yes, SA positions fill up gradually so you have plenty of incentive to get your CB scheduled immediately.

i think it makes perfect sense but if you want more evidence: one of my OCI interviewers, a partner, loved me and insisted that i call that night and schedule it ASAP so that he can make sure "his guys get the offers before they run out"

also, and i've told this story before, but i received a rejection letter postmarked the day before the CB interview.

Almost all of my classmates are scheduling at the end of the first week of Sept. just because that seems to be when firms have space right now. Glad I got my Philly ones in earlier, in that case.

So I've spent my first couple days as a 1L being bogged down by just general worrying and questioning myself. Normal I assume? My professor told me that being a law student will amount to putting in 60 hour work weeks. And I know that I can expect the hardest 3 years of my life, but will it always be that way? Is being a lawyer going down a road where work completely rules my life?

1L requires a decent amount of hard work if you want to have good grades. 60 hours is an insane exaggeration though. it's more like a couple of hours per day and some big studying days in the week or two before finals.

2L and 3L years are absolute jokes. i lived in a different city during 2L/3L and only showed up for finals.

postgrad all depends on your job. you'll probably be unemployed so i'm gonna guess work won't completely rule your life.

I was in the Evening Division taking only 11 credits per semester but I only devoted about 25 hours a week to law school.

I applied to a big law firm via email and today I received an email back from the recruiter asking what office(s) I was interested in. I told her what offices. Obviously, this seems minor and I may be reading too much into this but: would they even contact me if I have no shot at this firm? I'm thinking this might mean I have a shot with the firm and me be offered an interview, but please burst my bubble if I am wrong.

Second, currently I'm taking four courses and law journal this semester. I have professional responsibility on fridays, and it is my only class, which is 2 credits. If I keep PR I have 15 credits, if I drop it I have 13. My other courses are tax, biz orgs, and real estate transactions. Is it a no brainer to drop PR until next semester?

Third, I have an OCI interview with a biglaw firm tomorrow. Any tips on how not to burst into tears in the middle of the interview and curl up into a ball? In all seriousness, I am kind of worried, because my second semester lowered my GPA some, but I am just hoping to make a good impression and get a call back.

/novella

1- the person who received your resume is almost certainly someone who has absolutely no role in the recruiting process other than making sure your resume gets in the hands of the right person. she's probably going to forward your resume to the recruiter in the specified office and that person will submit it to the recruiting partner. the recruiting partner (or he and his team) will then decide whether or not you're worth talking to. in other words, i wouldn't read too much into it. at most, the low-level staff has instructions to decline any resume with a sub 2.8 GPA or something like that.

2- advice i wish someone told me a couple of years ago: save PR and other bar-tested course until 3L year. it'll make a difference to have them fresh in your mind when you take the bar.

3- like admissions, OCI is largely a numbers-driven process. the interviewer has a pretty good idea of whether or not you're getting a callback before you even step foot into the door and only the weirdest/most charismatic people can change this. if you have a 3.4 and the guy with the 3.9 manages to not vomit during his interview, you're screwed. if the guy has a 3.5 and is weird and you're a normal guy, then you'll get the callback instead.

so just be a normal guy. oci interviewers sit there all day and heat the same boring song and dance 30x from robot law students. try to brighten up his day but don't be too casual. i made it a point to talk and act like i was hanging out with a friend (but remained formal and respectful) and on two occasions was told be the oci interviewer "wow, its nice to talk to a normal person for once." both callbacks obv. i'm sure ur a normal dude and will do fine, just keep ur fingers crossed that ur grades are up to snuff

As always, diskoteque you are awesome. Thanks for your help.

