[0:09] Mike Spivey: Welcome to Status Check with Spivey, where we talk about life, law school, law school admissions, a little bit of everything. We’re talking about law school today, particularly getting a job in this new front-loaded hiring process. I’m with Dr. Milana Hogan, who’s been at Sullivan & Cromwell for the last 19 years—she’s their Chief Talent Officer—and also joined by our firm’s Rob Baker, who was a big law hiring partner who we added to our firm because the market said to us, “Spivey Consulting, what’s going on with hiring? Why are people asking 0Ls for their LSAT scores,” etc.
We put these questions to Dr. Hogan. We put these questions to Rob. It’s about an hour of wonderful advice: how to get a job, particularly if you’re interested in big law. Without further delay, this is me with Milana and Rob.
Dr. Milana Hogan, thank you for making the time. I know acutely how busy your schedule is, so thank you for taking the time.
Milana Hogan: Thank you for having me. Glad to be speaking with both of you and looking forward to the conversation.
Mike: Rob, I know how busy your schedule is because we just got off a long phone call, so thank you.
Rob Baker: Of course.
Mike: Milana, how did you get interested in—you had a million opportunities in front of you, and this one called you. Your resume reads like when we read General David Petraeus’ resume before our interview with him. I’m curious why it called you.
Milana: Yeah, it’s a good question. I was coming from an extended family of lawyers. I’ve got lawyers not in my immediate family, but I thought that’s what I wanted to do. And so I followed the path that many young people follow, which is I graduated from college and went to work for a law firm as a legal assistant as part of a two-year program, thinking I would take the LSAT and apply to law school, and I did that.
And I got into law school, and I was on the verge of sending in my first check and committing, and I had a quarter-life crisis at the age of twenty-four, where I thought, “I’m not actually 100% sure I want to be a lawyer. I want to be around lawyers, and I like the lawyer mindset. I feel like I get lawyers,” but I wasn’t sure that I wanted to do the work that a lawyer does. I was more interested and attracted to the people-focused elements of it. I like solving a crisis. I like being called in to try to sort through a disagreement or to come up with a way that you can do things better than you’ve been doing them. So I was interested in that piece of it, but didn’t think reading the letter of the law was really what I would be best at.
I shared this with the director of the firm I was working at at the time, and she said, “I actually need someone to come and help train the new legal assistants coming in. Why don’t you do that while you’re coming up with plan B?” And that became plan B. I pretty quickly realized I like training, I like learning, I like development, I liked mentoring, I liked all of that. Therapy. I think it’s definitely part therapy, this job, at times, and I really enjoyed that.
And so I just sort of rode that train a little bit, eventually took over that firm’s summer program, and then moved from there to S&C, where I moved into an associate development role, and then it just kind of rolled from there. And it’s been a really great run.
I think the thing I like most about this job is that you get to try your hand at all these different disciplines. So one day, I’m up in front of a room teaching something, I get to be a professor, I get to be a researcher, I’m taking in all this data related to hiring and development and success and trying to figure out what’s the magic formula. I’m in a lab in that way. I mentioned therapy before; sometimes I’m a therapist. I’m talking to somebody about a difficult issue or trying to help them sort through that. So I get to play all of these different roles, and I think that is what’s kept me here for twenty years and why I find it so interesting.
Mike: A lot of that is relatable. Rob, how about you? What made you decide when you were at big law to be on the hiring committee?
[3:46] Rob: A lot of different reasons. I enjoyed, for one, a break from the daily routine, right? You got to do something different, and you got to be a part of shaping what the next iteration of lawyers look like coming into the firm. Whether it’s preserving or reshaping culture at the firm, getting to be a part of that was a lot of fun. And I would get to go back to my alma mater, which was a lot of fun. That was the driving force of doing it as a young attorney at what was Waller Lansden, now Holland & Knight.
And then I started a small firm myself over on Music Row, and I became everything, and so hiring was just one of my thousand duties every day. Then I went back to mid-law at Bone McAllester, which is now Spencer Fane, and was on their hiring committee. And I did that for much the same reasons. It was fun to be a part of what was coming next.
Mike: We’re going to get to what’s coming next. Do you want me to give a little historical preview? Because I have a feeling we’ve been here before. I think people don’t realize this. NALP’s executive director, Nikia Gray, was kind enough to share an article with me that she wrote, which was beautifully written, and we’ll put it in our show notes. And she talked about a long time ago, in the ‘70s—now, to be clear, even to me, that feels like a long time ago; I was a baby—but before the ‘70s, there was no NALP; there was no OCI. OCI started in 1979. So people love to refer to what’s going on right now as the wild, wild west and chaotic. Well, guess what? It was even more chaotic.
