UVA Law Students Taking Questions Forum

[thesealocust]

Can 2Ls give a quick run down of how the different markets worked out for people at last year's OGI?


NYC: ????
DC: ????
California:????
Chicago:???
Texas:???
Atlanta:???
Boston:???

NYC was relatively rosy, DC was relatively apocalyptic. Southerners did particularly well in the south, I don't know that anybody else did. NYC was definitely the place to look if you had relatively few geographic connections and/or work experience, as those two seemed particularly important in other markets.

NYC and DC are always the two biggest markets out of UVA (I believe in a typical year about a third of the class winds up employed in either region). It was thus a pretty large and obvious data set, and people seemed to have better results in NYC than in DC up and down the GPA spectrum.

[sherpaorlawschool]

You don't need grades when you go to a T9 law school.

If you are not in the top third of the class AND a strong interviewer, then your plan should include more than just OGI. This is also true if you do not have prior work experience.

Worst. Golden. Ticket. Ever.

This is a general question about work experience and big firm hiring for anyone who has insight. I recently spoke to a couple of attorneys, who both worked in big law as recently as a year or two ago. One of them was sent to law schools to interview candidates for a couple of years as an associate. I asked them about prior work experience and big firm hiring, and they said that many firms prefer younger candidates with less work experience, even after experiencing the effects of this economy. In some cases, firms have the mentality of "the younger the better." They admitted that this isn't the case with every firm but that many firms do have this mentality.

After hearing this, I couldn't help but think that this goes against some of what is said on TLS about prior work experience. I was wondering if any of the 2Ls and 3Ls have any insight on this? Perhaps the folks here have something to add or some caveats to this? I realize these are just two anecdotes and really want to get a broader set of opinions/experiences on the matter. I posted here because this was mentioned recently and its where I'll be attending, so its good to hear the experiences of people from the same school. Thanks in advance.

[thesealocust]

This is a general question about work experience and big firm hiring for anyone who has insight. I recently spoke to a couple of attorneys, who both worked in big law as recently as a year or two ago. One of them was sent to law schools to interview candidates for a couple of years as an associate. I asked them about prior work experience and big firm hiring, and they said that many firms prefer younger candidates with less work experience, even after experiencing the effects of this economy. In some cases, firms have the mentality of "the younger the better." They admitted that this isn't the case with every firm but that many firms do have this mentality.

After hearing this, I couldn't help but think that this goes against some of what is said on TLS about prior work experience. I was wondering if any of the 2Ls and 3Ls have any insight on this? Perhaps the folks here have something to add or some caveats to this? I realize these are just two anecdotes and really want to get a broader set of opinions/experiences on the matter. I posted here because this was mentioned recently and its where I'll be attending, so its good to hear the experiences of people from the same school. Thanks in advance.

During OGI, it became very clear, very quickly that those with work experience were outperforming those who went straight through from undergrad (after controlling for grades and general 'interview ability' / social intelligence).

At my firm this summer, another law student randomly commented that relatively few people seemed to have gone straight through from undergrad to law school.

It's by no means impossible to get a (great) job without work experience, but it's definitely going to help to have it. It's not even just that it's bonus points on a spreadsheet or anything - people with work experience are likely to come across as more mature, have more relevant things to talk about, be more aware of their preferences with respect to geography, work environments, etc.

[Islandgirl8671]

Thank you for the feedback! Sounds like $1,800 was supposed to include a computer then.

[Cavalier]

With regard to the question on markets, you should use a lot of bids on NYC. NYC firms have very large summer classes compared to firms in other cities, so the competition is a lot less intense. DC was a very tough market. People from the west coast seemed to do fine in California. The other markets generally require ties.

[uvahooo]

Can 2Ls give a quick run down of how the different markets worked out for people at last year's OGI?


NYC: ????
DC: ????
California:????
Chicago:???
Texas:???
Atlanta:???
Boston:???

NYC was relatively rosy, DC was relatively apocalyptic. Southerners did particularly well in the south, I don't know that anybody else did. NYC was definitely the place to look if you had relatively few geographic connections and/or work experience, as those two seemed particularly important in other markets.

NYC and DC are always the two biggest markets out of UVA (I believe in a typical year about a third of the class winds up employed in either region). It was thus a pretty large and obvious data set, and people seemed to have better results in NYC than in DC up and down the GPA spectrum.

