Georgetown OCI 2019 Forum

[Anonymous User]

Gonna start this up.

[legallyadog]

Rising 3L, currently a SA in DC. Happy to answer any questions.

[Anonymous User]

Graduated 2018. Also happy to answer questions. 1 summer SA in DC and 1 in NYC.

[MSUN5]

Hey guys, thanks for being willing to answer questions. I’m formulating my bid list right now to submit this weekend and I just have a few basic questions.

Is bidding DC biglaw as difficult and competitive as this board would have it? I’m from Philly so was planning on bidding some Philly firms, and then I have legitimately no geographic preference between DC & NYC. Given my lack of ties or preference to either region, would I be best served by just bidding entirely NYC/Philly and neglecting DC?

Additionally, I’m a transfer student from a T1 (historically ranked between 25-40) with a 3.86/Top 3%. D’you guys feel like there are any serious limitations on what firms I should bid on? I’ve talked to career services and browsed this board and seem to be getting slightly conflicting advice—w/ some saying I should bid more or less whatever I want and some indicating I should be conservative re V10/20 firms.

I appreciate your thoughts!

[Anonymous User]

GULC (GW too) probably overperforms relative to its rankings for DC biglaw. But yes, you probably still need to be top 1/3 for most firms. Look at median GPA lists. Some DC offices’ median offered did get pretty close to GULC 1L median but I wouldn’t count on them anyway.

Practice area dependent too.

You absolutely need to get a hold of that spreadsheet with GPAs of people that got offers. That spreadsheet will answer almost all your questions on how grade sensitive (and by imperfect proxy, how difficult) each firm/office is to get an offer from.

Just a side note to everyone going into OCI. Relax. Almost everyone will get something as long as you bid for firms in your GPA range and don’t completely bomb the interviews.

[Anonymous User]

I don't want to overplay the difficulty of getting a position in DC, however, I will say that in my experience, the top 1/3rd cutoff mentioned by the previous poster is not even close to being enough without something else going on. I was just outside of top 10% and had multiple friends well inside top 3rd but outside of top 10% and none of us got D.C. offers. Conversely, I received double digit NY CBs and multiple offers and other regional CBs and offers from mass mailing (Tx, Chicago and a few others). I'm not saying you need top 10% to get D.C. because the spreadsheet shows you don't, but from my sample size, only top 10% people got D.C. that I knew and had I bid exclusively D.C., I would have gotten nothing despite getting multiple V10 offers from NY Offices. TLDR; It's ok to bid "some" D.C. offices, but if you truly have no geographic preference and your main goal is getting a position at all, bid the vast majority on NY offices.

[Anonymous User]

I am Anon that said 1/3 cutoff.

I OCIed two years ago. Just outside top 10%, didn’t bother with journals. 3 DC offers. 1 v10. That’s out of like 6 OCI interviews. I did most interviews for NYC.

K-JD, 3 summers as ibanking intern undergrad, 1L SA. I didn’t bother with writing comp.

Just to be clear, top 1/3 just gives fighting chance for DC offices of places like Cadwalader and you have to interview well. For the most part, you still should focus your bids on NYC. It helps if you got some background in DC heavy practices like tax/antitrust/anything reg heavy.

[Anonymous User]

Between top 1/3 and top 15. I'm bidding exclusively DC because I have a pre-OCI offer and don't care to interview anywhere else. Mostly interested in a handful of DC-centric regulatory practice areas. Having a hard time with where to rank firms like Orrick, WSGR, Ropes, MoFo etc. that don't take huge summer classes but have lower or similar GPA requirements compared to Skadden/LW/Sidley/AP/Hogan Lovells.

Anyone have experience re - where to bid those firms?

Also, would it be pointless for a high 3.5X to bid on firms like Wilmer/GDC even if the rest of the resume/work experience is strong?

[Anonymous User]

Don’t remember hearing about Wilmer but OK shot at GDC IF you have background in something. (ECON degree if you want antitrust for example or ibanking internships+what section was the Corp section again?)

YMMV. This kind of thing really varies year to year. Who knows who you’ll be interviewing with.

[Anonymous User]

Just below median with a mid-high 3.2, but that's going up from a 3.1x to a 3.3x between first and second semester. Write on was ass, but took a shot a tech law as well and I think that went better. Good FedGov internship now, locked down another really good FedGov externship for the fall, plus on Barristers'. Had good legal internships as an undergrad, K-JD.

Targeting mostly NY with some DC and a possibly a couple secondary markets. Hoping my softs and interview skills pull me up from my "meh" GPA. Let's get weird.

[legallyadog]

Between top 1/3 and top 15. I'm bidding exclusively DC because I have a pre-OCI offer and don't care to interview anywhere else. Mostly interested in a handful of DC-centric regulatory practice areas. Having a hard time with where to rank firms like Orrick, WSGR, Ropes, MoFo etc. that don't take huge summer classes but have lower or similar GPA requirements compared to Skadden/LW/Sidley/AP/Hogan Lovells.

Anyone have experience re - where to bid those firms?

Also, would it be pointless for a high 3.5X to bid on firms like Wilmer/GDC even if the rest of the resume/work experience is strong?

