Anyone else feel sick to their stomachs about how OCI is turning out?
OCI for me is essentially over - I’ve had 16 screeners, 2 rejections, 1 CB. I’m not “BigLaw or bust” in the sense that I wouldn’t enjoy doing anything else (in fact I’d probably love prosecution), however I am paying an insane amount in tuition and living expenses and I just don’t know what my options are if I strikeout (which looks more and more likely as each day goes by and the phone doesn’t ring). BigLaw has kind of been my employment focus and now I feel like I have to start thinking about switching gears.
Anyone else feel this way? This might as well just turn into a support group for the miserable.
If you’ve had 16 screeners and only 2 rejections / 1 callback, doesn’t that mean you’ve got 13 firms left to hear back from? And you’ve got that callback to think about! Certainly doesn’t seem like it’s time for you to feel down just yet…
I’m in a very similar situation to you. Even if I end up getting something out of OCI, I have come to the conclusion that law school is a stupid decision without a huge scholarship and I can’t believe I was stupid enough to risk my financial future on a 50% shot at biglaw.
Started last Wednesday, 16 interviews between then and yesterday. Many of the firms I interviewed with last week and this week have made at least some CBs. I have 3 interviews in secondary markets next week, but I don’t have particularly high hopes for them.
NU.
Yeah, I understand it may be a little early to panic, but the whole 180k debt load is starting to weigh heavier on me.
I honestly would not recommend going to law school to a single person.
what are your stats? it’s possible you may be flirting with their GPA cutoffs and they may just be waiting to see how their other screening interviews go before deciding on offering you a CB.
At my school, transfers killed OCI. A very large percentage of last year’s transfer class here worked at V10s over this summer. They absolutely did better than the class as a whole. This isn’t a transfer thing.
I feel the same dude, OCI just started this week but suffice it to say I have no cb’s and I’m more than half way through my interviews, I’m at T10, also amazed at how stupid going to law school is
I feel like an absolute fool for transferring right now, if this is the way it is going to go throughout. The point of paying tens of thousands extra wasn’t just for a name on a degree or firm facetime so that the firms could just humor me and move on. I’m really not a bad interviewer. A number of my mass mailing screeners turned into immediate callbacks. So why should my OCI rate be so divergent?
From what I’ve heard, NU transfers are all over the place. Some are very successful and others struggle. I’m not sure what the reasons are for the disparity, but it sucks.
I think thesealocust’s thread explains it best - OCI is just horrible.
Hang in there! This is an unnerving process (being judged repeatedly based on #s and a 20 minute conversation is not fun!). It is easy to get sucked in and think BigLaw is the be all and end all but it is not. Think of your legal education in a longer term perspective - it will pay off in the long run and is likely to be more rewarding and intellectually challenging than what you would be able to do without a law degree. Plus it still sounds like you have a lot of pending decisions so who knows.
