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I have a Big Law job, but I'm not on a journal, not on Moot Court, not really involved in law school at all except go to class, and do my HW. Do any of these prestigious extra-curricular activities matter for someone who has secured employment? I was thinking about just doing a ton of volunteer legal work during 3L to make up for the massive amount of extra time I would have and to just show what I was doing with my extra time. Thoughts?

I'm totally sorry in advance to those who are on journals, moot court, etc. and don't have employment yet. My intent is not to offend anyone. I just wanted general thoughts on my current situation. Thank you.

Those extras are typically what get you a job. After that, they don't matter much unless you're trying to move up to a super-prestigious firm, then they might care.

And volunteer work? Unless it's volunteering to play video games, it's silly.

Anonymous User wrote:I'm totally sorry in advance to those who are on journals, moot court, etc. and don't have employment yet. My intent is not to offend anyone. I just wanted general thoughts on my current situation. Thank you.

Don't apologize. You've done what you went to law school to do. Mad ups!

I would imagine that not being on a journal might affect clerkship opportunities.

Can't you just do moot court as a 3L anyway? If you are afraid of looking like a slacker.

Clinics are cool, do one of those.

kalvano wrote:Those extras are typically what get you a job. After that, they don't matter much unless you're trying to move up to a super-prestigious firm, then they might care.

And volunteer work? Unless it's volunteering to play video games, it's silly.

At what ranking is a firm considered to be super prestigious? regular prestige?

Anonymous User wrote:

kalvano wrote:Those extras are typically what get you a job. After that, they don't matter much unless you're trying to move up to a super-prestigious firm, then they might care.

And volunteer work? Unless it's volunteering to play video games, it's silly.

At what ranking is a firm considered to be super prestigious? regular prestige?

Anything above V23.34753 is super-prestigious.

Shit, wonderful use of anon poster, you know it when you see it. If every person at the firm was the EIC of their school's law review, order of the coif, and did a clerkship, odds are they are going to care, regardless of how well you've done at the firm you're at.

Same situation for me, except I work 15 hours a week at the firm I worked at during 1L summer. Any chance you could pick up a part-time legal job that pays during 3L?

ATR wrote:Same situation for me, except I work 15 hours a week at the firm I worked at during 1L summer. Any chance you could pick up a part-time legal job that pays during 3L?

I guess I could, but I'd rather not. Once I start working for real, I won't have much time to help people so I think I'd rather do as much pro bono type work during law school (although, wonderfully, the only pro bono work I've done thus far is for a clinic). I mean, I initially came into law school being okay with the likelihood that I'd probably not make much while doing public sector law, so to even have a job, let alone a very good one, is already beyond my wildest expectations.

After I landed this God-given gig during the beginning of my second semester of 1L, I lost a lot of motivation to do things and that included trying out for Moot Court, writing comp, and even attending classes on a regular basis. My commute is also 75 minutes one way to school so that was a contributing deterrence.

I don't know. I guess I just see a lot of my peers who have Big Law jobs at my school all being involved in everything with their journals and other things, that I began to feel like I somehow cheated the system and that I'm not as good as they are. I mean, this shouldn't even matter because I already got stellar reviews from all the associates/partners I worked with over the summer and got a full-time offer for after graduation. This wasn't even contingent upon my maintaining grades or anything (which is fortuitous because my grades dropped a lot second semester 1L). So, why should I even care about law review and all that jazz? Self-esteem I guess. I don't know.

Just fleshing out my thoughts as the semester winds down.

Journals are really all that matter. People talk about them all the time on the job, and the skills learned on them translate directly into practice. Most lawyers I know spend a lot of their week reading the latest articles from scholarly journals, and I know few who didn't participate in the process while at school.

Even the people I know who struck out at OCI wound up with well paying jobs, as long as they were on a journal.

thesealocust wrote:Journals are really all that matter. People talk about them all the time on the job, and the skills learned on them translate directly into practice. Most lawyers I know spend a lot of their week reading the latest articles from scholarly journals, and I know few who didn't participate in the process while at school.

Even the people I know who struck out at OCI wound up with well paying jobs, as long as they were on a journal.

Except that it's absolutely useless for transactional work. Hopefully you'll realize that after you're finished jerking off on how impressive your initial post was.

Fresh Prince wrote:

thesealocust wrote:Journals are really all that matter. People talk about them all the time on the job, and the skills learned on them translate directly into practice. Most lawyers I know spend a lot of their week reading the latest articles from scholarly journals, and I know few who didn't participate in the process while at school.

Even the people I know who struck out at OCI wound up with well paying jobs, as long as they were on a journal.

Except that it's absolutely useless for transactional work.

Perhaps you should read that post again and ask yourself if you have difficulty picking up on less than serious responses.

Fresh Prince wrote:

thesealocust wrote:Journals are really all that matter. People talk about them all the time on the job, and the skills learned on them translate directly into practice. Most lawyers I know spend a lot of their week reading the latest articles from scholarly journals, and I know few who didn't participate in the process while at school.

Even the people I know who struck out at OCI wound up with well paying jobs, as long as they were on a journal.

Except that it's absolutely useless for transactional work. Hopefully you'll realize that after you're finished jerking off on how impressive your initial post was.

