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Law School Recruiting Has Officially Begun

As incoming 1Ls, most students didn’t know much about the world of law firms. They didn’t know which type of law they were interested in, weren’t sure which firms they’d ultimately like to work at, and couldn’t tell you what specific geography they’d end up targeting. Law schools know that, so during 1L year they do a good job at bringing firms to campus, sending out mass emails about career options, providing students with networking events, and giving us lots of resources to learn things on our own. Well, after doing that for the past few months as 1Ls, the students here are finally putting that work into action. And just last week, interviews finally began, marking the beginning of OCI at Northwestern Law.

At long last, OCI  is finally under way. It’s the thing most law students wait for, especially after working so hard and at times struggling through the first year core curriculum.  So for two or three weeks, over 175 firms and offices come to campus to do initial round interviews based on the student’s selections, before the callback process begins. And this year is shaping up to be pretty big as compared to years past, at least according to the estimates that firms and our career center have given me.

In terms of the interviewers, many of the lawyers are coming to campus from Chicago, but there are also lawyers from NY, the Bay, DC, LA, and other parts of the country too. Likewise, most of the interviews are conducted by partners but a number are also conducted by senior level associates, and others are conducted by two attorneys where one is very senior and the other may be a more recent alum.  Another thing that’s nice is that most of the lawyers are also alum Northwestern Law, which is great because the alum understand some of the nuances of our program which can really help form faster connections during the actual interviews.

In terms of logistics, just about all of these interviews are held at a building named Weibolt, which is just next door to the law school. Weibolt is a building that is part of Kellogg’s downtown campus, and has lots of small conference rooms that are perfect to conduct the on campus interviews.  The set up always seems a little funny to the part time students who are here for class, but after a few days of seeing our setup, I suspect most of them get used to it.

In addition to the actual interviews, there are also “Hospitality Suites” that some firms have. Usually two or three firms each day will purchase a suite in addition to their interview rooms. Students go to the suite to meet attorneys, though usually not the interviewing attorneys, and grab a bite to eat or a refreshment as they wait in between interviews. It’s a great chance to meet attorneys at a firm you might like and also a wait to submit a resume if you didn’t get a chance to interview with that firm on campus.

In general, the OCI season is a great time now to take advantage of all the events we had last year – the career fairs and mixers and various chats with attorneys – where many of the same firms were available to share information about the legal industry.  In general, NU Law does a really good job at this programming and the career center is always rated one of the best in the country. I hope that fact means that the students here will also do really well, as they have also done in years past.

For JD-MBAs, the interviewing season is especially busy. Not only do we have interviews, but we also have final exams and projects for our summer classes which are coming to an end, we are moving up to Evanston to start at business school, and we have a pre-orientation trip next week, followed by orientation and class at business school after that. A herculean set of tasks if you ask me. But I guess that’s the sacrifice of doing an accelerated dual degree program here. Besides, in my book, busy usually means fun, because it’s a good opportunity to gain multiple interesting experiences.  And in the end, the JD-MBAs always tend to end up with really cool jobs, so I suspect that everyone will end doing up okay.

Personally, I just moved to the Park Evanston yesterday which is a hot spot for many of the Kellogg students. I also have two final exams this upcoming week and a final project on Friday. In the meantime I also have a few upcoming interviews this week for OCI, a few callbacks on the horizon, and my pre-orientation trip that I discussed in a recent post on Saturday (Click here for my recent post).

Fortunately, my OCI schedule is a bit lighter than most people’s as I only signed up to recruit with a few firms. I thoroughly enjoyed my time at Vedder Price this past summer so am being selective about interviewing for this next summer.  I’m mostly targeting a couple of firms here in Chicago, but stay tuned to see how things shape up.

Best of luck everyone with your interviews!