Advice

05 Apr 2015

Summering this Summer?

Here is some more advice from Hiring Partner/Committee Member Jay Price. More advice, don’t use the same word twice in one 3 word sentence. The Quest for the Golden Ring – Advice for Summer Law Clerks, Part 1 of 2 Guest post by Jay Price My earlier blog entitled The Biglaw Devil Wears Brooks Brothers/Ann Taylor focused mainly on the importance of summers getting along with others, not taking anything for granted and being team players. With summer approaching, here are some additional tips. W

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21 Mar 2015

Admissions Question of The Day (Comes to us from an AdComm)

Dear Spivey: Do you think there are many schools that admit (a) nobody with both a below-their-median LSAT and a below-their-median UGPA, or (b) no both-below folks other than diverse students? Or “almost nobody” both-numbers-submedian? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Our Answer: I think every school admits some people below both medians — beyond Special Interest and URM admits. But one way to think of the percentage of these admits is by loo

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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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13 Feb 2015

20 Things Applicants Do That Annoy Admissions Deans and Hiring Partners

We reached out to a number of friends at law schools and at firms and companies to see what things applicants did that made them grouchy (pro tip — it isn’t in your best interest to make them grouchy!) This is what we got, not surprisingly a good deal related to emails. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. When they launch into a sales presentation about themselves the moment we meet -* CEO of Company* 2. Sending emails without subjects

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10 Feb 2015

How you approach your law school application can also help you get a 1L job!

A brief snippet from two very happy and endearing emails I received. Tell a story, not just now, but in your interviews! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- On 19 January 2015 at 10:01 Hi Mike! I just wanted to give you an update on how first semester went: I just had callbacks with Cooley for a 1L SA position, and Munger, Skadden, and Wilson Sonsini just requested my grades. I have to thank you again because a lot of the materials we prepared f

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07 Feb 2015

"Help, I failed the LSAT!" Feb. Edition

Amazingly, I have heard those exact lines before. Many times. I’ve also heard thousands of times, “I way underperformed, I am doomed.” Indeed, we will hear  from about 50 people in the next 2 days who think just that. There are hundreds more out there who think the same right now. For so many reasons, you can’t fail the LSAT. And because I have seen the following scenario unfold so many times, I wanted to give some facts. Not an overblown peep talk or a feel good story. Just a few basic facts.

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10 Jan 2015

Applicant Question: "When a law school Defers/WL's someone well below the medians but has great softs, is this a polite way to reject them?"

Highly likely it’s not. Unless the applicant is some form of “special interest,” meaning that they have people who are donors interested in their admission, connections to the law school itself, etc. you really wouldn’t defer someone just to intentionally deny them later. That isn’t doing either you or them any favors. Rather, you defer them to see how your numbers look throughout the entirety of the cycle. At some point almost every school, including T3, will say “our medians look like x and z

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09 Jan 2015

Applicant questions answered, "will high LSAT scores be MORE or LESS valuable this cycle"

“Mike and Karen, as the number of takers continues to drop, won’t it become MORE acceptable to drop a median point in favor of maintaining GPA? Won’t this make high scores LESS valuable? For example, if Harvard or Yale’s median is going to drop to 172, doesn’t a 173 become LESS valuable, not more? If the median drops a point, suddenly, the pool of at/above median expands, right? So, in theory, I should be rooting for medians to stay the same?” This is something we spend a good deal of time loo

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06 Aug 2014

Debunking The 1-Page Law School Resume Myth

Let’s put an end to a false piece of advice that we recently saw on the internet — and more worrisome, that people give mixed messages on every year — about law school résumés. I won’t link the article because we are not writing this to personally call someone out, but it is written by someone who tutors for the LSAT. I imagine they are a wonderful LSAT tutor. The advice however, is about law school admissions, and is stated in such strong language it sounds like a near absolute. Thus, it is not

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