Sorry you are too pedestrian to APPRECIATE scholarship

Danger Zone wrote:

Fresh Prince wrote:

thesealocust wrote:Journals are really all that matter. People talk about them all the time on the job, and the skills learned on them translate directly into practice. Most lawyers I know spend a lot of their week reading the latest articles from scholarly journals, and I know few who didn't participate in the process while at school.

Even the people I know who struck out at OCI wound up with well paying jobs, as long as they were on a journal.

Except that it's absolutely useless for transactional work.

Perhaps you should read that post again and ask yourself if you have difficulty picking up on less than serious responses.

Just wanted to get that last bit of snark in. But no surprise that the internet doesn't translate well for those types of posts.

Fresh Prince wrote:

thesealocust wrote:Journals are really all that matter. People talk about them all the time on the job, and the skills learned on them translate directly into practice. Most lawyers I know spend a lot of their week reading the latest articles from scholarly journals, and I know few who didn't participate in the process while at school.

Even the people I know who struck out at OCI wound up with well paying jobs, as long as they were on a journal.

Except that it's absolutely useless for transactional work. Hopefully you'll realize that after you're finished jerking off on how impressive your initial post was.

If I'm ever representing someone in a case and Fresh prince is cross examining them, pretty sure I'll just tell my client it's okay to lie on the stand.

TTH wrote:

Fresh Prince wrote:

thesealocust wrote:Journals are really all that matter. People talk about them all the time on the job, and the skills learned on them translate directly into practice. Most lawyers I know spend a lot of their week reading the latest articles from scholarly journals, and I know few who didn't participate in the process while at school.

Even the people I know who struck out at OCI wound up with well paying jobs, as long as they were on a journal.

Except that it's absolutely useless for transactional work. Hopefully you'll realize that after you're finished jerking off on how impressive your initial post was.

If I'm ever representing someone in a case and Fresh prince is cross examining them, pretty sure I'll just tell my client it's okay to lie on the stand.

Good thing I'm not a litigator, then.

Fresh Prince and I have our differences, but I'm pretty sure we both have a healthy disdain for litigators and their litigating ways

I'm not sure non-law review journal is ever a good idea, especially if you want biglaw ever. If I was ever interviewing someone for a SA or post-grad job the best answer re: journals would be "Nah, I didn't apply. I generally don't work for free and especially not for a bunch of law professors making asinine arguments entirely unsupported by the source cited that they bullshitted together last minute so they can get tenure which the journal accepted because the article editors are a bunch of stupid fucking law students who have no idea about the area of law the author was writing on but saw the guy was a professor at Yale." That person would be getting a call back.

If this is some person who already has a job I would stand up and shake his or her hand.

Changing the subject slightly:

If you wanna clerk, I'm guessing some type of journal is kinda important?

bowser wrote:Changing the subject slightly:

If you wanna clerk, I'm guessing some type of journal is kinda important?

Yes. There are some judges who won't care, but there are others who will. You might be able to get away with not being on a journal if you have stellar grades and other proxies for writing ability, like getting published. And again, some judges don't care. But when judges are getting hundreds of applications for one spot, something like law review can be a way to make a preliminary cut (i.e. the judge could ditch everyone who doesn't have that on their resume).

Fresh Prince wrote:

thesealocust wrote:Journals are really all that matter. People talk about them all the time on the job, and the skills learned on them translate directly into practice. Most lawyers I know spend a lot of their week reading the latest articles from scholarly journals, and I know few who didn't participate in the process while at school.

Even the people I know who struck out at OCI wound up with well paying jobs, as long as they were on a journal.

Except that it's absolutely useless for transactional work. Hopefully you'll realize that after you're finished jerking off on how impressive your initial post was.

wow

Biglaw_Associate_V20 wrote:wow

The best part is I'm still not sure he realizes he got trolled.

Anonymous User wrote:I have a Big Law job, but I'm not on a journal, not on Moot Court, not really involved in law school at all except go to class, and do my HW. Do any of these prestigious extra-curricular activities matter for someone who has secured employment? I was thinking about just doing a ton of volunteer legal work during 3L to make up for the massive amount of extra time I would have and to just show what I was doing with my extra time. Thoughts?

I'm totally sorry in advance to those who are on journals, moot court, etc. and don't have employment yet. My intent is not to offend anyone. I just wanted general thoughts on my current situation. Thank you.

This is pretty much my plan for school. I'v been a para for two years in biglaw, have impressive internships, plus a biglaw SA this summer, plus connections in high places.

I'm planning to do my homework...perhaps join moor court just because I enjoy it (did mock trial always). Law journals seem like a HUGE waste of time unless you want to be a professor / law writer / researcher, from a practical stand point.

bad plan?

Law review is important if you want to clerk. And it can help if you want biglaw, although there's been a fair amount of recent discussion suggesting that if you don't have the qualifications for biglaw otherwise, being on law review isn't going to make that much difference.

bruinfan10 wrote:

Biglaw_Associate_V20 wrote:wow

The best part is I'm still not sure he realizes he got trolled.

Nah. Easily the best part is I'm not sure you realize I was trying to get a quip in. Sealocust got it.

Fresh Prince wrote:

bruinfan10 wrote:

Biglaw_Associate_V20 wrote:wow

The best part is I'm still not sure he realizes he got trolled.

Nah. Easily the best part is I'm not sure you realize I was trying to get a quip in. Sealocust got it.

LOL. Keep backpedaling, asshole.