Thanks for the reply. Each day I've been at school now I've started questioning this more and more. I made a last minute decision to attend law school. I was a PR major for 4 years, took media law, loved it, and rushed into law school from there. I've always been a strong persuasive writer, and in PR I loved speechwriiting. But what fascinated me about the law was just the general clash of ideas. Now I'm sitting in class talking about citations and picking apart the smallest details of connecticut arson law in the 1800s, and I feel like I don't belong. I don't seem to have much in common with the other people there, and idk. I'm a stubborn person and it takes a lot for me to do things I want to do. If I bottle these feelings down now, it could ruin my life for years.I know its tough, but I want to make a final decision on this now, before I sink myself into a ton of debt. Any thoughts are appreciated

if you're in law school because you think a JD will make you lots of $$ or open new, exciting career paths then you should drop out unless you're at a top 3-5 school. this sounds over-the-top but the fact is that the odds are overwhelmingly stacked against you and you're very likely to graduate unemployed with soul crushing debt.

if you're in law school because you find the subject matter interesting or want to do public interest work/criminal defense and don't mind being in a bad financial situation for many years, then you should continue.

i promise you that if you ask 10 members of the class of 2011 whether they would go to law school again if given a second chance, 8 would say no.


if you decide to stay, let me give you a very important piece of advice: for at least 1L year, do not get bogged down in the fascinating aspects of law or try to utilize your strong persuasive writing abilities. based on what you said above, i get the sense that you're precisely the type of person who gets eaten alive during law school (don't take this the wrong way, it isn't a bad character flaw or anything). nobody wants to hear what you think about the "clash of ideas" or any other policy crap that you might find relevant/fascinating. this is the number one thing that gets many law students--even very bright students-- in trouble on finals.

guess what-- if you want to do well on finals (which will dictate your employment) you're gonna have to pick apart boring, esoteric laws and know rules inside and out, their exceptions, the exception's exception and the exception's exception's three-part test that's only used in 12 states.

i completely obliterated my law school competition and it's mostly because i figured out how to "play the game" faster than the other students. you want to write your exam like a robot, not as a human being with real thoughts and feelings.

IMO law school is as interesting as you want to make it. You can learn the black letter law sufficiently to spit it back on exams and not think about any of it on a higher theoretical level and get good grades. But if you choose to think about it, there are a lot of interesting ideas floating around in 1L subjects. Torts is essentially about how we allocate risk and assign responsibility for our actions. Property asks big questions about how we know what is ours and who can tell us what to do with it. Contracts asks questions about how we come to agreements and when we can and can't hold people to the agreements they make. Running through all of these subjects are issues of how we prove the claims that we make - what counts as evidence and what weight do we give it. The answers to these questions have evolved over time, as new situations force judges to rethink their standards.

So it's not like the big questions and clash of ideas isn't there - it's more that people have figured out that you don't really need to think about them to get good grades and move on with your life (and as diskoteque said, the big ideas may be a distraction). And unfortunately, practice so far has mostly been dealing with concrete and uninteresting details as opposed to big and interesting ideas. The interesting part is really more learning about what my clients do and figuring out creative ways to solve their problems.

i agree with your entire post but i think its important for a 1L to avoid getting bogged down with the stuff i quoted above. you could write the most brilliant policy crap on a property exam but if the professor doesn't check off 2 points for getting the elements of adverse possession on your grading grid then the joke is on you.

I agree to a certain extent But I think that's a good mind Should be able to hold both The theory and black letter Law at the same time And understand when it is Appropriate to apply the
theory. Also I think often understanding the big ideas helps put the details in context

Scare you to death
Work you to death
Bore You to death.

Unfortunately 2Ls and 3Ls take the same classes and 4 of mine are still in 2L mode assigning over 60 pages for the first class.

Thanks for the response. I'm definitely in a situation where I want to make this decision as soon as possible, even if that means possibly missing out on something I could've liked. I think the ultimate worst case scenario would be getting through a year of school because I "just wanted to try it", having a complete ****TON of debt, and getting sucked into doing something that I'll end up hating.

I guess what I'm asking is - in the legal profession, am I gonna feel like I'm showing up every day doing something noble? Or advancing a cause, or fighting for things that I truly believe in?

