flawschoolkid wrote:I hope your T20 was GW, because though I'll be OK I wish I had left this rat hole.
glad to hear everything worked out, but unfortunately it was not GW
lhanvt13 wrote:What was your reason for transferring even though you had "a good chance of ending up okay" at ur t30?
The reasons I had when I left are very different from the reasons I would have now in retrospect.
Back then it came down to a mixture of "I want Y job in X market, T20 can't get me there" and "I want to be perceived as an equal at my firm"
(I waited until my preselect screener invitations came out at my T20 before i left, only got 1 screener with satellite office in my target market)
But looking back I would say that the reasons for transferring should be more nuanced. First, after spending more time around lawyers and students here, I don't think wanting to be perceived as an equal at your firm is a good reason. They don't really care. Even when I saw my summer class list and saw a few kids from TTT, my reaction wasn't "oh they must be dumb." In fact was the complete opposite: "Holy shit they must be ballers I can't wait to meet them"
Second, when i transferred my career calculus was basically "Job v. No Job" with a slight geographic preference. But after going through OCI and taking more specific classes, your thinking becomes more thorough to include practice area preference, growth in that field, plausible exit options, and long-term personal plans. At my T20--for the most part--people were lucky to have 1 offer. And whatever offer you got was the one you took. This is perfectly fine from a "job v. no job" perspective. But it can be really shitty if--for example--you want to do M&A and your only offer is Wilson Sonsini NYC...or you want to do VC work but your only offer is Mayer Brown Charlotte. Geography is also a big deal, but that's something that can be reconciled with time (e.g. If you really want California but get stuck in NYC, you can try to return to CA later)
Now, i'll concede that a 2L probably doesn't have a 100% accurate understanding of what kind of work they want to do. But it is when most people really start thinking about it and charting their trajectory. It's not guaranteed that you'll have offers with a firm that does the kind of work you want to do if you transfer. But it does increase the odds. Even if you're not sure what you want to do, having multiple offers almost forces you to compare practice groups and think about what interests you. Which is why i always tell 1L's who PM me about transferring to really start thinking about what they want out of their career. If you are completely indifferent about what you want to do, then the "Job v. No Job" mentality still applies and it makes less sense to transfer if you were going to get some kind of offer anyway.