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Okay, so I'm not sure how we are supposed to prepare for individual interviews. People have told me that they go home after OCI everyday and spend hours prepping for the next day, but I'm not sure why this is supposed to take so long. I assume this means I do not know what all I should be doing to prepare for interviews.

So far this is what my preparation strategy looks like:

1) Know the firm's practice areas and the types of clients it represents,
2) know the interviewer's legal specialties,
3) be able to give a decent reason for wanting to live in the office's host city,
4) ???

Can someone please tell me how else to prep for OCI?

4) Make sure you know your own shit backwards and forwards. It sounds silly because obviously you know what's on your resume... but knowing how to articulate it well takes some prep work.

What are the overall points you want to convey about yourself? How do these fit into what the firm is looking for and why you want to work for them in particular? Know exactly what you want to say if asked about any random line on your resume. Are there any related interesting/funny anecdotes that you can tell?

But don't do this to the point of sounding weird and rehearsed.

My prep usually is me looking through the website for a few hours while watching TV or gchatting. Sometimes I find something neat that I can talk about (like the firm that represented the builders for a baseball stadium or the one representing Gitmo prisoners). Granted, 98% of what you "research" won't come up, but you never know when you'll have an opportunity to show them you're really interested in their firm, and it certainly can't hurt.

Don't go nuts, but certainly try to have a nugget or two in addition to the basics.

For example:

Interviewer: Well, our summer program is such and such, but we also will allow you to do four weeks at a public service place while still receiving pay.

You: Yeah, I saw that you were really committed to pro bono work. How did you guys end up taking so many of the Gitmo detainee cases?

You never know if that person worked on it or not and has been dying all day for someone to ask....


And following on Orance, knowing how to convey the points about yourself is difficult even for me, and I'm well-spoken. After 8 interviews, I'm far tighter yet thoughtful about those points.

El Orance wrote:4) Make sure you know your own shit backwards and forwards. It sounds silly because obviously you know what's on your resume... but knowing how to articulate it well takes some prep work.

What are the overall points you want to convey about yourself? How do these fit into what the firm is looking for and why you want to work for them in particular? Know exactly what you want to say if asked about any random line on your resume. Are there any related interesting/funny anecdotes that you can tell?

But don't do this to the point of sounding weird and rehearsed.

TITCR. In one of my first interviews, I got a little tripped up when the interviewer asked a lot of really detailed questions about my thesis that I had written 2 years ago, and I just couldn't remember a lot of what I had written