Notre Dame has had a terrible OCI season. Has OCI been a bloodbath at any other schools this year? Forum

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Re: Notre Dame has had a terrible OCI season. Has OCI been a bloodbath at any other schools this year?

Post by Anonymous User » Sun Aug 26, 2018 5:08 pm

Anonymous User wrote:
Anonymous User wrote:
Anonymous User wrote:Call it northern elitism or w/e but I honestly think Duke and Vandy only do so well in employment because no one wants to live and work in the South.
This is a dumbass hot take.
It's too strong of a take, but a lot of the schools mentioned in this thread (Fordham, ND, etc.) place primarily in some of the most competitive markets (NY, Chi, Cal to a lesser extent) rather than in the south.
NY is not a competitive market, it’s by far the easiest city to get biglaw in. Chicago is second easiest. If you want to talk about pure competitiveness in the sense of difficulty to get a job, then Charlotte, Florida, Nashville, etc. are all much more competitive than NY or Chi because they have so few spots, require extremely strong ties, and are very attractive to candidates due to a number of factors (COL, hours, partnership prospects, etc.

But regardless, students at ND generally have three options if they want biglaw: go to NY, go to Chi, or go to their home market(s). All of those outcomes are possible with good grades/interviewing ability. What ND will generally not allow you to do is break into a market outside of the Midwest that you have zero ties to (e.g. if you’re from GA and want CA with no ties, ND probably won’t be able to get you there). I’ve only known a handful of people at NDLS who have succeeded in breaking into CA, TX, etc. without prior ties to the area.

RR88

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Re: Notre Dame has had a terrible OCI season. Has OCI been a bloodbath at any other schools this year?

Post by RR88 » Sun Aug 26, 2018 5:58 pm

@NDLS2020 anons, you're all a bunch of idiots

Stop focusing on "stats." Network, and get off of this TLS sinkhole...wallow at Brothers next Thursday.
Great move posting about all the class problems, I think NDLS has a priest on call...might help with getting that BL job...

To class of NDLS2021 - get off this toxic forum, most people I know have BL jobs - it's all about building your network early, which is easy to do with the help of alumni across the US.

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Grazzhoppa

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Re: Notre Dame has had a terrible OCI season. Has OCI been a bloodbath at any other schools this year?

Post by Grazzhoppa » Mon Aug 27, 2018 1:34 pm

RR88 wrote:@NDLS2020 anons, you're all a bunch of idiots

Stop focusing on "stats." Network, and get off of this TLS sinkhole...wallow at Brothers next Thursday.
Great move posting about all the class problems, I think NDLS has a priest on call...might help with getting that BL job...

To class of NDLS2021 - get off this toxic forum, most people I know have BL jobs - it's all about building your network early, which is easy to do with the help of alumni across the US.
Agreed. It is not difficult to get BL from ND if you are near median, not mentally ill, and actually want the job.

An anecdote to anyone reading is not to get discouraged because you didn't get handed a job at OCI. Lots of firms don't go to OCI at ND and you can mass mail/use your network to get jobs at those firm. That's what I did.

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Re: Notre Dame has had a terrible OCI season. Has OCI been a bloodbath at any other schools this year?

Post by kyle010723 » Mon Aug 27, 2018 3:39 pm

Grazzhoppa wrote:Agreed. It is not difficult to get BL from ND if you are near median, not mentally ill, and actually want the job.

An anecdote to anyone reading is not to get discouraged because you didn't get handed a job at OCI. Lots of firms don't go to OCI at ND and you can mass mail/use your network to get jobs at those firm. That's what I did.
Can't agree more. Getting a job through OCI is the exception, not the norm. Stop thinking OCI is the be-all-end-all.

Tip: Mass-mail by first emailing the ND grad within a firm, law school or undergrad, they're most likely willing to help and to push your resume, instead of just cold mail some recruiters/HR.

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Re: Notre Dame has had a terrible OCI season. Has OCI been a bloodbath at any other schools this year?

Post by smokeylarue » Mon Aug 27, 2018 4:37 pm

What's considered a bloodbath at Notre Dame? I mean, don't you go to a law school like that with the expectation that the vast majority will strike out?

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Re: Notre Dame has had a terrible OCI season. Has OCI been a bloodbath at any other schools this year?

Post by Anonymous User » Mon Aug 27, 2018 5:41 pm

smokeylarue wrote:What's considered a bloodbath at Notre Dame? I mean, don't you go to a law school like that with the expectation that the vast majority will strike out?
When I went I treated it as top third got big law in NY or Chicago with ties, or home market, the rest make their own way. This increase to 50% is a blip and I hope no one is hanging their hats on those kinds of numbers from any strong regional, i.e. those schools just outside the UT/Vandy range.