A good indicator for how likely a firm will dip below their median is to look at how close the 25/75 are to the median on the spreadsheet. If I remember right, Wilmer was a really tight range, but places like Skadden have a much wider range between 25 and 75.

[MSUN5]

On the subject of Skadden, what do we make of some of these requirements:

Criteria: Journal Membership, Clinical Experience, Legal Research and Writing Fellow

As a transfer, I won't have received a journal decision by the time we bid, I have not had any opportunity to accumulate clinical experience, and I literally have no idea what a Research or Writing Fellowship is. Considering this, would bidding Skadden be a waste? Or should I just do it and explain in the event I land an interview?

[Anonymous User]

Straight ignore unless you’re a really edge candidate. If you’re an edge candidate, then you need to talk up credentials not obvious on your transcript. (transfers not gonna be... I remember hearing you guys basically treated as medians).

I never bothered with extra curricular and literally nobody asked me why.

[Anonymous User]

Same only DC OCI bidder (3.5x)

Any feedback on how to rank or adjust these firms would be much appreciated:

1. Akin
2. Hogan Lovells
3. Skadden
4. Sidley
5. Latham
6. Orrick
7. Kirkland
8. Steptoe
9. WSGR
10. Ropes
11. Wilmer
12. A&P
13. GDC
14. MoFo
15. Cooley

[Anonymous User]

Same only DC OCI bidder (3.5x)

Any feedback on how to rank or adjust these firms would be much appreciated:

1. Akin
2. Hogan Lovells
3. Skadden
4. Sidley
5. Latham
6. Orrick
7. Kirkland
8. Steptoe
9. WSGR
10. Ropes
11. Wilmer
12. A&P
13. GDC
14. MoFo
15. Cooley

Hogan and Latham need to be 1 and 2 with 1 being the one you'd prefer. My OCI a couple years ago, many people who put Latham and Hogan 1 and 2 got one or the other, I don't know anyone who got either of those without putting them 1 or 2.

[Anonymous User]

Skadden and Latham down.

Cooley is reputedly basically the nuts DC firm now. Word is out they do a lot of interesting work and associates there are as happy as biglaw associates can be. If you want it, you need to bid it higher.

[ladybug1989]

Former transfer student if anyone wants to PM me for advice/bid list etc? Regardless, you guys should all be mass mailing right now, and if it's not too late, try to land a fall externship (e.g., SEC/DOJ, etc) to make you stand out. I'm happy to look at resumes as well if anyone needs help.

[Anonymous User]

So I know the DC firms with pretty big class sizes that dip into lower (relatively, for DC) GPAs like Hogan and Akin should be bid high, but what about smaller firms in similar GPA ranges?

How high do you have to bid firms like Orrick, MoFo, Sidley, WSGR, etc. to get a bid? Can you still get them in the 8-12 range?

[otr]

For anyone with experience: How would you go about mass mailing firms out of your region, i.e. you wouldn't be able to meet with them if they got back to you but you bid on them for OCI. Really any tips for direct outreach would be helpful. Thanks!

[happysun]

Graduated 2018. Also happy to answer questions. 1 summer SA in DC and 1 in NYC.

Hi, I’m interested in your experience. How can you have 1 summer SA in DC and another in NY?

[happysun]

Between top 1/3 and top 15. I'm bidding exclusively DC because I have a pre-OCI offer and don't care to interview anywhere else. Mostly interested in a handful of DC-centric regulatory practice areas. Having a hard time with where to rank firms like Orrick, WSGR, Ropes, MoFo etc. that don't take huge summer classes but have lower or similar GPA requirements compared to Skadden/LW/Sidley/AP/Hogan Lovells.

Anyone have experience re - where to bid those firms?

Also, would it be pointless for a high 3.5X to bid on firms like Wilmer/GDC even if the rest of the resume/work experience is strong?

Hi, I’m wondering about your pre-OCI offer. I asssume the acceptance DDL will be before the OCI, right, will you accept the offer then reject it if you secure any big law SA position?

[Anonymous User]

Graduated 2018. Also happy to answer questions. 1 summer SA in DC and 1 in NYC.

Hi, I’m interested in your experience. How can you have 1 summer SA in DC and another in NY?

One of them was during 1L summer.

[Anonymous User]

Anybody have any info on Hollingsworth? Threw them on my bid list because GPA made sense and got an invite to their post-OCI reception. I know they're a litigation shop with a lot of pharmaceutical cases and they pay $165, but that's about all I know. Can't seem to find anything useful on Vault, and nothing on Chambers. Anybody know anything about hours, culture, etc.? Big paycut from the top firms, would hope it came along with a QOL increase.

edit: also wondering about salaries after year 1 and bonus structure

[nonnie16]

Anyone know how many interviews is average for the initial schedule we got today? Hoping to pick up a couple more during opt-in!

[legallyadog]

Anyone know how many interviews is average for the initial schedule we got today? Hoping to pick up a couple more during opt-in!

It was 10 last year

E: Also, email literally every firm you didn’t get and express interest for a shadow interview. Don’t listen to OCS saying to only email your top 10 firms that you didn’t get.