I was looking up the NALP (National Association for Law Placement) rules about OCI on google and stumbled rather fortuitously on a blog written by a hiring partner at a law firm.
It’s called Hiring Partner’s Office and it doles out succinct and thankfully very candid advice about on-campus recruitment, what the hiring partner thinks and navigating the curious world of legal employ.
Worth a read methinks.
You can find it at http://hiringpartneradvice.blogspot.com/
Now you know.
From a conversation between arguably the two prettiest girls in my class:
“there must be some sort of special lawyer cancer. it fills up the cavity where your soul used to be.”
- _ - _ -
What, me jaded?
Prior to Hurricane Ike and its progeny of ills, I was in the throes of on-campus interviews or what’s popularly called in Legalese, OCI. I was tempted not to blog about OCI until it was largely over figuring that sunshine, while being the best disinfectant, would also be the best way not to secure a firm offer, should I say something untoward about the process or the participants. I thought about it for a good while and decided that about the only thing that one can do with caution is to throw it to the wind so here goes nothing:
There were about 102 odd firms in the first round of OCI. We were allowed to bid on up to 30 (or 35 I can’t remember). I used up about 28 of my bids. When I first signed up for some firms, I honestly didn’t know a lot about many of them. Some I hadn’t even heard of before. I was also of the mindset that like many other things in life, getting a summer offer would be a crap shoot. And the best way to secure a win is to take more shots hence I went at OCI with a bazooka rather than a rifle.
The first round of OCI is largely populated by the big-wigs of law. Firms that you had to hide under a rock to have not heard about. Also firms about which you were more likely to have at least one friend that had a summer with them or is accepting full-time employ with. My biggest issue when I was signing up to interview with these firms was that I could not, at least not from their websites and publicly available information, make out what the differences between any of them really were.
A classmate put it quite succinctly, “they’re fungible”. That’s comforting.
After hiring and firing a full office worth of staff in my day job over the years, I’ve often contemplated that interviews were an absolute waste of time. The questions I really wanted to ask, I probably couldn’t ( like, do you have a crazy baby-daddy [or baby-momma, we are an egalitarian blog here] that is going to be calling the office at all times of the day? ) and the questions I didn’t want to ask, I was suggested I should ( such as, would you tell me three of your strengths & three of your weaknesses? ). I think I could learn far more about a person by spending 5 minutes riding with them in their car or paying a quick visit to where they live. And even that would only give me a snapshot of their life at a certain place and time. For example, my car & home are usually clutter free and more often that not pretty neat and clean. However, if you saw either 45days into the start of my 1L year (or right about now for that matter) you’d think that I’ve been living in a war zone for 15years.
All that being said, I’m amazed about what has, will and could happen in the 20minute slot that the average law student gets in the On-campus interview. And that my friends is only the beginning. More on my adventures with OCI will be forthcoming.
Am I the only person who sees insane irony in the fact that some poor man named Wood was killed by a wood chipper?
For more on that and a voluble round up on excluding evidence of remedial measures as evidence of liability see Wood v. Morbark Industries, 70 F.3d 1201 (11th Cir. 1995).
Fellow 2L law school victim, Luke Gilman echoed the oft-repeated truism of the ladder of law school life which goes something like this: “Scare you to death, Work you to death, Bore you to death”. These allegedly represent your three years (in my case 3.5-4yrs) in law school.
I don’t think I was ever really scared my first year. Okay maybe a little when my hair started falling out and when my cholesterol shot up 45points in 6weeks. But it wasn’t out of fear. I was just burdened more than I had ever been before. So I thought.
My 2L year is a kaleidoscope of multiple bright points that however small unto themselves, have this aggregate effect of making me feel like I’m on the rack. While I can’t tell you enough about how much I’m actually learning about methamphetamine production and use ( courtesy of the Houston Journal of International Law) and spousal abuse and infliction of emotional distress (My Moot Court arguments); I will say that along with that and my classes in Constitutional Law with Prof. Peter Linzer (probably the most interesting class I’ve taken in law school thus far) and Family Law with Prof. Tom Oldham, my cup certainly runneth over.
I will have to also account for Factor X, in this regard, who sailed into my life mid-summer. I guess no man, not even this Brown Boy, can live as an island, so I’ve now found myself juggling many-a-thing besides law school and a full-time job. I certainly do hope that the “bore you to death” phase is all that it’s cracked up to be. I for one am looking forward to the day in law school, when I can confidently say “gosh I’ve got nothing to do”.
This post along with the many that are fluttering around my head is long overdue. One of the things that I promised I would do on this blog is give you the reader (note the singular for a reason….) my two cents on the classes I take and law school in general.