I called a dean of a law school this morning. I had to find someone who went to law school before 1979. So I found someone, I called them, and they were like, “Yeah, we would just walk to law firms and knock on the door.” Incidentally, Milana, if someone did that, would you let them up or would you say “No, no, make an appointment”?
[5:28] Milana: I think I probably would meet with them. I might be impressed at the initiative. I mean, don’t take that as an invitation, because I think we have [chuckles] to see whether that’s ultimately scalable. But I appreciate a personal outreach in an age where there isn’t a ton of that. So, I would admire the initiative, I think.
Mike: I always think of the movie Wall Street, the original, not the remake with Shia LaBeouf, where Charlie Sheen’s character buys Gordon Gekko the bottle of whiskey for his birthday. And the funny thing about that is, that works like one out of every 100 times. Showing up with a bottle of whiskey might work, and it might not; we generally encourage people not to do that and to make the appointment.
My macro-level point being: things were chaotic before. In the ‘70s, OCI started, and it was different. And when I was a dean of career services, it was different. OCI was in September, October, interviewing 2Ls, and then it moved up, and I think New York law firms were the first mover on this. New York law firms moved up to August OCI so that it wouldn’t interfere with classes, which I think was a good idea. You still had a full year of grades. And enter me into this world as a dean of career services at Washington University in St. Louis, my first week is when the Great Recession started. You’ll both remember this. You know, I had something like five students, the day of graduation, lose their big law job offers.
I was petitioning NALP—different leadership then, a huge fan of the organization, but I was petitioning, “Can we change these guidelines?” Because all I cared about at the time, my singular focus, to the point where all 1,000 students have my cell phone number—horrible idea, for any of our listeners who want to be a dean of career services; I got some interesting phone calls at weird hours—my singular focus was breaking down barriers that would impede people from getting jobs. And so I remember, I’m not going to say the firm or the hiring partner, but he and I were thinking about just standing up together and saying, “Hey, we’re done with all these rules. Let’s get students jobs.” We didn’t do it.
But I’m going to let you take over. During the Great Recession, I thought change was needed, and change has happened, I think, due to COVID. But I’m going to let you, Dr. Hogan, take over from here. So we had this OCI, it was with first-year grades, and then what’s happened since then?
[7:41] Milana: Yeah. Since the Great Recession, it’s inched up each year a little bit. And it’s funny, we graphed this out for a presentation we did for the partnership just to talk about the history, and it was slow but steady inching up all the way to where it is now, which is January. And I think we had this little respite in the COVID era, where it actually was moved to January of the 2L year, because people were unprepared to do traditional OCI when we were all on lockdown, which made sense. They pushed it back into the following January.
And so that was the one experience I’ve ever had where we were interviewing people and we had three semesters of grades. They were really able to articulate what they wanted to do, because they’d had more time to think about it, and they had more law school experience, and they were frankly more sophisticated during the interview process. And that was really notable. Like, when we brought people in for those interviews, they were remarkably prepared and composed, and you could look at that trajectory and you could say, “All right, maybe it was a little rocky the first semester, but then they’ve figured it out second semester, and then third semester really confirmed that they now understand how to operate in this environment. They’ve remembered what it’s like to be in school and to do really well academically.”
And we had all this great information, and at that point in time, we were very much hoping that it would stick, that we would never go back to the earlier interviewing, and that we would all just agree, “Let’s do this in January after the 2L year.” And I think there was a brief moment in time where everyone was open to that idea, and by everyone, I mean law firms and law schools. Everyone was kind of like, “We see the benefit of this.” And so we were all waiting to see whether somebody would do something or make a move.
And then, I won’t call that school out, but there was one school that came out and said, “We’re going to go back to where it was.” I think they did that based on conversations with students. That’s my understanding, that they polled the students and said, “Do you guys want to stick here or do you want to go back to the way it was?” And they said the way it was, so they were driven in large part by that feedback. But that was a real watershed moment and a real shame, because I think that timing is, from my perspective, ideal.
Mike: So, a school asks, and one firm changes, and to me, this is just classic market pressure. If one firm jumps in, then all firms jump in, immediately. That’s just market pressure. Is that accurate, Rob?
[9:57] Rob: 100%. And I’ll back up just a little bit to say that my father loves to tell the story about his job search. He’s a Vanderbilt alum, but his entire strategy was to go to the tallest building in town, start at the top floor, and come down and hand out his resumes. And he got a job on his second stop. Mine was different.
