Toward the end of my first semester of law school, I began to hear whispers of ‘OCI’ and ‘biglaw.’ By the early part of my second semester, the whispers had grown to full-throated yelling. Big bad biglaw and the pressure cooker of 20-minute, all or nothing screener interviews. It sounded scary, at least to me. But then, I’d never heard of any of this before. Biglaw? OCI?

I lost track of it during the semester. I was focused on school, grades, and life in general. OCI was a long way away, and most importantly, it was after finals. And finals were the only thing I was allowing myself to be worried about. I learned fast in law school that you need to prioritize your worries. One worry at a time, and no cutting in line. I would worry about OCI when I started getting emails about it. Not before.

Then I started getting emails about it…

At first, I ignored them. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go through yet one more stressful thing after a season of stressful things. And I was tired. Everything happens fast at the end of 1L. Immediately after finals, there’s the write-on for law review. Right after that, your internship starts, and then “pre-OCI” for some, and OCI for most. The last thing I wanted to do was apply and prepare for 20 minute interviews that might decide my early law school career. I wanted to sleep instead, preferably for a week or more. 

Finally, I did something I should have done weeks or months ago: I reached out for help. I talked to my professors, my friends, the few lawyers I’d gotten to know, and some of my colleagues. All of their generous advice led to the same conclusion: do it. Unanimity is rare, both in nature and among humans. But there it was. The thing was, though, none of them could agree about just why I should do it. It didn’t matter; all of the reasons they gave were good on their own. Some said I should do it for the experience of interviewing in high-stakes situations. Others said I should do it to keep doors open and not foreclose opportunities. Some said I might actually like biglaw (perhaps the prestige and money had something to do with that). And all of them made the same pragmatic argument, which was irrefutable in its simplicity: what do you have to lose?

With one week to go before the application period closed, I finally decided to do it. My reasons were as varied as the advice I received, but ultimately came down to one thing.

Franz Kafka.

In his last novel, The Castle, the best chance the protagonist, K, has to reach the castle comes through an accidental, nocturnal meeting with Brugel, a Secretary at the Castle. K is exhausted. Demoralized. And Brugel, who K found by sheer accident, is ready to offer him the access he seeks, access to the Castle itself. And he tells K:

“opportunities sometimes arise that have hardly anything to do with the situation as a whole, opportunities when a word, a glance, a sign of trust can achieve more than tedious, lifelong efforts.”

Kafka wouldn’t have known it, but he was absolutely talking about OCI. Because OCI is a privileged moment, something just a smidge outside the regular universe of hiring decisions. A unique space where a 20-minute interview (and a callback) can give you something that normally requires years of dedicated toil. And through this strange summertime ritual, it can happen that opportunity meets preparedness and gives birth to luck. Golden, glorious luck where a 20-minute interview can do more than a lifetime of effort. That’s why I bid for OCI. It was an opportunity, a privileged moment where I might be hired to practice law in a fast-paced, complicated environment while learning from attorneys at the top of their game. Even though I knew only enough to be dangerous, not enough to actually know what I was doing. Even though I would be hired for a job I didn’t know how to do, and everyone knew it. OCI offered that nocturnal meeting, that happenstance moment where one interview could do more than a lifetime of toil. OCI gave me the opportunity. Maybe with enough preparation, I could turn it in to luck.

I went to panels, I had my resume reviewed. I met with advisors, and I drilled. I practiced trying to answer interview questions out loud while doing dishes or driving to work. I filmed myself. I tweaked my online setup, my background, everything. And then it was time. Not for OCI, not yet. But for my mock interview with the Career Services Office. I was ready; I was prepared. I felt good.

