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0L here in need of clarification/general advice. I see a lot of students and recent grads on here advising to search for 1L/2L summer work (A) in the area of your law school, (B) Big Markets like NYC, and (C) Secondary markets where you have ties. I'm curious about this last one.

What really constitutes a "tie" to a secondary market? Where along the spectrum of Lived-there-all-my-life/parents-and-spouse-live-there/I-personally-know-every-lawyer-around to I-visited-once-at-age-7-and-bought-a-t-shirt does a geographic tie become a fabrication? Or is there no real minimum and it's all just about how you spin your connections? Thanks.

Braces Self for Ridicule

Instead of answer your question, I'm just going to point out that legal employers are not stupid. It's not a game, they're not waiting for somebody to utter the shibboleth that grants access to the secondary market. They're just hiring a small handful of people, and when the person whose resume drips home-town-hero walks through the door they'll get a lot more careful attention than the carpetbagger.

Especially for the 1L summer, the smaller locales often like to grab T14 students with deep roots before they have a chance to get sucked away to big city firms.

As somebody who got the "so why Texas?" question at a Texas law firm the first day in my life I'd ever set foot in the state, I can tell you that spinning only gets you so far when it comes to ties

Not that I'm encouraging lying, but I can say pretty definitively that he's wrong (the above poster). If you lie hard enough (ie on your resume or whatever) it works. I took a professor who did this and used it to get a firm job in a market that he had absolutely no real ties to. Apparently, saying that your fiance lives in the secondary market is one of the easiest ways to pull it off.

Anonymous User wrote:Not that I'm encouraging lying, but I can say pretty definitively that he's wrong (the above poster). If you lie hard enough (ie on your resume or whatever) it works. I took a professor who did this and used it to get a firm job in a market that he had absolutely no real ties to. Apparently, saying that your fiance lives in the secondary market is one of the easiest ways to pull it off.

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Well I certainly don't mean to take spinning to the point of deceit. Also, would it matter if the secondary market in question is desirable or not? (Read San Diego versus Detroit).

edit to incorporate anon response.

thesealocust wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:Not that I'm encouraging lying, but I can say pretty definitively that he's wrong (the above poster). If you lie hard enough (ie on your resume or whatever) it works. I took a professor who did this and used it to get a firm job in a market that he had absolutely no real ties to. Apparently, saying that your fiance lives in the secondary market is one of the easiest ways to pull it off.

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Cade McNown wrote:Well I certainly don't mean to take spinning to the point of deceit. Also, would it matter if the secondary market in question is desirable or not? (Read San Diego versus Detroit).

edit to incorporate anon response.

Forget it then. You can't fake ties unless you're bending the truth (which like I said I don't recommend).

thesealocust wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:Not that I'm encouraging lying, but I can say pretty definitively that he's wrong (the above poster). If you lie hard enough (ie on your resume or whatever) it works. I took a professor who did this and used it to get a firm job in a market that he had absolutely no real ties to. Apparently, saying that your fiance lives in the secondary market is one of the easiest ways to pull it off.

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Inexorably leading onward to an IRL version of Just Go With It

Anonymous User wrote:Forget it then. You can't fake ties unless you're bending the truth (which like I said I don't recommend).

My question wasn't about how to fake ties, it was about what constitutes a tie.

Something I've been wondering: what proximity do you generally need to establish ties? For example, if I was born and raised in a Midwestern city (St. Louis), would that count as an adequate tie for Chicago firms? Or, if my fiance has family in a smaller city in North Carolina (and we're looking to stay in NC long-term), would that be enough to satisfy firms in Charlotte?

beachbum wrote:Something I've been wondering: what proximity do you generally need to establish ties? For example, if I was born and raised in a Midwestern city (St. Louis), would that count as an adequate tie for Chicago firms? Or, if my fiance has family in a smaller city in North Carolina (and we're looking to stay in NC long-term), would that be enough to satisfy firms in Charlotte?

There's no formula. The more ties to any area you have the better you'll look as a candidate. "My fiance has a cousin who lives two hours away" might not impress the recruiters.

beachbum wrote:Something I've been wondering: what proximity do you generally need to establish ties? For example, if I was born and raised in a Midwestern city (St. Louis), would that count as an adequate tie for Chicago firms? Or, if my fiance has family in a smaller city in North Carolina (and we're looking to stay in NC long-term), would that be enough to satisfy firms in Charlotte?

I think consensus is that for a large market like Chicago, only actual ties to the city count (or to Illinois more broadly maybe). However, I also think consensus is that ties for a primary market matter much less than ties for a secondary market, b/c it's obvious why someone would want to work Chicago.

Your North Carolina example is more in-line with my topic. My inclination is that your situation would be considered some sort of tie to the area, but I want something better to go off of than intuition...

Cade McNown wrote:0L here

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