But to answer your question, absolutely. Outside of maybe the schools, there isn’t really a way to exert that kind of pressure. If one firm sees an advantage to interviewing early, then if you want to be competitive, you have to. You have to follow suit. It’s the same with if you want to look at lockstep compensation, if you want to look at other areas. You know, once someone makes that move, they have an advantage until you can match it or beat it.
Mike: I think this is where antitrust laws come into play, and some people have a great understanding of this, but many of our listeners are college students and don’t know. Correct me if I’m wrong; you’re the two experts. You can’t get together with all the other firms and all the schools and say, “Let’s agree upon this certain data,” you’re colluding. You’re violating antitrust law. Is that accurate?
Milana: I think it depends on your interpretation of those laws. I think the key would be that you’d have to show that the collusion created some sort of harm for the students or the people going through the process. And I think you could actually argue the reverse, that coming up with an organized way of doing this would actually benefit the students. But, having said all of that, no one should listen to me because I’m not an antitrust lawyer.
Rob: No, and I know that fear is out there that you’re going to run afoul of antitrust laws, and so why test it? That may be the calculus, but I do know that’s a concern. I agree with Dr. Hogan. You could argue it either way.
Mike: In the short term, this is here to stay. Do you anticipate, Milana, that this will swing back more towards January of the 2L year? And if so, when and how? Because it seems like—and correct me if I’m wrong—but it seems like, even if this one school’s students petitioned for this and that was the genesis, it seems like what’s tripping up students today is this bifurcated or two-pronged approach of, they have to both reach out to firms on their own and go through OCI. And I talked to a dean of career services this morning, and I know mental health and well-being is important. I’ve watched one of your podcasts on grit. I think what her position was is, the psychological hardship is coming from having to do both.
Milana: Yeah, I mean, I think that is a challenge, having to do both and having to do both while you are also navigating your first semester of law school, which is notoriously challenging and difficult and also incredibly important, more so than it’s ever been, because that’s essentially the one academic data point that law firms are looking at when they’re making these decisions.
I think that creates a perfect storm scenario, where it’s incredibly stressful for the students to have to go through that, and I think it often leads to bad decision-making on their part, because it is the perfect condition to make the wrong choice. You’re stressed out, you feel like there’s a scarcity, you’re trying to juggle 1,000 things, you’re not thinking clearly, you’re probably not sleeping a whole lot, and now all of a sudden you have to make a decision on where you might potentially spend the rest of your career.
So I don’t think that leads to the best place to make decisions. I think there’s universal agreement, at least among the career services folks that I’ve spoken to and other peers at law firms, that this is not a great time to make a decision or the best way to do it, and that the system is in many ways fundamentally broken.
But I think there’s also—people are unclear what the path forward could be, because, to your earlier point, I can’t suddenly decide that I’m going to recruit people in January of the 2L year if all of my competitors are out recruiting a year before that. I think we all agree there should be change, but I think none of us agree on how that could happen without tripping up these antitrust concerns or putting the firm at risk in some way, that we’re going to lose out on the best talent. So I think we’re kind of between a rock and a hard place, recognizing it’s not great but not exactly knowing how to steer that, or even having the authority to do so if we wanted to.
[13:48] Rob: I know students are really concerned about having to make a decision about not just their summers, but their careers before they even matriculate. Have we gone as far back, or do you think there’s potential for us to even go earlier?
Milana: Yeah, that’s a good question. I do think there’s sort of a doorstop in place here, because it’s pretty wild to imagine that you’d hire people without any measure of how they perform in law school. So, I think that waiting for those first-semester grades is a pretty hard doorstop from our perspective, in the sense that I think we really want to see that. Otherwise, it’s really kind of a crazy world.
Having said that, we are getting earlier and earlier outreach. So I think, from the standpoint of people wanting to develop relationships with us and try to get on our radar and try to learn about the firm or meet with someone for coffee or do any number of those things, I think that does continue to inch forward.
We were joking that our paralegal class, most of whom is headed off to law school, we’re like, “Okay, see you in three months,” because they’ll be—
Rob: Right.
Mike: Right, right.
Milana: —you know, usually it was like, “Hey, I’ll see you in a couple of years,” but now it’s like oh, no, we’re going to keep them very close. And I’ve had a lot of conversations with people who, in the last maybe two months, I think about two months ago, I was talking to somebody who was on a couple of wait lists, had also gotten into a couple of law schools, and was not sure where they were going to go. But I knew that they were going to go somewhere pretty good, because all of the choices in front of them were good ones, schools from which we recruit. And so I was like, “Okay, it’s a recruiting conversation. You know, you are going to—I don’t know where you’re going, but you’re going to go somewhere good, and I’m going to want to talk to you in the fall.”
