Top Law Schools

So ive been working on a connection to talk to a partner at a firm, and i finally printed resume out on nice paper, mailed it...i had to reformat a few times to account for a new position, and then realized that there was a glaring formating error in the resume. Seriously, should I kill self? This is already in the mail. What do i do?

Just send a digital copy and say you also sent one in the mail. That way when the snail mail gets there it will be auto-trashed.

Don't have an email address, the connections are old fashioned. Will try to get one though

Chrstgtr wrote:Just send a digital copy and say you also sent one in the mail. That way when the snail mail gets there it will be auto-trashed.

please tell me this isn't a dealbreaker. The formating error was honestly a result of me changing the font sizes, ugh....well i didn't notice it right away....i hope my connection is enough to snag me the interview without me coming in looking like a schmuck.

Anonymous User wrote:Don't have an email address, the connections are old fashioned. Will try to get one though

Chrstgtr wrote:Just send a digital copy and say you also sent one in the mail. That way when the snail mail gets there it will be auto-trashed.

But why don't YOU have an email address?

eriedoctrine wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:Don't have an email address, the connections are old fashioned. Will try to get one though

Chrstgtr wrote:Just send a digital copy and say you also sent one in the mail. That way when the snail mail gets there it will be auto-trashed.

But why don't YOU have an email address?

Lol. I obviously do. I put so much fucking effort into this, including expensive watermarked paper and snail mail.

Call postal and attempt to stop mail, then resend.
If not, simply resend resume in mail with attached note indicating that it was updated.

How can you not have an email address for the guy? Is it such a small firm that they don't have attorney profiles with email addresses or something?

Mid size firm with profiles but hidden email addresses, you email through a for or something, probably for clients.

Thing is this will probably be delivered within a day...basically being sent across the street. My contact will call them in 2 days to follow up.

If you can find any email address of someone at the firm you can probably figure out the email address of the person you want to email as those tend to all follow the same format, and I bet with a targeted Google search you should be able to reverse engineer that.

Thanks. I'll try to do this. But, in the event I can't, how fucked am I?

Anonymous User wrote:Thanks. I'll try to do this. But, in the event I can't, how fucked am I?

No point in worrying about something that is out of your control at this point – just do what you can to fix it and if you need help with that search PM me some details and we'll see if we can't get an email address.

Anonymous User wrote:Thanks. I'll try to do this. But, in the event I can't, how fucked am I?

Everyone in this thread is nuts. Do not send a corrected resume. Chances are that the partner will do no more than glance at your resume anyway.

Also, you described your mistake as a "formatting error." Do you mean that you used fonts of different sizes or something like that? If so, no one is going to care.

rpupkin wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:Thanks. I'll try to do this. But, in the event I can't, how fucked am I?

Everyone in this thread is nuts. Do not send a corrected resume. Chances are that the partner will do no more than glance at your resume anyway.

Also, you described your mistake as a "formatting error." Do you mean that you used fonts of different sizes or something like that? If so, no one is going to care.

Grammar and all is fine- I changed fonts and so the result was one of my dates, instead of being in a neat column aligning win all the other dates that are usually on the right side, was now under the position/title for one of the positions,

Anonymous User wrote:

rpupkin wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:Thanks. I'll try to do this. But, in the event I can't, how fucked am I?

Everyone in this thread is nuts. Do not send a corrected resume. Chances are that the partner will do no more than glance at your resume anyway.

Also, you described your mistake as a "formatting error." Do you mean that you used fonts of different sizes or something like that? If so, no one is going to care.

Grammar and all is fine- I changed fonts and so the result was one of my dates, instead of being in a neat column aligning win all the other dates that are usually on the right side, was now under the position/title for one of the positions,

Irrelevant. 90% chance no one notices. And if someone does notice, 99% chance they won't care.

rpupkin wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:Thanks. I'll try to do this. But, in the event I can't, how fucked am I?

Everyone in this thread is nuts. Do not send a corrected resume. Chances are that the partner will do no more than glance at your resume anyway.

