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any indication on if the cycle is any better than last year's or worse?

Anonymous User wrote:any indication on if the cycle is any better than last year's or worse?

Seems slightly worse, firms arent under any illusions that thing will swing back quickly like they may have been to some extent last year.

As a 3L (below median, T20) with six CBs in four different markets...I am quite happy! Haha. Chicago market has been the most responsive for me (3 CBs there).

Anonymous User wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:any indication on if the cycle is any better than last year's or worse?

Seems slightly worse, firms arent under any illusions that thing will swing back quickly like they may have been to some extent last year.

Yup. Probably neutral at best, though more likely a little worse than last year.

Anonymous User wrote:As a 3L (below median, T20) with six CBs in four different markets...I am quite happy! Haha. Chicago market has been the most responsive for me (3 CBs there).

Wow, that's a nice 3L pull. Did you have a 2L SA?

I'm a 3L so I haven't been in the market the way rising 2Ls are, but it seems at least a touch worse. Could be an illusion though.

Seems realistically cautious. Some current 3Ls have gotten screwed with no offers from firms possibly being too optimistic last year.

IAFG wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:As a 3L (below median, T20) with six CBs in four different markets...I am quite happy! Haha. Chicago market has been the most responsive for me (3 CBs there).

Wow, that's a nice 3L pull. Did you have a 2L SA?

Thanks! Let's hope one turns into am offer! No SA, just clerkship...still clerking but they said they could not make offers at the time and would reevaluate in January because they are a smaller firm (30 attorneys). This translated to me hustling and bustling. Ha!

I think it is better if you have work experience and worse if you are straight through. I go to a T-20, and most of my friends who did something before school have callbacks lined up in enough places that they feel odds are in their favor. Unfortunately, for students below top 35% ish who didn't work before law school the picture isnt as rosy.

I get the impression that firms are moving slower this year. I did OCI weeks ago and have still yet to hear from 10 firms, out of 25+ or so interviews.

Anonymous User wrote:I think it is better if you have work experience and worse if you are straight through. I go to a T-20, and most of my friends who did something before school have callbacks lined up in enough places that they feel odds are in their favor. Unfortunately, for students below top 35% ish who didn't work before law school the picture isnt as rosy.

I have to disagree. I go to a T20 (going straight through) and did extremely well this season, despite what the career office advised. I admit I am higher up than top 35%, but still feel that this hiring season has worked out way better than expected. I think the last thing a recruiter will care about is whether or not someone was able to work a 9-5 as a paralegal for X numbers of years - what does that bring to the table?

On another note, I think the market is improving. During my CBs most hiring partners mentioned firms increasing class size. This is also reflected in NALP forms. Hopefully this translates into high/higher offer rates at the end of next years summer programs.

I think that a number of firms oversubscribed classes this past summer, and will try to make up for it by hiring slightly fewer 2Ls this time around. Some have had some luck, but in general 3L hiring is pretty dead, especially compared to last year. For the average student, I'm not sure that it will be noticeably worse, but it might be a big difference at the margins. I wouldn't be surprised if firms that hired 125 SAs in 2012 hire 115 or 120 in 2012, or firms that hired 80 SAs in 2012 hire 75 for 2013, and so on.

Anonymous User wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:I think it is better if you have work experience and worse if you are straight through. I go to a T-20, and most of my friends who did something before school have callbacks lined up in enough places that they feel odds are in their favor. Unfortunately, for students below top 35% ish who didn't work before law school the picture isnt as rosy.

I have to disagree. I go to a T20 (going straight through) and did extremely well this season, despite what the career office advised. I admit I am higher up than top 35%, but still feel that this hiring season has worked out way better than expected. I think the last thing a recruiter will care about is whether or not someone was able to work a 9-5 as a paralegal for X numbers of years - what does that bring to the table?

On another note, I think the market is improving. During my CBs most hiring partners mentioned firms increasing class size. This is also reflected in NALP forms. Hopefully this translates into high/higher offer rates at the end of next years summer programs.

NALP forms represent hiring for the summer that just ended. And, though I'm not sure it amounts to much, the recruiters I've spoken with are all holding class size steady or decreasing class size slightly.

Anonymous User wrote:I get the impression that firms are moving slower this year. I did OCI weeks ago and have still yet to hear from 10 firms, out of 25+ or so interviews.

Depending on the market, that doesn't sound too different than last yr.

IAFG wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:I get the impression that firms are moving slower this year. I did OCI weeks ago and have still yet to hear from 10 firms, out of 25+ or so interviews.

Depending on the market, that doesn't sound too different than last yr.

NYC.

Anonymous User wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:I think it is better if you have work experience and worse if you are straight through. I go to a T-20, and most of my friends who did something before school have callbacks lined up in enough places that they feel odds are in their favor. Unfortunately, for students below top 35% ish who didn't work before law school the picture isnt as rosy.

