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Hi all,

There are going to be a series of 1L Law firm receptions on campus almost every other day at my LS for the next few weeks. Obviously - this can be helpful from networking standpoint. My question is whether anyone knows if this can actually be harmful for OCI if you DONT attend. OCS says they keep attendance, so would there ever be an interviewer who asked "Why didnt you come to our event in the spring semester if are so interested in our firm?"

Thanks.

nyg22 wrote:Hi all,

There are going to be a series of 1L Law firm receptions on campus almost every other day at my LS for the next few weeks. Obviously - this can be helpful from networking standpoint. My question is whether anyone knows if this can actually be harmful for OCI if you DONT attend. OCS says they keep attendance, so would there ever be an interviewer who asked "Why didnt you come to our event in the spring semester if are so interested in our firm?"

Thanks.

I seriously doubt it. Also, I'd assume that what they meant from "keeping attendance" is that if you RSVP.

It's fun. And free food and booze. Do it even it doesn't help you out at all.

I have no doubt it's fun, but it seems like a huge time commitment and not a huge value-add unless there is genuine networking going on (instead of 2 attorneys and 50 students) or you get penalized for not showing up.

In my experience, it's usually plenty of lawyers and even if you don't get the opportunity to chat with them, it can be nice having a few drinks and chatting with some students in your year that you've never spoken to before. And it's not a huge time commitment, just drop in for an hour.

But yeah, if you RSVP and don't show up, that would be terrible.

The firms do these because they know that as employers they are damn near fungible. The primary goal is to get their name out and make students interested in them.

It's possible that dedicated interest or screwing up at the reception or a magical connection will also come into play, but it's not the main reason firms are doing them.

Trust me on this one.

Go, find some friends, take advantage of the free stuff and chat. Takes an hour or two of your time. This shouldn't make or break your semester, even if you do several of them. And if you actually talk to the attorneys there, you might actually find out what kind of words they like to throw around about their firm or some unique tidbit about a practice group you're interested in that you can regurgitate during OCI.

I didn't find them to be helpful in terms of actually landing a job, but it was nice to get a feel for what the attorneys were like and what questions they cared about. I was so nervous about OCI, so anything I could learn about the process beforehand was helpful to me. I went to most of them, and honestly you can leave at any time, there are enough people there so you won't be noticed ducking out, even if it's 5 minutes after you got there.