The (Legal) Universe in a Nutshell
A couple weeks back Armen promised advice about 1L summer employment. I believe the date for speaking to employers is coming up sometime soon, so I figured it was time to get the ball rolling.
Thinking back to the halcyon days of my 1L year, I wasn't real sure how to land a legal job. But beyond that, I was also pretty clueless about what kind of job I even wanted. I didn't (and really still don't) know anything about the legal market. The only jobs I heard about my 1L year were firm jobs and judicial externships. I knew I didn't want a firm job, so I applied to judges, thinking it was basically my only option. But when I started talking to classmates about their summer plans, tons of people were doing interesting stuff that I'd never even considered.
All of this is a long way of saying that 1Ls should know all of their options. To help 1Ls (and others) figure out what's out there besides judges and firms, I'm hoping 2Ls and 3Ls can post their summer jobs in the comments. Did you work for a public interest group? For an NGO? For the government? Locally or federally? Travel overseas? Take classes at another school? Work for a small firm? A big firm? Hang out on a beach with your significant other?
Whatever you did, tell the 1Ls about it. I don't mean this to be advice on how to land the job--that is still a little ways off and can be a later post. I'm just hoping to get a quick sketch of the 1L job universe, if you will, so they can start thinking about what might be interesting.
Try to include the name of the organization, location, if you got paid or funded in some other way, and any pros/cons you think are relevant. Comments about firms are welcome, but try not to repeat earlier comments unless you have something new to add. I started it off in the Comments section.
Comment away! Hopefully your posts will inspire some younglings to pursue a job they may not have normally considered...
Thinking back to the halcyon days of my 1L year, I wasn't real sure how to land a legal job. But beyond that, I was also pretty clueless about what kind of job I even wanted. I didn't (and really still don't) know anything about the legal market. The only jobs I heard about my 1L year were firm jobs and judicial externships. I knew I didn't want a firm job, so I applied to judges, thinking it was basically my only option. But when I started talking to classmates about their summer plans, tons of people were doing interesting stuff that I'd never even considered.
All of this is a long way of saying that 1Ls should know all of their options. To help 1Ls (and others) figure out what's out there besides judges and firms, I'm hoping 2Ls and 3Ls can post their summer jobs in the comments. Did you work for a public interest group? For an NGO? For the government? Locally or federally? Travel overseas? Take classes at another school? Work for a small firm? A big firm? Hang out on a beach with your significant other?
Whatever you did, tell the 1Ls about it. I don't mean this to be advice on how to land the job--that is still a little ways off and can be a later post. I'm just hoping to get a quick sketch of the 1L job universe, if you will, so they can start thinking about what might be interesting.
Try to include the name of the organization, location, if you got paid or funded in some other way, and any pros/cons you think are relevant. Comments about firms are welcome, but try not to repeat earlier comments unless you have something new to add. I started it off in the Comments section.
Comment away! Hopefully your posts will inspire some younglings to pursue a job they may not have normally considered...
Labels: 0L/1L Advice, Law School, OCIP/Employment
posted by Anonymous at 4:32 PM
26 Comments:
What should you be doing right now if you want to give yourself a decent shot at a 1L summer position?
They won't have our grades to review, so how do they pick amongst us?
7:29 - the most important factor in landing a 1L job is having connections. Aside from that, there's really nothing you can do except be persistent.
Thanks for getting the ball rolling on these tips. I would really appreciate some advice on picking classes for next term as well.
7:29, 1L firm jobs tend to be for those with advanced science degrees or diverse backgrounds. I didn't bother with a firm job as a 1L. But there's a cost to that. It becomes harder to split your summer during your second year. Almost every non-southern firm insists on having you for first 6 or 8 or whatever weeks. If you do the math, it's impossible to be at two places at once. Anyway that's something to consider in your long term planning that I completely neglected as a 1L.
With that said, I still think a judicial externship to be the best experience. Civ Pro II was a breeze after a summer of jurisdiction checks on cases that were filed. Your writing doesn't have to be persuasive, it has to be right. To that end, you read good briefs, bad briefs, some in the middle, but in the end you have to look up the law yourself and come upon an answer for the judge. Sometimes the judge agrees with you, sometimes he/she doesn't. But your job is always to digest the arguments of the attorneys and apply them to the law. This is the exact opposite of what you will be doing as a litigator, but the best place to start is from the other end. You won't know what a bad argument looks like until you see it next to a good one. You won't realize how facts affect a decision until you see two sides construing the same set of facts. And last but not least, you will develop (hopefully) a relationship with a judge.