Why don't you just ask CSO? Your bid strategy should be different for your given GPA/geographic preferences.

[dailygrind]

Thank you for the feedback! Sounds like $1,800 was supposed to include a computer then.

i think it's more like the upper bounds of what people would reasonably spend. if you buy all new books from the bookstore, you'll spend like 600 bucks a semester on books. toss in some supplies and supplements, and you could probably hit 900 a semester.

[BruceWayne]

Can 2Ls give a quick run down of how the different markets worked out for people at last year's OGI?


NYC: ????
DC: ????
California:????
Chicago:???
Texas:???
Atlanta:???
Boston:???

NYC was relatively rosy, DC was relatively apocalyptic. Southerners did particularly well in the south, I don't know that anybody else did. NYC was definitely the place to look if you had relatively few geographic connections and/or work experience, as those two seemed particularly important in other markets.

NYC and DC are always the two biggest markets out of UVA (I believe in a typical year about a third of the class winds up employed in either region). It was thus a pretty large and obvious data set, and people seemed to have better results in NYC than in DC up and down the GPA spectrum.

Thanks this was very helpful!

[Doritos]

So, what should I take away from the firms that are coming to OGI and list as their hiring criteria some business about "well rounded" "leadership" and other things that aren't GPA cutoffs? Probably varies by firm right?

edit: answered my own question. Some super elite firms don't have cut-offs listed and I know those have to be high

[jawsthegreat]

Where are my grades?

[thesealocust]

So, what should I take away from the firms that are coming to OGI and list as their hiring criteria some business about "well rounded" "leadership" and other things that aren't GPA cutoffs? Probably varies by firm right?

edit: answered my own question. Some super elite firms don't have cut-offs listed and I know those have to be high

Ignore EVERYTHING firms list on symplicity or in spreadsheets. It's a vicious lie. Firm HR departments are on cruise control, and the most selective firms will sometimes post things like "top 50% grades are alright if you have them" while barely picky firms will say "top 3.4% required to not be spat upon."

You've got to learn what firms care about and what firms don't care about. Talk to people, ask on TLS, read the employment forum, demand (NB: I did not write ask) as much data as you can from career services, beg/borrow/steal data from other schools, etc.

A rough and highly specific example of the kind of information that would be useful to people that CSO won't have for you: Sullivan & Cromwell is notoriously grade snobby. They really want to see As, HPs, whatever, basically regardless of your school. They recruit from a narrow band of students even at the best schools, but also recruit from a wide array of schools. S&C routinely gives summer associate offers to 90%+ of the students they give callbacks to, making a callback there close to an instant offer. Their OGI process is relatively 'stress' interview like, and they have a very rapid turn around.

Davis Polk is a nearly identical business. They have the same specialties as S&C, represent the same clients, attract many of the same students, have offices of the same size, in the same places, etc. It would be hard to pick two big firms that were as similar in business practices as S&C and DPW. But they have completely different hiring models: DPW hires from a very narrow band of top schools, but routinely dips deep in the class even from schools it doesn't take many associates from. Its interviews tend to be laid back and casual. They are notorious for having one of the lowest rates of offers post-callback: sometimes as few as ~30% of the students they give callbacks to receive summer offers.

Basically none of that is info you could get from CSO. If you have the willpower, you want to know as much information like the above about as many firms as you can to figure out where your bids will be smart. Somebody with a ~3.4 from UVA wouldn't be throwing away a bid on DPW, they'd not get a sniff from S&C.

Why don't you just ask CSO? Your bid strategy should be different for your given GPA/geographic preferences.

Hopefully my above rant will help describe why CSO is necessary but not sufficient to an OGI strategy. But even more than that, your interest and CSOs do not align. CSO wants us all to get jobs, you want YOU to get a job. CSO simply cannot tell everyone "bid on NYC it's easier." That's a true statement, but if they did it, they'd (a) piss off non-NYC firms and (b) dramatically increase competition for NYC firms thus rendering their advice false. They'll help, especially with non-zero sum things like proof reading cover letters[FN1], but they can't give you the advice you need the most, which is how to survive OGI whether or not your peers are surviving OGI. That doesn't mean 'throwing elbows' but it does mean educating yourself about market trends that aren't in CSO's interests to allude too. For example, just don't fucking bid on DC. There are like, 3 total summer associate positions for all 600 UVA 1Ls and 500,000 other T14 1Ls bidding on them. Yeah, you like politics. Cool. Go work in (not DC) and use your summer salary to buy a subscription to politico or something. Problem solved.

