Top Law Schools

I recently had a screener with a fairly young associate that was extremely casual and laid back. He essentially had a fascination with something in my interests section and we pretty much chatted the entire time about that, with only about 5 minutes left for me to ask my questions and to mention what practice areas I was interested in, which he did make a note of. I'm at HYS but I'm pretty sure my grades are below the standard for this particular firm. Is it possible that he took a look at my transcript, decided that I was below their notice, and decided to goof off? My experience has so far been that the more difficult the interview, the better the chance of a callback, but I'm not sure if it applies to such an easy-going interview.

No one can tell you for sure, and agonizing about it at this point is just torturing yourself. Just move on and start thinking about interviews that are coming up. If they liked you, they'll call you. If not, you'll find out soon enough.

crumpetsandtea wrote:No one can tell you for sure, and agonizing about it at this point is just torturing yourself. Just move on and start thinking about interviews that are coming up. If they liked you, they'll call you. If not, you'll find out soon enough.

This

I'm 3/8 on callbacks right now and the ones I've gotten were all very casual conversations. I don't know if this helps but it's relevant information I guess.

Anonymous User wrote:I recently had a screener with a fairly young associate that was extremely casual and laid back. He essentially had a fascination with something in my interests section and we pretty much chatted the entire time about that, with only about 5 minutes left for me to ask my questions and to mention what practice areas I was interested in, which he did make a note of. I'm at HYS but I'm pretty sure my grades are below the standard for this particular firm. Is it possible that he took a look at my transcript, decided that I was below their notice, and decided to goof off? My experience has so far been that the more difficult the interview, the better the chance of a callback, but I'm not sure if it applies to such an easy-going interview.

I know of a lit boutique that decides in the room. If you're a no-go, you get a pleasant convo. Then again, I've also had interviews that were entirely about my interest section and still got a CB and offer.

Most successful interviews are usually the ones you don't talk about law at all IMO.

All of my screeners where we would just "shoot the shit" for the entire time were dings. For one, all we talked about the entire time was my wedding, and the interviewer loved it, but still, ding.

I think an ultra-casual screener is a bad thing from my anecdotal experience.

Um...yea....it....depends. I had 27 OCI screeners. Got callbacks from 13. Some of my successful were with "let's shoot the shit" attorneys. Others were with "let's talk about legal minutiae" attorneys. It depends on a number of factors. How strong of a candidate you are for the particular firm. The culture of the firm. School rank. ETC. Don't read into it too much.

I think it's impossible to make a general rule on this- it will depend entirely on the firm, the interviewer, and the interviewee.

Arbiter213 wrote:I think it's impossible to make a general rule on this- it will depend entirely on the firm, the interviewer, and the interviewee.

I agree - for instance, there was an interviewer from one firm that came to my school whose shtick was to spend the entire interview talking about one of the candidate's interests. My school had only pre-selects so it wasn't one of those "oh, now that I see your GPA I don't want to talk to you" things; it seemed to be their approach to interviewing. Not saying that this was the case in your interview, just that you can't know and it's not worth worrying about (to the extent you can put your mind to other things).

I had an screener where we spent the entire 20 minutes talking about marathon training and I got the callback. I don't even think he looked at my transcript til I left the room