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Green Crayons
Apr 2, 2009
But you'll have to sell it. So you'll need to be heartbroken for like a month. But you need to sell that you're an awesome associate even in the face of personal life tragedy, so only one of those days you need to show up mildly disheveled and stick to your office with the door closed, while the other 29 days you bill 15-20 hour days because you needed to lose yourself in your work to get over your heartbreak. If you catch yourself chuckling at any office humor, bite your tongue and bring tears to your eyes so they will know that you're laughing to mask the pain. Also, try to perfect "dead eyes" when having face-to-face conversations with peers.




Sounds like an awful amount of lying.



edit: Look, new page. Here's some more content!

I wish law school would start already. I'm tired of waiting. I just want to be in the thick of hating myself.

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G-Mawwwwwww
Jan 31, 2003

My LPth are Hot Garbage
Biscuit Hider

Green Crayons posted:

I wish law school would start already. I'm tired of waiting. I just want to be in the thick of hating myself.

I think my hatred for law school has actually exceeded my hatred for myself. Bar torts, every single course I've ever taken has been wholly useless outside of the classroom. I actually use my undergraduate major more on a day-to-day basis than I do my legal education. Law school is less about teaching you how to be a lawyer than a professor waxing over the topics that they're interested in while not teaching you a loving thing about the law as practiced.

Then again, I'm bitter over the latest round of grades. Maybe saying "Assuming plaintiff could find a jury with a full set of teeth between them, they would prevail in court" is the wrong thing to say in a final exam. Alternately, I might just be poo poo at both law theory and practice so just take it with a grain of salt.

G-Mawwwwwww fucked around with this message at 04:09 on Jun 15, 2010

Incredulous Red
Mar 25, 2008

So one of the attorneys in my office today was having a loud conversation about how going to law school if you don't want to be a lawyer is the worst thing you could do.

Three hours later a guy from the company furniture warehouse delivers me a new office chair. He heard I was a summer law clerk, and it turns out he is clerking out in another county's courthouse for free a couple times a week. I asked him what year in law school he was. "Oh, I graduated last year."

At least he has a job (chalk one up for being grandfathered in and the night program). Unfortunately, his school is going to use him for its "employed at graduation" stats.

Neko Sou
Jan 24, 2006
Scarved Wonder

Lykourgos posted:

The original was too broad; if you want to be an ambulance chaser or sell every waking hour to shitlaw, then you really don't know what you ought to want for yourself. It's been pointed out that, with few exceptions, government work is the best work. You could of course be a government civil attorney, or some sort of regulator, but let's be honest: if you want to get into a high class profession, then don't aim for the arse end of it. Therefore, criminal law; plus you do the most good there anyway, given the higher issues involved.

Aside from making you bitter, where does family law fall? I had the impression that ugly divorces aside you could directly help someone without the horrible feeling of "oops I just sent that guy to jail for 15 years" hanging over your head.

nm
Jan 28, 2008

"I saw Minos the Space Judge holding a golden sceptre and passing sentence upon the Martians. There he presided, and around him the noble Space Prosecutors sought the firm justice of space law."

Neko Sou posted:

Aside from making you bitter, where does family law fall? I had the impression that ugly divorces aside you could directly help someone without the horrible feeling of "oops I just sent that guy to jail for 15 years" hanging over your head.
Well, there are two types of family law lawyers.
There are the ones that handle divorces between people with lots of assets and then there is shitlaw.
Most (but not all) family people I've met are actually more bitter and cynical than hardened PDs. That said if you can get in the first category (you need to be able to be very nice to your client and very mean to everyone else), you can make a drat good living.

franzkafka
Jun 30, 2006

kafkabot mk. II: stronger, faster & more alienated
I'm a recent grad looking for nonprofit work. I have an LLM and I did a fellowship with the ACLU, but I went to a T3 school and ended up in the top 1/3. I'm having a tough time even finding venues to search for nonprofit jobs. I've been hitting idealist.org pretty hard, but to no avail. Any ideas?

It seems like the 501c3's are still hurting from the downturn and aren't hiring, generally...

