Description
Why a Start in Small Firms Shouldn't Stop You from Getting Hired in Major Firms
Speaker 1:[00:00:00] I took scholarship money over going to a top 14 and went to a school in top 30 instead. The way you talk about it I'm not very marketable without a super elite school. What other ways can I make myself marketable.
That's just not true. So you are certainly marketable if you go to a top 30 school. If you got scholarship money, that means that you probably did very well in your LSATS and could do very well at the top 30 schools. So the way to market yourself, it doesn't matter really where you go to law school if you do very well there, especially a top 30.
Just do the absolute best you can. No one needs to go to a super elite school to be marketable. It's just not true.
That's not true at all.
But the best way to market yourself, it's really just to look at multiple markets. Look at as many markets as possible and then look for branch offices of national firms in some smaller markets. But you're definitely marketable. There's nothing wrong with a top 30. If your grades are good you can do anything. I place people, by the way, they went to the zero and like the worst law school in the country at good firms. So it's certainly... Nothing is going to stop you from doing well if you went to a good firm.
You will do fine. You can really do [00:01:00] anything if you go to a good firm. There's nothing really to worry about with that. But the other thing too is typically your thinking. Your vision right now is short-term.
You have the short-term vision, and then you have your medium term vision and then you have your long-term vision.
What is it that you're trying to do?
So you have to ask yourself, what is it you are trying to do? What do you want to do specifically?
Your short-term vision right now should be, to get the best job you can in the practice area you want.
Your medium term vision should be, to get a position in the best firm you can.
And then I guess the long term vision, being settled, happy, and have a career after showing your best.
Just because you start out in a smaller firm or you don't get a position in the best firm doesn't mean that's what's going to happen to you the rest of your career. What you need to do is you need to get the best possible job you can. That to me would be applying to multiple markets and all those sorts of things. And then your medium term vision would be get the best firm you can after showing your strength, [00:02:00] if that makes sense. Those are the things that I would recommend, to get the best firm you can after showing your strength.
The way you would do that, you need to work on getting more more stuff on your resume to make it look like you're a good attorney. So that's basically possible. So that's getting to where you're going, making the best impact you can learning, billing hours, getting experience, all that stuff. Those are some of the things that I would recommend, and that's going to make the experience and then starting clients, papers, outside activities, presentations, all that sort of stuff.
And this is typically how people do it. Most people don't go to a top 14 law school or top 10 law school. Most people go to schools that are ranked 100 to 250 or 150 to 250. And a lot of those people end up in major firms. So the way they do it is if they don't get a job in the short term in one of them, then they get to the best firm they can, and they do everything they can to get the best experience possible. And they throw themselves into it.
That means they bill a lot of hours. They [00:03:00] try hard. They do everything they possibly can to do a good job. And that's really all you need to do. You need to do the best job you can. And once you do that, then you're in good shape. You need to throw yourself in and look like the best possible attorney you can in your practice area. And you just need to really do everything you can. If you do that for a couple of years after not getting the firm you want, and you do all these things at the first firm you go to. You're going to have a lot of value because most people don't do those things when they get to the firms, even in the large firms.
Large firms are going to see you and they're going to be very enthusiastic about you. I see attorneys move with below average grades from top 200 law schools all the time to top US law firms. But they do this stuff. So that's the way to think it. It's not to worry about all this stuff in the short run.
