Unspokenone, I'm sorry. I can't say that I had a bad experience with interviewing. Actually, I was annoyed b/c of the opposite. When I did the callbacks, I was there all of 15 minutes sometimes or met two attys then went to lunch with two others. The interviews were wholly unsubstantive and they wanted to basically just shoot the breeze and see if they liked me as a person. I was like ??? I was annoyed b/c I come from a technical background where the interviews are basically, get up on the dry erase board and show us your genius...or not while we shout questions at you and have you re-derive Green's theorem or show us how you would solve the research problem that we haven't been able to solve for 5 years now. Oddly enough, I got most of the lawfirm offers so I guess that it all worked out. Also, the firms that I went to 1L and 2L summers discouraged us from working on weekends and beyond 5. Heck, we were good if we could get a few assignments done each week for all of the time spent schmoozing and going to summer associate events. It was crazy and I actually got tired of having to go to all of those events. Now *that* was hazing b/c if you didn't go, you probably wouldn't get a job offer. *If* you want to go to a big firm, look for some big firms that are not crazy and don't have exceptionally high billable hour reqs. I would not go anywhere with 2000 or above. To give you an idea, if you take 3 weeks vacation a year and have 10 holidays off that the firm gives (which is the typical number given Memorial Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, etc.), 1900 billable hours is roughly 8.1 hours *billed (not worked)* per day (a rough estimate can be obtained by subtracting number of weeks in year from number off b/c of vacation, etc. and divide by 5 days in week). Add to the 8.1 hours your lunch time if you take it (b/c lunch is not billable in case you didn't know) and all of the time spent doing things not billable (which will vary by firm but most things done for a client are billable). Now if you want to do ***litigation**** at a big firm, that's another matter and wholly on you.
Know what you're getting into before you sign up. Understand that you will likely far exceed the minimum each year. Most litigators (at reasonable firms not the crazy firms) that I know bill at least 2000 hours per year and some bill 2100 regularly. Do you like blackberries and being virtually tethered at the hip to work all the time b/c someone will ask for something at the last minute that always has to be submitted to the court TOMORROW. I'm exaggerating a bit but transactional work is much more predictable. However, if you just have to litigate, go for it (or think of litigating in other, albeit less financially appealing arenas like a public office - public defender or attorney general, etc.).
In Chicago, 1950 is the average bill hour req for large lawfirms but at a few (which will remain nameless) it is no holds barred, how high can you go. You can find the *minimum* on
www. nalp.org. But you have to ask around about how many attys *actually* work. for some firms, the min is deceiving - beware of firms with no minimum, the number of hours worked is usually not cute.
At any rate, no matter what firm you go to, you will be hazed as a first year and basically as you ascend the ranks, you will have less people above you to haze you but the partners will haze all the same. Heck, some junior partners get hazed. LOL
Don't let it worry you too much.
SC
Quote:
Originally posted by unspokenone25
If there is anyone out there that is the legal field, law student, lawyer, I think that may be able to relate to this topic. As a law student, you have to do research on the firms that you are interested before you interview. If you are lucky to be selected for an interview, you then have to be concerned about getting a "call back" interview. At "call back" interview, you are there anywhere between 4-6 hours at a law firm meeting with different attorneys in firm (BTW, these are just for big law firms). This is all for the sole purpose of attys seeing if they can deal with working with someone, letting them handle cases, etc.
Now, if a law student is lucky to be hired for a clerkship, then the clerkship is truly the "pledging" and/or "hazing" period. Some clerks work seven days a week and 12-15 hour days.
And then at the end of the day, after all of this over, you may still not even get the job.
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