The above applies to District and Magistrate judges, not Appeals Court judges.
I worked at a small plaintiff's side litigation firm and got paid about as much as I did when I was a waiter.
This was a great experience because it helped me decide to do litigation since I had no idea what I would do before I worked there.
Working in a small firm is a great opportunity because you can get more hands on experience than you would get elsewhere, and you're able to make solid connections. The downside is that lawyers in big firms tend to look down on small firms, and especially on plaintiff's side firms. So if you're looking to land the big firm gig, don't count on biglaw to be impressed that you have actual legal experience.
Strongly second Armen and recommend a district/magistrate judge externship for students interested in litigation.
And they will have your grades for a number of positions (Spring OCIP, some externships).
I have no idea how one obtains transactional experience. Caddy?
Be an RA! You earn $14.50 an hour and get a great reference out of it for future job searches. It looks good on a resume, you go to work in flip-flops and old tshirts, and it's super flexible-- you can work four ten-hour days and have three-day weekends throughout the summer, or longer ones if you care to arrange it so. Some arrangements let you work while traveling at least part of the summer, so you can go visit the fam, take your laptop, and earn money while traveling. If you can get a full-time RA gig (or two half-time ones) for the summer, you can earn around 8K.
Not all profs advertise for RAs but all profs have funds and some just don't bother to think about hiring them. So ask your profs-- go to office hours in January and ask if they are looking for someone, or if there is a paper they're thinking about writing but haven't researched yet. Or ask that prof you haven't had yet but would like to know better.
Take a vacation. You'll have plenty of time to work in the future. Snag one of those trips to Italy or Australia, where you study law for two weeks, and then have fun.
I externed but I would recommend for 1Ls interested in public interest working at EBCLC. I believe they have summer positions for 1st years and you'll get actual client contact! I worked there during the year and loved it. I'm not sure that they pay summers though, since they are public interest, but it should qualify for the boalt grants.
Externships are great. Apply Dec 1 for these because they take tons of 1Ls so you probably have a better shot than mass-mailings to firms.
I learned a lot at my externship and really enjoyed the people I worked with. Just don't expect to be taken out to fancy lunches like your firm-employed friends. But even for those who are planning on doing OCIP it's great because firms love to talk about your experience AND they think you're interested in a clerkship which they really love.
Anybody on this blog notice the new LRAP program?
Anybody on this blog know if it's hard as a federalist at Boalt Hall to get laid? My guess is that the unprincipled liberals will get in bed with a federalist as quickly as they seem to be willing to work for John Yoo.
9:33 I'm going to take a wild guess here, and say good luck with the application process.
And it wouldn't be hard unless you intoduce yourself as "Mr. Federalist"; not because you are one, but that attitude don't get great mileage with the ladies.
What about an unpaid internship in a DA's office? Anyone do that?
Let's get one thing clear, the only thing that's REALLY unpaid is a judicial externship. Everything else qualifies for a Boalt grant.
My expert 3L advice is to do nothing. Don't think about the law. Get away from Boalt. Spend some time with your family. Spend some time with your friends. Travel around. Have a fun summer.
Ultimately, what you do over your 1L summer really doesn't make a difference, unless you work as an extern. Externs write a lot, which is good and looks good to an employer.
I wasn't an extern. What I did my 1L summer, work for a non-profit in the city, was interesting, but didn't help me land a 2L summer job, or give me great writing experience.
You'll work next year at a firm, 1Ls. Don't do anything this summer. Relax. Do something you've never done before and your future firms will appreciate your willingness to buck trends.
9:54 - I worked for a DA 1L summer and I highly recommend it. You get to see how the court system works, meet judges, research law, and participate in all aspects of a trial. It's very fast paced and the cases are really interesting.
My advice is do something that sounds really interesting to you in a location that is fun. Apply to externships in Puerto Rico or the Virgin Islands or Alaska, and spend your weekends hiking or sailing or lying on the beach. This is your last free summer, so make the most of it.
