Slurry of Seconds!

So. So. Thirdsty!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Nice reference to Phelps' general awkwardness.

Fifthsky on the rocks, please

C'mon, be nice. Phelps' interviews was no worse than Usain Bolt's.

The sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep's sick.

Please don't show that picture. It makes me nervous.

Also, you should probably have an update on the UI professor, whose body was supposedly found in an Iowa City park. Regardless of your thoughts on the alleged abuse, it's best to offer condolences to his family and friends.

Breaking News: McCain has the support of Jerry Bruckheimer and Robert Duvall.

So if adhering to Corporette's advice is pointless, why post this?

Bermuda, Bahama, Go and Vote OBAMA!

Breaking: McCain's hip

Is this the same company running that OCIAdvantage. com recruiting training? A couple of kids from my school signed up for that and said it was helpful, but it was nothing like taking notes on current legal news.

13, you got it ALL WRONG! It should be: Guys at my high school used to sign up for OCAdvantage all the time, it was nothing like taking notes on current legal news."

All TTT Grads, please note the photo. That will be you.

HTH.

The Democrats are about to have a fight over saying "under God" in the Pledge. Hillary is for the words while BHO is against it.

16,
This is the new, kinder religiousier Democrats. They just had their first "interfaith conference" yesterday. Don't you know they are the new party of Christians. Just ask BHO how welcoming they are of Christians.

First

If you have the law school equivalent of eight gold medals, who gives a flip about how you interview.

This had the potential to be a great post but it really sucked.

Based on the title, I thought someone would have to place an emergency call to the Sexual Harrassment Panda. But, that would have required humor in this post and there is none.

This sucks -- is ATL now just combing the net for whatever worthless story they can find? I hear Yahoo jobs has a few you could post. Or maybe you could post the articles that Law Ladders or Lawcrossing spams everyone's inboxes with.

Oh, and memorizing facts about your interviewer is the surest way to creep them out. Surprised you ever worked in biglaw with that kind of idiot strategy.

I agree with 21 -- what is the point of posting about a post on another site? Who cares?

Me wonders if Exley would have posted such junk.

21 & 22. It's OCI season. I just read the interview tips, and some of them are worth commenting on. That's the point of this post. There are other posts that reference posts that are worse.

To that end, tip number 10 is lame: reference the conversation that you had in the thank-you letter. It's hard not to make those references sound artificial. Like clerkship cover letters, make thank-you letters short and sweet.

But I agree with one of the other tips: letting phone calls go to voicemail. (But I do that with pretty much everyone who calls me, so what do I know.)

Firm research is much more important than interviewer research, especially for law screening interviews.

You can almost count on 20% of the employers changing who they are sending to interview. It just happens.

Your OCI screening interviews also aren't long enough to talk in depth about what someone does or what they published unless the conversation goes in that direction.

20, please keep bringing the Sexual Harrassment Panda references. I find them consistently hilarious.

-South Park Fan

Yeah, know something about the firm (website and Vault book summary enough) and its practice areas (don't want to say "I want to do M&A" in your Williams & Connelly interview), and be ready to talk about yourself a lot (classes, interesting things on your resume, what you want to do, hopes, dreams, why you want this particular firm, etc.).

OCI interviews are just like oral argument. Most of the decision making is already done before you even walk through the door. For the people who are pretty sure they are moving on to the next round, just play to not lose. It's yours to screw up.

"For the people who are pretty sure they are moving on to the next round, just play to not lose."

This is good advice. If you have a call back, lay up. Do your best to appear smart, driven and collaborative.

Research is important. A sure fire way to blow an interview is to express a strong interest in a type of work that a firm doesn't do in the office you're interviewing with or that only a handful of experienced specialists do.

You can also shoot yourself in the foot by coming in too focused on a particular practice area or thinking you know all about a particular practice area. Even if you're 100% sure you want to do litigation, if you have an interview with a corporate associate or partner you should at least fake an interest in the type of work that they do. If an interviewer asks you what practice groups your interested in, don't reply "I'm only interested in a practice area you know nothing about." It's fine to say you're leaning toward an area, but it's also fine to admit that you don't know what corporate attorneys actually do and ask the interviewer about their practice. Now you come across as interested in the interviewer and the interviewer gets to talk about something they know.