Networking is crucial and practice can be extremely helpful, hope you all did the practice interviews with alums offered by career services

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Re: Notre Dame has had a terrible OCI season. Has OCI been a bloodbath at any other schools this year?

Post by RR88 » Mon Aug 27, 2018 8:57 pm

Anonymous User wrote:I’m a registered patent agent with 4+ years of prosecution experience in large law firms. Electrical engineering undergrad. Above median 1L grades at a T25. Solid interviewer.

I had piss-poor results at PLIP (the patent fair). I applied only to top firms, but still, I received far fewer screeners than I expected, and no callbacks. Fucking nerds.

Since transferring law schools, OCI has been much kinder to me. So far have had a ~50% callback rate from screeners, including many lottery picks, and ~75% offer rate from callbacks. My options are more regional than I expected, but thankfully they are broader than just IP jobs.

My take is that firms have become pickier, especially with respect to schools. Maybe it’s always been this way, or more characteristic of certain markets... I am slowly becoming more #teamretake
I know you.

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Re: Notre Dame has had a terrible OCI season. Has OCI been a bloodbath at any other schools this year?

Post by Anonymous User » Tue Aug 28, 2018 1:53 pm

This entire post is ridiculous. If you’re a well qualified candidate (above median), then you should have been networking every day this summer. The Career Office is very transparent that the BigLaw placement rates are because of alumni connections.

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Re: Notre Dame has had a terrible OCI season. Has OCI been a bloodbath at any other schools this year?

Post by RR88 » Tue Aug 28, 2018 4:10 pm

Anonymous User wrote:This entire post is ridiculous. If you’re a well qualified candidate (above median), then you should have been networking every day this summer. The Career Office is very transparent that the BigLaw placement rates are because of alumni connections.
:idea:

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Re: Notre Dame has had a terrible OCI season. Has OCI been a bloodbath at any other schools this year?

Post by SarahB » Tue Aug 28, 2018 10:38 pm

Anonymous User wrote:
Anonymous User wrote:
Anonymous User wrote:Why all the secrecy around your dirty laundry? Stifling people from saying things here probably won't stop the news from spreading one way or another anyways. Besides, it's not like people from other schools are saying that they're doing amazing either.
Also NDLS 2020 here - since we're airing it all out, the Title IX complaint was withdrawn almost as quickly as it was filed. And since we're casting moral aspersions, let's not forget that members of the 2019 class also made the conscious decision to invite implicated students from that same cheating scandal onto law review and moot court.

The previous poster's comment about transfers is irrelevant. NDLS will place roughly 40% in big law and federal clerkships like it always has.
NDLS 17 here. Please continue, the whole world should know how toxic the culture is and the amount of drama that occurs at NDLS. I enjoy reading about this.

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Re: Notre Dame has had a terrible OCI season. Has OCI been a bloodbath at any other schools this year?

Post by sadgrl » Sat Sep 01, 2018 10:52 pm

Anonymous User wrote:
Anonymous User wrote:Call it northern elitism or w/e but I honestly think Duke and Vandy only do so well in employment because no one wants to live and work in the South.
This is a dumbass hot take.
lol yeah definitely doesn't apply to duke. duke tries to funnel people primarily into nyc and if not there, then dc/tx/ca (w/people targeting tx/ca having ties to those places). the majority of students end up in nyc/dc. duke is also notorious for being bad at placing people into nc firms so we're definitely not doing well just b/c nobody wants to be in the south.

i think our employment rates are so good b/c duke people really do love duke people. the school really pushes reaching out to alumni and every alumni i've met has been super responsive - even if they only went to duke for undergrad. it makes networking easy and helps a lot when you want someone to pass along your resume.

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Re: Notre Dame has had a terrible OCI season. Has OCI been a bloodbath at any other schools this year?

Post by Anonymous User » Sun Sep 02, 2018 12:33 am

Great win over Michigan tonight. Go Irish.

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Re: Notre Dame has had a terrible OCI season. Has OCI been a bloodbath at any other schools this year?

Post by Anonymous User » Sun Sep 02, 2018 11:26 am

sadgrl wrote:
Anonymous User wrote:
Anonymous User wrote:Call it northern elitism or w/e but I honestly think Duke and Vandy only do so well in employment because no one wants to live and work in the South.
This is a dumbass hot take.
lol yeah definitely doesn't apply to duke. duke tries to funnel people primarily into nyc and if not there, then dc/tx/ca (w/people targeting tx/ca having ties to those places). the majority of students end up in nyc/dc. duke is also notorious for being bad at placing people into nc firms so we're definitely not doing well just b/c nobody wants to be in the south.

i think our employment rates are so good b/c duke people really do love duke people. the school really pushes reaching out to alumni and every alumni i've met has been super responsive - even if they only went to duke for undergrad. it makes networking easy and helps a lot when you want someone to pass along your resume.
Duke is not bad at placing people at NC firms lmao, it’s the best school to go to if you want to be in NC. just don’t expect it if you’re not from here or have terrible grades.

