Tales from the Front Line: First Week on the Job

Tomorrow I'll start my second week of my 2L summer firm job. It's hard to believe I'm already 10% done...because it doesn't feel like I've done all that much yet! We had almost two days of orientation sessions, and every day features at least a lunch or breakfast gathering if not also an after-hours social event. Plus I'm always tempted to see my YLS and other friends after work. In short, these are long days. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't exhausted come Friday afternoon.

Everyone in my office (a BIG office: think 500+ lawyers, 40+ summers) has been unbelievably friendly and helpful. My assignments are interesting and related to things I know about, even if I have to ask some questions about format and "how do I use...?" the various administrative and research tools.

Entirely superficially: my office is beautiful, and out of the way enough that I'm not distracted by people constantly walking by (only quibble: my chair is a bit too short - but then, I'm short, so I might be asking too much to have a chair that boosts me up high); the out-of-office lunches have been fantastic (three restaurants I hadn't tried before but were gorgeous and scrumptious); and we're in a great location right on top of the subway.

On the home front: while we arrived to find that our sublessors didn't leave us plates, that was pretty easily addressed by a trip to IKEA. I also managed a pretty ingenious hack for shower curtain rings: I grabbed some 2" binder rings from Office Depot. The weekend has been a nice chance to recharge, take care of some errands, and try to catch up on some lingering tasks for school. I spent the afternoon in the sun, reading some articles I need to cite for a paper and making some phone calls for clinic. Just the break I needed before tomorrow's 8:30am meeting...

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When the Living is Easy . . .

I'm back home in Cambridge, since the best internship ever has ended. I learned how to blow things up, shoot a gun, and make an arrest . . . and also did some interesting legal work. Only one thing on that list will (at least I hope) be useful for my future career, but I had a great time. Plus, as an added benefit, my nephews and little boy cousins who used to think I was totally uninteresting now think I'm the greatest auntie/older cousin in the world.

However, I'm happy to be home in Cambridge with the SO, who wasn't able to come down to Washington with me. Like SB, the incoming 2L class at HLS is already thinking about internships for next summer. OCI starts the last week of August, and so we have to get ready to do about a gazillion interviews in a week. We submitted our bid lists for the firms we'd like to interview with, and are waiting for the results. The mental atmosphere surrounding those of us who are really committed to working for a firm can best be summed up as "DOOM." I went to see the Career Services Office yesterday and they were much more cheerful (although it was their podcasts who led to the "DOOM" atmosphere in the first place). Like SB, I have to go invest in some new suits and print out copies of my resume in 28-plicite.

Before that happens, I'm planning to spend a bunch of time hiking, swimming and drinking lemonade. I've been foiled at the moment by this bizarre salty fog that has descended upon Boston, but hopefully it will return soon to the ocean from which it came. I hope the rest of your summers are wrapping up well! SB, we have to arrange this trip to New Haven to eat lots of icecream together before the summer ends.

Summer, Months II and III

The past two months have just flown by! My internship was only 8 weeks long, so I barely got settled in and it was time to think about wrapping up projects and packing up luggage. As I mentioned in my previous post, my job was mostly related to transactional work which turned out to be much more interesting than I had expected. I got a lot of responsibility as the summer went on, to the point that I was drafting and editing agreements by myself near the end. Probably the most valuable part of my internship was learning firsthand just how important single words and phrases can be (and also the value of precise language and brevity) - I definitely feel that my time summer work gave me a new appreciation for the "real world" practice of law.

I also had the great fortune of finding a YLS alumna in the city where I was working who was willing to be a great mentor to me, taking me to interesting events and introducing me to both the city's legal market and her own unique career path since becoming a lawyer. I really enjoyed spending time with her, and it was cool to find that even in a "secondary" market, there are alumni excited to connect with current students.

In the past week or so, a lot has happened: my internship finished, I left to go abroad for a quick exotic vacation [picture above], and I had to bid for OCI (on-campus interviewing). While planning and executing all of those tasks was harrowing, the last was probably the one where I was most in the dark and stressed....even though the Career Development Office did a good job of telling us that "the economy isn't great but don't worry you'll be fine," I wasn't sure how many interviews to bid for or whether to concentrate all my bids in once city or expand a bit. Big, well-known firms or smaller boutique places? Firms that haven't laid anybody off (indicating a strong position), or firms that have done layoffs (indicating they've already trimmed the fat)? Too many questions, not enough answers - and not time to think through it all in the midst of everything else.

