Law Students

Fall Recruiting and the Evening Student, Part 5: Post-OCI

By Casebook Sherpa

If you’re an evening student and have done OCI but haven’t gotten callbacks (or have only gotten a few), it can be hard to know what to do next. I know just one person in our evening sections that has gotten multiple callbacks. (There may be others. But I’ve yet to hear about them.) More importantly, there are brilliant and talented people who have yet to get a single callback.

Frankly, I don’t really have a good answer to this challenge. I’ve gathered some information though and am developing my own next steps plan. This is a loose collection of ideas that inform my thinking, and of course incorporates several things we’ve already discussed in this series. While these posts read like advice columns, I’m hardly an expert. So where you feel I’m missing key points or you have advice to benefit our readers or questions to spur further discussion, please jump in. The water’s warm.

Time is the central challenge here and its scarcity presents in two ways: time off work and time off studying.

Most evening students actively engaged in fall recruiting have already spent a good deal of capital–in the form of paid and unpaid leave not to mention employer patience–to do fall recruiting. To set the stage for a second wave of interviewing or worse a prolonged process of interviews here and there is a huge challenge.

The standard answer to not finding a position through OCI is to reach out to smaller and mid-sized firms that don’t participate in OCI. We discussed this in an earlier post.  But that takes time. Not only do you have a full slate of reading for class at this point, you still have a job, you’re presumably involved on a journal (or some other extra-curricular activities), and there are other demands on your time. It’s simply not realistic to focus a whole new block of time on this right now, especially given the energy it’s already consumed. Though if you can devote the time to it, we’ve found Martindale, Indeed, LinkedIn, LexisNexis, PSLawNet, and Westlaw to be helpful. Each of those sites has some combination of job postings, law firm lists, lawyer profiles, and job hunting advice.

So, where do you go from here?

From where I sit this leaves a few options, but the most important I’ve heard is that you shouldn’t panic. This isn’t exactly an unexpected development. Given the terrible economy, one way or another some very good candidates were bound to be left out of the callback/offer stage following OCI. And I suspect that even in a great economy some great candidates don’t fare well in OCI. Plus, there’s some evidence to suggest that finding that BigLaw job isn’t all it’s cracked up to be anyway. So it’s a good time to reassess what, exactly, you’re looking for.

A common approach is to rely heavily on your school to funnel opportunities to you through its jobs database (CUA uses Symplicity). This is a reasonable, resource-efficient approach so long as your school regularly updates its listings and seeks out jobs to post. CUA seems to do that well.

There are also alums from your law school around. Whether you’re striking out in OCI or not, it is helpful to set up a few lunches or phone calls with these folks to discuss working as a lawyer, practice areas, and background scoop on firms in town.

Another approach is to make the jump to a legal job now. I suspect that you can find a law clerk or legal assistant job now. There are a decent number I’ve found in the DC area. This could be a way to get some legal experience now and may present an opportunity to parlay that into a summer of full-time post-grad gig.

You might also discuss with your boss some of other avenues to consider for next summer. While this is a strategy of last-resort, doing to part-time at your current job while seeking a part-time internship or clerkship next spring or summer could be something to consider.

Full post as published by Fight The Hypo on September 15, 2009 (boomark / email).