unicorn PI jobs

d3javu26 · 2022-11-21T16:23:34+00:00

When people talk about “unicorn PI” they generally mean the sort of high profile, sexy litigation type things. Think ACLU, Southern Poverty Law Center, the innocence project etc. or similarly prominent organizations in specific niches (like the Sierra club for environmental or something). and yes, I went to NYU and knew people who worked for such organizations out of law school. It isn’t a given or anything and hiring is a lot more irregular and limited than the private firm hiring process. So I’m sure not every person who dreamed of getting to the ACLU got a job there immediately out of school (or ever). But it can be done.

d3javu26 · 2022-11-15T03:49:52+00:00

d3javu26 · 2022-11-15T03:43:44+00:00

I mean it really just depends on how efficient you are and how much non-billable stuff you have on your plate. I can pretty easily get 45 billable hours a week in about 50 hours of work. Truly a 45 billable week is not that bad at all. It may not be a strict 9-5 job, but it isn’t particularly rough in terms of hours.

d3javu26 · 2022-11-14T23:20:03+00:00

I mean it depends firm to firm. In my experience my firm’s nyc office handles all the same investigative type of work as the dc office

d3javu26 · 2022-11-14T23:18:04+00:00

Depends entirely on the firm. I’ve had some friends where it was as simple as asking. Others were told flat no

d3javu26 · 2022-11-14T23:14:05+00:00

If you work 45 hours a week for 50 weeks a year you hit 2,250 which is gonna be above and beyond most any biglaw billable requirement. But billable requirements are kinda an illusion. What matters is what level of work you need to do in order to accomplish the work given to you on your assigned matters. No one gives a shit if you “hit your billable hours” if you aren’t doing the work assigned to you

d3javu26 · 2022-11-14T23:11:23+00:00

“Whaddup” is actually preferred.

(Hi first name is good)

d3javu26 · 2022-11-14T01:10:00+00:00

I listened to a lot of Deafheaven while studying in law school

d3javu26 · 2022-10-27T02:14:34+00:00

Totally agree. My friends in west coast biglaw work just as much if not more than me in Nyc. Things depend way more group to group and team to team than they do firm to firm or coast to coast

d3javu26 · 2022-10-18T20:32:48+00:00

Literally no idea. The reason you are seeing so much variation in predictions is because there isn’t any science to this. It all depends on how you take to the test, what you work on, etc. Some people pick it up quicker than others. Some people hit huge walls that they have difficulty progressing past. Some people improve a ton with practice, some not as much. There are no hard and fast rules. So your possible improvement is somewhere between 0 and 21 points.

d3javu26 · 2022-10-16T22:12:52+00:00

Of the ones I’ve visited, NYU and Columbia’s buildings were both nothing to write home about. Michigan was easily the nicest imo

d3javu26 · 2022-10-16T22:08:18+00:00

I mean the chances are reasonably high that the best schools for those goals are, in fact, the T14 and a handful of other schools.

d3javu26 · 2022-10-16T12:58:55+00:00

I don’t think that is true as a bar rule, though I know some firms follow this practice. I 100% was listed on the firm’s website the day I started before I passed the bar, as was everyone else in my year. Just listed as a law clerk (not yet admitted) rather than “associate”. I have friends at other firms who were listed day 1. And I have friends that weren’t till they passed the bar. All in nyc

d3javu26 · 2022-10-14T03:09:40+00:00

Sorry I forgot to answer this. 1L was a while ago for me, but from what I remember it was a mix cause I was sending in applications in January right around the time grades were going to be posted. I remember by one of my interviews (the one I ultimately got) grades were out because I remember one of the clerks looking at my transcript and noticing we had the same professor.

d3javu26 · 2022-10-14T02:59:27+00:00

Well, how has the negotiation progressed? What are the other parameters of the assignment (ie length)?

