Anonymous User wrote:Hi everyone,
Its one of my few remaining callbacks (no offers yet). Can someone please help me out.
1) Format (substance/law heavy or informal conversations?)
2) Anything specific about the firm / practice areas I should be aware of?
Feel free to comment with answer or volunteer for me to DM you. Both work!
Thanks
Interviews will be your standard summer associate interview, generally informal, asking about your interests, why Goodwin, why Boston, how's law school, what practice areas are you interested in, etc. They'll probably try to match you up with a couple lawyers who are alums of your law school, so definitely say nice things about the school and how great it is.
As for things to know about the firm, I'd make sure to know how it is organized internally. The main split is like most firms, between litigation and corporate (which they call the "business law department") and you declare for one at the end of the summer and start in as a first year, and each of those has four or so major subdivisions (commercial lit, IP lit, white collar/securities lit, and financial services lit on the litigation side, and private equity, tech/life sciences companies, real estate/real estate capital markets, and financial institutions on the corporate side) that you eventually have to make a decision to join by your third year, unless you go into a specialty field like tax or ERISA, where you tend to specialize earlier. During the summer you get to try a bit of both corp and lit, so if you're still deciding between lit and corporate you can say how the summer program is appealing because it gives you that opportunity, or if you're basically decided on one over the other, you can say how you like the idea of focusing on your preferred area during the summer while still being able to dabble a bit in the other just to see what it's like. Then since you have two years to pick your specialty as a junior associate, but you can just try to get work in your preferred group anyways, you can again either play up how you like the idea of having two years to try each group and see what's the best fit, or if you know you want to be in a particular group, you can say how you like the idea of being able to start working with folks in your preferred area anyways, and why that group appeals to you (e.g., you like the middle-market PE they do because of the idea of leaner staffed deals where you can get substantive experience, or you like the tech/life sciences group because you can help grow small companies to big public ones and do all kinds of deals from small early stage VC financing to IPOs and M&A transactions).
Also, they allow an unlimited number of pro bono hours to count for bonus eligibility, which they're proud of and changed only a few years ago, and their pro bono activities include citizenship/refugee support for migrants, so if you're interested in that at all, you can play that up. You might want to comment on how impressive their growth in Europe has been, opening offices in France and Germany recently, mention how you like their entrepreneurial culture, and if you're a woman you can say how you've read about how they're constantly ranked as one of the best places for women/moms to work and you think it's great they have such a good culture and inclusive culture. If you're from the Boston area or have strong ties, obviously play that up of course.