Even though it’s only March!
We know it must seem way too early to be thinking about your 2L summer job before many of you have nailed down your 1L summer job plans. However, the summer job search in your 2L happens much, much earlier. For the private sector, it begins in August. There is a lot of ground to cover with you all before classes end and everyone goes into finals mode. So, we’ve developed two tracks of programs that will take place over the course of the rest of the semester — one for the private sector search, and one for a public interest/public sector search — that will help you hit the ground running.
They begin in earnest next week. First up, on Tuesday the 10th at 12:45PM in Rm 110, for those of you interested in working for a firm in the summer of 2016, is a talk by Bill Voge (Class of ’83)), the global Chair and Managing Partner of Latham & Watkins, one of the largest law firms in the world, on what the future holds for the large law firm market. He’s going to discuss how globalization, technology and other forces of change are transforming law firms and creating new opportunities. He will also offer valuable advice about what to look for in a law firm.
The next day (March 11, 12:45PM in Rm 110), 3 partners from another large firm, O’Melveny & Myers, will be giving a presentation on what corporate or transactional practice is all about. Even if you don’t know any lawyers, you have some idea about what litigators do, but this presentation is aimed at de-mystifying what transactional/corporate lawyers do.
The following week, we’ll focus on those of you who are considering public interest/public sector (PIPS) careers. On Tuesday, March 17 (1PM in Rm 145) we’re holding an informal roundtable on whether participating in Early Interview Week (EIW) in April or our Fall Interview Program (FIP) in September will help you reach your ultimate career goals. We’ll discuss the kinds of employers who typically participate in each of these programs and how working for a large law firm during your 2L summer might impact your PIPS career.
We realize that your initial (and quite natural) reaction to this email may be to increase your stress level – and we wish we could think of a way around this. Our hope, however, is that these programs will ultimately have the opposite effect. They will help de-mystify the process and arm you with the knowledge necessary to best position yourself career-wise.
While you can’t control the legal job market, you can control how informed you are about how the legal employer hiring process works, the effect that changes in the industry are having on that process, how to research employers, what to ask them, the details about bidding and interviewing strategy, and the various job search alternatives to our on-campus interview programs.
Our programs are designed to give you this knowledge . . . and knowledge (we’ve said it before) is power.
Remember, we are here to meet with you – either by formal appointment, or during designated office hours (or any other time that we are not otherwise engaged) – to address any of your career concerns.
Here is a list of our private sector upcoming programs. Here is a list of the PI/PS ones.
You can see a complete list of all of our upcoming programs here.