One Callback Down

I had my first callback interview today, and I think it went pretty well... so hopefully I will have at least one offer fairly soon, which will take the pressure off OCI immensely. I also think this firm (henceforth to be known as Minneapolis Firm A) has a philosophy that is very well suited to what I am looking for in a potential employer. Firm A seems to know that *gasp* it's attorneys, even the new associates, may want a life outside of the office, so it has much less strict work requirements¹. I also got the impression that people are able to make their work schedule fit their personal lives fairly easily without feeling like they are sacrificing their personal lives or their careers. The only thing that concerns me is Firm A is a fairly small firm (25 lawyers right now) and it may not be the best place to develop litigation skills, if it turns out that I want to do litigation, because it is harder for a small firm to have a lot of litigation (at least patent litigation) without the litigation swallowing up the entire firm².

We'll see if anything comes of it, but I'm just glad to have one callback out of the way. I have a few more to go, plus OCI's, and hopefully I'll have a job for next summer at the end.

---

¹For example, they don't have a minimum billing requirement because they feel that when a firm has such minimum requirements, associates are much more likely to screw over their co-workers to meet their billing requirements (and to try and ensure co-workers don't meet their billing requirements) that it makes for a really bad work environment.
²Which is something that doesn't always make business sense, because what happens if you clients don't have anymore litigation work, and you've been lax on your patent prosecution, and then you have no work at all.