Summer job worth what? + what to say about moot court/journa Forum

[Anonymous User]

There are only 50 states and some fairly specific info here; anon. so as not to out myself.

State without a major (as in NY/LA major) market, Top 30 well-respected regional school in the state.

Interning with the Governor's general counsel this summer, only intern in the office, selected through a statewide government internship program.

Top one third grade-wise. Shot myself in the food and didn't make law review or a secondary journal. Moot court doesn't get decided until several important rounds of OCI are done.

President of a club, some other cool extracurrics, nothing earth shattering. Had a terrifically interesting summer, worked on everything from contracts to constitutional issues.

Should I bother applying to firms that request top 20-25% and "prefer journal or moot court"? Firms that request top one-third and prefer j or mc?

Is my summer job worth any kind of extra boost? Looking at mid-size firms to regional branches of biglaw firms that do regulatory/government affairs and transactional work.

What would you say to an interviewer if the truth is you wanted moot court and not a journal but were an idiot and wrote a crappy write on entry anyway, and didn't even make a secondary journal?

[OnceUponAMemo]

Shot myself in the food

Regarding your question, I wouldn't bring up journals in the first place. If pressed, then explain you were unsure of how much practical use being on a journal would be and wanted to focus on skill-building, thus you are looking forward to finding out your moot court results. It's up to you, but I wouldn't necessarily explain that you even did the write-on competition at all. As far as job applications go, it depends how your OCI works and how much you want to gamble. Isn't pretty much every firm top 1/3 with journal/moot court preferred? If not, use the firms that fit you first, with a couple of these flyers thrown in.

[thesealocust]

Should I bother applying to firms that request top 20-25% and "prefer journal or moot court"?

A wise and insightful person once wrote:

PSA - when a firm lists its GPA preference and requirements, you should do the following: Ignore them entirely and mother fucking ask career services.

Firms lie through their god damned teeth on those things, and I want to keep harping on it, because it is VERY IMPORTANT TO YOUR CAREER PROSPECTS. The firms are lying or naive or outsourcing their symplicity profiles to India or who knows what, but if you ask a 3 year old with a box of crayons to draw you the cut off for a firm you'll get a better answer than the firm's published cutoff on your OCI software.

Firms aren't consistently high, or consistently low - they're just consistently full of shit. A firm that says "top third required" might hire to median, it might hire from the top 3% without exception, and there's even a remote chance it will hire from the top third. But those pieces of data simply cannot be relied upon at all. Not even in a cursory way. Not for comparison's sake, not when nothing else will do. You need to completely disregard them, and beg/borrow/steal data from career services. Your (and that's the royal 'your' for everyone out there readingin paranoid law student land) career depends on it.