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Duke 0L interested in biglaw (v100) who's currently spooked by the impending recession. I turned down UChicago for $$$ at Duke and feeling slightly apprehensive.

Questions:

Can any Duke 3Ls comment on what the employment landscape's looked like so far? Has it (already) been
noticeably tougher securing biglaw...Or is it still the case that most Dukies who want biglaw get biglaw
(so long as you work hard, obvi).

For rising 2Ls, how has the administration managed expectations for outcomes for next year's OCI?

Thanks!

Nobody is going to have an answer to this until January of 2021. I believe every T13 pushed back their OCIs to January. That's when 2Ls will start hunting for SA positions (pre-OCI probably isn't a thing this year). 1L SA positions and 3L entry-level biglaw positions are already so rare that they won't make for useful data points.

Don't worry about it. Duke with $$$ is an objectively great outcome and even under bad economic conditions you're more likely to land a biglaw job than not out of Duke. Worrying isn't going to do anything for you. Go, work hard, and see how things play out. Just as much as the economy could be a dumpster fire in Q3 2021, it could also have recovered well. 15 months is a long time in terms of both pandemics and economic trends, so who knows what will happen.

If you don't land biglaw 15 months from now, we can talk about the next steps.