Also, you described your mistake as a "formatting error." Do you mean that you used fonts of different sizes or something like that? If so, no one is going to care.

OP described the error as glaring. If it's that obvious than the partner may not even need to read it but it may be evident on its face. I don't know what the error is so couldn't say for sure though I would tend to agree that if one portion was in 12 font and the other is in 10, no big deal. That being said, if the part was in 6 instead of 10, that may raise some eyebrows. What it all comes down to is the "meant to do it" factor – if looking at the resume would someone think that you meant to do whatever was done, or is it patently obvious that it was an error? And just because you, OP, are personally aware of such error, does not make it patently obvious so knowing what you meant by glaring would be helpful.

That being said, if this was indeed glaring like you mentioned, I doubt the partner you hope to interview with is not going to give a quick read through, let alone an actual reading of it. It really depends on the partner. Some wouldnt care if you misspelled your name, and other are assholes just looking for a typo.

If you do send an email with the update, I would not in anyway highlight the update or change-I would likely just call it a courtesy copy and that a copy is in the mail.

Anonymous User wrote:

rpupkin wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:Thanks. I'll try to do this. But, in the event I can't, how fucked am I?

Everyone in this thread is nuts. Do not send a corrected resume. Chances are that the partner will do no more than glance at your resume anyway.

Also, you described your mistake as a "formatting error." Do you mean that you used fonts of different sizes or something like that? If so, no one is going to care.

Grammar and all is fine- I changed fonts and so the result was one of my dates, instead of being in a neat column aligning win all the other dates that are usually on the right side, was now under the position/title for one of the positions,

Yea that's likely not glaring enough to warrant a follow up.

Rlabo wrote: If you do send an email with the update, I would not in anyway highlight the update or change-I would likely just call it a courtesy copy and that a copy is in the mail.

There's another factor here: the partner did not give the OP his email address, and that email address is not publicly available on a web site. Trying to find that email address somewhere—or trying to "reverse engineer" it, as someone proposed—is not a great idea. Some partners (especially older partners) are protective of their email addresses. They won't care about some trivial formatting error, but they will care about stalking their email address even though they didn't give it to you.

OP: don't pursue a cure that's worse than the disease.

Fair point and I tend to agree that the point is not egregious enough to bring up in the first place.

Anonymous User wrote:

rpupkin wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:Thanks. I'll try to do this. But, in the event I can't, how fucked am I?

Everyone in this thread is nuts. Do not send a corrected resume. Chances are that the partner will do no more than glance at your resume anyway.

Also, you described your mistake as a "formatting error." Do you mean that you used fonts of different sizes or something like that? If so, no one is going to care.

Grammar and all is fine- I changed fonts and so the result was one of my dates, instead of being in a neat column aligning win all the other dates that are usually on the right side, was now under the position/title for one of the positions,

When we hire 2Ls, we see a lot of resumes. People try and jam tons of extraneous stuff in (I don't give a shit about your college ultimate Frisbee exploits), so there is naturally oddball formatting stuff from time to time. If the content is good, then weird formatting stuff or whatever won't matter. If the content isn't good, then the weird formatting stuff or whatever won't matter.

Don't kill yourself, but do correct it and delete the old version. It's possible that the partner will want an electronic version to circulate to others if you pass muster.

Quit using bougie watermarked paper.

RaceJudicata wrote:Quit using bougie watermarked paper.

I've heard that old folks like it....but thanks everyone, got made me feel a little better about this. I've corrected it already. Hopefully my connection can get me a meeting at least

Chrstgtr wrote:Just send a digital copy and say you also sent one in the mail. That way when the snail mail gets there it will be auto-trashed.

nice.

I agree that this error was not something to get worked up about. But for future reference, I was able to get a lot of emails during my mass mailing process this year by calling the firm's front desk and just asking for a specific person's email address. I didn't need to identify myself and they never asked me why I needed the address. So if this happens to anyone in the future and you want to get an email in ahead of the receipt of your flawed hardcopy, you should give this a try.