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Based on my situation I plan on working in southern California for 1L summer.

I guess I need to start hustling now. Where do I start? I don't go to school in CA so I'm not sure where to look for.
The resources my CSO (websites) gave me include a couple positions, many of which I applied to but haven't heard back.

1. Should I be worried that I don't have any promising leads as of now?
2. I gave up on the firm search. Is it too late for in-house gigs?
3. Any good sites for CA jobs? What's the best method for job searching for both in-house (if not too late) and public interest gigs? I spent so much time focusing on firm jobs and applying for those that I'm so lost outside of those applications

Ask your school's CSO about this. My school has a symplicity page that collects all the jobs. And yeah the firm ship has pretty much sailed, especially for SoCal. Lots of state judges will take interns. If you want to get back to Cali I'd just take whatever you can in the area.

You'd best start hustling for government and nonprofit unpaid gigs, because even those are currently in their hiring processes.
Here's a good source for public interest organizations/agencies. Find a name in this list, and then look them up individually to see if they're hiring clerks/interns.
http://www.psjd.org/

Definitely too late for positions at large firms, although there may be some sporadic small firm hiring still.

Not too late for in house jobs -- most of them haven't been advertised yet. Besides checking your school's symplicity, a lot in house positions are advertised on the major online job search websites (Monster, etc). Also, there's some website that lists them, but I forget what it's called. The website just aggregates posting from the job search websites, though -- usually a few days after they're posted.

You should start hustling, but it's not time to panic.

Do you at least go to a out of state school with a big name/reputation? If not, I'd be contacting every government agency in the state right now.

Contact government jobs. Nao.

it's definitely time to get hustling, but i wouldn't panic. I didn't have a 1L gig lined up till the end of April, same with a couple friends of mine

What do you want to do? Might help to start with what actually interests you.

^ good point.

Another thing to consider is I got my part time small firm gig in May of 1L. If that sort of thing interests you.

Thanks for your feedback

Honestly I guess I don't really care what I do as long as it is somewhat relevant to what I want to do (corporate work).
I don't mind doing litigation work for 1L year either.

I do go to a big name school with pretty good grades.

Where can I find government jobs? I've utilized the Arizona handbook and such but I feel like I'm so limited since I'm looking only in Southern California.

Anonymous User wrote:Thanks for your feedback

Honestly I guess I don't really care what I do as long as it is somewhat relevant to what I want to do (corporate work).
I don't mind doing litigation work for 1L year either.

I do go to a big name school with pretty good grades.

Where can I find government jobs? I've utilized the Arizona handbook and such but I feel like I'm so limited since I'm looking only in Southern California.

Have u tried your CSO?

Anonymous User wrote:Based on my situation I plan on working in southern California for 1L summer.

I guess I need to start hustling now. Where do I start? I don't go to school in CA so I'm not sure where to look for.
The resources my CSO (websites) gave me include a couple positions, many of which I applied to but haven't heard back.

1. Should I be worried that I don't have any promising leads as of now?
2. I gave up on the firm search. Is it too late for in-house gigs?
3. Any good sites for CA jobs? What's the best method for job searching for both in-house (if not too late) and public interest gigs? I spent so much time focusing on firm jobs and applying for those that I'm so lost outside of those applications

Here are some places to look:
Government Honors and Internship Handbook (that UofA puts out). The UofA Gov't Handbook lists all state and federal job/internship postings sorted by federal agency (or state) and class year eligibility (and whether it's paid or volunteer).

BYU Intercollegiate Job Bank. This is part of the reciprocity program that a lot of schools have, but I've been surprised by the number of law students that don't know about or utilize this resource. Basically it's a list of most (or all) of the recent postings that a certain school CSO has (but some schools do not participate). Once you log in, you can sort by state and school. Then when you select a school, it will give you a PDF version of that school's job postings. Find schools that are close to the area you're targeting (e.g., for SoCal, look at Pepperdine, Chapman, UC-Irvine or UCLA-- not sure if they're on there). The lower-ranked schools typically have the type of listings you'd expect for lower-ranked schools (get whatever you can get, which often means free labor), but sometimes they're may be a gem or two in there so it could be worth looking. Especially since you're not flush with other options.

You need a login/password to access both, which you should be able to get from your your CSO office. If not, PM me.

downinDtown wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:Based on my situation I plan on working in southern California for 1L summer.

I guess I need to start hustling now. Where do I start? I don't go to school in CA so I'm not sure where to look for.
The resources my CSO (websites) gave me include a couple positions, many of which I applied to but haven't heard back.

1. Should I be worried that I don't have any promising leads as of now?
2. I gave up on the firm search. Is it too late for in-house gigs?
3. Any good sites for CA jobs? What's the best method for job searching for both in-house (if not too late) and public interest gigs? I spent so much time focusing on firm jobs and applying for those that I'm so lost outside of those applications

Here are some places to look:
Government Honors and Internship Handbook (that UofA puts out). The UofA Gov't Handbook lists all state and federal job/internship postings sorted by federal agency (or state) and class year eligibility (and whether it's paid or volunteer).

BYU Intercollegiate Job Bank. This is part of the reciprocity program that a lot of schools have, but I've been surprised by the number of law students that don't know about or utilize this resource. Basically it's a list of most (or all) of the recent postings that a certain school CSO has (but some schools do not participate). Once you log in, you can sort by state and school. Then when you select a school, it will give you a PDF version of that school's job postings. Find schools that are close to the area you're targeting (e.g., for SoCal, look at Pepperdine, Chapman, UC-Irvine or UCLA-- not sure if they're on there). The lower-ranked schools typically have the type of listings you'd expect for lower-ranked schools (get whatever you can get, which often means free labor), but sometimes they're may be a gem or two in there so it could be worth looking. Especially since you're not flush with other options.

You need a login/password to access both, which you should be able to get from your your CSO office. If not, PM me.

Thanks for the tip! I actually got a username/pass for Arizona's list. I'll ask for the BYU one.




Update: I've been applying to like 10 jobs a day (5 PI jobs, and 5 in-house or firm gigs) for the past week. Before this, I was applying to maybe 3-4 a day.
1. Is this enough? Should I step it up?
2. I have been getting either silences or rejections. Now I'm starting to worry even more since I'm not even getting screeners. I've been applying to more places but this means that places I've applied to for the past couple weeks have not been reaching out to me at all. At this point, I'll take almost anything. A lot of gov. jobs are full (most of the rejections are from them), and every other gig has been giving me silence. I guess at this point I'm not too picky. I feel like i'm looking at the wrong places. I've been using the Arizona PI list (applied to all the places that haven't had deadlines passed), and got only rejections so far saying they're full.

Now I'm worried. What do I do?
Meeting with my CSO later this week.