Solomon Grundy
Feb 10, 2007

Born on a Monday

Neko Sou posted:

Aside from making you bitter, where does family law fall? I had the impression that ugly divorces aside you could directly help someone without the horrible feeling of "oops I just sent that guy to jail for 15 years" hanging over your head.

Family law is horrible. You don't want to do it unless you have a personality disorder. Everyone always ends up hating you, even your own client. Watching the kids get punted around like a football is the worst, especially when the clients start accusing each other of abusing the kids, real or imagined.

Green Crayons
Apr 2, 2009

CaptainScraps posted:

I think my hatred for law school has actually exceeded my hatred for myself. Bar torts, every single course I've ever taken has been wholly useless outside of the classroom. I actually use my undergraduate major more on a day-to-day basis than I do my legal education. Law school is less about teaching you how to be a lawyer than a professor waxing over the topics that they're interested in while not teaching you a loving thing about the law as practiced.
I'm hoping knowing this before hand will undercut the severity of the impact. Another three year hoop to jump through that exposes me to a shitload of information that's interesting on a theoretical level but will have absolutely no impact on my actual life? After grade school and undergrad, this is really getting old hat and really just feels par for the course for any type of formal education I've ever experienced.


Solomon Grundy posted:

Family law is horrible. You don't want to do it unless you have a personality disorder. Everyone always ends up hating you, even your own client. Watching the kids get punted around like a football is the worst, especially when the clients start accusing each other of abusing the kids, real or imagined.
When people ask me what kind of law I want to practice I don't go into a lengthy tirade about how my relatively limited exposure to two different types of defense work has shown me appealing aspects to both and I could easily see myself working in one field or the other for a lengthy period of my life, but this is all really conjecture because with the economy the way it is and my ultimate dream job in the legal field I don't think I would mind a prosecution gig and that's really giving myself more undue credit than anything else because those things are hard to come by and holy crap plaintiff's work would be more appealing than unemployment so I guess that's the bottom of the barrel but what would be really sweet would be to clerk for a judge I really like for a few years while weighing my options, and then somehow fall into academia after a decade or so of civil defense but that shouldn't discredit all of the other imaginary options that this question inherently assumes to exist because often times I feel like a kid in a candy store with all of the different career life paths I could take but the sucker punch of reality which is always a byproduct of thinking this through thanks to your god damned question really puts a damper in my sails and oh god I'm going to be in so much debt and some of these assholes on Facebook that I've been stalking about once a week who are going to be my future class peers are going to do better than me because I'm not a snowflake and grading is arbitrary makes me irrationally angry and I have to bottle that poo poo up inside because I can't let anyone see that random people on the god drat internet I haven't even met yet bother me with their incredibly positive smiling profile pictures and holy god what the gently caress I started out answering this question on a positive note where have I taken it?


No. I only say, "You know, just not family law."

wacko_-
Mar 29, 2004

HooKars posted:

This seems easier for a guy. Do I have to go out and buy a cubic zirconia ring?

A female law school friend actually did this for one of her 2L summer firms. Her lie was elaborate and involved him being a consultant that was traveling constantly during the week. During the weekend, he had things to do at the ranch and couldn't be in the city.

She was ultimately no offered, so its possible they saw through the lie since no one ever showed. Or she mentioned too many details and they did a check to see if he existed.

So be sure to make a fake Facebook account for him too :)

wacko_- fucked around with this message at 13:59 on Jun 15, 2010

Dr. Mantis Toboggan
May 5, 2003

Does anyone else get irrationally annoyed at the phrase "cushy gig?" It is so goddamn annoying to me for some reason. I've always only associated the word "gig" with music performances.

To post something on-topic: don't go, no jobs, die alone.

builds character
Jan 16, 2008

Keep at it.

HooKars posted:

Anyone have any really good made-up excuses for wanting to work in a specific state that you have no connection to (and haven't even ever been to)?

Lie. I also think everyone should recognize you were sucker punched by your NYC job. This is a more compelling story if you're switching practice areas now. "I really wanted to do litigation but when they were assigning us they had a glut of corporate work and most of us were assigned to the corporate group only to be laid off when that work dried up. I'm really excited about the opportunity to get back to litigation."