In the end, I'm quite pleased with the just-under-20 interviews I have scheduled for next week. I have a good selection of geographies, firm type, and practice areas of interest. While I have a couple days where I have five or six interviews, on others I only have one or two. I'm hoping that by Monday afternoon (when my first interviews are), my Sunday international dateline-crossing jetlag will have worn off, and that I'll have something clean & coordinated to wear. Cat, how're you feeling about OCI?

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Summer, Month I

It's been about a month since spring semester ended. After that, I spent a few days visiting my best friends in DC. Then I went on vacation for a couple weeks...I spent a lot of time at the beach. Even though it was the rainy season, there was a good dose of nice weather that gave me ample opportunity to lounge around and finish a book I've been reading and to review a few "you ought to read this article as a part of our ongoing research" assignments from the professor I'm RAing for this summer. I also drank a lot of really cheap beer and saw some beautiful waters and fish just off the coast. Overall, it was a really relaxing vacation, and a great glimpse into another country's culture.

Last week, I spent a few more days in DC (and got to hang out with Cat!) before shipping off for my summer job. I'm working for a mid-size non-profit. I've just finished my first week, and I really couldn't be happier. My supervisors are really great; I get to work very closely with the general counsel and associate general counsel every day. The perks are fantastic: I have employer-provided housing, subsidized meals, a nice gym, free espresso drinks all day, and even my own bike to get around town. Since there are only about a dozen interns here, the HR department and out supervisors have coordinated lots of cool outings for us. My co-interns are all really interesting, and since most of us aren't from the area, we've been exploring the city together.

My work, too, is turning out better than expected. While I'm not sure I was quite prepared to be spending 70-80% of my day working on contracts and agreements (and I'm probably not qualified to do so, given my lackluster attendance in Contracts last fall), I've found the work to be diverse and interesting. I've been dabbling in employment law, trademark law, federal grant regulations, internet content licensing, and banking agreements....and that's just in my first week! I'm looking forward to the rest of the summer and building some level of competency in a few areas of law. Since lots of my work will probably be related to drafting and reviewing contracts, I'll have to be careful to make sure I get the chance to do some longer writing assignments,too - I'll almost certainly need a writing sample to submit to potential 2L summer employers when they come to on-campus interviewing this August, and I'm not particularly happy with any of my written assignments from 1L.

Speaking of OCI, I'm really glad to report that my last spring semester grade was posted last week. YLS professors are notorious for taking FOREVER to grade exams and papers, so I was delightfully surprised to find that all of mine were finished within a month. Even though I'm not stressing much about grades (our system pretty much prevents it, and I'm not gunning for a SCOTUS clerkship or a spot at Wachtell), I'm still happy with how things wrapped up.

One of my other favorite things about this job: having evenings and weekends free to just explore the city, be outside, and relax. I really need to buckle down and finish the next stage of my research for my professor, but he's been pretty lax about deadlines, so I haven't exactly been proceeding at breakneck pace....and may have spent the last four hours watching "LockUp" on MSNBC with my roommates....

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Elephantitis & Epic-itis: Reflections on 1L

Among the selection of TV stations available to me in my overseas hotel room, only two are in English: E! and CNN. CNN keeps showing this horrible preview for an interview with Tarantino about his new movie, and in the soundbite he says something about how he didn't want to submit to "elephantitis...or epic-itis" in doing a movie about something "so big." I guess he was tooting his own horn, claiming to have shown restraint? Not particularly something he's known for, but...eh.

In any case, I obviously don't want to over-state anything about 1L, but it was honestly pretty big in all sorts of ways. I knew that my classmates would be amazingly accomplished and intelligent, but I was (and constantly still am!) incredibly surprised by how nice and interesting they are. I knew that my professors are foremost in their field, but I have been blown away by just how completely they've mastered the content and how compellingly they can make their point...while at the same time being gracious and compassionate. I had heard that YLS was an extremely caring small community, but I never expected to have built relationships with so many staff and administrators or to honestly feel as though everyone is so invested in others' successes.

Of course, that doesn't mean that things weren't overwhelming at times. As a former science student, I'd never been expected to do so much reading - so closely - every night. I'd never before had an assignment that I honestly felt I'd completely blundered. I've never felt so over-committed by everything I had to do, for things both in and out of class.

