Can you apply to firms thru OCI if you are working on LLM? Forum

[Anonymous User]

For example, if you are working on an LLM at Georgetown, can you use the OCI for the JD students to get into a biglaw firm?

[najumobi]

For example, if you are working on an LLM at Georgetown, can you use the OCI for the JD students to get into a biglaw firm?

have no idea about all llms at gulc, but i think the tax llm has it's own recruitment program with nyu tax llm.

[chadwick218]

For example, if you are working on an LLM at Georgetown, can you use the OCI for the JD students to get into a biglaw firm?

This may depend on the school (not sure about Georgetown). More often than not, there is a separate program for tax LLMs who have already graduated from law school.

[Anonymous User]

I am curious about this as well. What if you just want to use the JD program's OCI (and not the LLM's)?

[Anonymous User]

This would be a question for the career center. I'm guessing firms probably don't want to interview LLM students during JD OCI...but I could be wrong.

[NewHere]

What if you just want to use the JD program's OCI (and not the LLM's)?

There may be exceptions, but as far as I know this is typically not allowed. The reason is that employers pay the school to participate in OCI, and when they do JD OCI, they expect to be able to interview the number of JD candidates that they paid for. Filling up slots with LLM students is essentially depriving them of that right. In addition, from the school's point of view, the aim of JD OCI is to help JD students get a job, and any interview slot that goes to an LLM student could have gone to a JD student.

I don't mean to say that LLM students are less valuable than JD students, but LLM hiring takes place on a different schedule, and LLM students have their own OCI (in which JD students cannot participate.) Employers seeking to hire LLMs (who tend to be international students) are not exactly the same employers who would participate in JD OCI. Schools try to help both students and employers by splitting the process up into two different rounds of OCI, one for JD students and one for LLM students. Employers may be looking for different qualities when they hire an LLM student (specific language skills or work experience to fit a particular job position they seek to fill). They might therefore send a different kind of interviewer to the different rounds of OCI (e.g., a general hiring partner to JD OCI, and the head of the particular practice group looking to fill a position to LLM OCI.) Another issue is that employers want to see grades of at least one semester, so LLMs arriving at the law school in September 2010 have no chance getting a job through the OCI of August/September of 2010, and by the time it's September 2011, they will have graduated. Furthermore, LLMs are looking for a job at the end of the current academic year, while JDs are essentially hired for two years out.

So it works both ways: a JD candidate participating in LLM OCI is also frustrating the system: both taking away valuable interviewing spots from LLMs and annoying employers by being someone they aren't seeking to hire through this round of interviewing.

[Anonymous User]

What are you supposed to do if you don't land biglaw (but want it) while working on your JD? How do you get a second chance at OCI if you've already graduated?

[NewHere]

What are you supposed to do if you don't land biglaw (but want it) while working on your JD? How do you get a second chance at OCI if you've already graduated?

You don't. (Or, well, you get two shots at OCI: as a 2L and as a 3L. But as a 3L, your chances are slim.) After graduation, you can still ask career services for help, though, as an alumnus.

As for what you are supposed to do: apply by letter (in the same way as students do who go to schools with much more limited OCI) or start in a non-biglaw job and try to reapply (through networking, if possible) after you have a bit of work experience.