Cause if I've just completely glamorized and exaggerated these aspects of being a lawyer, and I don't realize that until later, than I know for a fact that law school and beyond will absolutely kill me.

it obv depends on what you're doing post-grad. mindlessly filling out charts for some hedge fund obviously isn't advancing a noble cause but for almost all law students that is the only way to pay the debt.

if you're gonna go down the route of "making the world a better place" then be prepared to not have a lot of money. there really isn't much more to it.

guys like ajrenni, xxgodjr and others should be able to give you a better idea of what day-to-day life of a lawyer is like while engaging in intellectually challenging (and rewarding?) activities.

I think you should have spent some time studying the legal profession from outside of law school. But if that's too late, try to get an internship or some volunteer whatever legal work in the spring and see lawyering first hand.

Last day of OCI tomorrow. If I wasn't so exhausted I'd actually be enjoying this all - once the callbacks start coming and you realize you're going to be employed, it's kind of fun.

tl;dr alert - Cliffs: You don't have to be a white knight to do good as a lawyer.

My guess is that the people who have those positions are few and far between, and that they are most likely overworked, underpaid, underappreciated, and subject to burnout.

That being said, there is a lot of good that you can do as an attorney without saving the world. To give you some examples:

Say you and a friend of yours have gone into some business deals together. The friendship ends, and now he wants to rewrite all the deals. You end up in litigation with a year's salary at stake. You have never been in litigation before, and it sucks. You want a lawyer who will not only fight for you in court but who will demystify the process, give you a clear understanding of the process and your options, and allow you to go on with your life knowing that the case is in good hands.

Or, after years of working for the man, you come up with a great idea for a company. You and your wife quit your jobs, cash in your savings, and get a startup going. You know your business like the back of your hand, but you've never had employees before and never had to set up policies and procedures for dealing with them. Your vendors and clients are all presenting you with contracts to sign and you don't understand half of what is in them, let alone what is standard and what is fair. You need a trusted advisor who can explain the contracts, identify areas of concern, and come up with solutions so that you can build your business.

Or, you are the Treasurer of a small corporation with only a few employees. Your President gets ill, and before you have a replacement in place (or a Vice President), he dies. You know that you are supposed to send flowers to his family but other than that who has authority to do what with this company? Hopefully you have a lawyer who can talk you through these issues and help you keep things running smoothly.

This is the sort of stuff I deal with. It's not heroic or glamorous, but I am using my legal knowledge and analytic ability to help my clients solve problems and to give them peace of mind so that they can do the things they need to do. To me it's about being a valued and trusted resource for people that I like and respect, and being a good team member at my office, which is loaded with awesome people. Yes, a lot of what I do is monotonous and is often an exercise in form over substance. And some clients act like they are only paying me to tell them the things they want to hear, or they ignore my advice and then want me to spend hours cleaning up the resulting messes. But for the most part I like my clients, and if I crush as an attorney I will have the ability to be more selective in the future.

I do get to do pro bono work in Family Court (I serve as guardian ad litem for a child whose parents lost custody), which is rewarding but also depressing and frustrating. That accounts for a very small percentage of my activity.

You get the life you are willing to pay for.
What I mean is, if you are going into law strictly for the prestige and money, save your money now. While there is money and prestige, it comes with a price. A lot of hard work, sure it is rewarding, if you like the academic study of law and problem solving, but if you don't then you are nothing more than a technician, like a poker player who is all probability and math but cannot bluff or read a tell. You will never get prestige and money will come the way a fish occasionally wins a tournament, if you get lucky, you get paid.

Another problem for lawyers is that they are expected to step up and lead their community. If you want to go to work, then go home and play Internet poker then you are in for a shock.

If you understand that in the first five years of your professional life, to be really good at being a lawyer, you need to read advance sheets, attend Bar meetings, go to CLE (in NY 24 hours a year), then you are okay. I tell my staff attorneys that they can expect a week of 9-9 Mon-Wed, 9-6 then a 2 hour Bar Association meeting on Thursday and Friday 9-4 with 6-10 more hours of prep and reading over the Weekend in order to really be a good lawyer.

