Crazy for Taking Vacation after OCI? Forum

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Re: Crazy for Taking Vacation after OCI?

Post by Anonymous User » Mon Jul 30, 2018 5:07 pm

Anonymous User wrote:I would say it depends - are we talking this Thursday (Aug 2)? If so, you'll probably be OK scheduling callbacks the week of Aug. 13. If we're talking next week (Aug 9) and not doing a callback until the week of August 20, then you're really late.

Can confirm that the firm will fly you in and out of whatever city you ask for (I'm all over the place over the next couple of weeks for callbacks in 3 different cities) and you should be open to leaving your vacation early. No questions asked, just tell them what you want. It's almost always a travel agent for a large firm.
I think law students usually fail to grasp this. Don't worry about being budget conscious like a law student. If you get CBs, go ahead and order $40 of room service if that's what you want for dinner so you don't have to be around people any longer. CBs are definitely a draining experience since you have to be 100% "on" for 4+ hours straight. Book whatever flight time works for you on whatever airline has times that are most convenient. It won't be first class, but they will 100% work around your schedule.

On things like meals, you won't submit your receipts to the firm until later. If you interview in a city like NY, you may schedule 3 CBs at 3 different firms over 3 days. These firms will split the cost of your travel/hotel bill amongst themselves, and you only submit the expenses to 1 firm (whichever you feel like) and then they reimburse you and chase their money from the other firms you interviewed with.

So, one of my CBs in NY let me book my own hotel of my choosing. I stayed at a place that was $500/night (not outrageous for a full-service hotel in NY, re: one that offers a restaurant and room service so you can fully focus on interview prep). Then, I spent roughly $25 on lunches and $40 on dinner. On the last night, I got dinner with 2 friends, ran up a $190 tab amongst the 3 of us, and I just picked it up.

Then once I got an offer from one of the firms, I submitted my receipts to a different firm (even the $190 dinner, expecting they'd just cover roughly $50 of it for my portion). The firms covered every dime, no questions asked. There's no need to be "creative" or anything like that. Don't go crazy, but also don't try to save money and stay in a shithole or fly on budget airlines. Just treat it like normal business travel.

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glitched

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Re: Crazy for Taking Vacation after OCI?

Post by glitched » Mon Jul 30, 2018 5:39 pm

JohnnieSockran wrote:
glitched wrote:
radon5 wrote:
My family is actually giving some pushback. The trip is to be with an ailing family member. I'm pretty split on this decision.
If this is for an ill family member, don't cancel the vacation. Seriously. Don't even plan on making it back during the middle. In the long run, if you have limited time to spend with loved ones, that time is going to be way more significant than the advantage of interviewing on Monday over Friday. If this was a question of missing OCI entirely or an entire month of callbacks, I'd maybe have a different recommendation or plan. But one week? Recruiting happens from August to November. Sure, that one week will hurt your chances, but not to such a significant degree (especially if you're getting callbacks so fast you can schedule it the first week after OCI).
Personally, if biglaw is your goal and you have significant debt, I think this is pretty terrible advice. I agree don't cancel the trip, but have stuff with you in case you need to leave early.

It's no secret that entry level legal salaries are bimodal. So if you miss the biglaw boat, that could mean jobs that pay like $80k or even significantly less with minimal annual raises, if any, compared to $190k + bonus with significant yearly increases. That difference will certainly matter long-term when it comes to accruing interest on your student loans and paying them off.
Scheduling a callback on Friday instead of Monday to Thursday of the same week after OCI is not going to significantly hurt your chances at biglaw, especially if the candidate got a callback that quickly after OCI. Like I said, if this was a different question/scenario, then I'd probably give a different recommendation and/or come up with a better plan. OP wants to know if he can still make the vacation without killing his chances at biglaw, and that one week gap will not do that. It'll likely hurt, but for some firms (those that meet at the end of the week), it might not even matter at all.

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Re: Crazy for Taking Vacation after OCI?

Post by JohnnieSockran » Mon Jul 30, 2018 6:29 pm

glitched wrote:
JohnnieSockran wrote:
glitched wrote:
radon5 wrote:
My family is actually giving some pushback. The trip is to be with an ailing family member. I'm pretty split on this decision.
If this is for an ill family member, don't cancel the vacation. Seriously. Don't even plan on making it back during the middle. In the long run, if you have limited time to spend with loved ones, that time is going to be way more significant than the advantage of interviewing on Monday over Friday. If this was a question of missing OCI entirely or an entire month of callbacks, I'd maybe have a different recommendation or plan. But one week? Recruiting happens from August to November. Sure, that one week will hurt your chances, but not to such a significant degree (especially if you're getting callbacks so fast you can schedule it the first week after OCI).
Personally, if biglaw is your goal and you have significant debt, I think this is pretty terrible advice. I agree don't cancel the trip, but have stuff with you in case you need to leave early.

It's no secret that entry level legal salaries are bimodal. So if you miss the biglaw boat, that could mean jobs that pay like $80k or even significantly less with minimal annual raises, if any, compared to $190k + bonus with significant yearly increases. That difference will certainly matter long-term when it comes to accruing interest on your student loans and paying them off.
Scheduling a callback on Friday instead of Monday to Thursday of the same week after OCI is not going to significantly hurt your chances at biglaw, especially if the candidate got a callback that quickly after OCI. Like I said, if this was a different question/scenario, then I'd probably give a different recommendation and/or come up with a better plan. OP wants to know if he can still make the vacation without killing his chances at biglaw, and that one week gap will not do that. It'll likely hurt, but for some firms (those that meet at the end of the week), it might not even matter at all.
Agree to disagree. If OP wants biglaw, this trip could hurt OP's chances, maybe only slightly, maybe not at all, or maybe enough that it matters. There's no way to know, but it is a fact that interviewing sooner is always better for landing the job because offers are on a rolling basis.