CaptainScraps posted:

I think my hatred for law school has actually exceeded my hatred for myself. Bar torts, every single course I've ever taken has been wholly useless outside of the classroom. I actually use my undergraduate major more on a day-to-day basis than I do my legal education. Law school is less about teaching you how to be a lawyer than a professor waxing over the topics that they're interested in while not teaching you a loving thing about the law as practiced.

Then again, I'm bitter over the latest round of grades. Maybe saying "Assuming plaintiff could find a jury with a full set of teeth between them, they would prevail in court" is the wrong thing to say in a final exam. Alternately, I might just be poo poo at both law theory and practice so just take it with a grain of salt.

Securities law courses are very useful. Corporations or Business Associations courses are good background to have. Bankruptcy courses can be incredibly useful.

Oh wait, litigation? :frogout:

Solomon Grundy posted:

Family law is horrible. You don't want to do it unless you have a personality disorder. Everyone always ends up hating you, even your own client. Watching the kids get punted around like a football is the worst, especially when the clients start accusing each other of abusing the kids, real or imagined.

Solomon Grundy posted:

Family law is horrible. You don't want to do it unless you have a personality disorder. Everyone always ends up hating you, even your own client. Watching the kids get punted around like a football is the worst, especially when the clients start accusing each other of abusing the kids, real or imagined.

Solomon Grundy posted:

Family law is horrible. You don't want to do it unless you have a personality disorder. Everyone always ends up hating you, even your own client. Watching the kids get punted around like a football is the worst, especially when the clients start accusing each other of abusing the kids, real or imagined.

I'm not quoting this three times because it's the internet and I think it's funny.

Stunt Rock
Jul 28, 2002

DEATH WISH AT 120 DECIBELS

Solomon Grundy posted:

Family law is horrible. You don't want to do it unless you have a personality disorder. Everyone always ends up hating you, even your own client. Watching the kids get punted around like a football is the worst, especially when the clients start accusing each other of abusing the kids, real or imagined.

I had my first ever full on chancery trial the other day and it got continued during cross of the last loving witness and my client started flipping out and crying and when the judge was getting up to leave the courtroom she grabbed me and told me "STOP HER! YOU'VE GOT TO STOP HER!"

echopapa
Jun 2, 2005

El Presidente smiles upon this thread.
I have been practicing family law for a year and a half, and my cases have involved

-interstate kidnapping
-mail-order brides
-child molesting
-strippers
-meth addicts
-borderline personality disorder
-mentally retarded women being raped by their ex-boyfriends
-affairs with stepkids
-bestiality

So family law is basically The Aristocrats.

Defleshed
Nov 18, 2004

F is for... FREEDOM
Since many of us come from stable, sensible families and have risk-averse personalities that led us to (previously) stable careers such as law practice, it is often hard for us to even imagine some of the situations in which your average family law client finds him or herself.

But "those people" are out there, and they are legion.

Kase Im Licht
Jan 26, 2001
A friend of mine has been doing family law for about 3 years now and she's pretty happy. She doesn't seem to get too much of the really nasty kid stuff. Maybe that comes from practicing in a fairly wealthy area with an established firm that can select what cases they take. She did have a crazy opposing pro se who sent her emails about how he knows where she lives.

She seems to enjoy the litigation aspects of it, being smarter than the other side and using that to gently caress them over in noticeable and satisfying ways. Lots of dumb family law attorneys practicing out there too it seems like. She regularly has stories of winning arguments that she thought she had no chance at until the other lawyer did something retarded. (If you practice in a jurisdiction with a criminal adultery statute, you should probably be aware of the 5th amendment implications)

Phil Moscowitz
Feb 19, 2007

If blood be the price of admiralty,
Lord God, we ha' paid in full!
Here's a great job listing on Tulane's career services listserv

quote:

Pro se litigant needs recent JD not yet licensed to do research for various civil cases. Can only afford $10/hr. Access to legal search engine like Lexis required.