Those conversations, yeah, I think those will continue to happen earlier and earlier. Hiring decisions, I think we won’t move beyond January, at least in the short term. But not all firms may feel the same way that we do. I think academics are important to us. They always have been. We want to see that measure, but I think there’s a lot of firms that are maybe willing to go earlier. So we’ll see.
Mike: Someone online brought a great analogy of, Black Friday crept til midnight the night before and then 11 PM, and then South Park did a great spoof on that where they incorporated a Game of Thrones Black Friday. So for our listeners, we’ll link that South Park episode, first for Spivey Consulting.
Let me give 0Ls my perspective, too. If I’m a 0L, should I be contacting firms? I want to throw in this perspective, because it stuck with me to this day. When I was a dean of career services, I went to meet with a hiring partner, and I’ll never forget what he did. He said, “Mike, come over to my computer,” which, by the way, for a lawyer is pretty—right, Rob? It’s pretty rare that they’re going to show you their email.
Rob: Right. “See my screen?” No.
Mike: And he goes, “Just watch. Just watch for five minutes.” And we talked, and we watched. This is why admissions is so challenging on people’s psychological well-being, and hiring is so challenging, because you’re not the only person, even though we’re hardwired to think we are. His email was bing—he’s the hiring partner—bing, bing, bing. And this is during the Great Recession, so there is a lot of despair out there, and understandably so. It was all emails from law students. One after another. Not his clients, he pointed out, “Not my family, Mike. Not my wife.” These are all law students.
So on the one hand, I’m a go-getter. I’m not super organized like you, Dr. Hogan, or super talented like Rob and you, but I definitely am a doer. So I would be that 0L who’s reaching out and showing up with a bottle of whiskey for Gordon Gekko’s birthday. Is that a good idea to reach out as a 0L, or not so much?
[17:13] Milana: From my perspective, it’s a good idea to start developing relationships, but I wouldn’t reach out in a “will you hire me” posture, because I don’t know, and I don’t know how much time I’m willing to invest in those conversations, because at that point, what we know about you is very little. I would invest in, “I’d love to get to know about the firm and the culture,” and if there’s an event that’s open to anyone, I’m going to make an effort to attend that. But I’m going to do that from a learning posture rather than a “will you hire me” posture, because we don’t know the answer to the second one. And that can be taxing on the resources of the people that you’re reaching out to, right? They only have time to meet with so many people, and generally, we want to make sure that the lawyers are devoting time to people who are viable candidates, right? Like, actually in the pipeline at a moment where we’re going to make a decision.
So I would build the relationship, but I’d be careful about the nature of what I’m asking for.
Mike: One reason why I’m a big fan of LinkedIn is you can start building your network at any time. LinkedIn is getting bigger and bigger. It’s growing. Word of warning: if you reach out to a busy person on LinkedIn, if you catch them in the right moment—and this actually happened with Rob and I, which is why we were just on a phone call. Someone caught us at the right time. In my five minutes of free time yesterday, they happened to reach out to us on LinkedIn during that five-minute slot, so we were able to talk to them today.
But rejection is often, 98% of the time, 99% of the time, it’s a busy professional having a busy day. So friend them on LinkedIn, and they’ll accept. Most of the time, they’ll take the connection. If you message them on LinkedIn, “Dear Rob, saw that you’re working at Waller Lansden and I want to get to know the firm. Can we have coffee?” It has nothing to do with you if they don’t respond. Is that fair advice?
Milana: Yeah, I think that’s totally fair advice. And I actually, I will always accept a LinkedIn invitation from any law student. I’ve never said no. I am happy to connect with them that way. And I actually like LinkedIn, because it feels to me like lower pressure, in the sense that I’m somebody that is very diligent about trying to clear out my inbox every day. I have, like, a certain amount of anxiety if I don’t get through the inbox at the end of the day. And so that adds to my pressure in a way that I’m happy to let a LinkedIn note sit for a couple of days and get to it on my commute or when I have time to click through and kind of see what’s come in.
So I actually like that approach, because it feels less pressure to me, and I don’t know if other people feel similarly about that, but yeah, definitely don’t panic if I haven’t responded in a couple of days or even a week. LinkedIn response time tends to be—you tend to get a little more grace with that.
I’m also reminded, as you’re talking about—my daughter, she plays lacrosse, and she’s interested in playing in college, and so we’re sort of dipping our toe into the recruiting process. And she’s the class of 2029, so she’s a freshman this year, just completing her freshman year. And then there are class of 2028s, and those are the ones who are getting recruited. And so that’s basically the same advice she’s getting now, which is, like, “Nobody is focused on the 2029s. Nobody’s really paying attention.”
