As an older student the total cost would be my biggest concern. Go to the highest ranked school as cheaply as possible.

starting my gig as an assistant DA tomorrow in my county of roughly 700k people. While not super glamorous as a first job it's definitely step one of the plan, so i'm pretty excited.

DA is a totally righteous career starter good luck!

Congrats, dude.

That is awesome. Congrats! Do you mind sharing your path to that job when you get a chance?

I'm a 1L who would like to go that route, and am working on securing a summer job now in NYC. Haven't heard back from any of the DA/DOJ/AG offices that I applied to in December, but have 7 interviews lined up at a OCI-like career fair at the end of this week. Two are with public defender offices, and the rest are general direct representation public interest organizations. Trying to decide how important it is that my 1L summer job is at least in the criminal sector, especially in a super competitive market like the NYC metro area.

Obviously my experience will be a bit different as my area is much smaller but the biggest thing i learned about trying to get into the public sector is to just keep on people about trying to get an internship/job. Everything was handled so slowly and it was definitely a squeaky hinge gets the oil type situation. For instance i applied for this DA spot in july. They were understaffed and that led to them not even having the time to interview people to lessen their burden. It worked out that i wouldnt have been able to take the spot anyway if they had given it to me earlier so that was nice.

As for internships, I interned at the public defenders office my 2L summer and during my 3L year. My pd experience was definitely brought up several times in the two interviews and phone conversation I had with the DA's office. So i would say its relatively important for some crim law experience during law school. I lucked into my pd internship when my friend from lawschool left it to join a civil firm and she introduced me to the office and told me the best way to slide into her open position

FYI my brother applied to suffolk county DA office in November of his 1L year and was accepted the following April to start 1st week of June.

If you get accepted for intership at suffolk county, once admitted you can apply there and skip first round of interviews.

Hey sorry just saw this. Yeah my understanding is that usually they have more money in the beginning of the application cycle so you wouldn't be getting as much no matter what pretty much at the end. Same with your chances of admission generally, it's all rolling right? Who knows. Seems like one of those why why would you not things.

Taking a year off might be a little bit tricky but you could always say something like I had some personal issues come up and I needed to take some time off. You could even say I also need to change where I live for the same reason (which is why I am applying to your completely different geographic area school). This all has the added benefit of being true. I don't think it's that unreasonable if it's only a year gap. I don't even think you need to say divorce just life-changing personal circumstances and leave it vague unless they ask. I don't even think it's that weird that you needed to move to another state after a divorce. I think your grades will speak the loudest and do most of the talking anyway and this is all an afterthought.

just read through responses I assume you already submitted. I would just evaluate the offers you get and if it's not good enough try the next cycle

does anyone actually have a good, reliable paralegal who knows what she/he is doing? not having the best experiences in that area. good help is really hard to find, it seems.

Yes - 2 in fact. But there have been quite a few duds along the way.

It depends on your expectations. I think the 3 at my firm are all pretty good, but there's certain things you wouldn't want each of them doing.

However we keep going through people at a similar position for various lol reasons.

K, firm I work for has had plenty of problems in that area. Before I was in charge of recruiting paralegals, it was a very haphazard process that one of the partners didnt really put a lot of effort into. Paralegal work product sucked, and turnover was high.

I started posting openings on the three local colleges that offered paralegal certificates or associates degrees and would only hire top 5% out of those programs. It wasn't a guarantee for success (you'd be surprised at the amount of seemingly very intelligent people who are actually stupid), but we eventually found four gems.

Searching for a competent paralegal has caused me to lose faith in the American workforce.

That's probably because the compensation structure for paralegals is pretty messed up. My sister is an extremely competent paralegal that is an integral part of a team of attorneys that cleared millions in fees last year. Each of the associate attorneys receive massive bonuses and she receives about as much as she would if their work had completely tanked. Completely idiotic structure. A competent paralegal basically is forced into attending law school(which would be a complete waste of three years from a practical skills perspective) to have any significant upward mobility in terms of earning potential, even when compared to a completely incompetent paralegal.

When underpaid intelligent people tend to act stupid.

One of our paralegals didn't show up for work a week ago and nobody has heard anything from/about her since. Family isn't returning calls either.

