Reddit vs. Reality For Law School OCI Advice

My father spent his entire professional life, some 30+ years, in higher education, so it should come as no surprise that he had some advice for his only child when I started at Vanderbilt four years ago this month.  Dad said that one aspect of the job I was going to like more than I anticipated was working with students, and he has been absolutely correct — he was also right about aspects that I would like less, but that is a column for another time.  When a student swings by my office, a common occurrence during OCI season in which we are currently enmeshed, it provides me an opportunity to take a break from the Excel spreadsheet in front of me and help in whatever way I can.  Whether it is celebrating a newly acquired job, providing comfort when a professional dream is seemingly out of reach, or even just telling someone to take a deep breath and relax, I get to see the gamut of student emotion while providing my own degree of insight, or at the very least being a willing sounding board.  Having been fortunate to hold a number of jobs in the legal industry that Vanderbilt students are working toward (federal clerk, Biglaw, non-profit, academia adjacent), I like to remind students that I, and my colleagues, have a pretty in-depth knowledge of the state of the overall legal market; though the best and most up-to-date insights into the current conditions at a particular employer (e.g., Skadden NYC) will not come from Career Services, but rather, from their own classmates who have worked there. I can tell you what OCI is like, but back when I was going through the process, firms were actually giving out swag.^[1]

But while I love having students come in my office to share insights they learned from their classmates, there are few things that put me more on edge than when a student walks in and says, “So, I saw on Reddit/Top-law-schools/somewhere else on the internet . . .”  This is usually followed by a piece of career advice that ranges from questionable to a fireable offense if provided by someone who actually works in a CSO.   For those not familiar, Reddit is a social news aggregation and discussion website that is one of the most popular destinations on the internet.  It also has a well-deserved reputation as housing some of the most hideously racist and misogynistic online, while also serving as a model for sites like 4chan and 8chan, which are radicalizing a generation of violent white supremacist youth.  Reddit users helped drum out CEO (and former Cravath attorney) Ellen Pao, who had the audacity to *checks notes* ban forums that were absurdly racist.  This was followed by CEO and co-founder Steve Huffman quarantining certain subreddits while banning others because the overt racism therein was making it difficult for the company to attract employees.  While I went to law school rather than business school, I would think a CEO would want to crack down on rampant racism before it affected the bottom line, but that’s just me.  So, while NBA Reddit is interesting during the season, it is fair to say I am dubious of Reddit in general.  However, since it, and other sites, are seemingly a primary source of career information for students, I decided to take a look.

The primary subreddit dealing with law school is, not surprisingly, called r/LawSchool.  There’s also r/lawschooladmissions, but strangely, nothing dedicated to legal careers.  So, I took a gander at r/LawSchool to see what sort of advice was being provided and how it stacks up to what students should actually be doing.  Thankfully, the subreddit had an “OCI Megathread,” which seemed as good as anywhere to start.  I was frankly surprised that a lot of the advice/insight was accurate, laying out the various parts of the Fall Recruiting Cycle.  That being said, there were exceptions worth flagging.

In a word, no.  Now granted, this might vary a bit by region, with the South placing a greater emphasis on such niceties, but failing to send thank you notes can have negative repercussions on your job search.  If you are the one candidate who does not send a note, especially after a callback, it could very well make you stand out in a negative light.  While there is truth to the idea that decisions as to which candidates will be getting a callback and then an offer can happen relatively quickly, that only means students should employ a more rapid means of communication. Send an email thank you note and then, if you want, follow it with something handwritten.  There is no need to break out the calligraphy set, but something handwritten never hurts.  Later on in the thread, some posters feared that making a mistake in a thank you note could negatively impact one’s candidacy.  That could very well be true, but you know how best to avoid that mark against you?  Don’t make the mistake in the first place.

This discussion of whether or not “bad” grades will come up in an OCI interview manages to be incorrect in multiple different directions at once.  First, yes, grades that strongly deviated from the rest of your transcript are probably going to come up in an interview, be it a screener or a callback.  If an attorney is looking at a transcript and sees that someone booked all of their 1L classes, except for Torts where they got a C, it is human nature to ask, “So, what happened there?”  However, just because that question is asked does not mean that you have already been dinged by the firm.  Curiosity is sometimes just that.  Unless the class(es) in which one underachieved were in the areas where you would be practicing law in this particular job, your strong academic performance throughout the rest of your transcript can carry the day and get you an offer.

So no, not all legal jobs are the same.  I can understand that to a lay person all Biglaw firms can come off as a bunch of glass tower offices named for a handful of white males who have been dead for probably the better part of a century, if not longer.  But a law student is not supposed to be a lay person.  There are significant differences between Wachtell and Cravath or Covington and Williams & Connolly or Sidley and Kirkland.  And that’s just looking at various Biglaw firms.  The differences between working a massive all-purpose law firm as opposed to a 10-person insurance law boutique are about as stark as imaginable.  And then there are all the non-firm opportunities that exist ranging from solo practice to policy jobs in which having a law degree is valuable, but there is no actual practice of law.

I understand this advice on some level, especially the desire to distinguish yourself from your classmates and add some personality to your application, but typically, employers do not ask for cover letters for a reason.  For firms that are visiting dozens upon dozens of schools during the Fall Recruiting Cycle, interviewing hundreds if not thousands of students, there are already a lot of materials to both review and keep straight.  Adding yet another piece of paper on top of that pile provides something else that has to be reviewed and could get lost.  Plus, a failure to heed instructions, i.e., do not provide a cover letter, is going to be a mark against you in the eyes of some firms.

What?  Listen, I know that Reddit is home to r/The_Donald, but our largest occupant of the White House since (including?) William Howard Taft does not button his coat due to his corpulent nature.  Have your coat buttoned at least while standing.  If that feels constricting, then the issue is probably the size of your coat.

While it is true that my paycheck comes from Vanderbilt, my loyalties lie with our law students, not the institution as a whole.  I try my best not to push someone in a career direction they obviously do not want to go.  Now, do I talk up Biglaw to a lot of students?  Absolutely.  Why?  Because the vast majority of Vanderbilt students come to law school wanting to go into private practice at a large firm for a litany of reasons: the type of cases/clients found in Biglaw, the post-firm opportunities afforded to those in Biglaw, the prestige, and yes, the money.  I also sing the praises of clerkships at every opportunity, but that is because I can speak from personal experience and say students will learn more during a year of clerking than they would anywhere else.  But believe me, the goal of myself and my colleagues, both here at Vanderbilt and elsewhere, is to get students on the career path that will best fulfill them as an attorney.

So, while there can be some legal career information on the internet that is accurate, students are better off talking through their questions and concerns with their CSO than folks on Reddit.  Besides, if you want the single best part of the Reddit experience, just follow @redditships.

^[1] Seriously, you all in Biglaw need to step up your swag game. In 2006, I got an iPod during a CALLBACK DINNER. Granted, it was an iPod shuffle and that iteration probably held like a dozen songs, but still, I didn’t even have an offer yet, let alone had agreed to work with the firm in question. Law firm profits are at record levels — it is not as if a keychain flashlight is the best you can do.

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Nicholas Alexiou is the Director of LL.M. and Alumni Advising as well as the Associate Director of Career Services at Vanderbilt University Law School. He will, hopefully, respond to your emails at abovethelawcso@gmail.com.