So that early on, you want to plant the seed so that when it is your time, when you are the class that’s being recruited, you’ve done that work. But don’t worry. The fact that people ignore 2029s is totally normal, right? And I don’t know what the equivalent class years here would be at the law school level, but it’s the same idea.
We want to know that you’re there, that expressions of early interest are something we pay attention to and note, but the ignoring should never be taken personally. When it’s time to pay attention, we will go back and say, “Oh yes, this person expressed interest very early on, so this interest feels real; it feels genuine. It doesn’t feel like you’re interested now because now is when we’re making the decision,” so I think all of that planting of seeds is worth it.
[20:53] Mike: Well, I light up like a Christmas tree when you start talking about admissions. It’s what our firm does for the vast majority of what we do. The analogy is spot on in two arenas. One, when I was applying to colleges, when Rob was applying to colleges, and probably, Milana, you’re a bit younger, maybe a lot younger—but when you were applying to colleges, you wouldn’t be recruited til your senior year. And these are just markets at work. I know it’s not perfect, but if colleges start recruiting juniors, other colleges are going to follow suit.
But the theme that you’re getting at—I think you both agree; Rob had three daughters go through the college admissions process—is early on, until you’re involved with the school or, in this case, the firm, until they’re communicating with you, early on, your communication is very low-pressure and very information-seeking. That’s it. Professional, low pressure. It’s not, “Hey, can I have a job?” It’s at most, “I’d love to get coffee with someone—I know you’re busy, so I totally understand if you can’t—to learn more about Sullivan & Cromwell in the market.”
Milana: Yeah, that’s exactly right. And I think that can go a long way. And I will say that there are a lot of people who’ve reached out to me on LinkedIn that we have had no prior relationship with. I don’t know them. It’s essentially a cold outreach. And those people have ultimately been hired, because we carried on a dialogue, and at some point I found 20 minutes where I could jump on the phone with them.
And that’s something I very much want to do and actually feel very good about doing. I want to pay it forward. I want to connect with people. Whether we hire them or not, I really enjoy those conversations. I feel like I’ve been in this world long enough that I have a lot that I want to tell people and that I want to share. So I actually really enjoy those conversations, and a lot of times, they do lead to us ultimately putting someone on an interview schedule where that might not have happened were it not for that early outreach.
Mike: What about for 2Ls and 3Ls? I feel like I skipped 1Ls, which is probably the most important, but we’ll get back. If you’re a 2L and a 3L, because I know this question was asked numerous times for us online, what can you do if you missed out on OCI in this front-loaded process of communicating with firms? What can you do if you want to work in big law?
Milana: Yeah, so, I think the current recruiting process is actually good news for people who are 2Ls and 3Ls, which is that a lot of people are going to have made those quick under-pressure decisions that I was talking about earlier that weren’t necessarily the right decisions for them. And we understand that. We also understand there’s a lot of growth that happens academically and developmentally between the first year of law school and the second year of law school, as you learn more about yourself and figure out how to do well in that system, and all of that stuff happens. That your interests are going to change.
All of that makes the 2L, 3L markets much more robust than they were in years past, where we were sort of a strict OCI schedule happening in August. I think one of the silver linings of this schedule is that now, there is much more opportunity at that stage. So we’ve just opened, on our portal, 3L applications for fall of 2027. So what we are thinking with that is that there are people who are going through the summer associate experience now, maybe people that we interviewed and made offers to who went elsewhere, but maybe people we’ve never had any contact with who sort of went to a firm and thought it would be one thing and are learning now, as they’re at that firm, that this isn’t what they imagined. Or it’s exactly what they imagined, but now they realize they want a different thing. Or they did not well their first semester but very well the second semester and the second year, and now they’re thinking, “I could upgrade in some way, shape, or form. Now I’m a viable candidate for a top firm that’s focused on grades where I may not have been before,” right? Or “I’ve had a leadership experience that prepares me for success or indicates a really strong interest in an area that the firm is very focused on.”
[24:39] So any of those things create an opportunity for those people, and we are actively looking at them. So yes, you can apply today for a 3L position, and for years, when the cycle was August-focused, we really weren’t recruiting 3Ls. We had many years where we didn’t recruit them at all, and now we’re like, “Let’s see. We might have missed something, and they might have missed something,” so now it’s much more robust, and that’s true, I think, across top firms.
