Page 1 of 1

In house mentor willing to go to bat for you?

Posted: Fri Jun 29, 2012 12:13 pm
by Anonymous User
I made connections with a large corporation's senior council this past year, and we've gotten pretty close as mentor/mentee.
He used to be a partner in big law about 8 years ago before transferring to in-house. He volunteered to make a call to his previous firm (which I would love to work for and is somewhat in my grade range), or if I'm interested in other firms he would find someone at the corporation legal dept who had connections.

I am immensely grateful to him, but how exactly do I use this to my advantage?
Should I ask him to put a call in before OCI interviews? Or after I hopefully get a callback? Or after I strike out at OCI?
Or to ask for partners at the firm I can meet with pre-oci?

I didn't want to be rude and grill him for specifics, but I would like to get as much out of his offer to help as I can.
Don't know if it matters, but I'm a rising 2L, top 1/3 at T14.

Re: In house mentor willing to go to bat for you?

Posted: Fri Jun 29, 2012 12:35 pm
by piccolittle
Anonymous User wrote:I made connections with a large corporation's senior council this past year, and we've gotten pretty close as mentor/mentee.
He used to be a partner in big law about 8 years ago before transferring to in-house. He volunteered to make a call to his previous firm (which I would love to work for and is somewhat in my grade range), or if I'm interested in other firms he would find someone at the corporation legal dept who had connections.

I am immensely grateful to him, but how exactly do I use this to my advantage?
Should I ask him to put a call in before OCI interviews? Or after I hopefully get a callback? Or after I strike out at OCI?
Or to ask for partners at the firm I can meet with pre-oci?

I didn't want to be rude and grill him for specifics, but I would like to get as much out of his offer to help as I can.
Don't know if it matters, but I'm a rising 2L, top 1/3 at T14.
I would ask if he knows anyone who might be willing to do an informational interview over the summer. If he wants to go above and beyond that, he will. My in-house boss has been really helpful with everything related to the job search. I mostly mine her for advice on career/interviews, but as she gets to know my job search, she periodically volunteers to put me in contact with different people. Those informational interviews usually turn into callbacks. It's a progression :)

Good luck, and congrats on finding someone who's eager to be on your team.