Employment

14 Mar 2015

The New Third Year of Law School

This is the second in a series of posts by law firm partner/former hiring partner Jay Price. The New Third Year of Law School. By Jay Price I’m sure you’ve heard the old law school saying — scare you to death as a 1L, work you to death as a 2L and bore you to death as a 3L. The constants: first year can be like the Hunger Games minus the comforting song of the mockingjay; second year adds more class material, interviewing and law journals. That said, I believe third year has or should be chang

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06 Mar 2015

The Biglaw Devil Wears Brooks Brothers/Ann Taylor (Summer Clerking Advice from a Hiring Partner)

The Biglaw Devil Wears Brooks Brothers/Ann Taylor by Jay Price Whether your Spring Break entails relaxing on a beach or pounding energy drinks in your snow-encased apartment for lonely outlining sessions (after all, law school gunners know how to party too), finals will soon be over and then we can get down to business – summer at a law firm. The food, the drinks, the all night raves in hiring partners’ basements. Wait, that was before 2008. Well, there is still the food and the “can I eat that

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30 Nov 2013

Generation Neurotic

Every generation, it seems, gets a label. It’s what older, grouchier people like to do — label those younger than themselves as worse at something than they are. And it makes life more simple. For my generation, "Generation X",  we were dubbed “lackluster.”  We lacked passion and focus. To a great extent, I believe that was accurate. When I was 20 I wasn’t worried about graduate school or my career. Indeed, the only career thoughts I had was of opening some small business at a ski town. But most

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01 Aug 2013

...and the OCI Madness begins

A deranged student sent the following email to a close friend and CSO officer this morning. Redacted: I woke up this morning and was disappointed to see that I did not have any job offers from any of the firms I applied to last night. Some of them have had my application materials for nearly 12 hours now, so I went ahead and sent them all very angry and profane letters of retraction. So here is his dilemma. How do you get all of the hiring partners to click on the user recalled email in their

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16 May 2013

Want to make a really good first impression to an admissions dean or hiring partner?

This is a simple way to differentiate yourself, yet my experience has been that only about 1% of applicants and 5% of law students do it. But 50% of professionals do. Before I reveal it, a very quick backstory is necessary. Without this understanding, I think it is hard to genuinely “get” what I am about to say. The backstory is simply that professionals are really busy, often stressed, and at times frantic. Moreover, they know all of this. Anything tedious that requires a shred of time increas

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31 Oct 2012

Legal Interview Advice from a Fortune 50 Hiring Authority

Our first guest blog comes from a hiring authority at a Fortune 50 company. This is great advice, and most of it applies just as well to law school admissions interviews as it does to legal hiring interviews. Enjoy and dig in! Interviewing is a strange skill requirement. You’ll use it very few times in your life, but, when you do, it’s extremely important, as it definitely determines whether you’ll make it past the interviewing person with a "yes." Fortunately, it has residual value. Probably,

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17 Sep 2012

What you can learn from the 2012 Presidential Election

I live in a swing state, which means that I am constantly getting emails from both the Obama and Romney campaigns. Political platforms aside, what these emails tend to have in common is this important nugget for job search emails.

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14 Aug 2012

Your Legal Future in 5 Minutes

A dean of a law school told me once that he could tell who would win a moot court competition within 5 minutes of the arrival of the competitors—before the competition even started.

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