Rob: Do you see that as a response to the timeline compression for recruiting? “We have to make these decisions earlier, and so the propensity to make mistakes or the percentage of mistakes might increase.” And so, like you said, “Oh, I thought this firm was one thing. I thought this lifestyle would be one thing, but it’s not. Now it’s something different,” and so now you recognized an opportunity that there could be rising 3Ls that are not happy with the decision that they had to make early.
Milana: Yeah, I think it’s a direct response to sort of making a quick decision with limited information, and what the outcome of that is. It’s partly that. I think it’s also, at least in our case, we are thankfully incredibly busy, and the firm is doing a ton of work across all practice areas. And so for us, it’s also we need more people. We’ve grown our summer classes significantly over the last couple of years.
Rob: It’s a great problem to have.
Milana: Yeah. We want more people. So it’s also an attempt to continue to grow in a thoughtful way.
Mike: This is a great pivot point, and here’s the question that I get asked by the media all the time now, and they should be asking you, and I know they are. And we’ll have Nikia on from NALP. She and I have been messaging a few times, and she’d be a great person to ask this to, to preview. But how long is that growth going to continue? How is AI going to potentially disrupt it? How is the demographic cliff going to potentially disrupt it, and market changes for legal work?
Milana: Yeah, it’s interesting. For us, I think we are optimistically viewing AI as a tool to help us do work in a more efficient way and spend more of our brainpower on the harder, more complex issues or the navigation of difficult deals and difficult cases where there is no possible AI substitute. And so I think we’re thinking it will repurpose the way and reshape the way in which we spend our time, but we are not looking to make any drastic cuts in the headcount at all, and in fact, the numbers in the last two years and on a going-forward basis suggest and will suggest the opposite.
I think we’re in a really fortunate position where we have more work than we can say yes to, and we’re looking to grow. Now, we want to be really effective users of the AI tools, and we’re spending a lot of time to educate people properly on how best to use them and to make sure that we understand that and to make sure that we are on the cutting edge of whatever new is out there, and we have a lot of really smart people who are focused on making sure that’s the case. But for us, there are no immediate plans to reduce headcount really at all.
Mike: I can tell you our firm’s position on AI, and tell me if this is relatable for S&C. So, Spivey Consulting Group, SCG, you met our firm’s president, Anna Hicks-Jaco. And I can remember where I was, and I was in Nashville, Tennessee, on a long walk, and we had a long conversation about AI. And we landed on, there is a therapeutic element and a stress relief element involved in what we do in admissions, and now what Rob is doing in helping people find jobs. AI is not going to take away that. It can make our jobs more efficient at what we do, but the human-to-human connectivity is incredibly important in the work we do, and we will never be an AI firm. We will be a human firm that utilizes AI to make the humans at our firm better.
And to what you mentioned, too, we added 6 people this past year. For a firm of 50, 6 is a large number. So we’re growing, despite all these doomsdayers online saying AI is going to take away these positions. We’re growing in humans. Is it similar?
[28:34] Milana: Yeah, I think it’s a very similar approach. And I also get asked the question a lot, “Is what you’re looking for in humans that you hire different as a result of AI?” and I think the answer is really no. I think the skills that make you a really good lawyer and a good colleague and a good member of our team and our culture are going to be the same thing. I’m not looking for a particular AI skill or ability, which is not to say we’re not going to hire subject matter experts that know how to elevate the AI tools, but that’s a different bucket, right?
Within sort of the lawyer sphere, I think the whole point of AI is that it’s easy to use, you know? It’s that, you know, that anyone can use it and type in the question and put in the prompt and get some good output and then iterate from there. But beyond that, I think we’re looking for the same set of skills within the people that we hire.
I will also say that we use AI in our hiring now. We use a tool called Suited, which relies on AI, and it’s a very cool tool that is increasingly important to us, because it allows us to get access to additional data points about the people that we’re meeting with. One is a cognitive data point. Part of the assessment is a cognitive assessment, looking at the extent to which you are good at attention to detail or logical or critical reasoning. And then there’s also a personality component, where the AI looks at our people who are very successful, people that thrive within our environment, and then tries to determine whether you have a unique combination of attributes, personality traits, character traits, that will predict success within our specific environment based on the people who are here who are succeeding. So it’s not looking to replicate that, to be clear. There are 1,000, more than we could count, of combinations that will produce success within this environment. We’re looking to see, do you have that unique combination, which will be unique to you but successful here?