Thanks Tulane! $150,000 gets you $10/hr (as long as your free Lexis account lasts!)

Solomon Grundy
Feb 10, 2007

Born on a Monday

Kase Im Licht posted:

Lots of dumb family law attorneys practicing out there too it seems like.

Yes. The family law field self-selects for personality disorders and lack of intelligence. No offense, Echopapa. I am assuming that you have a personality disorder.

Kase Im Licht
Jan 26, 2001
How should I account for 2 years of doc review on my resume?

I've gotten too used to just using it for applying to doc review projects. Even when I've applied for permanent jobs, the format is still too based around highlighting doc review experience, with every separate project given its own line with firm name, any special position held (privilege review, team leader, QC team), and the dates for that individual project. With about 8 projects I put on there, that is taking up a lot of space. I could just leave a general entry about being a contract attorney, but I've had some fairly long projects at top firms, and some experience being slightly more than a regular coder. Its not much, but I'd at least like employers to know that while I'm a gently caress up in general, I'm not a gently caress up contract attorney.

The last 9 months I've been working part-time at small law firm, and I've got that at the very top, but I don't think I do enough substantive work there (and its only PT and I don't want to end up having to lie to anyone) to act like that's all I've done these last 9 months. They said I could call myself Of Counsel, I basically sign things they file in VA (and make sure they comply with weirdo VA rules) and meet clients to sign them up/evaluate their cases).

I've actually got a couple connections at the moment, which I'd like to not totally waste. Someone I helped out is married to a partner at a large law firm. Maybe he could get me a staff attorney job. Or maybe a paralegal job. :(

Also have a friend at a consulting firm that asked me for my resume. This was the one that made me realize I needed some serious change. "Its just a list of everywhere you worked, you need to highlight skills you've learned and things you've accomplished." But I don't learn or accomplish anything. Still, I've got to find some way to make what I do sound more impressive to non-legal types.

builds character
Jan 16, 2008

Keep at it.

Kase Im Licht posted:

How should I account for 2 years of doc review on my resume?

I've gotten too used to just using it for applying to doc review projects. Even when I've applied for permanent jobs, the format is still too based around highlighting doc review experience, with every separate project given its own line with firm name, any special position held (privilege review, team leader, QC team), and the dates for that individual project. With about 8 projects I put on there, that is taking up a lot of space. I could just leave a general entry about being a contract attorney, but I've had some fairly long projects at top firms, and some experience being slightly more than a regular coder. Its not much, but I'd at least like employers to know that while I'm a gently caress up in general, I'm not a gently caress up contract attorney.

The last 9 months I've been working part-time at small law firm, and I've got that at the very top, but I don't think I do enough substantive work there (and its only PT and I don't want to end up having to lie to anyone) to act like that's all I've done these last 9 months. They said I could call myself Of Counsel, I basically sign things they file in VA (and make sure they comply with weirdo VA rules) and meet clients to sign them up/evaluate their cases).

I've actually got a couple connections at the moment, which I'd like to not totally waste. Someone I helped out is married to a partner at a large law firm. Maybe he could get me a staff attorney job. Or maybe a paralegal job. :(

Also have a friend at a consulting firm that asked me for my resume. This was the one that made me realize I needed some serious change. "Its just a list of everywhere you worked, you need to highlight skills you've learned and things you've accomplished." But I don't learn or accomplish anything. Still, I've got to find some way to make what I do sound more impressive to non-legal types.

What is it exactly you do as a contract attorney? How about as privilege review, team leader, QC team etc? Why are those positions special?

Kase Im Licht
Jan 26, 2001

builds character posted:

What is it exactly you do as a contract attorney? How about as privilege review, team leader, QC team etc? Why are those positions special?
Mostly involves reading emails and things attached to emails, sometimes just the contents of a hard drive, using special software developed for this purpose. Large corporation has to produce docs to the government (antitrust 2nd request usually), or to the opposing party in a litigation of some sort. Sometimes they do keyword searches and filter by types of doc to cut down on the # to look through. Sometimes they do not. We read though them to check for relevance to whatever is going on, and if relevant, check if it needs to be withheld or redacted because of attorney-client privilege or trade secrets/irrelevant info contained in the same email. Depending on the types of docs, who's running it, and how much accuracy they want, you're reviewing 30-120 documents per hour. Sometimes all you have to do is decide relevant/irrelevant. Sometimes they want levels of relevance, and for you to check if it relates to 60 different subject matter tags.

