Law Students

Super Bowl Deluge.

By Steve Pirates

San Diego is apparently being struck by the wrath of God this year. We have heavy winds and heavy rain. The rain is basically coming sideways at us.

So of course this is a great weekend to go look at wedding locations for our outdoor wedding!

All in all it has been a good weekend. Thursday night was the finals of the 1L Opening/Closing Competition. While I didn’t place in the top three, I did get an award called Distinguished Advocate, which is basically an invitation to take a special Trial Skills class, and try out for competition teams. So that was nice. Apparently, the field of competitors for this years Opening/Closing competition was pretty talented. The judges decided to name all of the finalists as Distinguished Advocates. Ten finalists, ten DA’s. Last year, we were told that there were ten finalists, but only six made DA. So, it was nice to know that I held my own in a strong field. I like talking as much as the next guy, but public speaking is not exactly my forte.

Friday’s Contracts class was canceled so that we could go in and talk with our professor in office hours about our test, or grades in general. I went in for some tips on how to do a little bit better next semester and he gave me some good info. Friday was also the deadline for applying for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and for the California Court of Appeal, 4th District. The deadline was at 3:00p.m. At 2:30p.m. the Career Services office was packed full of 1L’s trying to get their first real law job of ever this summer. I only applied to the Court of Appeal.

Now, I am hopeful that I will get an interview. I spent most of last week working with Career Services to make my resume the best it could be. In fact, I felt a little bad about the constant e-mails to the Career Services director. First we got our grades, and I needed to know how to put that on my resume. Then, I made the finals of the 1L Competition, and had to know whether that was worth putting on my resume. Then I got the Distinguished Advocate thing, and had to know if that was something to put on the resume. So by Friday, I think that Career Services was plenty sick of me. But, I feel pretty good about how my resume looks. One of the big reasons I chose California Western over other schools in the area was the reputation of the Career Services office here. So far they’ve lived up to the hype. I guess we’ll have to wait and see whether it worked out well enough to land an interview.

My question for anyone who cares to offer their opinion is this… If I land an interview, should I outright tell the interviewing attorney that the Court of Appeal is my first choice? I feel that for many of my classmates, they would rather work for a Federal Court, or Federal Agency, and as a second choice would like the California Court of Appeal.

Me? I’m a state court kind of guy. I don’t plan on leaving San Diego, and neither criminal law, nor domestic violence law, nor family law have much interaction with the Federal Court. So, should I point all of that out to an interviewing attorney? Or just play it straight?

Full post as published by Jolly Lawger on February 03, 2008 (boomark / email).