Student Life

Preparing for OCI (Part 2 of 3): Interviewing 101

/ Rob Rossi / 1 Comment

Editor’s Note: Cara Fonseca is a rising 3L and the incoming Co-Chair of the LSA Career Mentoring Committee, which organizes the 1L Boot Camp Career Prep Series each year. For the second in our series of three posts geared to help rising 2Ls prepare for the on-campus interview process, Cara was kind enough to contribute as a guest blogger. The topic of this post is straightforward – how to interview with law firms as well as you possibly can during OCI and callbacks.

By now, a significant number of you probably have three little letters buzzing around in your head: OCI. You have worked hard all year, made it through two aggressive rounds of final exams, and now it’s summer.  You are probably working somewhere awesome, but you also know there are other new and exciting opportunities on the horizon, especially if you are interested in working for a large firm. You have also probably heard through the grapevine that working at a firm offers the opportunity to get unbelievable training and experience, not to mention to work with awesome clients on fascinating cases. (Totally true!) Ok, so OCI is certainly a worthwhile endeavor, and you’ve decided how you want to bid and sent in (or are about to send in) your resumes and writing samples. So you’re ready for interviews, right?!?!

If you’re anything like I was as a rising 2L, you probably see the interview process as equally exciting and intimidating.  I truly believe the interview is the most important part of the recruiting process. A great interview can get you an awesome summer associate offer, even if your grades are not the best in the class. Although I am by no means an expert when it comes to interview strategy and skills, I’ve provided a bit of my own advice and tidbits from interviewing attorneys, summer associates, and junior associates to compile a list of tips and tricks that I hope you will find helpful as you enter into your own interviewing process:

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Preparing for OCI (Part 1 of 3): Timeline & Breakdown

/ Rob Rossi / 1 Comment

Editor’s Note: This post is the first in a series of three geared to help rising 2Ls prepare for the on-campus interview process and provide prospective students with an inside look at the recruiting process during law school. The topic of this post is a general overview and breakdown of the logistics of the OCI process, and tips for navigating it each step of the way.

As hard as it may be to believe, OCI is right around the corner. If you knew the phrase “on-campus interview” before the start of law school, you had a head start on most of the class. And if you found time during 1L to learn a bit about the process, even better.

Leading up to your first round of interviews, it’s perfectly normal to feel excited, impatient, and more than slightly nervous. One way we do not want you to feel is unprepared. As with any advice, the information that follows is not a one-size-fits-all, guaranteed recipe for success. Hopefully, however, you find the suggestions worthwhile and as a result feel more confident heading into the OCI process. Let’s start by laying out the timeline: Continue reading →

Things I Wish I Knew, Vol. 10: How to not be homeless before Sept. 1

/ Charlene Ochogo / Leave a comment

Greetings almost-1Ls!

So, by now you’ve probably done the math: orientation is August 20th, school starts on the 24th, and many of the leases for apartments you’ve been looking into start on September 1st.

Ruh-roh.

This is a sad reality about Boston (that most leases do start on September 1st), but the good news is that you will only be in this dilemma once in your law school career. I polled some of our rising 2Ls to see what they did for that week and boiled it down to a few options:

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What We Do When We’re Not in Law School: A Survey of Summer Jobs

/ Elizabeth Blass / Leave a comment

One of the questions many prospective law students often have (and that I definitely had when I was looking at law school) is about what, exactly, law students do during their summers. The answer is: some pretty cool stuff. Below is a selection of summaries about what current BC Law rising 2Ls and 3Ls are currently doing in cities across the country, grouped into five categories: Firms, In-House Counsel & Consulting, Judicial Internships, Public Interest, and Government. This group isn’t necessarily representative (it basically represents who I could dragoon into writing something up for me on short notice — thanks friends!), but hopefully it will give you a general sense of the different types of work law students do before they graduate. As always, if you have any questions, use the comments to ask away!

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“But I Don’t Want to Work in Boston!”

