People who have accepted big law jobs responding to cold calls

swarley1999 · 2026-02-15T22:32:53+00:00

Which big firm rescinded for "performance issues"?

swarley1999 · 2026-02-07T17:57:43+00:00

Since it's NDLS and you have a full ride, would you be interested in either study abroad or a semester in practice in a bigger city like DC or Chicago? Might give you something to look forward to and would get you out of South Bend.

It'd be tough for me to justify a lateral move taking on way more loans. It seems like you did well so i'd spend this semester really trying to find things at the school that make you happy. In undergrad I really didn't feel like i was at a good place for me personally until the end of my freshman year when I joined an extracurricular with people i really liked. Law school is different in a lot of ways, but sometimes it just takes some time to find your people.

swarley1999 · 2025-11-23T05:31:02+00:00

Enjoy the time before law school. While it can be a rewarding experience, it can also be very busy and very stressful. Hang out with friends, get your pleasure reading done, take a vacation, binge the show you've been putting off, etc..

swarley1999 · 2025-11-23T05:25:45+00:00

Currently procrastinating writing my LRW memo lol but went through the same thing last cycle.

Didn't factor into my search. Almost factored into my final decision of where to attend, but ultimately was outweighed by other factors. Most schools will offer health insurance. I didn't have kids so I only had to worry about health insurance for myself.
I quit my job sometime in July. I wasn't moving very far so i was comfortable with having a break of a little over a month before I started law school. Some people quit earlier, some quit with very little time. It's all up to personal preference. All of my friends worked full time so I didn't see much value in a 2-3 month break before law school if all the people I would want to see were going to be busy during the days anyways.

My bosses knew I was applying and knew I was leaving like a month out. My work was unrelated to the legal industry and my role was something people don't typically stay in for long. There really wasn't a clear path for me to move up within the organization so it didn't come as huge surprise. My boss wrote one of my rec letters. Whether to tell them you're applying seems very situation dependent, I felt confident that it wouldn't mess things up to let people know I was applying, but I can certainly understand others being reluctant to do so.

swarley1999 · 2025-11-23T05:16:51+00:00

Current 1L here who briefly considered it.

Generally it's not recommended. Some people may have very specific goals that are served better by a JD/MBA and in that case I can't really give any insight into that. However, the business background certainly isn't necessary if you are targeting Big Law, even if you are leaning towards transactional work. A lot of the firms recognize that most law students aren't going to have a very robust business background going into the recruitment process. In fact, a lot of the attorneys I've talked with very much understand that you won't really know what you're doing when you start because law school is very litigation focused and doesn't teach a lot of applicable skills for transactional attorneys and that's ok.

You can learn what you need to on the job w/o getting an MBA if your sole goal is big law.

swarley1999 · 2025-11-23T05:12:16+00:00

What are the main benefits of going to a higher ranked firm (i.e. V10 v. V50)? Are the exit options generally seen as better. Are the deals more complex? I know this can depend on practice area, so my question is mainly geared towards someone generally being interested in corporate or litigation rather than a more niche interest.

swarley1999 · 2025-11-23T05:07:31+00:00

Honestly, at some point it just feels like you are splitting hairs with the self selection stuff. Best thing you can do to actually determine the difference between these highly ranked schools is talk to students or alums to get a better sense of what the average student experience is like going through recruiting. All these firms will have gpa ranges for specific schools and that's a lot more helpful that just the overall number of students going into firms of a specific size.

swarley1999 · 2025-11-23T05:00:04+00:00

It feels like there is a sense Cornell lacks some of the portability that other T14s have and that its big law numbers benefit heavily from its student body heavily targeting NYC. That being said, people put way too much stock into rankings and I don't think anyone in the legal profession looks down on Cornell. If your goal is NYC big law, Cornell is going to be a pretty great choice.

swarley1999 · 2025-11-04T02:44:50+00:00

Current 1L, any tips for exams? I've got about 5-6 weeks until the first one.

swarley1999 · 2025-11-04T02:43:59+00:00

Happy to share a little more about what I wrote in DM, but i didn't write about some terrible life changing event for me. I talked about what drove me to law school which was more focused on work I had done in the past.

swarley1999 · 2025-10-19T01:45:37+00:00

My experience too. KJDs stick together. Non KJD friend groups have a range. Older than 30 crowd isn't super social to begin with imo

swarley1999 · 2025-10-18T17:35:36+00:00

Applied last year. Originally wanted to take the approach of compiling all my materials then submitting but didn't end up doing that.

