Those Were The Days My Friend. We Thought They'd Never End
Today was one of the few times this semester where I have been forcibly reminded that just one year ago, I was a fresh faced ickle 1L trying to make sense out of the big bad world. For those of you who remember my postings from year ago, and I know you all do, this is the time of year when the Career Services Office can start scaring 1Ls about jobs. Last year, I got to be the scaree, this year I got to be one of the scarors (is that a word... never mind, I don't care).
Today was the 2005 version of the 2L job panel... where hundreds of first year students got to stare blank at a bunch of 2Ls talking about what we did last summer... or in the case of some of you (and YOU know who you are), surfing on the internet.
So, I got to talk about my experience at My Marvelous eMployment opportunity.1 But I didn't really do much of that... no, I used my time to shamelessly promote the student IP group.2 Eh, if these 1Ls really wanted information, they can just ask me in person, not get it from a huge production.
As I did last year, here is my summary of the 2Ls... but now from a 2L perspective:
- In house guy (that's ME) - Well this jerk didn't really tell us anything, he just plugged his stupid student group
- Save-the-world girl - Once again, there was someone who did a public interest, save humanity job. I have a lot of respect for these people... but I couldn't do it. To her credit, this year's save-the-world girl admitted that she doesn't want to do it anymore either
- Public-Defender Lady - She had a great experience... it sounded so good, I almost would have liked to have done it too... except that I got paid and she didn't. I think everybody needs a good lawyer, but I also have this nagging tendency to want to eat.
- Lucky BigLaw Girl3 - I can't say too much that is bad about her, because she was in my section and is incredibly nice, and very, very smart. But, she did come across as the person we should all be jealous of. There was also a Lucky Not-quite-as-BigLaw guy. I didn't know him, so I could dislike him as much as I want
- Funny, Fell-into-it Guy - I also knew this guy, and he pretty much lived up to his reputation. He was funny, the job he got, he kind of fell into it... so there you go.
There were others, but none of them were very different than anybody else. Once again, the whole purpose of the event did not seem to be met, as I am sure many of the 1Ls ended up being more scared rather than less. Especially since the overarching theme of the panel was "Start early... wait, don't worry about starting early... Get good grades... Grades really matter... Don't blow your finals [underlying point is that if you blow your finals, you won't get a job]. I'm sure that was a great comfort.
Oh yeah, I also finally got to meet this 1L, who was nice enough to introduce himself after the event. He's tall. I tried to give him some sage 2L advice, but I fear it did not come across as eloquently as I'd hoped.4
1I don't want to just outright tell you where I worked
2Speaking of which, if you're at Minnesota and not doing anything tomorrow, come to our event and hear more 2Ls and 3Ls talking about their work... it's just as boring as today's program, but we provide free pizza.
3Once again, BigLaw in Minneapolis is not the same as DC or New York BigLaw... but that's beside the point.
4What with the "You knows," and "ums," and the fact that it didn't really qualify as advice in that it was probably bad.
posted by Unreasonable Man @ 12:42 PM
5 comments
5 Comments:
Hey unreasonable man,
I'm a long-time lurker (first time poster). And since you seem to be in the advice-giving mood, did you find pre-law prep books like that "learning legal reasoning" one to be at all helpful? Good, or waste of time?
Let me guess... "Planet Law School," right?
I read some of those pre-law prep books, including "Learning Legal Reasoning." Now that I look back, I don't think they were that helpful. But, they also weren't hurtful.
For the most part, these types of books try to give you a tiny idea of what law school is about, and they sometimes succeed a little bit.
For example, "Learning Legal Reasoning" attempts to show you how to read a case and glean the little nugget of legal knowledge you are supposed to get from the case. For this, it does a pretty good job. But here's the thing, you also figure that out on your own within the first couple weeks of law school. Of course, if you've done a little bit of it before, it won't be as new and scary, so there is an advantage there.
Whether you want to spend your time doing law school prep is really up to you. You have to balance the extra time it will take out of your normal life (be it undergrad studies, having fun, or whatever) with the small amount of benefit you get out of it.
Oh, you were the in-house guy? That was actually one of the things that made my ears perk up a bit (I have no idea why I'm in law school). So thanks for that...the rest of the presentation was pretty much a waste of time.
I didn't give very much helpful information... if you have any questions, go ahead and ask on here. I'm always happy to see that someone actually reads this thing.
It was more the concept of working within a corporation rather than a firm. Like I said, I don't really know what I want to do, but I'm vaguely interested in health-related stuff, and so that inspired me to check out major Minnesotan HMOs for in-house positions.
I didn't know what IP was, but I did look it up because of your presentation. :)
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