Lavender Law Career Fair for Law Clerk? Forum
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Anonymous posting is only appropriate when you are revealing sensitive employment related information about a firm, job, etc. You may anonymously respond on topic to these threads. Unacceptable uses include: harassing another user, joking around, testing the feature, or other things that are more appropriate in the lounge.
Failure to follow these rules will get you outed, warned, or banned.
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Anonymous User
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Lavender Law Career Fair for Law Clerk?
I'm a 2020 grad, and will be clerking with a federal judge during the 2020-2021 term. I'm looking to explore post-clerkship options/trade up from the firm I summered at. Is the Lavender Law career fair worth it to attend in this situation? Also, how will the virtual nature of this year's fair affect that?
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j01
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Re: Lavender Law Career Fair for Law Clerk?
I'm going as well in the same situation, and I've heard it's useful to make recruiting contacts you can use down the road. But maybe less so without the afterparties and such.
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Anonymous User
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Re: Lavender Law Career Fair for Law Clerk?
I attended the LavLaw career fair in 2018, which is when I went through OCI. At least back then, the career fair was more about making contacts/getting information about a firm, rather than actually securing an interview. A small handful of firms conducted what seemed like "on-the-spot" mini-screeners where you'd sit in a chair with one of the people at a firm's table and talk about your interest in the firm and practice areas, and then give that person your resume. But I did not hear back from any firms who took my resume. In addition, a lot of law firms just sent a first or second year associate who really didn't have any "pull" with the hiring team.
The fair was before a bunch of my callbacks, so it was helpful at my callbacks to say that I'd met XYZ person at LavLaw. I kind of got the sense that most big firms just wanted to have some sort of presence at the firm so that they seemed LGBT-friendly, but did not treat the career fair as a way to actually hire LGBT candidates. I followed up with people who I met at the fair, and they were definitely receptive to hearing from me and answering questions, but it didn't progress to an interview invite or anything.
I'll add that it might be different for public interest organizations or smaller firms (I only stopped by biglaw tables). I had a friend who went to PI tables and was able to secure an interview for the week after the fair, and I've heard of some of the smaller firms reaching out to people post-LavLaw to set up screeners or callbacks.
I have no idea how the virtual career fair is going to work out. At least the way I'm envisioning it, it would be extremely chaotic and difficult to make an actual connection, but I could be wrong.
If you're looking to "trade up" from your summer firm, I'd say that you're unlikely to get any interviews through LavLaw but it might be a nice line to throw into a cover letter. The benefit of it being virtual is you don't have to travel, so in that sense it might be worth stopping by since you don't have to spend time or money to get there.
The fair was before a bunch of my callbacks, so it was helpful at my callbacks to say that I'd met XYZ person at LavLaw. I kind of got the sense that most big firms just wanted to have some sort of presence at the firm so that they seemed LGBT-friendly, but did not treat the career fair as a way to actually hire LGBT candidates. I followed up with people who I met at the fair, and they were definitely receptive to hearing from me and answering questions, but it didn't progress to an interview invite or anything.
I'll add that it might be different for public interest organizations or smaller firms (I only stopped by biglaw tables). I had a friend who went to PI tables and was able to secure an interview for the week after the fair, and I've heard of some of the smaller firms reaching out to people post-LavLaw to set up screeners or callbacks.
I have no idea how the virtual career fair is going to work out. At least the way I'm envisioning it, it would be extremely chaotic and difficult to make an actual connection, but I could be wrong.
If you're looking to "trade up" from your summer firm, I'd say that you're unlikely to get any interviews through LavLaw but it might be a nice line to throw into a cover letter. The benefit of it being virtual is you don't have to travel, so in that sense it might be worth stopping by since you don't have to spend time or money to get there.
