Columbia EIP 2019 Forum

[Anonymous User]

Surprised there hasn't been one yet

[Anonymous User]

Hey fellow Class of 2019ers,

Grades are coming back and the Offers by Honors reports are up on Symplicity, meaning that it's about time to start putting together bidlists for EIP. In this thread, we help one another put together suitable bidlists, share information, assuage fears, offer advice on interviews and callbacks, etc.

Past threads:
2018: ?
2017: ?
2016: viewtopic.php?f=23&t=265024
2015: viewtopic.php?f=23&t=248971
2014: viewtopic.php?f=23&t=231040
2013: viewtopic.php?f=23&t=211338
2012: viewtopic.php?f=23&t=187757
2011: viewtopic.php?f=23&t=162163

Here are the rules and some tips from last year:

I. Anonymous Handles

We all want to maintain some privacy during this process. That said, it is also nice to keep track of who is saying what. I recommend that everyone pick a handle with which to sign her anonymous posts (although you obviously don’t have to) so that we can keep track of one another.

II. Bidding

The basics of bidlist stuff should be straightforward even if you’re not Socrates: if you think other people are more likely to bid on a firm, you should bid it high. Firms that are less grade-selective or that have fewer interview spots are more competitive, so you should probably rank them higher. Don’t rank a firm high just because you want it, but if you really want a particular firm it might be good to rank it high for your peace of mind. The EIP Failed Bid Report helps with this, although relying too heavily on it could be a mistake (or so I've heard). Finally, spreading bids out between multiple markets increases the risk of striking out, especially if you don't have strong ties to those markets. We’ve all seen the data: there are just more jobs in New York, so NY is a solid backup for folks who are trying to head to California, Chicago, DC, etc.

III. Callbacks

Once we’re at least part-way through the first rings of interviewing hell, people will get callbacks. In past years, people would post the firm name and the initials of the person who interviewed them when they received a callback so that people would know that callbacks had gone out.

Good luck.

[Anonymous User]

This is my Nth year posting in the EIP threat, where N is a large number. So I have Seen Some [Stuff] and always try to pay back some advice. When I went through, eons who, I was maybe 70/30 leaning corporate and I know corporate the most so please take the below as A Guide to Recruiting For Someone Who Is Leaning Corporate:

- it is easy to get competitive about maximizing interviews and CBs during EIP. For many people, that’s the wrong approach - it’s all grade dependent. If you’re around median, then sure, it’s a numbers game and you want to max out interviews at every interchangeable big firm (see below). For Stone folks you’ll want to be more selective.

- Rankings only matter in tiers. There are, for your purposes, three tiers of firm.

A Top corporate firms, which are the Wachtell (clear number 1)/Cravath types of the world where being from there really will help you get your next job.

B Next tier down - maybe a smidge less “whoa” on the resume but still have tons of top deal flow. Kirkland, Weil, etc. The main thing you’re missing at this level is the sexy name of the tippy top firm that will help job hunting in the future, but you’re not really giving up anything in terms of work, with the exception of M&A (discussed below).

C. The enormous tier of interchangeable firms. This is a now a noticeable step down but you will still have a great career if you do well here. The real difference is that if you wash out of a tier A firm, a tier B or C firm will often hire you: if you wash out of a tier C firm your opportunities will be much more limited. It is very hard to not get a job at one of these firms from Columbia unless the economy goes to hell or your grades are legitimately bad. So don’t sweat EIP that much, because the “bad” outcome is still pretty damn good.

- Target the tier that matches your grades. If you are mid-Stone I would move mountains to interview with every top tier firm.

- Firms with similar revenue per lawyer and chambers rankings are mostly fungible in terms of lifestyle and QoL. Seriously. Do not chase lifestyle. It is basically marketing. Some practices may be slower than others BUT AT THE END OF THE DAY SIMILAR FIRMS CHARGE SIMILAR RATES AND HAVE SIMILAR RPL SO YOU CAN DO THE MATH ON HOURS.
BUT
- Firms are not fungible culturally, and it is worth the effort to try to figure out where you will be the best fit. This is vastly underrated. If you’re going to work 2100 hours anywhere, work them at a place you fit in at.
BUT
- even if you end up in a place that’s not a great cultural fit, cultural differences between practice groups at a firm almost always are bigger than firm-to-firm differences, so don’t sweat it too much. Almost every giant firm will have a niche that works for you. Your job once working will be to find it.

- unless you’re interviewing directly into a group, don’t count on getting into any particular practice group at any firm. Practice group politics can be weird and competitive and unpredictable and so many of my friends ended up being shut out of the group where they initially wanted to end up.

- Top M&A work is remarkably concentrated among the top few firms and is essentially the differentiator between the top corporate practices and everyone else. If you are deadset on M&A then check out chambers and get a job at a Band 1 M&A firm.