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Re: Notre Dame has had a terrible OCI season. Has OCI been a bloodbath at any other schools this year?

Post by Anonymous User » Sun Sep 02, 2018 12:34 pm

Anonymous User wrote:
sadgrl wrote:
Anonymous User wrote:
Anonymous User wrote:Call it northern elitism or w/e but I honestly think Duke and Vandy only do so well in employment because no one wants to live and work in the South.
This is a dumbass hot take.
lol yeah definitely doesn't apply to duke. duke tries to funnel people primarily into nyc and if not there, then dc/tx/ca (w/people targeting tx/ca having ties to those places). the majority of students end up in nyc/dc. duke is also notorious for being bad at placing people into nc firms so we're definitely not doing well just b/c nobody wants to be in the south.

i think our employment rates are so good b/c duke people really do love duke people. the school really pushes reaching out to alumni and every alumni i've met has been super responsive - even if they only went to duke for undergrad. it makes networking easy and helps a lot when you want someone to pass along your resume.
Duke is not bad at placing people at NC firms lmao, it’s the best school to go to if you want to be in NC. just don’t expect it if you’re not from here or have terrible grades.
well yeah i just meant it's not like duke places many people at nc firms if they didn't already have ties to the state/go into law school targeting nc. the only people i know who go to nc firms are originally from around here or went to duke/unc for undergrad. i've also heard of it being difficult to get nc firms since a lot of them expect duke students to be eyeing bigger markets for post-grad - but that's anecdotal anyways since i didn't apply to nc at all.

my point is that students at duke aren't all heading to the south. most are going to nyc/dc so they're still competing with schools in the north. duke isn't doing better in employment b/c students are only heading to nc firms that nobody else wants.

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Re: Notre Dame has had a terrible OCI season. Has OCI been a bloodbath at any other schools this year?

Post by Anonymous User » Mon Sep 03, 2018 12:07 am

I watched a median ND girl I met at my summer job literally waltz into multiple pre-oci offers merely by attending firm events. Doesn't seem too hard.

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Re: Notre Dame has had a terrible OCI season. Has OCI been a bloodbath at any other schools this year?

Post by Anonymous User » Mon Sep 03, 2018 1:01 am

Anonymous User wrote:I watched a median ND girl I met at my summer job literally waltz into multiple pre-oci offers merely by attending firm events. Doesn't seem too hard.
If only all the other ND kids would stop skipping firm receptions...

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Re: Notre Dame has had a terrible OCI season. Has OCI been a bloodbath at any other schools this year?

Post by Anonymous User » Mon Sep 03, 2018 1:35 am

Anonymous User wrote:
Anonymous User wrote:I watched a median ND girl I met at my summer job literally waltz into multiple pre-oci offers merely by attending firm events. Doesn't seem too hard.
If only all the other ND kids would stop skipping firm receptions...
Seriously. Networking was so huge for me this summer. I can attribute half my callbacks to networking. My offer ended up coming from networking - my entire story for why I wanted to practice in the specific group came from a phone call and coffee I had with someone in a different practice group. ND Undergrads and ND Law alums are all equally helpful and enthusiastic in getting ND people jobs - it's really not that hard to land SOMETHING if you meet the GPA floor and want it bad enough (assuming you can bring it home in the interview).

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Re: Notre Dame has had a terrible OCI season. Has OCI been a bloodbath at any other schools this year?

Post by Anonymous User » Mon Sep 03, 2018 5:22 am

Anonymous User wrote:ND’s class of 2017 had a 48.9% fed clerk+biglaw placement rate according to LST. Anecdotally, the classes of 2018 and 2019 look like they’re around or above that number. But OCI for the ND class of 2020 has been terrible. Plenty of very strong candidates have zero callbacks. This class could very well be below 33% fed clerk+biglaw placement.

Have any other schools seen similarly tough OCI seasons?
Thanks for the info. Were class sizes bigger for 2020 (for the whole country not just Notre Dame)? It'll be interesting to get a few decades of data to spot the cyclicality.

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Re: Notre Dame has had a terrible OCI season. Has OCI been a bloodbath at any other schools this year?

Post by Anonymous User » Wed Sep 26, 2018 6:05 pm

Update: everyone can relax. Looks like a strong year.

Placement spreadsheet is being circulated and it looks like about 1/3 of class has gotten a firm SA. Assuming some people haven't filled their name in yet (and I know for sure a few haven't), it looks like NDLS is well on its way to another >40% Large Firm year.