If OP goes in Friday, and a firm with a smaller class size saw 6 excellent candidates between Monday and Wednesday and made a few offers to some of them, OP could miss out.

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Re: Crazy for Taking Vacation after OCI?

Post by QContinuum » Mon Jul 30, 2018 9:57 pm

Anonymous User wrote:So, one of my CBs in NY let me book my own hotel of my choosing. I stayed at a place that was $500/night (not outrageous for a full-service hotel in NY, re: one that offers a restaurant and room service so you can fully focus on interview prep). Then, I spent roughly $25 on lunches and $40 on dinner. On the last night, I got dinner with 2 friends, ran up a $190 tab amongst the 3 of us, and I just picked it up.

Then once I got an offer from one of the firms, I submitted my receipts to a different firm (even the $190 dinner, expecting they'd just cover roughly $50 of it for my portion). The firms covered every dime, no questions asked. There's no need to be "creative" or anything like that. Don't go crazy, but also don't try to save money and stay in a shithole or fly on budget airlines. Just treat it like normal business travel.
For other rising 2Ls reading this, please don't follow the advice to run up a $190 tab for a single dinner. Don't give anyone any reason to remember you negatively. Sure, the expense might simply slip past and get approved, but why run the risk?
glitched wrote:Recruiting happens from August to November.
Recruiting may technically go on until November, but the vast, vast majority of BigLaw offers go out by the end of August.

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Re: Crazy for Taking Vacation after OCI?

Post by radon5 » Thu Aug 09, 2018 6:39 pm

So update. Got some callbacks (awesome). I decided to cut the trip short and do one mid week next week. But I got pushed off to the first days of the week of the 20th for my others. Hopefully won't hurt me too much.

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Re: Crazy for Taking Vacation after OCI?

Post by Anonymous User » Thu Aug 09, 2018 7:22 pm

QContinuum wrote:
Anonymous User wrote:So, one of my CBs in NY let me book my own hotel of my choosing. I stayed at a place that was $500/night (not outrageous for a full-service hotel in NY, re: one that offers a restaurant and room service so you can fully focus on interview prep). Then, I spent roughly $25 on lunches and $40 on dinner. On the last night, I got dinner with 2 friends, ran up a $190 tab amongst the 3 of us, and I just picked it up.

Then once I got an offer from one of the firms, I submitted my receipts to a different firm (even the $190 dinner, expecting they'd just cover roughly $50 of it for my portion). The firms covered every dime, no questions asked. There's no need to be "creative" or anything like that. Don't go crazy, but also don't try to save money and stay in a shithole or fly on budget airlines. Just treat it like normal business travel.
For other rising 2Ls reading this, please don't follow the advice to run up a $190 tab for a single dinner. Don't give anyone any reason to remember you negatively. Sure, the expense might simply slip past and get approved, but why run the risk?
glitched wrote:Recruiting happens from August to November.
Recruiting may technically go on until November, but the vast, vast majority of BigLaw offers go out by the end of August.
What risk? If you land a job in say, SF, then submit the expensive dinner to the NY firm you did at CB at. Just don't do expensive meals in SF where your first choices of jobs are. And if you end up having to take the job in NY because it's your only offer, eat the expense and don't submit it since you'll be working with those folks. Who cares if some random person at a firm you'll likely never work at remembers you expensed an expensive meal? Everyone is so soft these days.

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Re: Crazy for Taking Vacation after OCI?

Post by Anonymous User » Thu Aug 09, 2018 11:06 pm

Anonymous User wrote:
QContinuum wrote:
Anonymous User wrote:So, one of my CBs in NY let me book my own hotel of my choosing. I stayed at a place that was $500/night (not outrageous for a full-service hotel in NY, re: one that offers a restaurant and room service so you can fully focus on interview prep). Then, I spent roughly $25 on lunches and $40 on dinner. On the last night, I got dinner with 2 friends, ran up a $190 tab amongst the 3 of us, and I just picked it up.

Then once I got an offer from one of the firms, I submitted my receipts to a different firm (even the $190 dinner, expecting they'd just cover roughly $50 of it for my portion). The firms covered every dime, no questions asked. There's no need to be "creative" or anything like that. Don't go crazy, but also don't try to save money and stay in a shithole or fly on budget airlines. Just treat it like normal business travel.
For other rising 2Ls reading this, please don't follow the advice to run up a $190 tab for a single dinner. Don't give anyone any reason to remember you negatively. Sure, the expense might simply slip past and get approved, but why run the risk?
glitched wrote:Recruiting happens from August to November.
Recruiting may technically go on until November, but the vast, vast majority of BigLaw offers go out by the end of August.
What risk? If you land a job in say, SF, then submit the expensive dinner to the NY firm you did at CB at. Just don't do expensive meals in SF where your first choices of jobs are. And if you end up having to take the job in NY because it's your only offer, eat the expense and don't submit it since you'll be working with those folks. Who cares if some random person at a firm you'll likely never work at remembers you expensed an expensive meal? Everyone is so soft these days.
if I understand you correctly, your master plan is to expense your expensive SF dinner to the NY firm you're not accepting the offer from. Are you assuming that they're not gonna look at the receipt and start asking questions about the SF...address

(putting aside the fact that this is unethical; HR people at big law firms bounce around all the time, talk to each other; there's basically no upside because you can spend normal amounts of $$$ and still have a good time...)

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