Privilege review: Most of the time you're also reviewing for privilege in addition to responsiveness, but frequently the regular coders are told to ignore privilege, or just flag anything that might possibly be privileged, without going into it too much. Then they'll have a separate team of people review everything flagged, or everything that comes up in a search with an attorney's name in the document, for privilege, since privilege is important.

QC Team: Do spot checks of other attorneys work, make sure they're actually working and not blindly clicking, see if they know what they're doing. Tell the project lead who to fire (fun!). Once I got to design some database searches to pick up specific documents they thought might need to be rechecked.

Team lead: Depends on the project, but I basically handled some administrative stuff (checking timesheets mostly, ugh, how can attorneys not be able to do basic math?), handed out assignments, and also did some QC stuff and made recommendations to the project lead about who sucked and should be fired. Typed up some daily reports for the client so they could see how we were progressing.

Kase Im Licht fucked around with this message at 21:22 on Jun 15, 2010

poofactory
May 6, 2003

by T. Finn

nm posted:

Well, there are two types of family law lawyers.
There are the ones that handle divorces between people with lots of assets and then there is shitlaw.
Most (but not all) family people I've met are actually more bitter and cynical than hardened PDs. That said if you can get in the first category (you need to be able to be very nice to your client and very mean to everyone else), you can make a drat good living.

I've handled plenty of "shitlaw" divorces. I think it gets a bad rap. I mean $2,000 for filing, settlement/jpa plus one court appearance isn't as lovely as some make it out to be. Actually, I think it's an excellent fee.

Phil Moscowitz
Feb 19, 2007

If blood be the price of admiralty,
Lord God, we ha' paid in full!

Kase Im Licht posted:

Mostly involves reading emails and things attached to emails, sometimes just the contents of a hard drive, using special software developed for this purpose. Large corporation has to produce docs to the government (antitrust 2nd request usually), or to the opposing party in a litigation of some sort. Sometimes they do keyword searches and filter by types of doc to cut down on the # to look through. Sometimes they do not. We read though them to check for relevance to whatever is going on, and if relevant, check if it needs to be withheld or redacted because of attorney-client privilege or trade secrets/irrelevant info contained in the same email. Depending on the types of docs, who's running it, and how much accuracy they want, you're reviewing 30-120 documents per hour. Sometimes all you have to do is decide relevant/irrelevant. Sometimes they want levels of relevance, and for you to check if it relates to 60 different subject matter tags.

Privilege review: Most of the time you're also reviewing for privilege in addition to responsiveness, but frequently the regular coders are told to ignore privilege, or just flag anything that might possibly be privileged, without going into it too much. Then they'll have a separate team of people review everything flagged, or everything that comes up in a search with an attorney's name in the document, for privilege, since privilege is important.

QC Team: Do spot checks of other attorneys work, make sure they're actually working and not blindly clicking, see if they know what they're doing. Tell the project lead who to fire (fun!). Once I got to design some database searches to pick up specific documents they thought might need to be rechecked.

Team lead: Depends on the project, but I basically handled some administrative stuff (checking timesheets mostly, ugh, how can attorneys not be able to do basic math?), handed out assignments, and also did some QC stuff and made recommendations to the project lead about who sucked and should be fired. Typed up some daily reports for the client so they could see how we were progressing.

I think you missed the point of his post. He doesn't need the nuts and bolts, but you can take those nuts and bolts and put them together in a more interesting way to explain why you would be a good lawyer and not just a doc reviewer.

Explain all that in a valuable way, as in what type of privilege you were looking for, what type of cases it was one, how you crafted a search tool that screened for items with 99% accuracy, supervised other attorneys and were the client contact on various projects...

