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I'm a rising 2L at University of Georgia, and wondering about my prospects at OCI (mostly Atlanta firms) as well as outside of OCI (targeting SoCal, Boston, and D.C., with moderate-to-strong connections in each area). I'm in the top 20 percent, close to top 15, with Law Review and a few years of relevant post-undergrad experience.

BigLaw (as well as TLS) seems to focus mostly on T14 schools so I'm not really sure how crazy my goal of landing a SA is at this point. Any thoughts on firms that might be good to look at would be very much appreciated.

Anonymous User wrote:I'm a rising 2L at University of Georgia, and wondering about my prospects at OCI (mostly Atlanta firms) as well as outside of OCI (targeting SoCal, Boston, and D.C., with moderate-to-strong connections in each area). I'm in the top 20 percent, close to top 15, with Law Review and a few years of relevant post-undergrad experience.

BigLaw (as well as TLS) seems to focus mostly on T14 schools so I'm not really sure how crazy my goal of landing a SA is at this point. Any thoughts on firms that might be good to look at would be very much appreciated.

Rising 3L at UGA summering at a large firm in ATL here.

Your non-atlanta market SA chances are really slim unless you have really good connections or you're doing IP.

K&S, A&B, Kilpatrick, Jones Day will be possible, but very improbable. Troutman, Sutherland, Paul Hastings are unlikely, but slightly more doable. You should probably aim McKenna, Arnall, MMM, Bryan Cave, Smith Gambrell or some of the non-big law OCI options like French, Rogers & Hardin, Miller Martin, Swift, etc. Last year was very hard to guess based strictly on grades, so your range of potential firms is fairly large; just know that we didn't place all that many into big law last year.

Good luck.

Also a rising 3L at UGA. Top 15%, law review. Got about 8-10 OCI interviews and zero callbacks, which was fairly common for those outside the top 10%. And I had a lot of prior interview experience, too. Ended up with a smaller firm that I secured later in the year.

Honestly, don't cross your fingers. Very few from my class got biglaw SAs, and with your class having a lower LSAT/GPA coming in, there's no reason to expect it to be any different. Expect to have to work hard all fall and spring to lock something down at the later OCIs or on your own unless you catch a break.

Another rising 2L at UGA here. Would love to hear more from 3Ls+ on fall recruiting success/lack there of in the Atlanta market at UGA.

First rising 3L back again. I'd be happy to answer any specific questions either of you have, but "fall recruiting success/lack thereof" is hard to really speak to. There were about 3 people that got everything they wanted and more and the rest of us navigated the economic realities of 2012-13 as best we could. Generally, it's safe to say that big law only really happened for about 10% of the class (not to say that the entire top 10% got biglaw, but rather that 10% of the entire class got there--including a fair number of people outside of the top 10%).

UGA usually has a stronger presence in the Atlanta SA market, correct? What do you put this lack of success (10% big law) on? Diminishing prestige, Aspie c/o 2014, etc. etc.?

I'd say we normally (post 2009) place about 15% in ATL biglaw, and this year we're somewhere between 10 and 15%, so it's really not that far off.

Anonymous User wrote:UGA usually has a stronger presence in the Atlanta SA market, correct? What do you put this lack of success (10% big law) on? Diminishing prestige, Aspie c/o 2014, etc. etc.?

Small class sizes, desirable market. Lots of competition out there these days. If you're a K-JD, you're fighting a hugely uphill battle, even at the top of your class.