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Started going through the Vault 100 on Chambers Associates today, and after like 5 hours of this, my brain has turned to mush. I think I'm interested in litigation but still want exposure to some transactional work just to make sure, and I'll probably just shoot for NYC because I don't think I have ties to anywhere else (I'm not from a major market) even though I wouldn't mind being in Boston or Chicago (probably not the west coast though). I interview relatively well in general, but not necessarily about substantive legal issues since I've never had to talk about that in an interview before (I know most screening interviews are informal and conversational except for like WLRK, but I imagine at some point further down the line, someone will ask me a legal question).

So, any suggestions for: targets, reaches, and safeties?

Also, any bidding strategies? We get 30 bids that are basically rankings/lottery (so no pre-select and firms don't see your grades or resumes). I'm guessing I should put smaller summer classes higher up on the list, but I also know the Vault list doesn't really match up with selectivity so I'm not sure where to go from there.

You can probably bid the NYC Vault 10 (not the overall V10 which includes some non-NYC based firms) and a few safeties that are big NYC offices with large practices in both transactional/lit (Shearman, Milbank, Cahill, White and Case, Ropes, Latham). You probably need no more than 5 of these safeties and I doubt this many. You'll probably get one of Davis Polk, Cravath, or Sullivan Cromwell. And you'll definitely land in the Vault 10 somewhere.

Then you can use some of your other bids to play around in the secondary markets. Big firms in Boston like Ropes/Wilmer/Goodwin and in Chicago Kirkland/Sidley/Winston/Mayer/Jenner. You could also bid on some big DC firms too.

Many CLS students with your grades put their reach firms as Munger, Irell, Wachtell, Susman, and Boies Schiller. These firms call back very few people though.

Nobody will ask you a legal question even at the callback stage. Callback interviews pretty much resemble screening interviews although they expect you to know a little more about the firm and its practice areas.

In terms of bidding order, the Vault 10 are usually underbid, but since those are your targets you might want to mix them in at the top with the safeties. You can rank the big non-NYC firms towards the bottom of the list because they aren't likely to be overbid the firs time through.

I had your gpa last year and ended up bidding on too many safeties. Very few places are out of reach, so just bid where you want and I'm sure you'll find something--don't really worry about safety bids.