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incoming 1L at YLS interested in clerking and policy work. Help me figure out law school. low-income first-generation background.

Not super familiar with how all this law school thing is. I know regular schools have a curve and you wanna do well on that curve, but YLS is unique in that 1st semester is P/F and then subsequently H/P.

How do I make the most of this YLS experience? What opportunities should I be aware of and make the most of?

Interested in international law and public policy, clerking, litigation, and white-collar investigations. Looking to work at the White House Counsel, foreign policy, etc in the future.

Seems like the current White House administration is full of YLS ppl (jake sullivan, current white house counsel, etc.)

Is networking a thing? How do I make the most of the YLS network, experience, and education?

On a more practical note, lean center-right, what grades do I need to get a clerkship? How hard is it to get DC biglaw?

The idea of govt/policy work is super appealing, but the practical side of paying off loans via biglaw is also a weighing factor. How do I balance the two? At what point in their biglaw careers do ppl start looking at govt options? It seems Jake Sullivan worked in biglaw for just a few years before ... he became counsel to a senator and then joined the State Department.

ilovemang0s wrote: ↑

Wed Jun 15, 2022 10:32 pm

incoming 1L at YLS interested in clerking and policy work. Help me figure out law school. low-income first-generation background.

Not super familiar with how all this law school thing is. I know regular schools have a curve and you wanna do well on that curve, but YLS is unique in that 1st semester is P/F and then subsequently H/P.

How do I make the most of this YLS experience? What opportunities should I be aware of and make the most of?

Interested in international law and public policy, clerking, litigation, and white-collar investigations. Looking to work at the White House Counsel, foreign policy, etc in the future.

Seems like the current White House administration is full of YLS ppl (jake sullivan, current white house counsel, etc.)

Is networking a thing? How do I make the most of the YLS network, experience, and education?

On a more practical note, lean center-right, what grades do I need to get a clerkship? How hard is it to get DC biglaw?

The idea of govt/policy work is super appealing, but the practical side of paying off loans via biglaw is also a weighing factor. How do I balance the two? At what point in their biglaw careers do ppl start looking at govt options? It seems Jake Sullivan worked in biglaw for just a few years before ... he became counsel to a senator and then joined the State Department.

So first of all, take a deep breath. I think you’ll work out a lot of these things with your Cokers next fall (and in conversations with other law students and professors), and there’s absolutely no need to have any of this figured out right now. YLS has a pretty steep learning curve, but the best advice i can give you is, once you get on campus, to start reaching out to other students who have done things you find interesting / want to do for advice. I think that’s how most people found their way here, and they’re usually happy to pay it forward.

It’s hard to give you individualized advice without knowing more about you and your interests (feel free to DM if you want to chat offline), but the one piece of advice I can give you is that YLS is more like conventional law school than you might think—things are obfuscated by the H/P system, but for doctrinal classes (“blackletters”) there’s still usually a curve where 33% of the class gets Hs. In seminars and clinics, almost everyone gets an H.

You don’t need a perfect transcript to clerk or work in DC lit. Most people who do have a mix of Hs and Ps; I think the more competitive DC firms don’t like to see more than one P spring semester, and the most competitive judges don’t like to see more than one or two Ps over two years, but almost everyone who wants to can clerk for someone great.

ilovemang0s wrote: ↑

Wed Jun 15, 2022 10:32 pm

What opportunities should I be aware of and make the most of?

Dinner at amy chua's house? (no but seriously low income first gen right leaning is probably already making chua salivate). joining fed soc?