I have to disagree. I go to a T20 (going straight through) and did extremely well this season, despite what the career office advised. I admit I am higher up than top 35%, but still feel that this hiring season has worked out way better than expected. I think the last thing a recruiter will care about is whether or not someone was able to work a 9-5 as a paralegal for X numbers of years - what does that bring to the table?

2nd Anon, your personal experience doesn't really go against OP's point, especially if you're top 20%. There are students who will always do well in OCI simply because of their GPA. I think OP is correct for students in a grayer range and that range has expanded this year. I'm top 20% at a pre-select only T2 where only top 5-10% of the kids have any realistic chances at BigLaw, top 25% scrambles for whatever is left, and everyone else is left in the cold in terms of OCI so I'm probably closer to to the field of students OP described. I outperformed a lot of top 10% kids at getting screeners and it was because of my prior work experience at a couple of well known firms. Beyond screeners, "you worked at X, do you know Y?" has come up in 5/6 screeners that led to callbacks. On the other hand, I know a few top 10% K-JD students with zero callbacks.

Anonymous User wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:I think it is better if you have work experience and worse if you are straight through. I go to a T-20, and most of my friends who did something before school have callbacks lined up in enough places that they feel odds are in their favor. Unfortunately, for students below top 35% ish who didn't work before law school the picture isnt as rosy.

I have to disagree. I go to a T20 (going straight through) and did extremely well this season, despite what the career office advised. I admit I am higher up than top 35%, but still feel that this hiring season has worked out way better than expected. I think the last thing a recruiter will care about is whether or not someone was able to work a 9-5 as a paralegal for X numbers of years - what does that bring to the table?

On another note, I think the market is improving. During my CBs most hiring partners mentioned firms increasing class size. This is also reflected in NALP forms. Hopefully this translates into high/higher offer rates at the end of next years summer programs.

You've never worked 9-5--how would you know what it "brings to the table." Many interviewers I've spoken with have emphasized work experience as something they're looking for--it signals a sense of humility and wherewithal that can only come from working your first job after school.

Anonymous User wrote:I get the impression that firms are moving slower this year. I did OCI weeks ago and have still yet to hear from 10 firms, out of 25+ or so interviews.

I really hope they are just moving slow. Did 5 callbacks last week, 2 of which are firms with ~90% cb to offer ratio at my school, and so far have only heard from one of the 5.

To echo another poster's sentiment- the few recruiters I've talked to said their summer classes this year would be smaller. I think the conservative hiring might reflect less work or maybe just a general trend towards being more conservative in hiring so that a firm doesn't end up on ATL.

Firms have told me that classes would stay the same or shrink. Hopefully that means that permanent offer rates will go back up (if indeed all these no offers are representative)
Then again, I am median or slightly below at a T6 with little work experience and ~15 callbacks so maybe firms are not being very conservative after all, or maybe they are just shifting more of their filtering to the CB phase.

Anonymous User wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:I think it is better if you have work experience and worse if you are straight through. I go to a T-20, and most of my friends who did something before school have callbacks lined up in enough places that they feel odds are in their favor. Unfortunately, for students below top 35% ish who didn't work before law school the picture isnt as rosy.

I have to disagree. I go to a T20 (going straight through) and did extremely well this season, despite what the career office advised. I admit I am higher up than top 35%, but still feel that this hiring season has worked out way better than expected. I think the last thing a recruiter will care about is whether or not someone was able to work a 9-5 as a paralegal for X numbers of years - what does that bring to the table?

On another note, I think the market is improving. During my CBs most hiring partners mentioned firms increasing class size. This is also reflected in NALP forms. Hopefully this translates into high/higher offer rates at the end of next years summer programs.

Eh. I think you'd be surprised how well some of your peers are doing with that work experience. You sound like a GW kid, ask around. I think you'll find that "extremely well" is relative. Because of the pure preselect system, there are some students there with two dozen callbacks. Talking 25+. If you're one of them as a K-JD, that's seriously impressive, but the ones I know all have either advanced degrees or tangible work experience that makes them significantly more of a known quantity that firms will leap at.

Anonymous User wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:I have to disagree. I go to a T20 (going straight through) and did extremely well this season, despite what the career office advised. I admit I am higher up than top 35%, but still feel that this hiring season has worked out way better than expected. I think the last thing a recruiter will care about is whether or not someone was able to work a 9-5 as a paralegal for X numbers of years - what does that bring to the table?

You've never worked 9-5--how would you know what it "brings to the table." Many interviewers I've spoken with have emphasized work experience as something they're looking for--it signals a sense of humility and wherewithal that can only come from working your first job after school.

To add to this, being a paralegal is almost never a 9-5 job. If there's any one job that signals to employers that you can pull biglaw hours, it's this (or banking, I suppose).