The Hiring Partner website has some similar advice. Have we figured out if this is a real HP or just a law student? www.hiringpartneradvice.blogspot.com

Unless a 2L has a family or professional background in business, it's much safer for them to express that they don't know what corporate attorneys do, or that they are undecided.

Saying "I want to do commerical finance" is going to lead to a "why", and there is no way you can answer that well enough to indicate you know what you are talking about.

The same goes for the advice of "read the WSJ and talk about that." If you try to talk about the credit crisis and you have no frigging clue about the underlying mechanics, you will just look like a boob. Any attorney at a major full-service firm has learned a lot of interesting banker vocabulary over the past year, either because their client has horrible headaches or because their coworkers have been bitching about those headaches and the resulting lack of work.

Try to remember that you are not qualified for this job in general, and anything complex in particular.

I love Interview tip #5: lean forward -- a little extra cleavage can't hurt your chances

#24, part of my point is that the advice was poor. First, don't send thank-you letters to law firms. CLS gave us that advice when I was interviewing, and, in practice, I now know that most interviewers have already written and submitted their comments to the powers that be before you even make it back home. A thank-you note makes you look like a douche. I've interviewed dozens of law students now, and only the students from the bad schools have sent me thank-you notes.

Second, let the call go to voice mail at your peril. More than likely the person is just from HR, so you can't screw up, and if there's a particular day you want to interview, you're more likely to get it if you schedule it sooner rather than later. And I do think it generally gives you a slight advantage to interview sooner if you're on the cusp. Further, although there's generally not too much harm that will come from letting the call go to voice mail if the call is from a law firm, DON'T let calls go to voice mail if you expect to hear from a judge regarding a clerkship. I know for a fact that some clerks go right down a list making calls and if they get your voice mail, they move on.

So, my point, #24, was don't listen to this drivel. This is about on par with Yahoo Jobs in terms of accuracy and relevance.

--#21

Thank-you notes might matter for small to mid-size firms or for firms in TTT cities like Minneapolis where female summers get fired for making out. Imagine this hypothetical: the hiring committee meets and says, "Hmm, well we really like candidate X, but she hasn't sent a thank-you note to each of her callback interviewers yet -- better wait and see if she gets her correspondence in." Yeah, exactly. Never happens. Most thank-you notes sent to big law firms aren't even read. And if you send a thank-you note after OCI, you should automatically get dinged.

The only time you should send a thank-you note is if an attorney has personally helped you out above and beyond normal law firm protocol (e.g., friend of a family member floats your name).

One thing I have never liked about the OCI process is the so-called "hiring criteria." Between bid maniac law students and law firms with an overinflated opinion of their standing, a great amount of the stated hiring criteria are meaningless.

Unless he was a total tool or clearly only interested in the market because it was on the sheet or is a fallback, are you not going to invite back a 3.5 w/ law review? Of course you are bringing him back. Are you going to succeed in arguing not to bring him back versus someone with lower grades but slightly better "intangibles?" I've seen it happen (usually when the interviewer was a senior person from the practice group he sensed the kid really wanted), but it's rare.

Much more likely is that you bring back the high grade douche, the high grade douche goes to 10 other callbacks because everyone is thinking "of course we are calling him back", takes an offer somewhere else, and you lose the interested but not-quite-as-strong numbers candidate to someone else.

Had an interview this week at a T25 OCI. One kid was the son of a lawyer-turned-corporate (but not "DO NOT INSULT THIS KID" level) guy, on a secondary journal, with Top 25% standing. Nice kid, ties to the area, and I honestly felt that he considered 60+ hour weeks normal and acceptable because that was what was around the house when he was growing up.

We "technically" hire people like him from that school, but I also had 12 Top 10%/Law Review kids. Two sucked, but that leaves 10. Cross off the top two guys assuming they are going to take an offer somewhere else before even coming to our callback, and we still have 8 people, at least, in front of the "intangible" kid. All 8 were fine and personable individuals, nothing that sends up alarms about what they think of work.

We are not hiring 8 people from that school. No one is. Who do we bring back?

Be-your-self (but dress better).

Point 6 is right on--lots of boats have sunk before getting out of the harbor on that one.

Point 6 is right on--lots of boats have sunk before getting out of the harbor on that one.