First the course: Alright, I don’t know why Administrative law isn’t on the bar and why it isn’t a course everyone is running to take. Perhaps the fact that the reading is quite onerous and tortured. There’s a thought. Nonetheless I think that the material we covered in Administrative law was so painfully interesting (painful here was not used lightly) that you couldn’t help but be interested in the stuff. The fact that almost anything you deal with these days runs through some quasi-adjudicatory forum such as administrative law courts makes me wonder why the masses aren’t clamouring for this class. I’m thrilled to bits I took it. Between the Admin law class and trying to write-on for law review, I almost sold my soul, almost discovered barbituates and a host of poor health practices that I am glad I didn’t turn to. Such was the nature of my Summer. Something I have regrettably come to terms with since skipping summers isn’t really an option but I’m trying to make it so in 2008.
Interesting tid-bits of Admin Law, is: if you’ve got to deal with the FTC ( and if you’re in any kind of business, you always have to deal with the FTC) or if you pay taxes to the IRS ( and if you’re into those schemes those guys on the internet sell, you’re already too far gone) or deal with any kind of regulatory agencys (like the FAA, EPA, FCC and other equally ugly government acronyms) you need administrative law.
What’s sad is that city councils, home owners associations and the like all don’t pay enough heed to the principles of the Administrative Procedures Act (APA) because if you make rash ill-thought decisions not based on the record or propose and impose rules without due process, the lords of Admin law will come a-bustin your chops. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!
I will say Prof. Darren Bush, did his best to teach this class. Arguably the Punniest professor I’ve had so far. Also the only professor to do a real review of the class that one could actually use instead of the “ask me a question and I’ll answer it” format for class review that pervades academia.
Will warn the masses that he has a curious exam methodology. You get the exam questions a few days before and can even answer the entire thing but you can only bring your answer outline in with you besides any other text etc. Different. Made me sweat for 3days working on the thing. More like 2 days because I didn’t even go past reading the thing on the day I got it. We’ll see it all turned out soon enough.
To summarise: Would I take Admin law if I could do it over again? Yes sir/ma’am. Should you? You’d be a fool not to.
Discovered while cutting through the 1L study carrels at the UH Law Center. You have been forewarned incoming 1Ls!
Porter Heath Morgan’s ‘The Trials of Law School’ caught my eye when Gilman gave me a head’s up about it. It chronicles the roller-coaster ride that is the law school experience and I think it is going to be fascinating. Watch the trailer and I’m sure you’ll be just as keen to see it as I am. It premiers at the 2007 Dallas Video Festival on August 5th. http://www.videofest.org/film.aspx?id=198
Had it been any other day I would have driven up to the Big-D and checked it out but alas I’m in the throes of an impending Administrative Law Final and movie watching isn’t meant to be. I hope Porter makes it big and then can do what us law school students dream about all the time, leave the law far behind us!
When I’m in class or attending a school sponsored seminar or the like, I take notes. I take them for me and invariably I often am a scrivener for those that couldn’t make it. My ability to pretty much type as fast as most people talk lends myself to such a position. It is not uncommon for me to broadcast my notes to my evening classmates who are often victims of a far less flexible schedule. What is curious to me the is their response: gratitude and a good bit of surprise that I would want to share and not keep a leg up on my classmates.
Is this normal for law school? For most competitive arenas? I certainly hope not. I once explained it to a fellow techie-now law student that “not sharing my notes and getting ahead is like being happy I won a desert marathon because everyone else didn’t have any shoes”. That’s no way to get ahead. For one thing, it’s the cowards way up. The law center at Univ. of Houston doesn’t seem to foster that contemptuous competition that I have heard of (albeit anecdotally) in some ‘name-brand’ law schools.
It’s interesting to consider that as far as Federal Procedure is concerned, the judiciary espouses the ’sunshine notion’ of law through discovery and depositions. I have never dealt with Criminal Procedure and Texas Procedure but I’m tempted to believe they are similar (at least prosecutorial disclosure in the criminal arena). This certainly allows for a civil and criminal case to be far more than a game of legal Battleship. I am sure, however, that I have far more glorified notions of the law than what it is in practice. I guess I’ll keep dreaming while I’m in law school and just hope when I wake up to reality and a law practice that the truth isn’t a nightmare.
In the movie, Snatch ( one of my all time-favourites) the following conversation transpires:
Tommy: I’m the one who’s got the gun, son. It’s you who I think ought to calm down.
[Errol takes a step forward. Tommy cocks the gun and sticks it right in his face]
Tommy: Go ahead. You want to see if I’ve got the minerals?
[Brick-Top's men don't move as Tommy backs out of the slot parlor, then runs after Turkish]
Now it doesn’t take much to discern what exactly Tommy is referring to when he uses the term ‘minerals’ but dear reader, there is a purpose to all of this.
It’s running close to Midnight on a Saturday night and I’m double timing through an affair with a Law Review write-on paper while my lover - Law School and my wife - The job, continuously and contemporaneously battle for my time and affection. I have never worked so hard in my life. Never. Never been pulled in three directions, slept as little, yet I feel no pain. I’m comfortably numb. In fact I’m riding on a slight wave of euphoria and caffeine-induced legal literary coruscation. If I get absolutely nothing out of this write-on process (which I hope shan’t happen), I can unequivocally say this:
” You know what Life? I know now like I knew then I’ve got the minerals! How do you like them gems?”
