Anonymous Lawyer

The 1L resumes started today. It's like this every year. I know most schools used to have guidelines that say 1Ls can't send anything out until December 1, and I think they still do, but every year the process gets more and more competitive and we start getting them earlier and earlier. It's very hard for a 1L to get a job here. We nominally recruit at our top schools, but mostly to get our name in their minds for when they're 2Ls. We'll interview a few students, and have perhaps one or two 1Ls in the summer class, if we're blown away by anyone. It's all a game. The difference between taking one 1L and taking zero is that if we take one, people think they have a chance, and put us on their list, and pay attention to us. If we take zero, no one knows we exist when we come back the next fall for the 2Ls. But the worst part are the phone calls from 1Ls who've never looked for a job before, and they call every two weeks to follow up on their resume, like I remember whether I've read it or not. If I remember someone's name from having already called once, the second time they call without any reason, I throw away the resume. No exceptions. It's more to make myself feel better than anything else. If I haven't called you and you have to call me, it means as a 1L you're not getting the job. So it doesn't matter if I throw the resume away or not. Every fall I also get calls from students at some schools "updating their firm contact information," which, as far as I've been able to tell, involves the creation of mail merge spreadsheets that let students apply to hundreds of firms without nearly enough trouble. I assume they are better at mail merge than I am. I wondered how they found students to call the firms. And then one of them told me that what they do is dangle the promise of access. "You'll be on the phone with the recruiting coordinators, and sometimes even the hiring partners. So if they're hiring anyone, if you make a good impression, they'll remember your name and you'll have a foot in the door." This is baloney. They think this helps them. It doesn't. If anything, it makes you look weak in my eyes. You thought you needed to telemarket in order to have a chance? You must be useless. Sometimes we give them mercy interviews if we think it'll hurt our reputation on campus if we don't. That means we invite them down here, but we know they won't be getting an offer. They don't know. It makes those interviews a bit more fun than most.