50/50 chance of no offer Forum

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50/50 chance of no offer

Post by Anonymous User » Wed Aug 15, 2012 6:47 pm

Any one else been told that they have a 50/50 chance of no offer?

How did that turn out?
How long did it take for them to make the decision?

I just want to know when I should succumb to full-fledge depression.

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Re: 50/50 chance of no offer

Post by Anonymous User » Wed Aug 15, 2012 6:52 pm

Anonymous User wrote:Any one else been told that they have a 50/50 chance of no offer?

How did that turn out?
How long did it take for them to make the decision?

I just want to know when I should succumb to full-fledge depression.
Yes, from a V50. They said a couple weeks until the hiring committee makes a final vote. No word yet, but CSO said that if they say 50/50 to your face, that's an almost certain no offer when they meet in private and you aren't there to argue your case.

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somewhatwayward

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Re: 50/50 chance of no offer

Post by somewhatwayward » Wed Aug 15, 2012 7:04 pm

Anonymous User wrote:
Anonymous User wrote:Any one else been told that they have a 50/50 chance of no offer?

How did that turn out?
How long did it take for them to make the decision?

I just want to know when I should succumb to full-fledge depression.
Yes, from a V50. They said a couple weeks until the hiring committee makes a final vote. No word yet, but CSO said that if they say 50/50 to your face, that's an almost certain no offer when they meet in private and you aren't there to argue your case.
Yikes, from a V50? What market?

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Re: 50/50 chance of no offer

Post by Anonymous User » Wed Aug 15, 2012 7:20 pm

Anonymous User wrote:
Anonymous User wrote:Any one else been told that they have a 50/50 chance of no offer?

How did that turn out?
How long did it take for them to make the decision?

I just want to know when I should succumb to full-fledge depression.
Yes, from a V50. They said a couple weeks until the hiring committee makes a final vote. No word yet, but CSO said that if they say 50/50 to your face, that's an almost certain no offer when they meet in private and you aren't there to argue your case.
Very good point.

The person who said it (recruiter) doesn't get a vote.

The partner who gave me my reviews sad my one bad review was "an outlier" and they would bring my side of the story to the committee. The partner is a voting member of the summer committee. I later told them what recruiting said and the partner said that 'recruiting is simply trying to cover their bases'. That statement alone gives me a little bit of hope (perhaps naively).

This is from a v15 firm.

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fatduck

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Re: 50/50 chance of no offer

Post by fatduck » Wed Aug 15, 2012 7:46 pm

what are these ttt firms no-offering people for one bad review?

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Re: 50/50 chance of no offer

Post by 09042014 » Wed Aug 15, 2012 7:51 pm

fatduck wrote:what are these ttt firms no-offering people for one bad review?
It makes the whole thing a crap shoot. You could do 9 weeks of great work and get fucked by a really picky partner over an honest mistake.

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Re: 50/50 chance of no offer

Post by Anonymous User » Wed Aug 15, 2012 8:09 pm

fatduck wrote:what are these ttt firms no-offering people for one bad review?
Yeah this is after the firm went out of their way to stress that you would have to do something absolutely crazy, and you still stood a chance of getting an offer. Yet, when pushed came to shove, their tone and attitude was completely different.

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fatduck

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Re: 50/50 chance of no offer

Post by fatduck » Wed Aug 15, 2012 8:10 pm

no, i mean, what bullshit firms are these? pm if necessary.

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Re: 50/50 chance of no offer

Post by Anonymous User » Wed Aug 15, 2012 8:25 pm

All of the no offer talk on here lately has assured me of a couple of things: people should 1) really pick and choose their assignments carefully and; 2) focus on quantity over quantity. That is, forget about the constant need to feel "busy" (this anxiety was reinforced, at least at my firm, by the constant need of all summers to talk about how "busy" they were and how late they had to stay, yada yada yada). It really seems best to only have one or two open assignments add a time. Having more than that is all downside with no upside.

Additionally, when picking assignments, don't pick the super-obscure research assignment that there might be nothing relevant on point. Even if there is nothing at all, some prickly reviewer might ding you for not finding some "analogous issue" (even if there is no such issue that any real lawyer would actually send to a court). Instead, pick assignments like "write a memo summarizing the current state of the law in New York of [some random 1L topic that a treatise will quickly give you 10 million cases on]." There is really no such thing as a "superstar SA" and there's no real need to "prove yourself." It seems best not to give enough rope to hang yourself with.

Of course, there may be nothing you can do if all these no offers are really pretextual. But still best not to give the hiring committee any ammunition to no offer. If all reviews are good and they need to no offer, they may move onto the next unfortunate chap who was given an unreasonably bad review.

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09042014

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Re: 50/50 chance of no offer

Post by 09042014 » Wed Aug 15, 2012 9:24 pm

Anonymous User wrote:All of the no offer talk on here lately has assured me of a couple of things: people should 1) really pick and choose their assignments carefully and; 2) focus on quantity over quantity.
I don't think SA's typically get to pick their assignments. At my firm we couldn't.

I agree you should do quality over quantity, but not if that means constantly turning down work. But I'd almost never go looking for more assignments unless you are totally empty.

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Re: 50/50 chance of no offer

Post by Anonymous User » Thu Aug 16, 2012 12:00 am

Desert Fox wrote:
Anonymous User wrote:All of the no offer talk on here lately has assured me of a couple of things: people should 1) really pick and choose their assignments carefully and; 2) focus on quantity over quantity.
I don't think SA's typically get to pick their assignments. At my firm we couldn't.

I agree you should do quality over quantity, but not if that means constantly turning down work. But I'd almost never go looking for more assignments unless you are totally empty.
I second this. Also, I'd suggest to do first assignments really well in terms of both thorough research and concise writing. Correcting problems after a mid-summer review can be difficult, especially as many firms don't like to assign too much work during the last weeks of the summer program.

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Re: 50/50 chance of no offer

Post by Anonymous User » Thu Aug 16, 2012 10:02 am

Why the hell don't we out these TTT firms who are potentially no-offering?

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Re: 50/50 chance of no offer

Post by Anonymous User » Thu Aug 16, 2012 10:19 am

Anonymous User wrote:Why the hell don't we out these TTT firms who are potentially no-offering?
Because they're only "potentially" no-offering me and even if they don't invite me back, might soft offer me out of mercy.

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Re: 50/50 chance of no offer

Post by Anonymous User » Thu Aug 16, 2012 11:22 am

So anyone else with this experience?

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