(1) The NALP directory: http://www.nalpdirectory.com/dledir_search_quick.asp
This is your best friend. You need to read and get to know information on firm size, summer class size, offer rates, and practice area sizes for the firms you are interested in bidding on. This is a 1-stop shop for some of the most important information you need going into OCI. Don't be surprised the day of an interview to learn one firm you're bidding on is looking to hire 80 summers and the other hired 2 last year.

(2) The NALP Perspectives on Fall Recruiting: http://www.nalp.org/perspectivesonfallrecruiting
You can skip this if you are light on time, but it's a fantastic resource for understanding the way the legal market works in general. Knowing these things can help inform your choices and research, but the documents on that website will be less useful for learning about individual firms.

(3) Chambers Associate: http://www.chambers-associate.com/
This is a fantastic resource from the makers of Chambers & Partners. It includes detailed descriptions about law firms and information directly from attorneys about what it's like working there. One of its best resources for beginning to do research is its practice area summaries, available at: http://www.chambers-associate.com/Pract ... -Summaries

(4) Vault: http://www.vault.com/wps/portal/usa/ran ... regionId=0
This website is annoying and difficult to navigate. You need a subscription for most premium content, but you can usually get that from your school's career services office. The rankings themselves are not very useful, but the detailed information about firms ('buzz' and the like) can be a great way to start getting acquainted with a firm's culture. Be aware that the rankings are purely based on 'prestige' and come from a survey distributed to associates. Vault rankings are badly skewed in favor of NYC corporate practices, and firms that NYC corporate attorneys have heard of.

(5) Lateral Link / Above the Law Career Center: http://careers.abovethelaw.com/
Great information presented in largely the same format as Vault and Chambers Associate. The charts and survey information is especially helpful, as are links to recent news from Above the Law.

(6) Chambers & Partners: http://www.chambersandpartners.com/USA
This isn't designed "for" us - it contains information more useful for prospective clients, or bragging between law firms. It's extremely detailed, however, and can even get into boutiques and small firms in niche practice areas. Not as useful for interview prep, but very useful for deciding between offers or doing deeper research.

(7) Am Law Profitability & Revenue rankings: http://www.law.com/jsp/tal/PubArticleTA ... hbxlogin=1
This info isn't very useful, but it's interesting to see how profitable firms are and how they use their leverage. For more detail, see the next link.

(8) Financial League Tables: http://thomsonreuters.com/products_serv ... ue_tables/
You can actually learn how many deals large firms did, where firms biggest deals were located, who had the biggest share of work like M&A, capital markets, etc. This is, if useful at all, mostly useful to learn about how the practice areas at big transactional firms actually compare. In truth, it likely won't matter much to you as a young associate, but it's interesting and concrete data if you want to go the extra mile.

(9) Autoadmit, TLS, and Above the Law: (various obvious websites)
These places can contain mountains of information about gossip, especially gossip from a young associate and law student point of view. You'll have to learn to filter information, but these are the kinds of places you'll have to turn to if you want to learn important information such as "Sullivan & Cromwell routinely sends its summer associates Bonsai Trees for Christmas" or "A callback interview at Cravath can last for 9+ hours."

(10) Firm Websites: http://namesandampersands.com
The website of any individual firm will have information about the firm's summer program and culture. Perhaps more importantly, almost all firms allow you to research attorney backgrounds. This is a good way to determine which firms have strong relationships with your school. The more partners a firm has from your school, the more likely they are to take recruiting from your school seriously - even if you have to write a letter instead of doing an interview on campus.

(11) Your Career Services Office
Many schools maintain surveys from prior associates, internal databases containing grade information of various firms, and basic data on how many students will be interviewed. Out of context, none of the above resources are very helpful. Once you learn what firms will be coming to OCI and which appear to be interviewing more candidates, you can make informed decisions about how to plan for OCI season.

- - - - - - - - - -

Links provided by others / at a later date:

http://benchmarklitigation.com/ - Litigation info

http://www.martindale.com/ - Martindale is a great resource for smaller firms (usually the type of place you'd send applications to rather than see at OCI).

Adding to the Useful Links Thread.

Thanks for this. Still trying to find a reasonable manner to predict hiring upticks at individual firms, and failing, but this helps.

Good stuff, although my choice in the poll is currently losing. This will be handy.

We could sticky this too if you would prefer that over a poll. Thanks!

ETA: It already is. Oops.

Dood- very close poll. Glad someone finally cleared that up with some ampirical date pontzzz.

Good call on the sticky. It would be nice to rename this one "Outside OCI Sources" and the other one "TLS OCI Threads" or something similar, if the OPs wouldn't mind.

You forget that half the point of the title is that it has "thesealocust" in it. Without that, the opportunity to ego-stroke would be lost forever.

So we should have something like "thesealocust's Outside OCI Sources," or "thesealocust's TLS OCI Threads" or something similar.

It appears thesealocust is more modest than you thought.

(1) lol at calling me out on the thread's title 9 hours after I had changed it.

(2) it's was a star wars joke. Augie's Great Municipal Band is the title of the closing song in Episode 1; this thread's title was Thesealocust's Great Municipal OCI Research Thread. I do birthdays and weddings too.

Oh wow. You counted!



...ah it makes sense now. You lost your virginity 9 hours ago.

Edit: squashed.

Don't be so mad. Lighten up and take a joke.

congratulations on your continued effort to be one of the worst posters on tls. you're only 50-some posts in and exceeding all expectations.

It's all good. After a few years on this site you develop a thick skin.

There we go. Cheers! Great OP either way.

thanks !

awesome thread, thanks

And, should you ever wonder how to pronounce a firm's name....Weil, Gotshal & Manges anyone?

Anyone who says all three names during the interview deserves to be dinged. Two of the names is pushing it. And simply saying, "Weil" is good enough.

That said, a lot of people do not know how to say "Debevoise."

Cravath is actually the one I hear mispronounced the most often. I think most people think they know how to say it and so don't bother with confirmation they would with a firm like Weil.

Wachtell is another.

Duke has another pronunciation guide: http://www.law.duke.edu/career/pronunciations. It doesn't look nearly as extensive as GULC's, but it includes a few that GULC missed.

While "Weil" is standard, I was always curious about the "Manges" part.

And you'd be surprised how many people pronounce "Akin" the same way you pronounce "atkins"

Err, thanks. I was definitely pronouncing this wrong.



Phonetic spelling, please. Neither the GULC nor the Duke guide seems to have it, probably because they don't interview at either school. I say "WAH-CHELL." Is it "WATCH-TELL"?