[FN1] I have friends who had typos slip through even a CSO review. Do your own due diligence.

Edit: I now have it on information and belief that CSO is now telling people to bid on NYC because it's easier. Good for them

[BruceWayne]

How did people do with mass mailing firms that don't come to OGI? I'm especially curious about those who did this with smaller firms outside of the NYC and DC markets.

[RVP11]

How did people do with mass mailing firms that don't come to OGI? I'm especially curious about those who did this with smaller firms outside of the NYC and DC markets.

I went 5 for ~80 mass mailing firms in smaller markets I had connections to. I think that was slightly better than average, but it seems like most people who mass-mailed got at least one interview out of it.

[thesealocust]

How did people do with mass mailing firms that don't come to OGI? I'm especially curious about those who did this with smaller firms outside of the NYC and DC markets.

I went 5 for ~80 mass mailing firms in smaller markets I had connections to. I think that was slightly better than average, but it seems like most people who mass-mailed got at least one interview out of it.

+1. Mass mailing had a poor yield for everyone (i.e. probably fewer than 10% response rate) but almost everybody I know who bothered to do mass mailing got some interest out of it.

[5ky]

So, what should I take away from the firms that are coming to OGI and list as their hiring criteria some business about "well rounded" "leadership" and other things that aren't GPA cutoffs? Probably varies by firm right?

edit: answered my own question. Some super elite firms don't have cut-offs listed and I know those have to be high

Ignore EVERYTHING firms list on symplicity or in spreadsheets. It's a vicious lie. Firm HR departments are on cruise control, and the most selective firms will sometimes post things like "top 50% grades are alright if you have them" while barely picky firms will say "top 3.4% required to not be spat upon."

You've got to learn what firms care about and what firms don't care about. Talk to people, ask on TLS, read the employment forum, demand (NB: I did not write ask) as much data as you can from career services, beg/borrow/steal data from other schools, etc.

A rough and highly specific example of the kind of information that would be useful to people that CSO won't have for you: Sullivan & Cromwell is notoriously grade snobby. They really want to see As, HPs, whatever, basically regardless of your school. They recruit from a narrow band of students even at the best schools, but also recruit from a wide array of schools. S&C routinely gives summer associate offers to 90%+ of the students they give callbacks to, making a callback there close to an instant offer. Their OGI process is relatively 'stress' interview like, and they have a very rapid turn around.

Davis Polk is a nearly identical business. They have the same specialties as S&C, represent the same clients, attract many of the same students, have offices of the same size, in the same places, etc. It would be hard to pick two big firms that were as similar in business practices as S&C and DPW. But they have completely different hiring models: DPW hires from a very narrow band of top schools, but routinely dips deep in the class even from schools it doesn't take many associates from. Its interviews tend to be laid back and casual. They are notorious for having one of the lowest rates of offers post-callback: sometimes as few as ~30% of the students they give callbacks to receive summer offers.

Basically none of that is info you could get from CSO. If you have the willpower, you want to know as much information like the above about as many firms as you can to figure out where your bids will be smart. Somebody with a ~3.4 from UVA wouldn't be throwing away a bid on DPW, they'd not get a sniff from S&C.

Why don't you just ask CSO? Your bid strategy should be different for your given GPA/geographic preferences.

Hopefully my above rant will help describe why CSO is necessary but not sufficient to an OGI strategy. But even more than that, your interest and CSOs do not align. CSO wants us all to get jobs, you want YOU to get a job. CSO simply cannot tell everyone "bid on NYC it's easier." That's a true statement, but if they did it, they'd (a) piss off non-NYC firms and (b) dramatically increase competition for NYC firms thus rendering their advice false. They'll help, especially with non-zero sum things like proof reading cover letters[FN1], but they can't give you the advice you need the most, which is how to survive OGI whether or not your peers are surviving OGI. That doesn't mean 'throwing elbows' but it does mean educating yourself about market trends that aren't in CSO's interests to allude too. For example, just don't fucking bid on DC. There are like, 3 total summer associate positions for all 600 UVA 1Ls and 500,000 other T14 1Ls bidding on them. Yeah, you like politics. Cool. Go work in (not DC) and use your summer salary to buy a subscription to politico or something. Problem solved.

