote:I can't share the exact distributions (I also don't have actual distributions, just self-reported ones), but I can say that more than 1% of students end 1L year with more LPs than Hs (a GPA below 3.00).
I'm actually really surprised by this. No one I know has ever admitted to an LP, even in confidence. So where does this idea of 3-4 Hs being median come from? Is it really just a guess? Maybe it's just my section but that honestly seems high.

I'll yield to TripTrip who has actual data, but this question can be answered mathematically if we make a few reasonable assumptions. First, let's say that 40% of each 1L class gets an H or DS. This means that if everyone got the same grades, both the mean and median would be 4 Hs. But grades tend to skew right; people with good grades tend to get a lot of them. The mean is not affected by this (the total number of Hs and of students remains constant), but the median is lowered as a result. For example, if one student gets 8 Hs, then two other students would have to get 2 Hs to balance it out. The median of 2H, 2H, and 8H is 2H. Granted, this is a tiny and made-up example, but I think the same concept applies to the real grade distribution. This means that the median amount of Hs is almost certainly 3H.

Also, it's weird to me how many people write about "3-4" Hs being median. Either it's 3 or 4, it cannot be in between. And for the reasons above, it's almost certainly 3.

TripTrip · Post by **TripTrip** » Wed Jun 22, 2016 1:58 pm

I'm going to have to bow out of the grades discussion. They're definitely relevant (as Mark Weber likes to analogize, they're like good looks when you're dating). But they aren't everything, and even if they were you can't go back and change them now.

Here's one piece of hard data I can share: in the past two years, there were only eleven firms whose hard grade floor was greater than or equal to the HLS grade median. If you have median grades, the number of firms you would be wasting your time interviewing with is so small as to not be worth worrying about. At worst, you waste a couple bids and an hour of your time doing a few extra interviews.

If you have more LPs than Hs, your situation is a little different. There are more firms where you will be excluded based on grades. That's why I would (and OCS would) encourage you to send your bidlist to an OCS advisor to look over. There are still plenty of firms for you, but with more LPs than Hs it's possible to only bid on firms that are reaches.

Single-Malt-Liquor · Post by **Single-Malt-Liquor** » Wed Jun 22, 2016 2:06 pm

I know Trip and I echo each other a lot but I'm gonna agree with him. Every student I know who struggled either bid DC/West Coast to heavily or had interviewing problems.

Don't be to proud to do a mock interview. Don't rely on your friends they're either going to be too nice or give you advice that's mostly irrelevant.

Here's an exercise for the rest of your summer. As you work with other attorneys, especially ones you havnt encountered, see how fast you can figure out who's all business all the time and who's more laid back as far as conversation goes. Figuring that out within the first 30 seconds of an interview and then diving into that mode will help you more than your grades.

Anonymous User · Post by **Anonymous User** » Fri Jun 24, 2016 2:25 am

4Hs, upward trend for what it's worth (1h + 3h), summer M&A experience, trilingual, assuming okay interviewing skills, would any top NY firms be a waste bid? my goal is NY corporate and I would hope to land a V5 offer.

Surely, wachtell is not worth bidding. What about sullcrom? cravath? dpw? if possible, how are my chances? or should I bid more conservatively? any thoughts are appreciated, many thanks!

t-14orbust · Post by **t-14orbust** » Fri Jun 24, 2016 2:45 am

Anonymous User wrote:4Hs, upward trend for what it's worth (1h + 3h), summer M&A experience, trilingual, assuming okay interviewing skills, would any top NY firms be a waste bid? my goal is NY corporate and I would hope to land a V5 offer.

Surely, wachtell is not worth bidding. How about sullcrom? cravath? dpw? if possible, how are my chances? or should I bid more conservatively? any thoughts are appreciated, many thanks!

Cravath definitely takes 4 Hs

Anonymous User · Post by **Anonymous User** » Fri Jun 24, 2016 2:23 pm

Girlfriend wants NY and would be fine with DC
I want DC and would be fine with NY
Any general advice on how to play in terms of bid distribution? (or would you need more information to even guess)

Anonymous User · Post by **Anonymous User** » Fri Jun 24, 2016 4:04 pm

Do ties to LA help at all when bidding SF?

TripTrip · Post by **TripTrip** » Fri Jun 24, 2016 4:22 pm

Anonymous User wrote:Girlfriend wants NY and would be fine with DC
I want DC and would be fine with NY
Any general advice on how to play in terms of bid distribution? (or would you need more information to even guess)

I'm not sure that anyone will be able to have better insight on this than you and your girlfriend.