Legal assistant (secretary basically but she did some paralegal stuff) at my old firm got fired/jailed like a year after I left for embezzling around $15k.

oh and another assistant at that firm when I was there got fired for lying about having jury duty so she could skip work. Like how do you think you aren't going to get caught?

on another note, never ceases to blow me away how many calls I get from women on their boyfriends' behalf asking for help with his custody/child support/divorce case. Like bro if you're too big of a man-child to call a lawyer on your own, perhaps child-rearing is not for you.

Does anybody have any advice on juggling summer (1L) job offers (NYC)? I wanted something direct services/"hands-on" based, crim related, and/or paid. I sent out my top 16 (top 8 prosecution, bottom 8 public defender) applications in late December, and have only heard back from 4 of them, all towards the bottom half. Two rejections and two interviews, one of which I haven't heard back from after 2 weeks and the other I have a 2nd round interview (Family defense) with this Wednesday. In addition, I have an OCI Big Law interview this Tuesday, but obviously that is a long shot.

Due to the poor response rate, I fired 30 applications into a Public Interest Career Fair in NYC, and somehow got 9 interviews at a wide range of organizations. Friday evening, I got a job offer from one with a deadline of this coming Friday. Its a public interest organization that does direct representation in essentially every sector but criminal. It seems interesting and they have a good reputation for treating their interns well, as the summer includes the opportunity to argue in administration hearings and to work in several of their divisions. But, my main interest at the moment is definitely crim, as my goal upon graduation is the ADA/AUSA route. I probably don't have the resume for those internships at the moment, but have been working hard to fill it out with student organizations/Trial Ad. I would say that the offer I received would be my top choice outside of the internships like are criminal or paid.

So my choices are:
1) Take the job offer and be happy with it.
2) Ask for an additional week to decide and email determination requests to my top choices that are pending, though I'm not sure this will help me with any of the places I have yet to hear back from.
3) Wait to answer or ask for an extension, and let the 2nd Round interview organization that I have an offer due on Friday but would work for them if offered ASAP.
4) Decline the offer and let the other applications ride. Seems like the prestigious organizations take forever to reply, or I've been rejected long ago.
5) Accept the offer but pursue any of my top choices I hear back from (I've gotten polarizing advice regarding this one).

Any advice is much appreciated!

Anything akin to trial experience, even if it's administrative rather than in the courtroom, is going to look really good for 2L summer applications to criminal law offices. The offer you've got sounds great to me. If you've got preferred opportunities then you could contact them and explain your situation, saying you'd prefer them but that you have to know almost immediately, but I really wouldn't let that offer expire without guaranteeing yourself something you like better.

Bird in the hand... Doesn't sound like you're awash with options so take what you can get. Incremental improvement to your resume of actual work after 1L makes a huge difference over no work or like research assistant BS to your career trajectory over time.

Reg poster here. Need advice. Created new acct to stay anon.

I recently got a summons for fare evasion on the subway in NYC. It was dumb and I could explain how it happened (I didn't hop over the turnstile to get out of paying $2.75) but the truth would render me guilty regardless. It's a Class A misdemeanor (165.16 of the NY PL). $100 fine.

I am a 2L in law school. I know this won't prevent me from passing the BAR, but am worried about ramifications for future legal employers, specifically, the firm I will be working at this summer. I clearly have to tell them about this. Thoughts on the best way to do this? I just recently filled out a questionnaire from my firm prior to receiving the summons telling them I have never been arrested, etc. No matter how I go about it this won't look very good.

How likely is it that it could lead to a rescinding of the summer offer or a no offer at the end of the summer?

Before I do these things, I could still plead not guilty--but I don't have a very good defense. Do you think talking to a lawyer has any value? Is there anything lower than this I could even plead to?

Obviously the fine isn't a big deal but clearly not a great time in my life to have gotten this.

Any thoughts appreciated. Thanks.

First, if you have the means to hire attorney - do it.

With No arrest record, aspiring lawyer, and something really as dumb as this you should be able to get an ACOD.

Worst Case I think would be pleading down to violation.

Why do so many people capitalize BAR exam? It isn't a ****ing acronym

It's probably Hoya's fault.