I spent my 1L summer in Europe. I travelled for the 1st month, and then spent the next 2 months taking a comparative law class. The best thing was that I went through a law school that not only has classes, but sets you up with a legal internship in Europe (or Asia, or wherever you decide to go). I definitely recommend spending the summer this way. It's expensive, because you don't get paid and have to pay for your trip, but you get to spend the entire summer travelling around Europe (or the destination of your choice), and during OCIP, firms love talking to you about your trip and experiences working in a foreign law firm.
I worked for the State of Alaska Attorney General. It was a great job in an even greater location. I did the typical 1L summer thing - wrote a bunch of memos - but they also let me work on a few sexy cases. My friends who worked for the California A.G. all seemed to really enjoy that too. Alaska A.G. pays for a roundtrip flight up there and you get free housing (house-sitting for A.G. employees), but otherwise it's unpaid.
My two cents: it doesn't really matter what you do your first summer, as long as it's something law related that you can slap on your resume for 2L interview time.
Regarding the advice to do nothing: please don't take that advice. For some reason people here at Boalt like to tell underclassmen to not worry about anything; don't work your first summer, don't worry about grades, don't worry about applying for jobs. It's all a lie. Unless it is simply inherent to you to not worry about this sort of thing (in which case you probably would not be in law school), you should worry about those things. Well, maybe you don't have to worry about applying for a job until later since so many job opportunities come out in April, but unless your transcript is a double row of railroad tracks - which of course 1L's don't know yet, you do have to worry about these little things.
I'm with Alice, to an extent. There's really no reason to blow off an entire summer. You're about to enter a profession with a steep learning curve. Use that summer to add to what you've learned your first year. If that means getting tan on the Riviera while taking an EU copyrights class, so be it. But use the summer to add to your skill set.
One drawback to coming straight to law school from undergrad is that I had no savings to speak of. In fact I had all my debts from undergrad. In the end I chose to extern where I could not earn any money from any source, meaning I was limited to LA where I could live with my parents.
Tactitus,
Where on the internet did you find the most promising Fed Govn't positions?
Thx.
Several posts ago, someone asked about working for a DA. I worked for a DA this past summer (which was my 1L summer) and it was AMAZING. I would recommend it to anyone. If you're not prosecution-minded, working for the public defender is also fantastic experience. I became very comfortable inside a courtroom, got to do lots of writing and really interesting reserach, saw some fascinating and really scary stuff, saw actual trials from start to finish...I'd be happy to gush about it to anyone. It was unpaid, but I was able to get a Boalt Hall Fellowship, for $4000. It's not much, but it's completely worth it. During OCIP, employers were actually really excited about my experience and I was able to go on and on about it.
I'll throw a voice in for studying abroad. Go someplace interesting, party your ass off, work for a professor there as an RA (if you want), and come back well-rested for OCI with something truly interesting to talk about in interviews. I actually figured out what I wanted to do with my life because of a class I took over the summer that I wouldn't have been able to take at my home institution, and landed a plum job through a genuine interest in an obscure area of the law. (I'm a 3L now and it couldn't have worked out better.)
Just do something legal related, even if it's just one class or volunteering. Can't overemphasize the importance of that.
I recommend living in a new city. After deciding I wanted to live in Austin, I wikipedia-ed the city and found a cool environmental non-profit (Save Our Springs) - also where two Boalt alums worked. SOS is only three lawyers large, so I got a lot of good work - mostly litigation. Employers didn't care that there was geographical inconsistency on my resume - they mostly thought it was interesting.
A plug for Austin: UT has a research library agreement with Berkeley and Standford where grad students at one can check out books at the other's library. This was really helpful b/c of limited non-profit resources. But get your library card from Doe before you leave for the summer. Good luck and do something fun!
Can anyone talk more specifically about jobs in California and the Bay Area for 1Ls? I have to establish residency and am nervous about opportunities in the area.
I'm not sure what you are asking, or what year you are a 1L, but you can send me an email pbageant AT gmail.com, and maybe I can steer you to someone who can answer your question.
It's been a while since Oct. 2006. I doubt you'll get an answer by posting here . . .
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