My mock interviewer stopped the interview after 10 minutes. It was a disaster. I couldn’t answer questions easily or naturally. I panicked. Frequently, my mind went blank, and I struggled to link my experiences to the questions I was being asked. In short, I didn’t know how to talk about myself. Well, no, that’s not right. I know how to talk about myself. At length and with enthusiasm. But what I didn’t know was how to talk about what my life means. The questions my interviewers were going to ask me were ones I’d never asked myself. What was my greatest accomplishment? Not for interview purposes, but really. What was it? Did I have one? (I do. And I’m immensely proud of it.) Weaknesses? Take your pick. I’ll walk you through the Hall of Fame. But I started to realize why I blew my mock interview. I hadn’t ever thought of my life as demonstrating anything. I lived it; I was there when it happened. It didn’t occur to me to think it meant anything, certainly nothing as specific as how I handled conflict with a co-worker, or how I brought a difficult project to completion in spite of the obstacles. But that’s exactly what I was doing in those moments. I was handling conflicts, navigating deadlines, solving problems. But all of that meaning came later. After the fact. Like stories that begin, “It was a cold winter day…” It’s a story you can’t tell until it’s over. Until the past is passed. 

It stopped being about finding answers to interview questions. Instead, I started thinking about my stories. About my life and experiences and what they actually meant. It was my own personal OCI. An interview with my ex post facto life. It helped. I learned a lot of things that surprised me, chief among them the realization that I had quite a few stories to tell, and a lot of questions I had never before answered for myself. And so for the first time, I did.

The actual interviews were anti-climactic. I just talked. I told stories about myself and what they meant. Sometimes the interview went well, and in one case extremely well. Sometimes the interview went bad, and in one case extremely bad. And that interview, the bad bad interview – that’s the story I want to tell if someone ever asks me whether they should bid for OCI. Here it is.

I was accepted for an interview with a firm I was really excited about. Good firm, good people. Nearly everyone liked working there. I did my research. And I don’t mean I looked at a few websites, either. I once spent over a month researching waffle irons, okay? When I research something, it stays researched. I wanted that interview to go well, so (to coin a phrase), I went waffle-iron on that firm. Then it was time. 

The interview started out well. Not great, not terrible, but pretty good. My preparation was working for me. I was feeling relaxed. The interviewer starts probing. Do I mind the workload? Nah. The hours? Nah. Am I tied to Boston, or would I be willing to consider other offices, other cities?

Now we’re talking. Sure thing, I say. I’ll travel. Other offices? Not a problem. Other cities? Sign me up. 

Interviewer: Yeah? That’s good to hear. Where else would you go? What other office appeals to you?

Me: Chicago. I have friends out there. Never been; good city. 

Interviewer: We’re not in Chicago. East Coast only. 

Oops. 

[Exit callback offer, stage left.]

Among all of the many things I knew about that firm, I most certainly knew where it had offices. I can still count them off. I just blanked. Said the first city that came to mind. I didn’t stop to think about it, or call up my mental data on the firm. I didn’t stop to take a deep breath. I just blurted out a snafu that one second of pause would have prevented. I dunno why I did it. Just one of those things. Happenstance. 

I recovered as best I could, but how do you come back from that? The interview was over even before it was over. The rest of the interview was awkward. We both knew I had no shot at a callback. He ended the interview early, and I don’t blame him a bit. But it was a hard blow. Opportunity and preparedness had alchemically merged to produce luck. It just wasn’t the kind I was hoping for. I got the rejection email a short time later. 

 The worst had happened. I blew it. Bad. And strangely, the sun keeps shining. The Earth keeps turning, and life goes on. I wouldn’t put it in my top-ten best experiences. But I wouldn’t put it among my worst experiences, either. Not even close. But I stood up. I was there, and that means I was there when my luck just might have gone the other way. It didn’t, of course. Not this time, but some time. One time I’ll be there when the good luck happens, and now I know that about myself, along with a lot of other things. I know rejection, mistakes, screw-ups – even big ones – these are not the only stories I have. I have stories of success, accomplishment, and simple courage, too. And now I have another story, one that means…

You know what? I think I’ll save that for another time.

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Michael Deere is a second-year student at BC Law. Contact him at deerm@bc.edu.