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Note: even though this is anonymous, please do not quote. Thank you.

I'm essentially working under a three-month internship at a small firm (about 25 attorneys). My internship ends at the end of November. I submitted an application for permanent employment after I found out that I passed the bar exam (almost three weeks ago).

I have yet to hear a single word from the Board or any member of the board. I do, however, know a couple other things:
-My status for permanent employment was discussed at length at a recent shareholders meeting, and one shareholder couldn't tell me much, but told me that "everybody spoke very positively of your application." He's a no-BS kind of guy that would have told me if things didn't go well.
-The Board considered my application and passed it to the firm's "Long Term Planning Committee" for review. I really do not know who is on this committee except one attorney, whom I have a pretty good working relationship with.
-Most critically, I've overheard discussions (my office is adjacent to the administrator's office) that the firm is hiring two laterals from a small labor and employment firm (the practice area I wanted to specialize in). From my understanding, these two lawyers are about 60 years old (each), are very well-respected, and and are coming to (a) boost the firm's book of business; (b) work with our two labor and employment attorneys (who are retiring within two years); or (c) both.

So right now, my optimistic side is telling me that if the Board knew it didn't have the resources/work to hire me, they would have shut me down already and not passed my application to committee; also, with more labor and employment partners, there's more need for an associate in those practice areas. My pessimistic side tells me that the firm is hiring a couple more experienced attorneys and there won't be fiscal/logistical room for me.

Which side of my neurotic brain is right?

It's not what you want to hear, but no one on TLS is going to be able to give you a good, insightful view of your chances. You are the closest to this hiring decision of anyone, and anything we could tell you would be conjecture. Just put your head down, keep applying as you normally would, and hope this pans out.

this is what you need to do: time travel to the future. be careful, though, because you can only go forward, not back. i would recommend time traveling at a rate of one second per second until you get to the point in the future where your firm tells you whether you're hired or not. then you'll know.

OP here.

Dr. Review wrote:It's not what you want to hear, but no one on TLS is going to be able to give you a good, insightful view of your chances. You are the closest to this hiring decision of anyone, and anything we could tell you would be conjecture. Just put your head down, keep applying as you normally would, and hope this pans out.

I know this is true; just wondering if anybody's been in a similar situation at a small firm. Also wondering if there were any experienced shareholders/board members who would be able to venture a guess based on what I wrote in the OP.

fats provolone wrote:this is what you need to do: time travel to the future. be careful, though, because you can only go forward, not back. i would recommend time traveling at a rate of one second per second until you get to the point in the future where your firm tells you whether you're hired or not. then you'll know.

But I don't want to sit around and wait. Sigh.

So d'on't sit around and wait. Until you have a real job offer in hand, you should continue to be applying/networking/hustling as much as you can.

OP here. Just got hired. Seriously. I put all my eggs in this basket and it worked out, and I feel so incredibly lucky. Jesus.

Anonymous User wrote:OP here. Just got hired. Seriously. I put all my eggs in this basket and it worked out, and I feel so incredibly lucky. Jesus.

Congrats! I see you opted for fats provolone's approach. Good choice.