Given all that, I guess I'll follow in Cat's footsteps and give a few bits of advice:
(1) Don't spend your 0L summer trying to "get ready" for law school - it's not really worth it: it'll be hard to nearly impossible to predict exactly what will be helpful, and you should use the time to relax (read non-law books, travel, hang out with your friends, etc.) because you'll need all your energy for the semester.
(2) Do cultivate some non-law interests. Sign up for an art class, explore your new city-home, volunteer. Just do something that doesn't involve the FRCP or the Constitution or a Restatement.
(3) Similarly, have some non-law school friends: pay attention to your pre-law school friends, and try to make new friends who aren't in law school. When you need a break from the madness, they'll be a great asset.
(4) New school, new city, new classmates = a new chance to "start over," if you want. Feel free to explore new interests, redefine yourself a bit. If you think you've been unfairly typecast before, you can most likely break free from that and try again in a way that suits you.
(5) That said, don't feel compelled to create a new and improved version of yourself...more specifically, don't think that you have to conform yourself to any stereotypes of what kind of student attends your school - if you're not an aspiring academic, don't pretend to fill that mold just to fit in. Do what makes you happy: take classes and join clubs that are fulfilling, not just ones that will look good on a resume. Chances are, you'll do much better in things that you enjoy.
(6) Like Cat said, put effort into making friends - especially people that you wouldn't normally find yourself befriending.
(7) Eat well. Free food at lunch lectures and dinner meetings is great, but there are only so many food pyramid blocks that get repeated again and again.

Okay, back to vacation...as Cat said, we'll be writing periodically over the summer as we feel inspired!

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Goodbye 1L Year

1L year is now over! I've finished the law review exam (ugh), all my exams (double ugh), and am basically just waiting for grades before I say goodbye to life as a 1L. Since finishing the law review exam, I've spent several days getting my life back together. My apartment is now significantly cleaner, although there is a stack of paper about three feet high waiting to be recycled in our living room. It's not all mine - I have been eyeing my SO's growing mountain of paper on his bureau for about six months now (he's also a graduate student), and decided that while I'm throwing out paper, we might as well make a clean sweep - but I'd say about 1.75 feet of it does belong to me. When I finally get rid of it, I imagine the feeling's going to be pretty cathartic.

So, what was 1L year like in retrospect? I'd say that unlike most people, I both really liked it and did not think it went by that fast. Of course, that may be in part due to fact that I got to move in with the SO, move back to a part of the world that I like a lot, and experience various other major personal developments that have nothing to do with law school itself. Still, I think that most people I've talked with did not think 1L year was as bad as predicted. What general advice can I offer now that SB and I are rising 2Ls?

(1) Ignore the top part of this post, and go in with really low expectations. It definitely helped that I thought 1L year as going to be the worst experience of my life, and was instead pleasantly surprised.
(2) Realize that there's going to be a really steep learning curve. The first two months of your first semester are going to be really difficult. In comparison, the rest is cake.
(3) Get a hobby. Get enough sleep. Eat right. Sorry, I'm sure I'm starting to sound like your mother. But honestly, the most unhappy people I knew were the folks who were all law school all the time. I may be totally off on this one - perhaps I'm not going to get the super great clerkships that the more intense people got or graduate with a "laude" attached to my degree. But I decided that there's only so long that I was willing to wait for my life to really start, and that if I didn't start doing the things I wanted to do now I was going to be in my mid-thirties before I could.
(4) Apply for a lot of summer internships, since they're apparently a lot harder to get than you'd think. Maybe if the economy's turned around by next winter, this won't be relevant.
(5) Put effort into making friends.
(6) Don't be afraid to change the way you study as you figure out what works for you. Don't feel pressured to study exactly the way other folks do - i.e., if using commercial outlines doesn't help you with exams, then don't use them.
(7) Probably, your law school will invite interesting people to come talk. Even if you are super busy, go see those people. They were inivited because they are probably actually interesting, they will help you to think about your career, and plus then you can call up your parents and say "I got to see X,Y,Z person" and your father will rail about the inequities of one political party or go "that's nice, sweetie" depending. (I would say that's just my family, but I think it's a pretty universal phenomenon.)

Hm...I wish I could come up with more, but that's all I've got. Enjoy your summer! SB and I will be posting sporadically, I think....probably mostly about the job search for next summer. We'll see you next year for life as a 2L at YLS and HLS.

Update: Summer Job Search - Mission Accomplished!

I've been sitting on this for over a week now, in part because I had to wrap up some interview processes, write a number of thank-you notes, and politely decline a number of other offers but...

...I've finally picked a summer job! After an earlier phone interview, I traveled to visit the office for an in-person final interview last week and really fell in love with the organization. I'm truly excited about the work that I'll get to do, and the team that I'm working with seems fantastic. Plus, they're generously paying me (so I don't have to rely on the also-generous SPIF funding from YLS) and offering a bunch of other perks - really unique for a non-profit.

