interview

If It’s Meant to Be, It Will Be

/ Tess Halpern / Leave a comment

When I was around 9 years old, my mom bought me a brown dress to wear to my sister’s Bat Mitzvah. I loved that dress, but we knew it would be difficult to find shoes to match. My only real option was to find a pair in the same, specific brown, so we put the dress in a shopping bag and went to the mall.

We went to store after store finding shoes that were too uncomfortable, too hard to walk in, or, of course, the wrong shade of brown, until we found the perfect pair. Not too high of a heel, a flattering shape, the right price, and almost the exact color of the dress. The only problem was, they didn’t have my size. This was in 2006 and online shopping wasn’t exactly what it is today, so if they didn’t have the shoes in the store, we weren’t going to be able to buy them. My mom put the shoe back on the display, looked at me, and said, “It wasn’t meant to be.” She walked out, and I followed.

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Get to Know the CSO: Jill Hwang

/ Tess Halpern / Leave a comment

A career services advisor can be an amazing resource in law school as you navigate OCI, externships, clerkship applications, and more. However, it’s important that you find the advisor who can best help you reach your personal goals! To do so, follow along with this new series to learn about each CSO advisor at Boston College Law School. Here is our interview with Jill Hwang.

What was the biggest challenge you faced in law school, and how did you overcome it?

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OCI Don’t Know What I’m Doing

/ Michael Deere / Leave a comment

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…

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The Art (and Importance) of Networking

/ Reilly Doak / Leave a comment

The most helpful thing Professor Hillinger taught me during my 1L year was that networking is a critical tool during the legal job search. Although I earned my position for next summer through The Law Consortium, an OCI analog, I am thankful to my past-self for speaking to as many attorneys as I could. In hindsight, I think my networking helped me to figure out which legal practices I am interested in, which firms might be the best fit for my work style, and to become more comfortable and knowledgeable when speaking to attorneys. Just as Professor Hillinger stressed, networking should be an integral part of every 1L’s experience. 

During my first semester of 1L, I talked to as many attorneys as I could find from a breadth of experiences and practice areas. Everything in law school seemed interesting to me, and I knew it would be important to be more targeted in my internship and job search. I made sure that I reached out to speak one-on-one to at least one attorney after every negotiation competition, club panel, or CSO event I attended. In the beginning, I had no idea what to talk about, but I knew that people like talking about themselves, so my networking conversations involved a lot of personal questions: “how did you know you wanted to pursue litigation,” “what made you choose to move in-house after working in Big Law”, and “how did you decide on your specific practice areas?” Through these conversations, I realized that I did not strictly identify with the transactional or litigation camps, and decided to pursue a career more closely aligned with regulatory work, where I would have the chance to have a broader range of work.

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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 →