I thought I had gotten used to being a rube.
Nope. Still a rube.
Was doing some preliminary research on fall On Campus Interviews. (OCI). The Fall OCI is muy, muy, muy importante for law students. This is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, the reason why we’ve been working our asses off. This is where the Big Law apple gets really shiny and appealing. See, these employers, off the strength of your first-year grades, invite you to an interview. Many of these employers only take the top 10%, top 20% of the class for an interview. They also want law review, moot court, all the goodies. Usually it’s the largest employers who are coming to campus to interview, though there are smaller firms and a few government agencies who come through as well.
You interview, you land your summer job. And that’s it. If you do well your summer after 2L, they invite you back to work, full time, as an associate after you’ve graduated after your 3L.
For some reason, I didn’t realize just how important the grades were. It almost doesn’t matter what you graduate with, because those who are chasing those Big Law jobs landed them two full years before graduation, more or less.
Big Law. I’ve talked about it here before. Hell, I’m working at a Big Law firm this summer. But this is where the rube part comes in.
Sure, we know they make money. But I didn’t realize the money starts early. Summers, as summer associates are called, at a large firm can expect to make at least $1,700 a week. One L.A. firm was paying their summers 3,100 a week. Starting salaries for first-year associates at these firms, of course, start at six figures. One advertised its potential of a 20K + bonus. Others will pay you a stipend as you study for the bar, and will pay for bar review courses. (This is something I definitely plan to negotiate with my first job. Bar review courses are about $3,000. *And* most people can’t work while studying for the bar. It’s too intense.)
It’s just pots and pots and pots of money. I can see why people start to pass over the 75K job, if the 175K job is just in reach. You only need to bill 1950 hours*. Who needs to live?
I knew this was the reason why people come. But I didn’t know this was the reason why people come.
Damn, what a shiny apple.
*I’m starting to figure out what “1900 billable hours” actually translates to in real-person time. I’m working now maybe 45, 50 hours a week at the internship. Manageable. If I were billing, I’d only be billing about 25-30 hours. (I’m incredibly inefficient.) That puts me only about 1400 hours. I would be fired from the firm I’m interning at if I put in that kind of time.
Or, as this article puts it:
Billing 2,000 hours a year may not seem onerous. The total can be reached in just over eight billable hours a day, setting aside four weeks of the year for vacation and national holidays. But studies consistently show that a lawyer must spend three hours in the office for every two hours of billable work. Lawyers can’t simply bill time. They have to read and respond to mail and firm memos, go to meetings, read legal publications, and eat lunch—not to mention kib-bitz with colleagues, if not friends.
To do all of this and make the 2,000-hours target, a lawyer must spend the equivalent of 12 hours in the office for each working day. Since the day hasn’t gotten longer since 1958, the honest lawyer who commits to working “full-time”—to a schedule of 2,000 billable and thus 3,000 total hours—is giving his life to the firm.
Source: http://www.legalaffairs.org/issues/September-October-2002/review_kuckes_sepoct2002.msp