So we’re using it in that way, and that’s been really helpful, because, again, we have this one semester of grades, and now we can say, “Okay, we also—in addition to those grades, we have this cognitive assessment, which gives us another data point about your sort of raw intellectual horsepower. And then we have interviews, and we can supplement the interviews with this personality piece.” And it’s all very holistically done. I will say, the risk management element of my job sort of demands that I say we never rely on the AI-produced results to make a decision, ever. So it is always considered along with all of these other data points that I mentioned. And it’s always part of a whole rather than a single determinant factor, but it’s a really great tool to have at this moment in time.
Mike: Again, similar to admissions, colleges are using AI, but a human will make every final decision. Law schools are about to start using AI, but a human will read every application.
You mentioned skills. I’m curious, for both you and Rob—for the 1Ls, for the people who you’re going to hire, what personality traits, what skills, what are things you look for? And we’ll ask Rob; he’ll answer this one for me. What are a couple things you shouldn’t do? Milana might be too polite, but Rob might have a story or two. What are a couple things that stand out, macro level, and then maybe a couple things that have stood out to you that someone shouldn’t do?
[31:47] Rob: Well, I’ll kind of combine it. One of the most off-putting things for me was to have a young lawyer that may not have passed the bar yet come in and know more about the law than me, or think they know more about the law. And maybe they do, but certainly not in my practice area, the thing that I’ve been doing for decades and become an expert at. Some people think, “I’m going to show you how smart I am and you’re going to hire me because I’ve demonstrated how smart I am.”
And the truth is, when you come out of law school—at least it was for me and my generation—you didn’t know how to be a lawyer, particularly a transactional lawyer. You had to learn that on the job. You learned how to think in law school, how to think like a lawyer, how to think analytically, how to apply facts to a particular situation and come up with a solution. But you had to get in and be part of a deal flow to figure out how to practice on a day-to-day basis.
Which does dovetail into a question I have for Milana about AI and young lawyers. When I was a young lawyer, part of our training, part of what helped us be a part of deal flow was, as we called it, change little A, big A, right? We had to look at all the details of a document and make sure the capitalized terms were defined and that they were all capitalized. All the things that could be done with the push of a button now, with AI citing cases, looking up cases, working on all the behind-the-scenes, has it changed the way you train young lawyers?
Milana: Yeah, it’s a good question. I think there is a sort of fear out there that if we take away that routine, sometimes painful exercise of really reading and proofreading and making sure you’re thinking about every step, what sort of replaces that, you know, if AI can do that sort of better and more effectively than you could? But I think there’s enough that’s happening at the junior associate level that I’m not too worried about that element of it.
I do think there’s sort of a movement away from an apprenticeship model in the law firm world more generally, but we have really clung to that as the best possible way to learn. And I think people really take that responsibility very seriously here. We’re largely a law firm of people who started here as summer associates and were trained by other lawyers, more experienced lawyers from literally day one. And so we’ve really leaned into that.
We still have models where we’ve got junior associates who are non-contributors but along for the ride in a negotiation or something of that nature, where maybe they’re not the one speaking and, you know, taking the lead negotiating a complex element of a deal. But they are there, and they’re listening, and they’re observing, and they’re watching how somebody who’s done it before does it. They’re watching the tone that they use, their body language, the pause, how they’re navigating all of those things, and we want them very much to be observing and taking all of this stuff in.
[34:45] Which is not to say that we don’t give them a ton of responsibility early on, and I think we actually give them maybe more than even some would feel comfortable with. You know, we’re sort of like, there’s no limits. We’re not like, “A first year does this, and then a second year does this.” We’re like, “It doesn’t matter. We will let you do as much as you’re capable of at any point in time, including the first day you arrive.”
But we still really want to make sure that they’re learning from more experienced people. And luckily, our practice allows for that. I know a lot of firms, a lot of the bigger firms that are growing tremendously have started to run a bit more like a corporation, where you don’t have the opportunity to do that. They’re more commercialized in a way that it feels like there’s maybe less opportunity for true apprenticeship. But we are trying to vigorously protect that, and I think it’s something that makes this firm really attractive to people who like to learn in that way.
Which gets me to Mike’s question about what do we look for. I really want somebody that loves to learn and that is a good learner, that has the self-awareness to know how they learn best, and is willing to bet on themselves to learn and digest a lot of information really quickly, and has a genuine curiosity and enjoys that process.
And along with that, sort of hand-in-hand with that, would be humility. I think, you know, a lot of these people are coming from the top schools, and they’re at the top of their class, and they’ve always been at the top academically. Any point at which this was tested, they were tippy, tippy-top. And then you have to be able to come into an environment like this, where you don’t know anything, and you’re starting from the beginning. And you have to be willing to bet on yourself, and also comfortable with not being the smartest in the room for maybe the first time ever in your entire life. And so I really want to try to draw that out in the interview process. Are you somebody for whom that’s going to create a total identity crisis? You know, and you’re going to panic, or are you somebody that’s going to actually lean into that and take some sort of pleasure in that?
