Columbia students taking questions Forum

[zcobb]

Also it is highly unrealistic for students to know the "best fit" firms for them when they are creating their bid list. Hell figuring that out is a part of the interview process (both at EIP and callbacks).

[dabigchina]

Pretty funny maximizing number of interviews is considered a faux pas by OCS. Do they usually send out spreadsheets of the first failed bid and honors lists or do we have to finagle them into excel ourselves?

[smaug]

Pretty funny maximizing number of interviews is considered a faux pas by OCS. Do they usually send out spreadsheets of the first failed bid and honors lists or do we have to finagle them into excel ourselves?

they will give you this now, but back in the day we didn't have the first failed bid list and there was a lot more information asymmetry

[GoneSouth]

Everyone I know who has dealt with OCS has a pretty common opinion of them.

You can guess whether it's positive or negative

Is there any student in any school who loves their OCS equivalent? I certainly don't know any. So either they all suck, or students are off on what they expect from OCS

[RSN]

Pretty funny maximizing number of interviews is considered a faux pas by OCS. Do they usually send out spreadsheets of the first failed bid and honors lists or do we have to finagle them into excel ourselves?

Most likely will be in PDF, not Excel. I used this site to convert the initial results sheet though, and it worked perfectly, just had to adjust row height and font size.

[Bach-City]

.

[dabigchina]

Pretty funny maximizing number of interviews is considered a faux pas by OCS. Do they usually send out spreadsheets of the first failed bid and honors lists or do we have to finagle them into excel ourselves?

they will give you this now, but back in the day we didn't have the first failed bid list and there was a lot more information asymmetry

First failed bid is really really handy. I wish they give us grade cutoffs instead of an "honors" list. Columbia should give it up and just calculate GPA already.

But it could definitely be worse.

[jbagelboy]

Pretty funny maximizing number of interviews is considered a faux pas by OCS. Do they usually send out spreadsheets of the first failed bid and honors lists or do we have to finagle them into excel ourselves?

they will give you this now, but back in the day we didn't have the first failed bid list and there was a lot more information asymmetry

First failed bid is really really handy. I wish they give us grade cutoffs instead of an "honors" list. Columbia should give it up and just calculate GPA already.

But it could definitely be worse.

Some ppl disagree with me on this, but honors is basically the ballgame. There are no grade cutoffs really except stone and non-stone, with the exception of a handful of extremely selective firms that are more grade sensitive (but everyone knows who these are and if you aren't high stone/kent you don't bid them). There's some fungibility around the edges: people b/t median and stone (3.3-3.4) can feel more comfortable bidding on some firms that traditionally require honors. Especially if they are URM/have relevent WE/ect. But in broad terms, honors/non-honors is a pretty good way of thinking about it since its the first and main thing a recruiter will see.

Put another way, of the ~300 large market paying firms you can interview with, only a small sliver of them--or a small sliver of their offices--will actually care about your grades. Those just happen to be the firms people talk about at schools like CLS.

[Monochromatic Oeuvre]

0L going to Columbia next year. Out of curiosity, what's LOL about being a Litigator in 2016 compared to years past?

Litigation hiring at the majority of firms is either flat or growing slowly. Generalist litigators usually have a harder time getting hired in-house, where their services are less in-demand. This has always been true, but the difference has been particularly large in the past couple of years.

[TheoO]

Only 20 students a year or so are clerking (which, by the way, is a shitty idea for 95% of people). Most of the AIII clerks are Stone.

If you could elaborate, why is clerking such a bad idea?

I think the idea is that its mostly just a resume sticker/preftige thing. It's a good experience and signals that you're qualified. But in the end, if you're going to work for a firm, is it really a year better spent than a year working for the firm? I think if you want to go into academia it might help, but that's not the 95% of people. I guess put another way, if you're going to be an M&A lawyer, which is better, spending a year doing M&A work as an associate or spending a year researching random cases as a clerk?

You give up a tangible cost (about $45k on net) for a credential that maybe makes you a marginally better associate (but who cares, you're not making partner, so the chance of your quality being materially relevant to your Biglaw career is minimal) and maybe makes you marginally more marketable (but you were already preftigious enough to clerk, so I'm not sure it's helping besides the fact that other people are getting it and you've sucked yourself into an arms race). And any possible benefit to your marketability is dwarfed by the marketability you already lost, because LOL, you decided to be a litigator in 2016.

In general, consider me a giant skeptic of anything hawked by Boomers with a large upfront cost and vaguely-described "benefits" that no one seems to be able to quantify.

0L going to Columbia next year. Out of curiosity, what's LOL about being a Litigator in 2016 compared to years past?

http://www.law360.com/articles/633302/g ... n-slowdown
https://www.law360.com/articles/630017/ ... financials

[Nebby]

Transactional practice isn't even law practice. Being a litigator is much better than being some goober due diligence machine

[Tiago Splitter]

Transactional practice isn't even law practice.

Dude that's the best part

[Nebby]

Transactional practice isn't even law practice.

Dude that's the best part

True true

Anyway, TheoO, there's nothing wrong with litigation

[iamgeorgebush]

0L going to Columbia next year. Out of curiosity, what's LOL about being a Litigator in 2016 compared to years past?

Litigation hiring at the majority of firms is either flat or growing slowly. Generalist litigators usually have a harder time getting hired in-house, where their services are less in-demand. This has always been true, but the difference has been particularly large in the past couple of years.

Monocrhomatic Oeuvre's point is that if you go the transactional route, it's easier to get hired (1) by firms (during EIP) and (2) by companies seeking in-house lawyers (if/when you decide to leave BigLaw, which most of you will).