Put it this way, as a hiring partner at a firm I don't give a poo poo that you looked through electronic documents and flagged stuff, but I am interested to know the subject matter and complexity of the documents and how you used your legal expertise to determine what to flag.

builds character
Jan 16, 2008

Keep at it.

Phil Moscowitz posted:

I think you missed the point of his post. He doesn't need the nuts and bolts, but you can take those nuts and bolts and put them together in a more interesting way to explain why you would be a good lawyer and not just a doc reviewer.

Explain all that in a valuable way, as in what type of privilege you were looking for, what type of cases it was one, how you crafted a search tool that screened for items with 99% accuracy, supervised other attorneys and were the client contact on various projects...

Put it this way, as a hiring partner at a firm I don't give a poo poo that you looked through electronic documents and flagged stuff, but I am interested to know the subject matter and complexity of the documents and how you used your legal expertise to determine what to flag.

Yes.

Every single bullet or whatever should have a message. Think of them as little talking heads. For example you might want to say you have lots of client contact or that you have excellent analytical skills. Then tailor your description to emphasize those. Instead of "clicked yes/no 30/120 times a minute" you could say "Analyzed discovery [can you use discovery as a noun? I don't know] for relevance to [particular type of antitrust law]." Some ideas for points to make are knowing a particular kind of law, experience supervising, self-starter, client contact, researching, negotiating, team work and working without supervision.

If I were drafting a resume for myself I would try to make this point: "Give me a deal and I will take care of it for you." All of the descriptions of my experience would be geared toward that idea. I'd include drafting documents, negotiating with counterparties and their counsel and being the primary contact for clients (including what type of clients so that the reader was comfortable that I could deal with their type of clients). For your resume you need to figure out what the point you're trying to make is and then tailor your description of the nuts and bolts to get across the message that you are good at that point. Unfortunately I don't know what the types of jobs you're looking at are looking for so I can't be as much help with respect to what your point should be.

edit: here is some specific advice:

under the experience section have the part time job first with lots of meaty descriptions, then have contract attorney second (is there another way to say this?) with a brief description of the work generally (bearing in mind the message you're trying to send) and then under contract attorney you can have each project as a separate indented point with a brief description of how awesome you were on that particular project.

Firm Name, Location
Title and dates
* description

Contract Attorney Company or just Contract Attorney if there were a bunch of companies, Location, dates
* Project description of your skills
* Project 2 description of your skills

builds character fucked around with this message at 22:42 on Jun 15, 2010

echopapa
Jun 2, 2005

El Presidente smiles upon this thread.

Solomon Grundy posted:

Yes. The family law field self-selects for personality disorders and lack of intelligence. No offense, Echopapa. I am assuming that you have a personality disorder.

None taken. My personality disorder is that I need to eat and Legal Aid was hiring.

MayakovskyMarmite
Dec 5, 2009

Kase Im Licht posted:

Mostly involves reading emails and things attached to emails,

I would suggest one section devoted to all your doc review work. Dropping names is o.k., but I'd be much more interested in the actual work you were doing and the content of your review. If it is science based or heavy tech/financial (and you actually had to understand those aspects of the case to do the review) that would be a huge plus. Show them that they can drop you into an area that you know nothing about and that you can teach yourself and become an expert on your own initiative. The more judgment calls you have to make the better. The more you interact with the attorneys working on the cases the better. No one is going to give a poo poo about whatever title they gave you at each one of these jobs or how long you were there. There might be some value in demonstrating that you could managerially supervise a doc review, but there are plenty of people who can do that.

Also, we did some interviewing recently. For the love of god have at least three GOOD questions pre-loaded. We ask the same drat questions and get the same mealy-mouthed answers, so you need to bring something novel to the experience. Certainly helps if you can actually engage on a substantive point that the person you're interviewing with handles. In a similar vein, your goal should be to show that you actually interested in and want the job (lawyers can recognize your bullshit so you might as well try and get a job you actually want).

Above all, by the time they bring you in for an interview your resume has already been deemed acceptable. People are looking for how you will fit in at that stage. It sounds like bad dating advice, but you just need to be yourself. If you have to pretend you are someone you're not, you don't really want to work at that firm.