[2020throwaway]

This is my Nth year posting in the EIP threat, where N is a large number. So I have Seen Some [Stuff] and always try to pay back some advice. When I went through, eons who, I was maybe 70/30 leaning corporate and I know corporate the most so please take the below as A Guide to Recruiting For Someone Who Is Leaning Corporate:

- it is easy to get competitive about maximizing interviews and CBs during EIP. For many people, that’s the wrong approach - it’s all grade dependent. If you’re around median, then sure, it’s a numbers game and you want to max out interviews at every interchangeable big firm (see below). For Stone folks you’ll want to be more selective.

- Rankings only matter in tiers. There are, for your purposes, three tiers of firm.

A Top corporate firms, which are the Wachtell (clear number 1)/Cravath types of the world where being from there really will help you get your next job.

B Next tier down - maybe a smidge less “whoa” on the resume but still have tons of top deal flow. Kirkland, Weil, etc. The main thing you’re missing at this level is the sexy name of the tippy top firm that will help job hunting in the future, but you’re not really giving up anything in terms of work, with the exception of M&A (discussed below).

C. The enormous tier of interchangeable firms. This is a now a noticeable step down but you will still have a great career if you do well here. The real difference is that if you wash out of a tier A firm, a tier B or C firm will often hire you: if you wash out of a tier C firm your opportunities will be much more limited. It is very hard to not get a job at one of these firms from Columbia unless the economy goes to hell or your grades are legitimately bad. So don’t sweat EIP that much, because the “bad” outcome is still pretty damn good.

- Target the tier that matches your grades. If you are mid-Stone I would move mountains to interview with every top tier firm.

- Firms with similar revenue per lawyer and chambers rankings are mostly fungible in terms of lifestyle and QoL. Seriously. Do not chase lifestyle. It is basically marketing. Some practices may be slower than others BUT AT THE END OF THE DAY SIMILAR FIRMS CHARGE SIMILAR RATES AND HAVE SIMILAR RPL SO YOU CAN DO THE MATH ON HOURS.
BUT
- Firms are not fungible culturally, and it is worth the effort to try to figure out where you will be the best fit. This is vastly underrated. If you’re going to work 2100 hours anywhere, work them at a place you fit in at.
BUT
- even if you end up in a place that’s not a great cultural fit, cultural differences between practice groups at a firm almost always are bigger than firm-to-firm differences, so don’t sweat it too much. Almost every giant firm will have a niche that works for you. Your job once working will be to find it.

- unless you’re interviewing directly into a group, don’t count on getting into any particular practice group at any firm. Practice group politics can be weird and competitive and unpredictable and so many of my friends ended up being shut out of the group where they initially wanted to end up.

- Top M&A work is remarkably concentrated among the top few firms and is essentially the differentiator between the top corporate practices and everyone else. If you are deadset on M&A then check out chambers and get a job at a Band 1 M&A firm.

since you have experience with M&A in NY ... mind pm' ing me to answer some Q's?

[Anonymous User]

Any advice on interviewing if you're very high stone (3.7x) given that we can't post our GPAs explicitly?

[Anonymous User]

Don’t we have your transcripts? I know what a high stone transcript looks like.

[Anonymous User]

Don’t we have your transcripts? I know what a high stone transcript looks like.

Yeah; I was just told by a non-CLS friend who has interviewed candidates at CLS that interviewers a.) don't typically look at transcripts and 2.) if not from CLS, don't really understand them. I'd be relieved if that's not true.

[Anonymous User]

I think your friend is trolling you. Of course we read the transcripts. Its hard enough to pick candidates as it is, we don’t throw good info away.

[Anonymous User]

The way he put it was that by interview 5 or 6 you're bored and skimming things, not really looking super seriously at them -- he said it was like people who picked up your resume for the first time when you walk in and ask to go through it with you.

would love to hear how you "run" an interview if you've been on the other side / what level of firm you're at (he's at a v20 shop and just says he checks for stone/kent and then moves on)

[QContinuum]

The way he put it was that by interview 5 or 6 you're bored and skimming things, not really looking super seriously at them -- he said it was like people who picked up your resume for the first time when you walk in and ask to go through it with you.

Even if that's the case, there's nothing you can really do about it. You can't put your GPA on your resume (because, as you note, Columbia doesn't allow that), and there's no way to proactively bring up, "oh, by the way, my grades are super strong!" in an interview without coming off badly.

More broadly, some interviewers will care about your grades (either because they personally care about candidates' grades or because their firm requires them to care about candidates' grades), and others won't. The interviewers who care about your grades will get the information they need from your transcript. They will not need you to remind them to care about your grades. The interviewers who don't care about your grades still won't care even if you were to somehow manage to bring up your GPA during your screener without coming across badly.

I also wouldn't worry about the "understandability" of the transcript. The grading scheme isn't actually that difficult to understand. Columbia uses letter grades that are going to be familiar to just about anyone - this isn't like Chicago's weird numeric scheme, or even Harvard's DS/H/P scheme. Non-Columbians may not be familiar with what Columbia's median is, but a 3.7x is widely going to be considered a terrific 1L GPA anywhere - I don't know of a single peer law school that has a median anywhere near 3.7.