Anonymous User wrote:Do ties to LA help at all when bidding SF?

For big markets, "ties" really just means a good answer to why you want to work in that market. A good answer is "my husband is here" or "my parents are here." A great demonstration of this commitment is working there your 1L summer, or having it on your resume. If everything about you screams LA (family, work history, undergrad, etc.) it's going to be a tough sell for you to argue, "I want to live six hours away from everything I love."

You might be able to argue that you want to go back to California in general. People have mixed success with this persuading interviewers. It definitely works in markets that are the biggest around. If you're from Minneapolis and you tell a Chicago firm you "just want to be in the Midwest," that works 99% of the time even though those two cities have almost nothing to do with each other because everyone knows you choose Chicago over Minneapolis. My gut feeling is that that tactic doesn't work as well between SF and LA, but I've never tried it to know.

Anonymous User · Post by **Anonymous User** » Fri Jun 24, 2016 11:46 pm

Anonymous User wrote:4Hs, upward trend for what it's worth (1h + 3h), summer M&A experience, trilingual, assuming okay interviewing skills, would any top NY firms be a waste bid? my goal is NY corporate and I would hope to land a V5 offer.

Surely, wachtell is not worth bidding. What about sullcrom? cravath? dpw? if possible, how are my chances? or should I bid more conservatively? any thoughts are appreciated, many thanks!

Is Wachtell really out with 4H's? Where is the cut-off for Wachtell?

Anonymous User · Post by **Anonymous User** » Sat Jun 25, 2016 1:33 am

Anecdotally I've heard the cut-off is around 6H's, but that it depends on the year.

PMan99 · Post by **PMan99** » Sat Jun 25, 2016 1:44 am

Anonymous User wrote:
Anonymous User wrote:4Hs, upward trend for what it's worth (1h + 3h), summer M&A experience, trilingual, assuming okay interviewing skills, would any top NY firms be a waste bid? my goal is NY corporate and I would hope to land a V5 offer.

Surely, wachtell is not worth bidding. What about sullcrom? cravath? dpw? if possible, how are my chances? or should I bid more conservatively? any thoughts are appreciated, many thanks!
Is Wachtell really out with 4H's? Where is the cut-off for Wachtell?

It's above 4H, but go ahead and bid it - with 4H and sights on NYC you'll have enough offers that you can take a flier on a few.

lawlorbust · Post by **lawlorbust** » Sat Jun 25, 2016 11:06 am

Anonymous User wrote:
Anonymous User wrote:4Hs, upward trend for what it's worth (1h + 3h), summer M&A experience, trilingual, assuming okay interviewing skills, would any top NY firms be a waste bid? my goal is NY corporate and I would hope to land a V5 offer.

Surely, wachtell is not worth bidding. What about sullcrom? cravath? dpw? if possible, how are my chances? or should I bid more conservatively? any thoughts are appreciated, many thanks!
Is Wachtell really out with 4H's? Where is the cut-off for Wachtell?

Yes, Wachtell is out, probably S&C is out, but I'd be shocked if you didn't get Cravath/DPW/Skadden/rest of the NY V10.

ETA: I agree with above post that you're in a strong enough position to throw bids at these places anyway.

HLS EIP 2016 Forum

Re: HLS EIP 2016

Re: HLS EIP 2016

Re: HLS EIP 2016

Re: HLS EIP 2016

Re: HLS EIP 2016

Register now to search topics and post comments!

Re: HLS EIP 2016

Re: HLS EIP 2016

Re: HLS EIP 2016

Re: HLS EIP 2016

Register for access!

Re: HLS EIP 2016

Re: HLS EIP 2016

Re: HLS EIP 2016

Re: HLS EIP 2016

Resources to assist law school applicants, students & graduates.

Re: HLS EIP 2016

Re: HLS EIP 2016

Re: HLS EIP 2016

Re: HLS EIP 2016

Register now!

Re: HLS EIP 2016

Re: HLS EIP 2016

Re: HLS EIP 2016

Re: HLS EIP 2016

Register now, it's still FREE!

Re: HLS EIP 2016

Re: HLS EIP 2016

Re: HLS EIP 2016

Re: HLS EIP 2016

Seriously? What are you waiting for?