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Do people ever just use personal connections to get an SA position, or are all SA positions filled through OCI? Sorry to be so clueless (and no, I'm not an 0L -- I just never took an interest in OCI.) I recently found out my SO has some colleague/friends who are pretty high up in some BigLaw firms. SO wants me to reach out to them, but I don't know if that's how it's done. Advice?

Connections always help, but at most big law firms you probably at least have to go through an interview process (Though not necessarily OCI. Firms do accept resumes from people at schools they are not doing OCI at.) Depending on how high up these connections are they might get your resume to the top of the pile and/or put in a good word for you.

At smaller law firms many positions are filled through connections and networking.

Thanks, Cleareyes. One of the friends is a partner in what I think (see, I'm such BigLaw ignoramus, I had to look it up) is a fairly highly ranked firm, and the firm does in fact do OCI at my school. However, the firm has a really high GPA requirement -- so while I might get an interview, I'd probably never get a call-back on numbers alone.

I wish I'd paid more attention to all the career services stuff we got...

Also, I wish I could find information on how firms factor in "diversity"... Is this something specific to each firm, or some top secret advice to which my career services folks hold the keys?

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Thanks for your advice, NYAssociate/Cleareyes.

If a firm isn't doing OCI or a resume drop at your school, is it worth it to directly apply to them? If so, what's the best timeframe for this? (Now?)

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