**** LRW. It's so ****ing tedious and boring. I know it's an important class that teaches valuable skills or whatever but **** it, it's stupid.

UNEMPLOYMENTTTTTTTTT

Take home assignment plus paper and I really really want beer.

Zomg this. 7 page memo due Monday and I was going to work on it tonight. I figured maybe for the first time in my life I could get something done before the last possible night.

**** it though, I'm gonna drink. I'll do it tomorrow (lol).

Passed the California bar.

grats!!!

TY. Sucks you got dinged from DOJ SLIP. Did you apply to any other governmental honors programs that you still might have a shot at? (I don't really know the deadlines for those programs.)

For what it's worth, I got dinged from DOJ Honors after an interview last year. It sucked.

I'm kind of curious about the work involved with law school. Is there anywhere online I could find a sample essay that a student might turn in for one of the basic 1L classes? Obv, it's not easy because nobody wants to set up a website that will mainly be used to plagiarize essays from.

Oh also, I know someone who works at Pillsbury and I am not sure how to judge that person. :P Can anyone give me an idea where they rank on the status hierarchy?

NH - hope you do something fun to celebrate.

Remember that the OCI process is just one avenue towards getting a job as a lawyer. Obviously it's a nice little package for the firm/DOJ to come to your school and give you a sweet summer gig, but keep in mind that not everyone who lands a SA spot is going to get an offer, and not everyone who gets an offer is going to be with the firm 5 years down the road. So it's not like winning the OCI lottery leads to a sure thing either.

In the meantime, yes it sucks that you have to hit the pavement and find the firms/agencies who are hiring, but you have some interviewing experience under your belt and you have all the credentials/experience that landed you the OCI interviews in the first place to draw on. And you still have lots of time to develop your network and experience.

It also may be that a smaller firm gets you where you ultimately want to be quicker than working in BigLaw. If you want to get into appellate advocacy, for example, getting yourself in a situation where you try cases earlier (as opposed to spending the first 3 years in the library or doing document review) will give you an opportunity to lose cases or to have your victories appealed.

Relative to big-law, Pillsbury is pretty low on the totem pole.

Relative to 95% of law jobs, Pillsbury is great.

Outlining takes a disgusting amount of time.

Principle 4 of contracts comes to mind assuming you entered a contract based on the quote

2 gals told me they had finished with 2 weeks of class left. I have never finished more than 2 days before the test. During most tests I never really looked at it.

Yep...just turned in my 3200 word memo that I had to cut like 400 words from, is worth 70% of my final grade and is pretty bad imo....sigh....

The concept of a BigLaw "hierarchy" is pretty stupid imo.

Somewhat. It makes sense when it is based upon tangible factors though, such as job security, types of tasks given at various stages of experience, pay, and the like.

Of course, the hierarchy is only partially based on those factors, and doesn't really account for things like how many hours people work.

Yep, same story. Mine's only worth like 20% of my final grade and it's pretty terrible but I don't much give a **** to be completely honest.

Law is the most hierarchical field there is. It makes sense that the image obssessed lawyers would be.

And law students not in the top-whatever are jockeying to not be at the rock-bottom where I may be headed. My take home final is to 'write a memo' I can't remember if the Prof said we have to use blue book citations and all that fun formatting stuff. I don't understand the material really so it will just be toppings on the #### sundae.

Why would you not do the bluebook citations?

lol i got hammered worse on a cold call today than i ever did 1L year and it's not even close. i mean i wont pretend to have been super fully prepared or something, but the professor assigned a 65-page case (yes 65-page case... as in one case) with a plurality, a concurrence and 2 dissents. he called on one person for the entire case, me, for an entire hour.

then he got all angsty when i couldnt fully answer all his questions in a clear manner flipping to all the different opinions (he also bans computers, so i couldnt even have notes in front of me or easily flip through a pdf). then i blanked on the name of a landmark case because i was reeling already, he called on another student to answer the question, then took the time to subtly insult me and infer that i wasn't prepared for the final.

wow, just wow. ive never cared about cold calls, and ive had some brutal ones before, but this was something else. huge class too.

at the end of the day, he apologized to the class for what a bad mood he was in and said he wasn't sure why he was acting so "foul" today, but he never said anything to me. a few guys came up to me after class telling me they were sorry how brutal that was today and that they've never seen him be so nasty before.

and i was planning on going to see this prof next week for career advice too.

you're not going to mention what case it was?

mcdonald v. city of chicago

i mean he was prob just having a bad day and i did blank on some questions (i take the approach of prepare for the exam, not for cold calls... i stuck to that all 1L year so im not backing out now), but there have been people far less prepared in that class who he went much, much easier on. plus it's the last 2-3 weeks of class so no one is ever uber gunner prepared. i did read the case and knew the material alright.

edit - not to mention he won't call on people twice until the entire class is called, and i was cold called for an entire class 2 class periods ago... thus it's a miracle i was even prepared at all (i think most people in my position would just assume they aren't getting called on again). i barely talk in class and am always paying attention so i dont see why he'd be picking on me or anything.

I have been experimenting with avoiding cold calls since first semester 1L year. I think I have finally honed my skills into a razor sharp strategy of cold call avoidance. I should write a book and sell it to nervous 1Ls.

Cutting and pasting the 343 F3d saves a lot of time. A few students said they didn't either since it was a split class with some non-Ls.

When I was teaching I would often try to draw out the students who barely talked in class. If you want to avoid getting called on, raise your hand every time the professor asks some trivial question that you can answer but doesn't require you to have read the material (e.g. some factual background on some tangential subject or some opinion question). The professor will have heard enough of your voice and will likely look elsewhere for "volunteers"