Not all of these are vault firms but they are all >100. That said, there are more Vault firms than usual - including a few people that landed S&C NY, which has only happened like one time since 2015.

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Re: Notre Dame has had a terrible OCI season. Has OCI been a bloodbath at any other schools this year?

Post by Anonymous User » Wed Sep 26, 2018 7:08 pm

Anonymous User wrote:Update: everyone can relax. Looks like a strong year.

Placement spreadsheet is being circulated and it looks like about 1/3 of class has gotten a firm SA. Assuming some people haven't filled their name in yet (and I know for sure a few haven't), it looks like NDLS is well on its way to another >40% Large Firm year.

Not all of these are vault firms but they are all >100. That said, there are more Vault firms than usual - including a few people that landed S&C NY, which has only happened like one time since 2015.
OP here, this is correct. Just glancing through the list I can see multiple Jones Day, KE, SullCrom, Ropes, and Orrick placements in a variety of offices. Many of these people aren’t on journals either. Additionally, there are plenty of people going to strong regional firms all over the country (e.g Alston & Bird ATL, Allen Matkins SD, Sheppard Mullin LA, Honigman DET, etc.)

Looks like I was very wrong in my OP, which I’ll blame partially on the fact that a good amount of my friend circle is still jobless - but that’s not abnormal for any school, and it shouldn’t dissuade anyone from looking at NDLS.

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Re: Notre Dame has had a terrible OCI season. Has OCI been a bloodbath at any other schools this year?

Post by Anonymous User » Fri Oct 12, 2018 2:47 pm

Class of 2018 here. I was below median when I went through OCI. Received multiple offers in my home market in the northeast.

There were definitely a decent amount of people in my class who struck out, but anecdotally, if you were around median and hustled, you had a good shot of getting a Biglaw job (through OCI or otherwise - a lot of people got jobs through networking or mass mailing). off the top of my head, I can think of about 20 people who are working for Vault firms (Orrick, Paul Weiss, Cleary,White & Case, Bracewell, etc.) in their home states of New York, California, and Texas. I also know of at least 4 people who ended up working for big firms in DE because they were interested in corporate law. ND's placement isn't anything near the T13, but it's pretty strong, even outside of the Midwest. Take that for what it's worth.

As for the incidents that happened last year - really embarrassing for ND. I personally would have liked to see the administration crack down on the idiots who cheated and the psychopath who was stalking women.

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Re: Notre Dame has had a terrible OCI season. Has OCI been a bloodbath at any other schools this year?

Post by Dnl2111 » Sat Oct 13, 2018 6:45 am

Vanderbilt had rough OCI in 2014 AND 2015. If you’re not top 1/3, you’re SOL. It’s weird though. Almost none of my friends got jobs through OCI (or not through OCI), yet Vandy’s numbers claim something like ~95% employment

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Re: Notre Dame has had a terrible OCI season. Has OCI been a bloodbath at any other schools this year?

Post by Anonymous User » Sat Oct 13, 2018 8:31 am

Seems like a better than normal year for ND because most years it places 35-40% in biglaw (last year’s 44.5% seems more like an anomaly).

And for Vandy, didn’t like 50%+ get biglaw jobs? I thought the biglaw + fed clerk % for Vandy last year was 67% (albeit a lot of them are smaller firms like Bass, Waller, Bradley, Baker Donelspn)

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Re: Notre Dame has had a terrible OCI season. Has OCI been a bloodbath at any other schools this year?

Post by Anonymous User » Sat Oct 13, 2018 9:20 am

Dnl2111 wrote:Vanderbilt had rough OCI in 2014 AND 2015. If you’re not top 1/3, you’re SOL. It’s weird though. Almost none of my friends got jobs through OCI (or not through OCI), yet Vandy’s numbers claim something like ~95% employment
I mean, the numbers are for 9 months out. Are your friends still all unemployed?

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Re: Notre Dame has had a terrible OCI season. Has OCI been a bloodbath at any other schools this year?

Post by Anonymous User » Sun Oct 14, 2018 6:13 pm

Anonymous User wrote:lol Notre Dame 3L here. I will echo what most other people have said: I think our 2Ls are doing fine at OCI but some of the top performers in their class are just weird AS FUCK and that's why they can't get jobs.

As far as the cheating scandal, I think the issue most people had with it was how fucking dumb the cheating was. First, it's cheating on legal research, an easy one-credit class. Second, they literally made a google doc and shared it will a bunch of people using their notre dame accounts. If you're going to cheat, don't be a fucking dumbass about it.

The Title IX complaint is more worrying. The fact that a 2L has bragged about bringing guns to school and keeps threatening to shoot people, including girls who are rightfully creeped out by his behavior, is most concerning to me. Considering that this kid has already been kicked out of Northwestern, idk why the administration didn't kick him out right away.
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