Ainsley McTree
Feb 19, 2004


MayakovskyMarmite posted:


Also, we did some interviewing recently. For the love of god have at least three GOOD questions pre-loaded. We ask the same drat questions and get the same mealy-mouthed answers, so you need to bring something novel to the experience. Certainly helps if you can actually engage on a substantive point that the person you're interviewing with handles. In a similar vein, your goal should be to show that you actually interested in and want the job (lawyers can recognize your bullshit so you might as well try and get a job you actually want).


Can you give some examples of questions that people have asked that you've been impressed by (and why you've been impressed by them)? That's always the part of interviews that I could never get the hang of. I always want to ask "five years ago, where did you see yourself today" or "why did you want to work here" but I feel like that would come off as combative so I don't

OptimistPrime
Jul 18, 2008

MayakovskyMarmite posted:

Also, we did some interviewing recently. For the love of god have at least three GOOD questions pre-loaded. We ask the same drat questions and get the same mealy-mouthed answers.

What are some examples of good questions? This is an area where I worry I may fall flat as an interviewee, so I appreciate any tips to really up that part of my interview game.

MayakovskyMarmite
Dec 5, 2009

Ainsley McTree posted:

Can you give some examples of questions that people have asked that you've been impressed by (and why you've been impressed by them)? That's always the part of interviews that I could never get the hang of. I always want to ask "five years ago, where did you see yourself today" or "why did you want to work here" but I feel like that would come off as combative so I don't

That really gets into personal preference and I'm not sure if there is a good answer. Best bet would be for you to entertain me for 10 minutes, but as long as you are engaged and can feign interest in my answer you're ahead of the game. I wouldn't hesitate from trying some of those questions in the right context.

Edit: I would actually be interested to see what other people say on this topic. At the very least you should comb the interviewers profile for anything that looks interesting and know what the firm does in general. Questions about the interviewers past and their day-to-day work is better than nothing for sure.

MayakovskyMarmite fucked around with this message at 03:07 on Jun 16, 2010

Mookie
Mar 22, 2005

I have to return some videotapes.

OptimistPrime posted:

What are some examples of good questions? This is an area where I worry I may fall flat as an interviewee, so I appreciate any tips to really up that part of my interview game.

"What percentage of the hooker's fee does the firm let you expense?" is always a pertinent one.

Ainsley McTree
Feb 19, 2004


MayakovskyMarmite posted:

That really gets into personal preference and I'm not sure if there is a good answer. Best bet would be for you to entertain me for 10 minutes, but as long as you are engaged and can feign interest in my answer you're ahead of the game. I wouldn't hesitate from trying some of those questions in the right context.

Edit: I would actually be interested to see what other people say on this topic. At the very least you should comb the interviewers profile for anything that looks interesting and know what the firm does in general. Questions about the interviewers past and their day-to-day work is better than nothing for sure.

Can you remember any specific examples of questions that people have asked you, though?

(is that a good question to ask when they ask if I have any questions?)

MayakovskyMarmite
Dec 5, 2009

Ainsley McTree posted:

Can you remember any specific examples of questions that people have asked you, though?

(is that a good question to ask when they ask if I have any questions?)

The questions are your chance to connect with the interviewer. Figure out what they are interested in or proud about and engage them in a conversation. Could be their family, their favorite sports team, the case they just won, the school they went to, the pro bono work they favor. You have 10 minutes to talk to someone you will never see again. What do you want to know?

Me personally? I'm a humanities nerd/public law panda. Engage me in a conversation about something non-legal in my profile. Talk to me about your your senior thesis on albino midgets in Madagascar. Ask me my opinion on law school or how to break into my field of work. The absolute best questions are ones that show an interest and expertise in the areas/fields I work in, but you can't fake that. Good candidates want to know what they are getting themselves into. What type of work they will be doing. How this position will advance their career. And who they will be working with. I'm not sure I actually remember any specific questions.

Roger_Mudd
Jul 18, 2003

Buglord

OptimistPrime posted:

What are some examples of good questions? This is an area where I worry I may fall flat as an interviewee, so I appreciate any tips to really up that part of my interview game.

