WonL
The random thoughts of an architect-turned- lawyer from the deep south living in Washington, DC...
Friday, February 04, 2005
Elaboration
Apparently my innate artistic ability is not quite clear. NOBODY UNDERSTANDS ME:-( I went to dinner with a friend last night and asked him "did you see my painting? did you see my painting" to which he replied "um, yeah, what the hell were you talking about?" Good thing I'm going to law school, as apparently starving artist is not in my future. So, to elaborate on the interview in words:I was lucky enough to land an interview for a Summer Associate position. (Note to non law-schoolers: Summer Associate is the way that law firms set up their whole recruiting world. As a 2L, it is extremely imporant to land one of those positions as a springboard into a BigLaw firm - if this is the route you intend to take.) I figured I would try to start early as a 1L, since I know this is the route I will take. So, I finally got an interview after SIXTY rejection letters. By the way, I am still getting those in. In fact, I think I have now gotten in more rejection letters than I sent out. Apparently, they sit around lawyer recruiting happy hours and say "so, have you rejected Law-Rah yet?" "No, she didn't send us a resume!" "Well, here's her address, go reject her anyway!" Back to my point...I got an interview that was actually set up through school. This means some firm came to them and said "we want some of YOUR students" and school set out on a search. School sent them a bunch of resumes of interested students and firm narrows down who they will interview. Since firm was sending someone from their big southern office, they would be here for only one day conducting interviews. I guess the "pick me! pick me!" I markered in red on my cover letter did the trick, as I was asked to meet for an interview.
I was sent "instructions" for the interview from school. These instructions included arriving at a hotel, asking for a key card, going up the elevator to a hotel room to meet with a guy named "Derrick" and gently tapping on the door to get his attention (name changed to protect identity:-) I thought this was all a bit strange. Growing up as a Southern Gal, the bedroom was always such a private place. Hell, I am still not allowed to have boys in my room when I go home. So, to meet with some random guy in a hotel room seemed strange to me. Luckily, he was even more uncomfortable with it than I was. He propped the door open and made sure to tell me that he had slept in a different hotel room the night before. D told me that for some reason, my school wanted to do it this way. Hmmm, perhaps since school already knew my grades, they were telling me I was going to have to come up with a different way to land a job.
Seriously, though, aside from a few mis-communications...things went pretty well. Firm has three offices of interest here. I was interviewing for office B (or so I thought). I knew they were 'headquartered' at office A and were also interviewing for that office, but that's not what I was interested in. I did specify in my cover letter that I was interested in B. Upon arriving, Derrick tells me that they are actually hiring for their DC office too. YAY! That was exciting to me, as I would love to work in the DC office:-) Long story short, by the end, he had basically laid it out that they "MAY" hire for office B the DC office, but they REALLY want to hire for A and I had to make clear that I am not interested in office A. This was hard, seeing as how he was sent from that office. So, if they do end up hiring for my offices of choice, I think I have a pretty good shot. Otherwise, back to the drawing board.