Mike: Humility will get you a long way in this world, and I can tell you, as a former dean of career services at a top 20 school, or from hearing from deans at top 5, 10 schools, how many of their students should have gotten the job offer, but the moment of entitlement—treating the front office employee poorly, demanding a timeline—has taken someone this close to an offer, and it happens in admissions, too, and yanked that offer. You have hundreds of those stories.
To me, everyone’s looking for a hack, and there are no hacks. But one piece of advice I would give—so I’m not a podcaster by nature, but I podcast a lot, and my best podcasts always come after I watch someone who’s, like Rich Roll, who’s really good at podcasting. So if I’m about to go interview at Sullivan & Cromwell, at minimum, you can find videos online. Be yourself, be authentic. Authenticity is important. But also don’t go in blind. Watch how people do these things, because you mentioned body language when Rob asked about AI. Every little detail counts. Again, be your organic self, but watch reps. That’s not a hack. That’s just a macro thought that I thought would be helpful.
Rob, any other of those for a 1L or 0L or 2L or 3L who are looking to apply?
[37:52] Rob: Yeah, absolutely. The one thing I would encourage is, and it’s a sports analogy—you mentioned lacrosse earlier; I started thinking about it—you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. So you can’t get hired by S&C, or any law firm, unless they know about you, unless they know who you are. So get involved. Find out when you can submit applications. Find out if there are recruiting opportunities. Find out how you can inject yourself into the conversation. And if you’ve missed it or you can’t or you’re a 3L, you still have to get in front of someone before anyone can hire you.
Treat yourself like a business. This will be your career, and you can only succeed if they know about you.
Milana: I think those are really good points, and I think the reps one in particular really resonates. Interviewing well is a particular skill, and it can be developed and improved pretty dramatically. And I think there’s a lot of really, really smart people who have these big brains and can think really quickly in a really agile way, but have trouble communicating that to another person in a way that feels authentic.
And a lot of the questions that people ask in interviews are cringe-worthy questions like, “Tell me about a time when you struggled with something challenging,” and it’s very easy to answer that in sort of an off-putting way, unintentionally. So I think spending some time talking—literally, maybe to the mirror or just out loud in your own room, in a private place where people won’t think you’re insane—doing that and really trying to practice what it feels like to answer that question. Not in a scripted way, but try doing it a couple different ways, like version A, version B, version C, until one sort of feels right to you and you feel comfortable delivering in that way.
I can’t emphasize how much of a skill I think interviewing is. And just going in cold, I think you’re going to stumble. I think any human being would stumble going into it unprepared. And I think that can make a big difference. It’s just logging that time and getting a couple reps in so you know where you’re going and what you want to ultimately communicate.
Mike: I’ll end on this note. For the vast majority of people who go through the process, they’re going to think they’re doing worse than they are. They’re going to think their interview went worse. You’re going to be your own worst critic, and I can think back to my early 20s where I thought like that. I also used to look in the mirror, and I would practice the outline but not the script. The script would come in the room, but the outline was in my head. Just remember that, if you think you’re struggling, you’re judging yourself. You can’t read the other person’s thoughts. For all you know, you just did better than the first 15 people who interviewed right before you. Any final thought, Rob and Milana?
Rob: No, I think we’ve covered most of it. Just, I would reiterate, this is your career, and you should look at it like you’re in charge of it and take control of it, because no one else is going to do that for you.
Milana: Yeah, I love that. I think taking ownership of this process is a really good way to approach it.
And then also to try to enjoy it along the way. I think one of the magical things about this process is you get to meet some really incredible people. You’re going to interview, likely, at a lot of different firms, and ultimately, you’re only going to choose one. But the gift of that process is you’re going to have some really interesting conversations with some fantastic people who may eventually play some role in your story. Even if you don’t work at the same firm, you might be across the table from them, or they could be a resource for you, and you’re going to connect with a lot of them organically. And that’s a really cool and maybe unanticipated part of this process, is just this exposure to people who are doing what you’re going to eventually do. And all of that is a learning opportunity and I think can be really fun as well.
Mike: Quite literally, everyone you meet, are exposed to, or have a connection to in this life is part of your story. So it’s a wonderful note to end on. Thanks for being a part of our story, Dr. Hogan. I know your day is busy, so thanks for your time. Have a great rest of your day. And you too, Rob
Rob: Pleasure to meet you, Dr. Hogan.
Milana: Thank you.
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