The only down side: the organization is located in a non-DC/SF/NYC/Chicago/Boston urban area (of course, in all honesty, I haven't spent enough time there to be able to say that it's non-ideal for a 20-something yuppie like me). But it's only for a couple months. And it could turn out to be an awesome adventure! And, I'll have about a month of summer left over to do other stuff, too - maybe work on fulfilling one of our writing requirements, or travel, or just relax.

So now, it's onto the logistics - figuring out what to do with the extra month (I'm hoping to at least make a trip to visit some of my classmates working in London!), finding subletters for our apartment, and all that loveliness. I'm just glad to have pinned down my major summer commitment.

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Cruel Summer?

When orientation started, the big questions were usually variations on a theme: "Where did you go to school?" "Where are you from?" "What kind of law do you want to do?"

Now that we all know each other better (and "what kind of law" you want to do becomes at least somewhat self-evident on the basis of the courses you're taking, not to mention the journals, clinics, and other extra-curriculars you've chosen to do), the question has turned to "What're you doing this summer?"

Admittedly, there's a sense of uncertainty in the air. This summer is perhaps shaping up different than others, simply on the basis of the economy. Law firms are cutting jobs, meaning there's an inevitable trickle-down effect...summer associates aren't be hired at the same rates by big firms, meaning that there's more competition for government and non-profit jobs, too.

Luckily (for us), we're somewhat better-insulated than many other schools. A number of my friends accepted jobs at big firms back in December. Others have accepted offers at various US Attorneys Offices from coast to coast. People are working for circuit court judges. Or for other countries' supreme courts. Or for non-profits with which they've built a relationship through the Pro Bono Network here at school. Or they've arranged to volunteer abroad in something completely non-law-related.

It's not really, then, that you can't *get* a job which is causing a number of people around here to worry...rather, it's that we don't yet *have* jobs (or, in my case, due to a bunch of mis-matched deadlines, I have been playing summer job roulette by turning down offers while [perhaps foolishly?] anticipating the possibility of other ones yet to come). Because I am interested in kind of a niche specialty (which, in some cases, means that jobs I'm interviewing for aren't even "law" jobs), the magic 'December 1' date for 1L applications didn't really apply, and now I'm trying to make a number of important decisions, but there are just too many things to think about! What to do. Where to do it. Who to do it with: private, government, non-profit.

The Career Development Office and the new public interest adviser try their best to help us navigate the mess that is the summer job search (including hosting an on-campus interview day, which netted me some interesting conversation and an awesome firm-logo coffee thermos(!), but so far no job offers), but sometimes it's hard to calm yourself when you need to figure out how to get to and live in another city (most people don't stay here in New Haven for the summer unless they're working in the school's clinic or perhaps as a research assistant to a professor, so you've got to sublet your apartment here, too) - all in exactly 3 months from now.

Hopefully, I'll have my job situation all wrapped up by the end of next week...I have two more interviews in two different cities between now and then, and I've been promised that I'll be able to make a fully-informed decision by March 1st at the very latest. At the same time, I'm kind of tempted to just move to the Mediterranean or South Africa for the summer - so who knows.

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I Hate pdfs and Excel and Everything else...

In 15 minutes, 1Ls across the country are allowed to start submitting applications to summer employers that are members of NALP (mostly, big private firms and some big non-profits), and employers are allowed to begin contacting 1Ls. While the current state of the economy has created some uneasiness among those people who had hoped to work for big bucks, everyone else just seems happy (and overwhelmed!) to begin to think about the exciting opportunities available to us this summer.

Personally, I hadn't really thought seriously about working for a big firm until a few weeks ago, when I realized that it couldn't hurt to apply to a handful of places that have practice areas specific to my area of interest...I could send out a few targeted applications, see who (if anybody) took the bait, and then decide whether I really want to work in "biglaw" (or in my case, "biglaw" or "midlaw") this summer, or whether I'd go ahead with my original plan to work at a non-profit or governmental agency or two.

Of course, I didn't really think about how long it'd take me to send out "a few targeted applications." First, I had to think about what cities I'd be willing to go to. Then I had to run advanced searches to find firms in those cities that have the specific practice area I want. Then I had to make a freakin' spreadsheet: firms, contact people, specific names of special practice groups. Write specific cover letters. Fix up resume. Prepare e-mails, with attachments specific to each firm.

What seemed like forever hours later, I've got a bunch of drafts in gmail ready to send tomorrow. Now it's nearly midnight, and I haven't even started my con law reading for tomorrow, and we've got a special guest speaker coming to class expecting us to be knowledgable about a recent CT Supreme Court case. I guess a working lunch isn't the end of the world, especially after a nice, long relaxing holiday weekend...

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