[Anonymous User]

The way he put it was that by interview 5 or 6 you're bored and skimming things, not really looking super seriously at them -- he said it was like people who picked up your resume for the first time when you walk in and ask to go through it with you.

would love to hear how you "run" an interview if you've been on the other side / what level of firm you're at (he's at a v20 shop and just says he checks for stone/kent and then moves on)

I mean, we look at transcript. You’re high stone. Don’t worry about what firms do that are focusing on generic folks at the median. You’re not trying to work there anyways.

[Anonymous User]

Anyone here planning on dropping Latham NY, Boies NY, O'Melveney NY? Can trade Paul Weiss NY or Cleary NY for those interviews.

[Anonymous User]

How large a portion of EIP interviews are them asking questions about what I like about their specific firm, or asking me if I have questions about their specific firm? Because almost all of the firms are the same to me, and I couldn't tell you what makes one's culture/strong corporate practice different than another's culture/strong strong corporate practice. When I read Chambers, I feel I am reading the same bullet points for every firm.

[Anonymous User]

How large a portion of EIP interviews are them asking questions about what I like about their specific firm, or asking me if I have questions about their specific firm? Because almost all of the firms are the same to me, and I couldn't tell you what makes one's culture/strong corporate practice different than another's culture/strong strong corporate practice. When I read Chambers, I feel I am reading the same bullet points for every firm.

People aren't going to quiz you in depth (except for maybe Wachtell, Cravath, Boies, etc), but you should have 2-3 sentences about "why this firm" for everyone, even if it's not unique. Strong corporate practice, commitment to pro bono, I like people I know there, I hit it off with someone at the reception, etc. If possible, something moderately specific (saying you like that e.g. Skadden is social, K&E is ambitious, Cleary is thoughtful, PW cares about social justice, DPW is polite, etc) is good. They're not looking for a love letter, just an expression of interest.

[Anonymous User]

How large a portion of EIP interviews are them asking questions about what I like about their specific firm, or asking me if I have questions about their specific firm? Because almost all of the firms are the same to me, and I couldn't tell you what makes one's culture/strong corporate practice different than another's culture/strong strong corporate practice. When I read Chambers, I feel I am reading the same bullet points for every firm.

People aren't going to quiz you in depth (except for maybe Wachtell, Cravath, Boies, etc), but you should have 2-3 sentences about "why this firm" for everyone, even if it's not unique. Strong corporate practice, commitment to pro bono, I like people I know there, I hit it off with someone at the reception, etc. If possible, something moderately specific (saying you like that e.g. Skadden is social, K&E is ambitious, Cleary is thoughtful, PW cares about social justice, DPW is polite, etc) is good. They're not looking for a love letter, just an expression of interest.

This isn’t good advice. Generally what most interviewers are looking for with those type of questions is to test that you’ve spent some time researching and thinking about the firms in order to measure engagement in the recruiting process, a willingness to do annoying online research, and a general ability to frame an answer that’s consistent with your personal narrative. For example, if you’re saying you’re interested in transactional work, it’s a perfectly fine answer to say that you’re interested in firm X because it’s one of the handful of preeminent firms for transactional work. Doesn’t really need to be more specific than that and that answer will take you a long way! If you want to get fancier (and I generally wouldn’t do this unless it was true), if you have a hankering for a particular practice area and the firm is highly ranked in that in chambers, I might mention that group in particular (“I’m interested in exploring M&A and I know you guys are really strong in that”).

You should avoid professing interest in firms based on the one word conventional wisdom shared among law students. What is appropriate, if you want to give an answer like that, is to parrot back a word or theme that you see emphasized in the firm’s own promotional materials or previous interviews. Saying you want to work at Skadden because it is “social” will make you sound unprofessional.

Also, never forget that you are interviewing for a job and so you want to portray yourself as interested in paying work. In other words, generally de-emphasize pro bono: pro bono is something that firms should sell to you but that you should not use to sell yourself to a firm. The exception to this is pro bono in lit which is really just a way to get courtroom experience. That’s mostly safe ground.

[Anonymous User]

Bumping to hopefully compel CLS peeps to post their callbacks. Esp. interested in any DPW callbacks. Good luck all.

[Anonymous User]

O'Melveny callback (CM and DS).

Also particularly interested in if anyone got DPW tonight.

[cls2019eip1]

Had a friend with a Sidney London callback.

[Anonymous User]

DPW callback by email, a few minutes ago

[cls2019eip]

Interviewer initials?

[Anonymous User]

I got a DPW callback by email.

[phyllislapin]

Interviewer initials?

JB

[Anonymous User]

Sidley callback, came via a phone call

[Anonymous User]

Covington NY CB (JC)

[Anonymous User]

McDermott