Speaker 1: 00:00 1L grades have traditionally been the most important piece, the most pivotal
piece in the biglaw law firm hiring process, which starts officially at the beginning of
your 2L year.
So as you can imagine your 1L grades are all that you have to go on.
But what else is there?
What other steps, what other mechanisms can you use to make yourself competitive?
Speaker 1: 00:23 The next thing to focus on is the 1L summer internship and what you want
to focus on for your 1L summer internship is getting good substantive experience at
a place that has the best name recognition you can find.
And so the process for getting a 1L summer internship usually starts at the beginning
of the second semester.
So around January sometimes the applications are due at the end of December, and what those
are going to look like are things like nonprofits, government agencies and corporations.
And so career services might have a list of places that accepted interns in the past.
There might be sort of a mini on canvas interviewing process for these internships or it might
just be you reaching out individually to these places to ask them if you can come in intern,
whatever the process is for your law school, just know that what you're focusing on is
the substance of experience that you could talk about in interviews later on.
And again that better name recognition, the more the law firm who's interviewing you is
going to know something about what you did.
Speaker 1: 01:23 As much as you can help it avoid taking non-legal jobs just because they
paid you.
I know that money is an important factor and that student loans are insane, but if you
get a non-legal job or a non-substantive legal job for your 1L summer, it's going to be a
big mark against you in those interviews because you're not going to have any substance of
experience to talk about.
You're not going to be showing them that law is really what you're interested in or what
you're trying for or that you are looking to challenge yourself in that way.
Um, and so as as unfair is that might be, as best you can try to focus on the experience
you're getting and not necessarily the money they may or may not be paying you.
What's happening now is sort of this phenomenon of a spike and a growth in 1L summer clerkships
at big law firms and so for these 1L summer clerkships you may not have any grades to
go off of.
Speaker 1: 02:24 1L summer clerkships have existed for a while but they've always been
a bit of a smaller player.
So when I was in law school, I think maybe two to three to four of the 1L class actually
got a 1L summer clerkship and even then it wasn't a deal breaker for how you would do
in the big law firm hiring process at the beginning of your 2L year.
It was sort of a nice bonus.
You made a lot of money that summer, but it wasn't a critical piece of determining how
the longer game would play out.
But now since there is this growth in 1L clerkships, it definitely is worth mentioning and worth
talking about.
Speaker 1: 03:02 There's been an interesting recent development, so at the end of the last
year in December 2018, NALP, or the national association for law placement, withdrew is
official guidelines for how 1L law school recruiting had to go.
Before they had an October 15th deadline for when law students could meet with their career
services department.
There was a December 1 deadline for when law students and law firms could have official
contact and all of those guidelines are officially gone as of last year, and so this is actually
going to be the first year when there's sort of a wild west approach where anything goes.
Now in this context, there's a couple of important things to keep in mind if you are currently
a 1L.
One, I would immediately meet with your career service advisor because some law schools have
their own rules, have implemented their own rules of 1L recruiting.
Some law firms
Speaker 1: 03:52 have implemented their own rules of 1L recruiting and you need to know
what those are so that you can be sure to respect them and not make any contact you're
not supposed to be making.
The second thing I would do is check out the NALP official list of biglaw law firms that
are offering 1L clerkships to give you an idea for the law firms in your area, the offices
in your area, that might be available.
I'll leave that in the description below.
And the third thing, and arguably the most important, is to try to find 2Ls who had 1L
law firm clerkships to ask what their strategy was, what their approach was, because they're
going to have the most up-to-date information specifically from your law school, specifically
for the law firms in your area.
Because you're gonna want to know when to apply, how to apply, what to include, and
you don't want to be stepping on any toes or violating any rules that you didn't know
exist.
Speaker 1: 04:43 So because this system is so new and the process is happening for the
first time this year, I'll go ahead and do those three things before you start putting
your applications together so that you can most effectively and efficiently use your
time.
Because of course, studying and doing well is still going to be your number one priority
throughout your 1L year.
And if you are currently at a law school with these 1L recruiting guidelines, or you're
applying to a law firm in your area that has already published these 1L recruiting guidelines,
go ahead and link it below so we can start to see what kinds of rules and regulations
and dates and, and, application guidelines are out there to give people the most information
that you can as you're going through this process.
So that's 1L year.
Your two main focuses are to get as high of grades as you possibly can and to get the
best 1L summer internship or clerkship as you possibly can.