Top Law Schools

T10, just above top 20% grades. Looks like I’ll strike out. Don’t know what happened. Probably a bad interviewer/weak WE. Did work on it with OCS--no real critiques. (Did have some CBs, but no offer. I theoretically have a small few outstanding, but have little hope, and would like some opinions now since I have to make some financial decisions soon.) Also no ties to secondary markets/not willing to go to them. Because of a scholarship, my debt will be about 60k upon graduation. It’s about 30k now.

I don’t mind legal work, but I really don’t want to spend two more years here if my job prospects won’t be much better than if I drop out. OTOH, I have a useless degree and no other marketable skills. Enjoyed the PI work I’ve done, but I think that’s just because it was in a niche civil area. I don’t think I’d enjoy being a Prosecutor/PD at all. I know that PI/gov’t is just as competitive as anything else, and not necessarily as grade-focused. Might have a lead on a PI job for 2L summer, but no idea whether/probably unlikely they’d consider me for permanent employment.

Even with BigLaw probably out of the picture, is this still too good of a deal to call it quits? I appreciate that a lot of people might envy my debtload, but we’re also no longer living in an economy where merely possessing a professional degree from a good school necessarily means increased earnings over time. So I wonder if I might end up in pretty much the same place if I spend the extra two years here, and I should just go with my gut and pick another path in life. As OCI results indicate, I’m probably not the kind of person who can network my way into anything I want. But feel free to tell me if I should just suck it up and spend the next two years mass mailing midlaw. If you need more info to vote in the poll/advise me, please ask. Thanks for any thoughts.

Mass mail. People like you are the most likely to have success with it. Clerk... with your grades it might be feasible. If you were engineer, maybe you should drop out, but if you have useless BA, suck it up.

Thanks. My lack of other options really might make the difference. Although being able to feasibly pay back my debt if I leave now makes it tempting to go.

I should note, for anyone voting no because I said I have a few outstanding, please just vote as if I definitively struck out. My conversion rate was less than 20% for over 20 screeners. I was almost totally shut out of the V50, and knew of many cases where firms called back median or below candidates over me. So not holding out much hope for the "outstandings."

-OP

Unless you're big law or bust, I say stick it out.

Anonymous User wrote:Unless you're big law or bust, I say stick it out.

Didn't mean to post that anonymously. Was the T10 UVA by chance? Their partial pre-select system seems to fuck a lot of people over.

It might be. Do you mean in terms of people in my grade range? I've sort of noticed that. Law review grade-ons generally have their pick of what they want, but then good grades don't matter as much since firms will take an outgoing median Type A over a more laid back person in my grade range. Sucks that everything you did to succeed during 1L can go out the window in a 20 minute meeting. I was pretty satisfied with the list of firms that preselected me though, so I guess I only have myself to blame?

-OP

Anonymous User wrote:It might be. Do you mean in terms of people in my grade range? I've sort of noticed that. Law review grade-ons generally have their pick of what they want, but then good grades don't matter as much since firms will take an outgoing median Type A over a more laid back person in my grade range. Sucks that everything you did to succeed during 1L can go out the window in a 20 minute meeting. I was pretty satisfied with the list of firms that preselected me though, so I guess I only have myself to blame?

-OP

I mean in terms of people in any grade range. If you bid poorly, you can fuck yourself over at any rank (not saying that was necessarily the dispositive factor in your case).

Yeah, I guess not for me then. I was pretty ecstatic when preselects came out. Had great opportunities and just couldn't convert most of them.

-op

Anonymous User wrote:It might be. Do you mean in terms of people in my grade range? I've sort of noticed that. Law review grade-ons generally have their pick of what they want, but then good grades don't matter as much since firms will take an outgoing median Type A over a more laid back person in my grade range. Sucks that everything you did to succeed during 1L can go out the window in a 20 minute meeting. I was pretty satisfied with the list of firms that preselected me though, so I guess I only have myself to blame?

-OP

Sometimes these things happen. It will only hurt you if you take it too personally. I am anon from 2nd post, and I struck out with decent grades from T-14. Career services said my interviewing is fine. You have to look forward, and if you want biglaw, that means clerking and mass mailing.
Good luck.

HeavenWood wrote: Didn't mean to post that anonymously. Was the T10 UVA by chance? Their partial pre-select system seems to fuck a lot of people over.

Say what? If anything it helps someone with his profile out tremendously (a student with high grades). The 100 percent lottery thing isn't really all that great ITE. It's a relic of the boom days when a top 14 degree was enough in and of itself. Now the only reason it works is because, thankfully, most students don't bid on firms outside of their GPA range. But that basically boils down to the same thing as preselect system. The only schools where lottery really "helps" is at HYS because most employers will take any grades from those schools.


OP just do a clerkship. If you stay in the top 20 percent you should be able to get a district court clerkship somewhere. Make sure to do a journal/moot court to assist with this. You can get a firm out of a clerkship with little difficulty.

I have been mass mailing. But my market is NY, so obviously that's tough since even the midsize firms have already done OCI at CN/Fordham. Admittedly I started mass mailing late.

Assuming I don't want to clerk, will there be other options? I'm not BigLaw or bust, but I'm surprised things came out this skewed so far. It's very tempting for me to cut my losses.

-OP