Secondary Market Ties? Forum

[Cade McNown]

Reposting this in the FAQ Forum after it was locked in the Employment thread (I assume b/c I'm a 0L).

I'm in need of clarification/general advice. I see a lot of students and recent grads on here advising to search for 1L/2L summer work (A) in the area of your law school, (B) Big Markets like NYC, and (C) Secondary markets where you have ties. I'm curious about this last one.

What really constitutes a "tie" to a secondary market? Where along the spectrum of Lived-there-all-my-life/parents-and-spouse-live-there/I-personally-know-every-lawyer-around to I-visited-once-at-age-7-and-bought-a-t-shirt does a geographic tie become a fabrication? Or is there no real minimum and it's all just about how you spin your connections when answering the question, 'why CityXYZ'? Thanks.

[TTH]

Reposting this in the FAQ Forum after it was locked in the Employment thread (I assume b/c I'm a 0L).

I'm in need of clarification/general advice. I see a lot of students and recent grads on here advising to search for 1L/2L summer work (A) in the area of your law school, (B) Big Markets like NYC, and (C) Secondary markets where you have ties. I'm curious about this last one.

What really constitutes a "tie" to a secondary market? Where along the spectrum of Lived-there-all-my-life/parents-and-spouse-live-there/I-personally-know-every-lawyer-around to I-visited-once-at-age-7-and-bought-a-t-shirt does a geographic tie become a fabrication? Or is there no real minimum and it's all just about how you spin your connections when answering the question, 'why CityXYZ'? Thanks.

Mainly the latter, but law firms can detect bullshit as well as anyone else, so I wouldn't try to claim ties unless you actually thought they were genuine. Maybe it's you went to UG there, or lived there for a while but moved away, or have some family there, etc.

[Cade McNown]

Bump for more opinions.

Also, does the desirability of the secondary market make much of a difference? Presumably it would be easier to explain why I would want to live in San Diego than Detroit, so would I need stronger ties to access less desirable markets? Or would the relative demand for each city essentially negate that?

[Kronk]

Bump for more opinions.

Also, does the desirability of the secondary market make much of a difference? Presumably it would be easier to explain why I would want to live in San Diego than Detroit, so would I need stronger ties to access less desirable markets? Or would the relative demand for each city essentially negate that?

Ties are ties. The stronger they are, the better off you are when sending in resumes and interviews. If you have really strong ties, they will probably be immediately visible from your resume. For instance, I am going to school in the Bay Area, but my resume reads a UG from a secondary market and three prior employers from a secondary market as well as my 1L internship which is in my secondary market. So that's immediately visible. If I get interviews here this fall, I plan to bring up that my girlfriend, family, girlfriend's family, friends, etc. all live here. I think I have one uncle that lives away from the secondary market.

It cascades down from there. Just having the UG school in the secondary market to put on your resume as your undergrad is pretty good. Having a past job there is good. Having a 1L internship there is good (assuming you have prior ties as well). Something that will show the employers immediately that you aren't just applying as a backup or everywhere.

As for whether or not some places need better ties than others: yes, definitely. Even a lot of major markets require ties. For instance, D.C. is nearly impregnable without ties (and often with them). Chicago is harder as well. I think California is a little easier maybe, but still pretty difficult. For instance, I interviewed for an LA place for this summer and they asked me why I wanted to work in LA. I would've thought that was pretty obvious since I went to school in CA, but it wasn't to them and I didn't really have an answer for it.

The only place you really don't have to have any ties for is NYC, because New Yorkers think everyone wants to be in New York. Otherwise, they can only help you. I'm sure there are a few other places like NYC that don't matter as much. San Diego may be one of them, as I interviewed two places there and didn't get asked about location. But I'm just conjecturing on that.

[Cade McNown]

Great, thanks. That's the sort of response I was looking for.