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How in the hell do you do it? Is it even possible?

Everyone said it helped them sooo much at OCI to have had lunch/coffee/phone-call with someone at the firm they are interviewing with.

But atm I am working my hardest to ensure I get an offer from my 1L firm, which includes accepting lunch offers from coworkers.

I also start career fairs literally 2 days after my last day of work.

Just wondering if/how anyone was able to actually do these Informational Interviews or whatever...

Anyone?

Anonymous User wrote:How in the hell do you do it? Is it even possible?

Everyone said it helped them sooo much at OCI to have had lunch/coffee/phone-call with someone at the firm they are interviewing with.

But atm I am working my hardest to ensure I get an offer from my 1L firm, which includes accepting lunch offers from coworkers.

I also start career fairs literally 2 days after my last day of work.

Just wondering if/how anyone was able to actually do these Informational Interviews or whatever...

Find balance. Nobody is going to throw a fit because you go off and have lunch on your own once or twice per week. Also, during my 1L summer I did a lot of phone calls instead of lunch/coffee.

Nammertat wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:How in the hell do you do it? Is it even possible?

Everyone said it helped them sooo much at OCI to have had lunch/coffee/phone-call with someone at the firm they are interviewing with.

But atm I am working my hardest to ensure I get an offer from my 1L firm, which includes accepting lunch offers from coworkers.

I also start career fairs literally 2 days after my last day of work.

Just wondering if/how anyone was able to actually do these Informational Interviews or whatever...

Find balance. Nobody is going to throw a fit because you go off and have lunch on your own once or twice per week. Also, during my 1L summer I did a lot of phone calls instead of lunch/coffee.

did you do these phonecalls outside of business hours? Or did you block out time to try and sneak out of the office (or just shut your office door?)

I know they seem like basic questions, but the firm I'm at, while they have a high offer rate, is definitely not 100%. Probably more like 80-90%. And I have been made thoroughly paranoid about getting no offered by this site and my school's career office.

Also thanks for the reply

I've left my firm multiple times this summer for lunch meetings at other firms and I have 3 upcoming pre-EIP interviews. You do you and they'll get over it. Don't shout from the rooftops when you leave the office to go see another firm. I haven't told anyone but my close 2L friend and i just did that because I had this exact question. Don't feel you need to tell anyone where you're going when you dip to go to an event or a lunch meeting. If you aren't billing it and aren't expected to be there, you're on your own time.

I've gone to multiple lunch meetings and have pre-EIP interviews line up over the next couple weeks.

Anonymous User wrote:How in the hell do you do it? Is it even possible?

Everyone said it helped them sooo much at OCI to have had lunch/coffee/phone-call with someone at the firm they are interviewing with.

But atm I am working my hardest to ensure I get an offer from my 1L firm, which includes accepting lunch offers from coworkers.

I also start career fairs literally 2 days after my last day of work.

Just wondering if/how anyone was able to actually do these Informational Interviews or whatever...

Shit I did full CBs during my 1L SA. Just said I had an appointment if someone asked. No one ever questioned it to my knowledge.

Yea I suppose you guys are right. Thanks for the replies.

honestly I haven't done any outside networking as a 1L SA. I agree it's tough; even scheduling a phone convo with my clerkship adviser was rough. I guess I think networking is somewhat overrated at the OCI stage and I'll be relying on massmail in my target markets + grades/lr/WE/personality (I recognize this is a flawed perception, it's the delusion I've relied on to stay competent at work and not overly anxious). Maybe I should be doing more; I did a bunch over winter break and I could follow up. But with my mid summer review coming up I just haven't been thinking about other firms aside from my bid list.

I didn't really network during my 1L SA, but I see how you could if you were proactive about it. During my SA, I attended a few city-wide type events and chatted with attorneys from other firms. That's one way to do it, though, it seems like it would be difficult to make an impression at an event like that where they will actually remember you. But still it could provide credibility to your answers during OCI. Also, my school offers a mock interview/interview tips session with a partner of a firm in the city where I did my SA. I signed up for that and through that I got to know the partner that I did the mock interview with, who was able to give me valuable and candid advice (and we hit it off pretty well, so i'm sure that I could've emailed him/her for advice later on if I had wanted to). So if your school offers a similar opportunity, take them up on it.

When you're a 1L, unless your dad is the CEO of a big company, you have absolutely nothing to offer anyone. That's not to say you're a bad guy or that you won't make a great lawyer, just that you don't bring anything important to the table right now. This is why you should be extremely skeptical when someone tells you that the key to getting a job is "networking." By all means ask a few lawyers out to coffee and make friends at your workplace, but true "networking" is a 2-way street where each of you has something to offer. 1L/Partner at a biglaw firm is more like solicitation than networking.

Your best bet, honestly, is to quit worrying about any kind of self-conscious "networking" and just try to become buds with people in your office. If they like you as a person, they'll be more willing to help you out later when/if they can. You can call that "networking" if you like.

SBL wrote:When you're a 1L, unless your dad is the CEO of a big company, you have absolutely nothing to offer anyone. That's not to say you're a bad guy or that you won't make a great lawyer, just that you don't bring anything important to the table right now. This is why you should be extremely skeptical when someone tells you that the key to getting a job is "networking." By all means ask a few lawyers out to coffee and make friends at your workplace, but true "networking" is a 2-way street where each of you has something to offer. 1L/Partner at a biglaw firm is more like solicitation than networking.

Your best bet, honestly, is to quit worrying about any kind of self-conscious "networking" and just try to become buds with people in your office. If they like you as a person, they'll be more willing to help you out later when/if they can. You can call that "networking" if you like.

I don't disagree, but I guess that's the reason I put the quotes around "networking". More like grab coffee and make them like you enough that you can name drop them at OCI, or I've even heard skipping screeners and going straight to a call back based on these is possible (rarely). Disagree?