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You've got a shot at everything, but don't bid the selective firms so high. You'll get interviews from lower. Your safeties should go in your high bids.

How much lower are you thinking? This is 100% lotto by the way. Does that change your mind?

CSO told me to just put the firms in order of how badly I want to work there. Presumably myself and 30 or 40 others will at least roughly follow this advice, right?

Edit: Also what are the safety firms? The lower ranked firms have smaller classes. I feel just as safe about my odds getting a job from STB as I do from Jones Day, A&O, and any other lower ranked firm. Not that safe.

You really badly want to do corporate at Paul Weiss??? That makes zero sense.

Anyways, you have to think where the majority of your classmates will be bidding and how selective firms are. S&C is highly selective, so not many will bid on it. You can place it lower and still get it.

Weil, on the other hand, is V10 prestige that's attainable by more than half the class. You'll have to bid them higher.

Think about maximizing the number of interviews you get, and maximizing the number of interviews at firms youre more likely to get an offer at.

And if your goal is to do NYC corporate, re-think about half of these firms. Chambers is a good start.

And our career services doesn't deserve the salaries it's paid.

Anonymous User wrote:CSO told me to just put the firms in order of how badly I want to work there. Presumably myself and 30 or 40 others will at least roughly follow this advice, right?

This is terrible, terrible advice. Bid them in rough order of how difficult it will be to get a screening interview there. Use your preferences for one firm over another as a tie-breaker at the margins.

Fresh Prince wrote:You really badly want to do corporate at Paul Weiss??? That makes zero sense.

Anyways, you have to think where the majority of your classmates will be bidding and how selective firms are. S&C is highly selective, so not many will bid on it. You can place it lower and still get it.

Weil, on the other hand, is V10 prestige that's attainable by more than half the class. You'll have to bid them higher.

Think about maximizing the number of interviews you get, and maximizing the number of interviews at firms youre more likely to get an offer at.

And if your goal is to do NYC corporate, re-think about half of these firms. Chambers is a good start.

And our career services doesn't deserve the salaries it's paid.

How can they not even get a basic idea like bidlist right? I don't think that OP would end up with nothing out of that list, but that is some terrible advice. Maybe they are thinking OP will get hired anywhere so he should just put his first choice first. I don't know what they are thinking.

thank you everyone

Is there a TLS consensus on what NYC firms are considered "safety" firms? Or how to determine if a firm is a safety firm? I'm new at this and trying to optimize my list.

Muchos gracias.

No firm is a safety firm, though some are easier to get than others.

Easier to get an offer, right?

Yes, and before you ask, there is no general rule. Vault rankings are a rough indicator at best.

Haha ok. I'll go through my data again. I have all of the info from past years on interviews, callbacks, offers extended, offers accepted.

I'm guessing a "safety" will have a high ratio of callbacks to interviews, a high ratio of callbacks to offers, and a potentially low ratio of accepted offers.

An extreme example: 120 interviews, 60 callbacks, 40 offers extended, and 5 offers accepted.

Don't forget GPA. S&C isn't easier to get if it has 100 screeners, 90 callbacks, and 89 offers, when 99% of the screeners had top 10% grades. Just an example.

You think Cravath at 9 is too low?

Anonymous User wrote:You think Cravath at 9 is too low?

Which school? It's definitely not too low at schools that don't target NYC as their primary market. At NU you can get CSM/DPW/S&C with bids in the high 20's low 30's.

duke

It's too high.

Back when I bid, I structured it with my targets at the top, "safeties" in the middle, and reaches at th bottom. This reconciled my desire to work at specific firms with my desire to just get an offer.

Within each group, I structured the order based on the number of interview slots available.

At the end of the day, I had gotten all of my targets, some of my "safeties" and all of my reaches.

At the end of the week, I had callbacks at two of my reaches, three of my targets, and five of my safeties.

At the end of the month, I had offers at one of my reaches, two of my targets, and one of my safeties. Could have gotten more if I had not cancelled the others.

Just curious, what is the GPA you're equating to top 20%?

Let's say above 3.6