[FN1] I have friends who had typos slip through even a CSO review. Do your own due diligence.

Edit: I now have it on information that CSO is now telling people to bid on NYC because it's easier. Good for them

So, my question is how do we go about finding incredibly useful information like this? Any suggestions on where to start?

[thesealocust]

So, my question is how do we go about finding incredibly useful information like this? Any suggestions on where to start?

Big data sources: Vault, chambers & associate, chambers & partners, the NALP directory. If all you do for any given firm is read each of these sources, it will still take a while, but you'll at least get a good idea of what they're about, if not exactly what they're looking for in a candidate.

Clandestine data sources: Spreadsheets showing the results of various schools after various years OCI/EIP/OGI/whatevers. For this, you'll just have to ask around. There's a lot out there but almost all of it is released to students on the condition it not be passed or spread around.

Word of mouth: There's 'archival' word of mouth to be found by doing careful searches on TLS and autoadmit. 'Live' word of mouth from rising 3Ls and recent graduates is obviously useful too, though it can be hard to broach and few people have broad-market understanding or expertise.

News and gossip: Above the law (posts some really good tables every know and then with info on things like salaries and offer rates). Every now and then worthwhile info makes it into the economist, the WSJ, or a publicly accessible article somewhere like The American Lawyer.

[Cavalier]

Don't hesitate to ask your 3L friends, or even post on TLS or AutoAdmit, or PM someone here. Most people who've been through OGI still probably remember enough about the firms to have some useful information that took a fair amount of research to find. Also, the importance of interviewing cannot be emphasized enough. Some people were able to turn 6 screening interviews into 6 offers; others got 1 callback and 0 offers out of 30 screening interviews. You can't change your grades at this point, but grades are only part of the battle; with enough research and interviewing practice (if you need it), you can make your chances at getting an offer much more likely.

[5ky]

Thanks, very helpful.

[dailygrind]

Thanks, very helpful.

[bubbletea]

The person who made the model and the shirt(s) is the same person from what I have heard. It is just one--admittedly unsatisfied--3L who is focusing all of this negative attention on our career services. I don't mean to deny that there are other similarly situated 3Ls, but I don't think that the fact that we have one particularly vocal unemployed 3L here says anything about UVA compared to peer schools.

Actually they are not the same person. I know this for a fact.

[5ky]

The person who made the model and the shirt(s) is the same person from what I have heard. It is just one--admittedly unsatisfied--3L who is focusing all of this negative attention on our career services. I don't mean to deny that there are other similarly situated 3Ls, but I don't think that the fact that we have one particularly vocal unemployed 3L here says anything about UVA compared to peer schools.

Actually they are not the same person. I know this for a fact.

Go away with your UVA trolling, it is tiresome. You keep warning people away from UVA because there are a handful of unemployed 3Ls, which every school has.

[bgdddymtty]

Did you hear the one about the Con Law professor who hadn't printed off his students' exams 23 days after the final? No? Don't worry; it wasn't that funny.

[paulinaporizkova]

Did you hear the one about the Con Law professor who hadn't printed off his students' exams 23 days after the final? No? Don't worry; it wasn't that funny.

[badwithpseudonyms]

Did you hear the one about the Con Law professor who hadn't printed off his students' exams 23 days after the final? No? Don't worry; it wasn't that funny.

Has he really not printed them off? I'm too paranoid to click on the link. I hope he waits until the last minute to grade them. At least one third of that test was a disaster... probably more like two thirds or the entire thing.

[bgdddymtty]

Did you hear the one about the Con Law professor who hadn't printed off his students' exams 23 days after the final? No? Don't worry; it wasn't that funny.

Has he really not printed them off? I'm too paranoid to click on the link. I hope he waits until the last minute to grade them. At least one third of that test was a disaster... probably more like two thirds or the entire thing.

I clicked, and it says he hasn't. Then again, maybe he has received them but it doesn't show it because he does them via his special computer. Who knows?

BTW, are we section-mates?