I think the answers to these questions can only really lose you points. By this point in the interview they already know if they want to hire you or not. No one's gotten the job by acing the "5 year question" but I'm sure many have lost it.

People like themselves and are looking to hire themselves. To the extent you can truthfully mirror them you are better off. Find some commonality and beat that dead horse until you find some other commonality.

MoFauxHawk
Jan 1, 2007

Mickey Mouse copyright
Walt Gisnep

echopapa posted:

So family law is basically The Aristocrats.

I thought this comment was really funny.

BigHead
Jul 25, 2003
Huh?


Nap Ghost
I'm sitting here taking BarBri notes on some random Tort poo poo at 11pm, and it suddenly dawned on me that if I had one singular Convisor book during 1L, I would have easily gotten straight As without even thinking about anything. Maybe it was the fact that I was in a horrendous accident 1L year and spent several weeks in the hospital and thus didn't learn poo poo, but this loving book and these loving lectures make literally everything make so much sense. All those loving cases, all those loving nit picky rules just... make sense. drat. You future 1Ls should get ahold of some barbri books. gently caress Chemerinsky and other outlines, this poo poo be easy.

Edit: it's probably because I like big picture analysis, and spending a week on subject 4(3)(a)(6) in class didn't make rule 4 memorable.

BigHead fucked around with this message at 07:42 on Jun 16, 2010

Abugadu
Jul 12, 2004

1st Sgt. Matthews and the men have Procured for me a cummerbund from a traveling gypsy, who screeched Victory shall come at a Terrible price. i am Honored.

BigHead posted:

You future 1Ls should get ahold of some barbri books.

I think I said this before in one of the other megathreads, but yeah, I picked up more studying for the bar than I did through my 1L classes.

Ainsley McTree
Feb 19, 2004


Abugadu posted:

I think I said this before in one of the other megathreads, but yeah, I picked up more studying for the bar than I did through my 1L classes.

I felt that way too, but I can't help but wonder if having already gone through it at least once helped. Learning Civ Pro for the very first time as a 1L was a BITCH but it came together well enough studying for the bar. I feel like the Bar Bri books are designed for people who have learned the material, forgotten it, and need to remember it all in a 2-month period, I'm not sure how well it would work for a 1L who has no prior knowledge of the material

But then again I can't go back in time and find out now, can I

and if i could i'd use the opportunity to drop out

Solomon Grundy
Feb 10, 2007

Born on a Monday

echopapa posted:

None taken. My personality disorder is that I need to eat and Legal Aid was hiring.

Legal aid is different. There, you are doing the Lord's work. So hat's off to you. Just try not to get too bitter.

WhiskeyJuvenile
Feb 15, 2002

by Nyc_Tattoo
alternatively you could study so hard your 1L year that you can play Eve Online all summer instead of studying for the bar

Phil Moscowitz
Feb 19, 2007

If blood be the price of admiralty,
Lord God, we ha' paid in full!

Baruch Obamawitz posted:

alternatively you could study so hard your 1L year that you can play Eve Online all summer instead of studying for the bar

"3L summer - worked 14-20 hrs per day managing extensive resource network along with economic and political system for vidiots"

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quepasa18
Oct 13, 2005

Ainsley McTree posted:

Can you give some examples of questions that people have asked that you've been impressed by (and why you've been impressed by them)? That's always the part of interviews that I could never get the hang of. I always want to ask "five years ago, where did you see yourself today" or "why did you want to work here" but I feel like that would come off as combative so I don't

When I was interviewing for my clerkship, at the end of the interview I asked if there was anything he was looking for, or something he was hoping I'd address, that I hadn't addressed in response to his questions. He told me later he loved that question. I've used it ever since.

Also, I've found that the more you talk about stuff other than the job, the better the interview is. They already know about your credentials by the time you get the interview, so a good part of it if them finding out if they like you and can stand to be around you 8-12 hours a day.

quepasa18 fucked around with this message at 15:46 on Jun 16, 2010

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