Of course, being a litigator is very different from being a transactional attorney. And believe it or not, some people truly enjoy litigation but would dislike transactional work. Not so much "LOL, you decided to be a litigator" for those who happen to fall in that camp.

[RSN]

0L going to Columbia next year. Out of curiosity, what's LOL about being a Litigator in 2016 compared to years past?

Litigation hiring at the majority of firms is either flat or growing slowly. Generalist litigators usually have a harder time getting hired in-house, where their services are less in-demand. This has always been true, but the difference has been particularly large in the past couple of years.

Monocrhomatic Oeuvre's point is that if you go the transactional route, it's easier to get hired (1) by firms (during EIP) and (2) by companies seeking in-house lawyers (if/when you decide to leave BigLaw, which most of you will).

Of course, being a litigator is very different from being a transactional attorney. And believe it or not, some people truly enjoy litigation but would dislike transactional work. Not so much "LOL, you decided to be a litigator" for those who happen to fall in that camp.

Yup, we do exist. If my only choice was transactional I would not have gone to law school.

[GoneSouth]

What's the timeline for post-EIP callbacks? Is there any chance I would be pretty much done by ~Aug. 23 (EIP ends Aug. 9)?

[Monochromatic Oeuvre]

http://www.law360.com/articles/633302/g ... n-slowdown
https://www.law360.com/articles/630017/ ... financials

For everyone's reading pleasure

Through the first ten months of 2015, real estate and corporate are the only practice areas to have experienced year-over-year demand growth. Consistent with what we’ve seen over the past couple of years, litigation remains soft

Most of the growth will continue to come from transactional activity rather than litigation

Over the past few years, given the growing cost of large scale litigation, the appetite of law firm clients to litigate all the way to trial has waned, reducing the demand for litigation services...Law firm litigation practices have been disproportionately impacted by the trend in disaggregation of work, either doing more work in-house, or sending relatively routine work to low-cost providers, rather than to traditional law firms.

Look, I'm not telling you guys not to be litigators if you really feel you can't stand transactional. You need to find whatever it is that gets you through this job. But I will say that I was in probably the 90th percentile of having a litigation preference, and was sufficiently spooked by three solid years of bad data and horror stories to go in a different direction. So I think people need to really take a good, hard look before they choose to commit themselves to risks like those.

[Monochromatic Oeuvre]

What's the timeline for post-EIP callbacks? Is there any chance I would be pretty much done by ~Aug. 23 (EIP ends Aug. 9)?

I'm assuming you're asking this in order to plan some sort of trip. Don't do that. Some firms (Latham is one I think) don't even start their callbacks until September. You have no guarantee that you'll have the offer you want by late August or, God forbid, that you'll have an offer at all. Save the shenanigans for when you're secure, because you hardly have any reason to actually be in NYC at all in the next two years except to show up for finals.

[smaug]

But I will say that I was in probably the 90th percentile of having a litigation preference, and was sufficiently spooked by three solid years of bad data and horror stories to go in a different direction. So I think people need to really take a good, hard look before they choose to commit themselves to risks like those.

lmao

want to know a dark secret?

you exit options are going to be worse than you think they are regardless

have fun with that post-hoc rationalizing though

[Monochromatic Oeuvre]

But I will say that I was in probably the 90th percentile of having a litigation preference, and was sufficiently spooked by three solid years of bad data and horror stories to go in a different direction. So I think people need to really take a good, hard look before they choose to commit themselves to risks like those.

lmao

want to know a dark secret?

you exit options are going to be worse than you think they are regardless

have fun with that post-hoc rationalizing though

I don't need to rationalize anything. I've gotten to a point of pessimism where any day the partners don't throw a cannister of sarin into my office will be a good day. I preempted Biglaw's alienation of my friends and family by doing that myself. My only true exit option is the railing of the GW Bridge. Your low-effort flame doesn't stack up.

[smaug]

Not really flame, though.

[Tiago Splitter]

But seriously. Do litigation if you'd prefer it. Don't do corporate because of some possibility of better exit options. Keep an open mind either way.

[RSN]

But I will say that I was in probably the 90th percentile of having a litigation preference, and was sufficiently spooked by three solid years of bad data and horror stories to go in a different direction. So I think people need to really take a good, hard look before they choose to commit themselves to risks like those.

lmao

want to know a dark secret?

you exit options are going to be worse than you think they are regardless

have fun with that post-hoc rationalizing though

I don't need to rationalize anything. I've gotten to a point of pessimism where any day the partners don't throw a cannister of sarin into my office will be a good day. I preempted Biglaw's alienation of my friends and family by doing that myself. My only true exit option is the railing of the GW Bridge. Your low-effort flame doesn't stack up.

Come on, man, 0Ls read this stuff, you're gonna drive them away.

But seriously, this is dark.

[GoneSouth]

What's the timeline for post-EIP callbacks? Is there any chance I would be pretty much done by ~Aug. 23 (EIP ends Aug. 9)?

I'm assuming you're asking this in order to plan some sort of trip. Don't do that. Some firms (Latham is one I think) don't even start their callbacks until September. You have no guarantee that you'll have the offer you want by late August or, God forbid, that you'll have an offer at all. Save the shenanigans for when you're secure, because you hardly have any reason to actually be in NYC at all in the next two years except to show up for finals.

Not a trip, but some stuff in NYC that I can probably cancel last-minute if I need to. Just trying to figure out the likelihood of that happening because if it's really high then I may not end up signing up in the first place.

[GreenEggs]

Can anyone speak to the differences of doing a clinic vs. an externship. Is it preferable to do one over the other in a given semester? Or 2L vs. 3L? Can you take them at the same time?