Be Prepared For Your Summer Job and for Fall OCIP
SUMMER
We have posted several items on our Guides & Webcasts page to help you prepare for summer:
* A webcast of our 4-21-10 presentation entitled “How To Succeed In Your (Private Sector) Summer Job,” which consisted of 15 minutes worth of summer tips from CDO attorney-counselor Marsha Rabkin and a presentation by the attorneys who comprise the hiring committee of Latham & Watkins’ SF office. Their presentation included a series of interesting real-world summer scenarios.
* A webcast of the Public Interest/Public Sector version of this presentation (which took place on 4-13-2010).
* Summer Tip Sheets — one for succeeding in your public interest work experience and another focusing on the private sector.
* Older summer advice webcasts, including one by an outside presenter called “Top Ten Things Summer/New Associates Should Know,” which received excellent student feedback. Also, last year’s “How To Succeed” presentation by attorneys from Cooley Godward and Sheppard Mullin was particularly informative. Marsha’s 15 minutes of summer tips is repeated at the beginning of this webcast, but the balance of it is not repetitive and we think would be really useful to listen to.
The private sector tip sheet identifies some links for further follow-up, including one to the “Hiring Partner’s Office” blog, which we’ve mentioned before. Whether or not the author is really a hiring partner, and whether you agree with his or her advice [we don’t agree with all of it], we think it’s important to be aware that this perspective is out there because there are large law firm partners (and some associates, too) who think this way.
If you are volunteering for a public interest organization, government agency, or a judge, your approach to work should not be any different than if you were a paid employee — work hard, be professional, and come away with a good reference. In addition to further developing your legal writing and analytical skills, starting to build your professional network and establishing productive working relationships with practicing attorneys who will be willing and able to serve as a reference for you in your next job search ought to be among your top goals for the summer. Your relationships need to be such that your references can enthusiastically attest to not only your legal research and writing abilities, but also your work ethic and attitude.
Establishing these kinds of relationships is important even if you decide that you are not a good fit with your summer employer. If you are experiencing difficulties/potential difficulties of any kind in your summer workplace, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
Remember that the CDO is fully staffed and open during regular business hours throughout the summer (and we will be adding some evening and weekend hours over the summer — stay tuned for further details), so call or send us an email if you have any questions or concerns over the course of your summer experience. Sarah, Marsha, and Terry are likely your best bets for private sector career adivce. Linda or Alex for public interest and Eric for government and clerkship career counseling.
OCIP AND FALL RECRUITING
We will definitely need to be in touch with you over the summer because of early deadlines for participation, so please make certain to do the following if you are considering participating in OCIP in the Fall:
* Update (or confirm the accuracy of) the Employment Preferences and Personal Information (ESPECIALLY YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS) in the Profile section of b-Line.
* Make certain your @berkeley.edu address continues functioning throughout the summer and that CDO emails (including mgrenhart@law.berkeley.edu and tgalligan@law.berkeley.edu) will get through your spam filter.
As we discussed during April’s info session, OCIP is only one of many job search tools (and its focus is on a narrow band of employers). You should also be checking b-Line throughout the summer for non-OCIP summer 2011 opportunities. Many firms choose to post a summer associate position on b-Line in lieu of registering for OCIP. Also — and this is particularly true if you will be looking for out-of-state positions for next summer and you will be in that location this summer — consider targeted emails to employers who will not be participating in OCIP this Fall (CDO attorney-counselors can help you with this).
We have started work on our Fall 2010 OCIP informational webpage. So far, it consists of a series of links to webcasts of our Fall 2010 OCIP-prep programs, including the April 14, 2010 OCIP Orientation. We expect to finish building the rest of the content by June 1, 2010 and will email you when it’s fully completed. In the meantime, you can listen to the webcasts. We have also continued to make available the Fall 2009 OCIP webpage as a general reference. This page contains links to lists of employers who participated in OCIP in the Fall of 2009. The 2009 webpage may help answer your general procedural questions, but keep in mind that this year’s dates and deadlines will be different as will the list of participating employers.
You might want to bookmark the Interview Programs section of the CDO website, which contains the links to both the 2009 and the 2010 OCIP webpages.
Those of you who are interested in conducting a government or public interest job search in the next academic year, we posted a link to recordings of our recent presentations on the subject here.