Now the fun part. I run a small boutique law firm. We concentrate on taking impossible cases and winning them. We use imaginative solutions some of which are legal but not law related. I am my own boss because I want to be, I want that freedom. I say what I want, I support whom ever I want and I don't let what other think affect how I behave. I am very good at what I do and whether other people like me or not, my clients want me.

My attorneys are responsible for a case load which I over see with them. I expect them to get work out on time, market our practice and make money from the day they enter through the employee entrance.

I invest in them, sending them to not only local County Bar meetings but paying for dues to the State Bar and ABA and usually underwriting a trip or two for them to each year to attend a meeting/CLE and become active. One of my associates attended a conference in Moscow last year and will be in Panama in a couple of weeks for one there this year. Another is going to Seattle and to Washington DC in the next 3 months. That one just took the bar.

In their 4th and 5th years I ask them to take on a project outside of the Bar and the firm. I ask them to find a community group (PTA, American Heart Foundation: something they care about, and help out. Run a fund raiser, organize a support group, provide legal advice pro bono.)

Chances are if they last this long they are going to become partners.

I also encourage at least a three-6 month Sabbatical after the completion of their 7th year unless they have to do it sooner. I want them to do something radical and bring back what they have learned. My associates have worked for the UN, Doctors w/o borders, Teach America, and a number of other programs. They have earned LLMs and the like. I pay them a match of their salary up to what they have saved for the sabbatical.

I want them to stay engaged in the process of the law, I ask them to blog, teach a course or CLE, write an article that will help other lawyers understand our approach to problem solving.

Now I know I went on long, but in the end, I make a lot less than my friends in similar positions do. I still make mid to high 6 figures and occasionally 7 figures (though not in this economy) I don't kill myself anymore I work a 60 hour week most weeks, Trial weeks more like 80.

I charge a lot of money for my work, but I get a lot out of what I do. I work for people who understand I am their last resort. I am there for them like The Rock of Gibraltar when everyone else they know has abandoned them. When their business is in ruins, when they face jail or loss of their families. I stand with them. While the whole world hates them, often I let the world hate me instead.

Sometimes clients don't know how to thank me, other times it just never occurs to them. It doesn't matter. My true client is the Bill of Rights of the US Constitution. I am thankful for it.

I am not new to this profession. I have been practicing law for 28 years come September 2011. I've tried over 150 trials and litigated another 400 motions and hearings. I thank the Lord above every day for the opportunity to do His work with my time on Earth. I go to sleep every so often dreaming of winning the ME of the WSOP. If I do, it I will be the top of the Luckboxes. The week after it is over though you will find me back at my desk, working on a brief or an article or a motion or a cross-examination. I like playing poker VERY Much, but in the end, I am a trial lawyer. I come to the aid of others when everyone else is gone. I stay to relieve them best I can of the troubles they bring me, and give them an opportunity for a fresh start.

Now if this is what you think you want, Go to Law School. Don't worry about the money or the time commitment, cream rises to the top. If you plan it you will achieve it even in this job market.

If it isn't what you want, then go elsewhere now, there are way too many unhappy lawyers in the world already.

Good luck,
AC.

PS if you think you want the knowledge so you can use it in another career, then it is worth it too.

Great post ACshark. I wondered, are you taking clients on a contingency?

Thank you. It works really well for us. It keeps us fresh and we seem to have a great firm doing work we love. We do take certain cases on contingency.

1. I find my job pretty rewarding. Can't believe what a scam the insurance industry is.

2.I took my first car wreck depo the other day. Girl was a hollister model who knew nothing except for it definitely wasn't her fault and her light was green and everyone else is lying. (She got a ticket for running a red light and "doesn't remember" how she pled). good times.

TPIUWP