/ Elizabeth Blass / 1 Comment

Anyone who knows me will tell you that I am a Philadelphia girl. Born and raised in the City of Brotherly Love, I am a little obsessed with my hometown: the food (cheesesteaks! Wawa! water ice!), the accent (“youse” is a word, don’t question it), and of course, the sports teams (yeah, we threw snow balls at Santa Claus, so what?). My family is still Philly-based, and I knew when I was thinking about law school that I would ultimately want to practice close to home.

So when I started looking at BC, I faced something of a conundrum. The law school offered a ton of stuff geared towards my area of interest (juvenile rights and education law), which was hard to find, and my campus visit convinced that the people and professors had a lot to offer, too. But in case you didn’t know, Boston College is, in fact, in Boston. BOSTON. Like, home of the Patriots, Boston. (Sorry, not sorry, Rob.) And I was really worried that going to BC — or any law school outside of the Philly area — would make it difficult to come back after graduation.  Continue reading →

Things I Wish I Knew, Vol. 8: The best way to prepare for law school this summer

/ Charlene Ochogo / Leave a comment

…is to not prepare at all.

Dear Class of 2018, you have struggled through the undergraduate battleground, you finished a post-bachelor degree, or maybe you’ve summoned the courage to work AND apply to law school, and you’re positively ravenous for any advice on how to best prepare yourself for what lies ahead of you.

I have only three words for you: Treat. Yo. Self.

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For those of you unfamiliar with NBC’s Parks and Recreation, no worries – you have the entire summer with which to make yourself familiar. But for old fans of Donna Meagle and Tom Haverford, Treat Yo’ Self 2015 (aka, now until right around August 20th) should be spent on you.

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My Thank You Letter to BC Law: Looking Back On The Past Three Years

/ Luciabc / Leave a comment

It was about three years ago now that I was making my decision as to where to attend law school. It was a tough decision for me, as I am sure it is for most people. Even though I knew which school was the best fit for me, I was stressed out about turning down bigger scholarships elsewhere. Every time I went to send in my deposit, I started to second guess my decision.

It is a very personal decision to choose where you’ll spend the next few years of your life. Looking back now, I feel so grateful that I chose Boston College, and I feel lucky to have a mother like mine, who encouraged me to go with my gut in choosing BC. Last week I finished up my academic career here, and I am already starting to feel nostalgic for the community of friends and mentors I have found at Boston College Law School. Here, more than anywhere else, I have found a school where professors keep in touch with their former students, where administrators go out of their way to share opportunities with students, and where the group of classmates you find end up feeling like family after three years of going through life’s ups and downs together.

The first, and most important group, that deserves thanks is the BC Law student body. I made my first, and closest friends in Section 3, but as the years progressed I have gotten to know an amazingly diverse, passionate, friendly group of my classmates. These people have studied with me during exams, passed along their carefully formatted outlines, and accompanied me on all sorts of misadventures over the past three years. Especially when I compare my experience to those of my friends at other schools, I feel so fortunate to have found such a stellar group of people to spend the past three years with. On a broader scale, our student government, the Public Interest Law Foundation, and the myriad affinity groups here at BC have truly excelled at making Boston College a welcoming, fun, and engaging place to be a student.

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Things I Wish I Knew, Vol. 7: End senior year on a high note

/ Charlene Ochogo / Leave a comment

Dear College Seniors,

Congratulations! The finish line is in sight, you’ve picked up your cap and gown, you’ve probably scheduled or already taken your graduation photos, and all that’s left between you and summer is a bunch of finals. Now, If you’re anything like me, the second you got into BC, the greatest law school on Earth, you were pretty much done with undergrad. At least mentally.

I mean, think about it. As you stand right now, many of you have been going to school non-stop for the past 17 years (and probably even a couple summers here or there, too). You’re tired, and rightly so. You’ve done what you need to do, and likely, your GPA for graduation has already been calculated. What is it going to hurt if you just skate through finals and do the bare minimum?

Well, as it turns out, potentially a lot.

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