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0L here...Ive been browsing through people's OCI bidlists and have a question for some of yall that have been through OCI:

For people that want litigation, why are litigation boutiques not higher on their bidlists? It seems that their cutoffs are much higher than many full service firms. For example, I hear that the cutoff for both mckool smith and Fish Richardson is top 25% as opposed to top 5-15%. Granted, these firms require hard science/engineering degrees for patent prosecution, but this is not required for areas like IP litigation, commercial litigation or white collar defense (which these firms have). Is the reality that most students want a broader range of practice areas within litigation to try and therefore the firms open up the cutoffs for a broader range of students? Or are these firms actually much more selective than their cutoffs suggest?

Boutiques often are more selective. But the real issue is that boutiques have small class sizes. They also don't necessarily need to be bid highly to get a screener.

ETA: the legal employment forum is not for 0Ls. I've moved the thread.

bk187 wrote:Boutiques often are more selective. But the real issue is that boutiques have small class sizes. They also don't necessarily need to be bid highly to get a screener.

ETA: the legal employment forum is not for 0Ls. I've moved the thread.

Apologies, thanks for the move.

So in essence it's not hard to get a screening interview with such boutiques, the tough part is being impressive enough (through grades, interview, WE, etc) to land a callback and from there continue to be awesome enough to obtain an offer. Is that a fair assessment?

It is still hard to get a screener.

As an anecdote, Bondurant in Atlanta has a top 5% grade requirement at UGA's OCI. The second most selective grade requirement is top 15%, which is the standard for top Atlanta biglaw.