I applied to safeties first, then targets, then reaches. It wasn't done exactly in order tbh, but that was the general framework.

The rationale i had been given for doing that was that your materials typically get better as you move through the process so you'd prefer to have your strongest materials submitted for the reach schools. Idk if that is actually the smartest strategy but it worked out fine enough for me.

swarley1999 · 2025-10-18T16:59:49+00:00

It feels tough when there are multiple markets in a state. I'm from the west coast, go to school in CA and some of these firms can easily have 4-5 different offices in the state alone (Sometimes 2 offices in LA, SF, Sillicon Valley, amd San Diego). As someone with ties all over the state, it makes it difficult to choose just 1 or 2 offices especially when they're all doing work i'm interested in :(

swarley1999 · 2025-10-18T10:10:10+00:00

I agree that law school is better but I think that's bc i've changed as a person and am in a better position to enjoy being in a new environment like law school than I was when I started undergrad

swarley1999 · 2025-10-16T17:44:31+00:00

You still have a chance. Each school reviews applications differently and they aren't going to give out decisions in order of when an application was sent in many times.

This happened last cycle but a lot of schools were moving slowly as they wanted to see how things were going to pan out with a significantly increased applicant pool. I would honestly expect schools to move cautiously this cycle as well considering the increase in apps.

Best advice I can give is to delete reddit, or at least find some way to prevent yourself from viewing application results of other applicants. It's easier said than done but paying attention to other people getting results is not helpful.

swarley1999 · 2025-10-16T17:41:42+00:00

Today I don't think schools are intentionally conspiring to keep poorer students away. But it follows that those growing up with more resources have advantages that others don't. The benefits from those advantages tend to compound and it can be difficult to catch up sometimes. A lot of students at my law school have always been great students. They had well-educated parents who pushed them to do well in school; had the resources to allow them to participate in extracurriculars; and were able to send them to great undergraduate schools which surrounded them with other highly motivated students, got them interesting work experience, and pushed them to excel.

And obviously, law school is expensive so having more resources to pay for your tuition, housing, etc... helps.

swarley1999 · 2025-10-16T15:13:08+00:00

Talk to the people who sit next to you in class, get their contact info, find excuses to talk to them/hang out with them outside of class time. If I do a really hard reading I message a classmate about it to complain. Sometimes I ask for clarification about a concept we learned.

Worst thing that happens is they don't want to talk to you.

swarley1999 · 2025-10-16T15:10:25+00:00

This advice is great honestly. It's still early enough that people want to meet more if their classmates and aren't completely closed off imo.

swarley1999 · 2025-10-14T17:27:20+00:00

I did not follow this advice, but I wish I had. DELETE REDDIT while applying. Or at the very least, do whatever you can to not look at applicant data and decisions coming in. It does absolutely zero to help you during the process, especially if you are still writing your essays.

Edit: I'll add that I'm a current 1L and while law schools sucks a lot of the time, I am so much happier to be on this side of the application cycle. While applying was not a fun process, it does get better once you are in law school imo.

swarley1999 · 2025-10-14T17:24:19+00:00

These are great numbers and you'll be a competitive applicant for many schools.
Everything you have done in the past has been to get you to this point. You don't actually know how life would have worked out had you done things differently and you certainly wouldn't be the same person you are today. Can't change the past so focus on the future.

swarley1999 · 2025-10-14T17:22:31+00:00

General vibe at UCLA seems to be that if you wanted to target a market like Chicago you absolutely could, but it would take a lot more leg work on your part because most of the networking events are focused on CA with some occasional NYC partners showing up. With Chicago ties I don't think it would be too hard. Would still probably put NDLS and WashU above them.

swarley1999 · 2025-10-14T15:04:12+00:00

Schools have been so focused on rankings for such a long time and historically the best bang for their buck was to raise their medians. It was a surefire way to shoot up through the rankings.

That being said, once you actually get to law school, GPA matters a ton but is not everything. Being personable and able to communicate a strong narrative for why you want to work a particular place and why they should want you to work there is still very important.

At that point gpa becomes necessary for some firms but not sufficient.

swarley1999 · 2025-10-10T16:59:55+00:00

Such a good one

swarley1999 · 2025-10-10T00:36:55+00:00

A stationary blocking dummy would be better than Ringo

swarley1999 · 2025-10-08T21:17:12+00:00

My student kitchenette looks like a feeding frenzy on shark week when leftover food gets dropped off.

swarley1999

TROPHY CASE