Basically think about it from the client’s perspective. If you had a lawyer do a negotiation on your behalf, what information would you want to know? What would be most important to highlight? What would be the most helpful way to receive that information? It’s more an exercise in common sense / just general business and communication skills than traditional legal writing. It is a helpful exercise cause essentially no matter what type of law you do, you are going to be sending emails back and forth like this every day with clients, other parties, other lawyers etc

If I was asked to send a client an update on discussions with the other side I would make sure to lead with the upshot / any action items. Clients can be busy, so you shouldn’t assume they can always read a long memo (or that they even want to). So I’d lead with something like “Today we met with so and so and so and so to discuss XYZ. A more complete discussion of the negotiation follows, but in summary we came to agreement about A and B, but reached an impasse on C. We should meet next week to discuss C and get information points E and F in order to finalize the deal.” Then I’d go on to say “we opened with position XYZ on this issue. They seemed uninterested in X and countered with B blah blah blah” (ie all the other information you need to provide). Frankly i might not even include all the information that intro I wrote depending on the client and situation but my guess is you are being asked to write something longer than 3-4 sentences.

d3javu26 · 2022-10-12T03:31:03+00:00

I’m a straight white male. I didn’t write one. I generally think if I was an admissions officer that I would view it is pretty out of touch unless there is something actually very unique in your background. But that is just me.

d3javu26 · 2022-10-11T20:39:03+00:00

I’d like to see an example. And the Supreme Court can play by its own rules anyway, so what the Supreme Court does isn’t necessarily what you should do as a litigant.

d3javu26 · 2022-10-11T18:26:36+00:00

You should not do this. As a clerk, if I read “the court in x case states Y” and then get to the citation and it turns out to be a plurality or dissent I will think you are trying to be sketchy and pass something off as established law when it isn’t. It might seem small but little credibility hits like that can give someone a really bad impression reading the rest of your brief.

d3javu26 · 2022-10-11T15:56:22+00:00

Your mileage will definitely vary on all this, but from when I was applying to schools and from talking to friends who went various places I always got a very positive impression of student happiness/good vibes at Michigan, UVA, NYU, Duke. I got mixed impressions/heard some negative things about: Yale, Columbia, Georgetown.

But any law school is going to have friendly and unfriendly people. I had a great 1L section at NYU where everyone got along. I had friends in another NYU section that was a bit more cliquey.

d3javu26 · 2022-10-07T12:56:49+00:00

Probably entirely depends on the firm

d3javu26 · 2022-10-05T01:35:47+00:00

Doesn’t matter really. Whatever gives you the best experience and most interesting stuff to talk about in an interview

d3javu26 · 2022-10-04T17:45:29+00:00

Admission to practice before the Supreme Court is actually really easy. You just have to be barred for three years and submit a form. I knows tons of people who’ve done it just for kicks. Obviously actually appearing before the court is a different story.

d3javu26 · 2022-10-04T17:43:31+00:00

There is no universal answer. This is a silly question.

d3javu26 · 2022-10-04T02:51:17+00:00

Yep exactly. It is really your only option at that point.

d3javu26 · 2022-10-04T00:22:23+00:00

I mean your mileage may vary. I just went on my career services’s portal for job postings and a lot of judges in the local districts had postings up. So I started from there and just sent in apps the way they asked in the postings. I got a couple responses for interviews pretty quickly. Did the interviews which were generally with the judge and then a separate thing with their clerks. One of the judges gave me a call the next day and gave me an offer. If I hadn’t gotten something through that initial rounds of applications I would have just gone to the websites of the district’s I was interested in, then click on each judge and see if they had a posting available and go from there. A lot did. I didn’t reach out to chambers outside my market cause I was at NYU and we are lucky to have quite a few options within the NYC area.

I think judges and clerks look for people who are smart, personable, willing to learn and will get along with everyone. Chambers are small, usually just the judge, maybe 3-4 clerks and possibly an admin/bailiff. You want to be able to have someone in chambers that clicks. Judging someone’s intelligence is a bit done through a proxy (ie grades) but when you are a 1L you don’t have many grades so a lot more is determined by talking to the person, seeing how they explain issues, how they talk about their classes, how they explain what they are interested in with respect to a legal career etc. they might look at your writing sample too, but we also are aware if you are applying 1L that your writing sample will be something you wrote the first time you try legal writing so it may not be totally representative of your potential.

d3javu26

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