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 the extremely well-received program from last Wednesday (4-21-09) — “How To Succeed In Your Summer Job” (with attorneys from Cooley Godward and Sheppard Mullin)
* 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
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.
Given the current state of the economy, we feel constrained to underscore a few points even though they may strike many of you as common sense:
* If you are heading for the private sector, don’t assume an offer is “yours to lose.” Firms consistently tell us the old rules have changed and that offers must be earned by demonstrating your value to the firm. Even if you decide over the course of the summer that your firm is not for you, it will be important for you to have that offer in hand as you look for other opportunities throughout your 3L year.
* If you find yourself on the private sector job market in the fall as a 3L, your job search will need to include more than just OCIP (and we will work with you on developing a strategy if/when the time comes). We expect very few firms to be interviewing 3Ls for permanent positions in the Fall — as of now, it appears that 95%+ of the OCIP interview slots will be for 2Ls.
* 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.
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 do not hesitate to give us a call if you have any questions or concerns or encounter problems/potential problems of any kind over the course of your summer experience.
OCIP
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 mentioned in the early April 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 2010 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 2009 OCIP informational webpage. So far, it consists of a series of links to webcasts of our Fall 2009 OCIP-prep programs, including the April 8, 2009 OCIP Orientation. We expect to finish building the rest of the content by June 1, 2009 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 2008 OCIP webpage as a general reference. It may help answer your general procedural questions, but keep in mind that the dates will change as will the list of participating employers. It is also worth remembering that any advice you find on that page was offered in the context of a very different legal job market.
You might want to bookmark the Interview Programs section of the CDO website, which contains the links to both the 2008 and the 2009 OCIP webpages.
If we do not get to see you before you leave for the summer, we wish you the best of luck!