What Do I Do with a Rescinded Offer?
February 23, 2009 by Sweet Hot Counsel
Q: I’m a second-year law student at a Tier 1 school. I finished my 1L year in the Top 10% and I’m on secondary journal and moot court. During OCI, I thought all was going well. I had about 25 interviews and received 15 callbacks. Then the economy came crashing down. I struck out on callback after callback until I finally received an offer from a mid-sized firm paying market. Hooray for me, right? Wrong! Recently I was told (surprisingly this has not made ATL) that they were rescinding my offer. To make things worse, my grades suffered from all the callbacks and I dropped from 10% to 25% (I got a dreaded C). So right now I’m applying to each and every single job that I can get my grubby little hands on.
So…all that being said, am I completely shut out of BigLaw? I mean, now my resume for 2L summer won’t say something as glamorous as Summer Associate, and who knows what I’ll be able to get my hands on with such short notice. Thanks!
A: No question about it—your situation brutally sucks. Salary cuts are one thing, pushed back start dates are another, but rescinding a summer associate offer entirely is in a whole other universe of suck. A possible silver lining (or silver-plated, at least): It would be waaaay worse if you were a 3L, just about to graduate, and you were told your permanent offer was rescinded. And if that doesn’t make you feel much better, you can at least take a little comfort in the (disturbing) fact that you’re not alone and employers are going to realize that and probably won’t hold it against you.
So, you have the right idea: Apply for every possible law-related job you can find in any industry you think you’d be interested in, and be creative. Focus on the job, not the paycheck (I know, easy to say, but still). Even though it sounds like your grades have dropped a bit, being in the top 25% is better than being in the top 50%. (And another silver lining: The kiddies in the top 10% probably still have their BigLaw summer associate gigs lined up (well, so far), so you won’t even be competing with them in this round.) Just cast a wide net and remember, the goal is to get as prestigious and high-profile a job as you can in this market, with even a tangential legal connection, which will not only give you something productive to do over the summer, but will also make you attractive to employers when interviewing starts in the Fall.
Now, as to whether you’re going to be shut out of BigLaw, it’ll certainly be tougher to get in, but not impossible. See, here’s the deal: Every year in a decent economy, Big Firms bring in crops of summer associates, about 30% of whom are actually decent attorneys-to-be. The other 70% or so are useless, over-entitled douchebags with no long-term BigLaw potential. But, in a good economy, everyone gets hired at the end of the summer because the firms know that regular attrition will weed out the losers who really shouldn’t have been there in the first place. That’s sure as hell not going to be the case this year. Because, despite what you may have heard from cocky 3Ls who have no idea what they’re talking about, being a real BigLaw lawyer is actually kind of hard and has about a .0003% similarity to being a summer associate. The summer associate “recruiting” bullshit-fest notwithstanding, when it comes to down to it, BigLaw firms are looking for insanely industrious, capable gunners, the kind who can keep slave labor hours, keep coming back for more, and get the job done so the partners can do as little work as possible. If you can show that you’re the kind of person who can do that, you have a better shot than some schmuck who spent a “glamorous” nine weeks attending wine tastings and writing fake memos on fiduciary duties at the satellite office of some BigLaw firm—and then got dinged for a permanent offer because the economy sucks.
So, go get the best and most prestigious internship you can—even if it doesn’t pay—and then try to snag an interview with as many firms as you can and talk up your summer experience to show them what a self-starting, industrious little gunner you are. Remember, Big Firms survive on the backs of Big Clients, and if you can snag an internship with one, you’ll be that much more valuable to potential BigLaw employers.
Good luck and keep your head up. (And in a few years, when you’re stuck in your office at some huge BigLaw firm, nodding off at your desk after a three-day diligence marathon, you’ll wonder what you were so worried about it the first place , trust me.)
Need advice? Email our Sweet Hot Counsel at counsel@sweethotjustice.com.
First. Good advice! I wouldn’t want to be in the shoes of this 2L.
Yes, good advice, but what firm rescinded the offer?? Tell us!! Or tell ATL. Tell someone!
Yes, this situation clearly bites the big one, both for this person as well as everyone else in the food chain. I recommend you do your best to get any job–repeat, ANY job, as close to what you want to do as possible.
Hopefully things will improve for you and everyone else, but you can’t count on it.
The asswipes on this website don’t know how good they have it. I recommend they thank GAWD they have jobs, in law.
Thanks for the advice. It’s greatly appreciated!
Yes, do keep your head up, unless, of course, youre expressly directed to do otherwise, by your employed significant other. These days, we must be prepared to do things we might not otherwise want, in order to keep the piece.
Sorry to be a douche, but how the eff do your grades drop that much because of call backs? It seems to me like you got the BigLaw clerkship and decided to coast. Obviously, not a good game plan.
Anyhoo, stay in the top quarter and count your blessings. You could have kept your BigLaw clerkship, had a great summer, gotten good reviews and then not gotten a permanent offer because of the crappy economy. That happened to a “friend” of mine back when the economy took a dump in 2001-02.
I had a friend who had a job, then lost it way back when Clinton was president. Lucky thing Clinton needed somewhere to hold his cigars.
I had a friend who had a job, then lost it, in the Clinton Administration. If it weren’t for the fact that Clinton needed a cigar warmer, she might have been on unemployment all along.
To the commentator about coasting.
I’m the person who sent in the question. I received an A, a B, and a C. A wide spread. I did not coast. I missed 4 weeks straight of classes due to all the OCI interviews and the callbacks.
15 callbacks at about 4 a week = 4 missed weeks of class I spent flying around (I know it sounds glamorous, but people who have done the whole process know it’s tiring and loses its charm fast). 25 OCI interviews = a lot of missed classes, but they were a lot more sporadic.
At that point, it was hard to keep up with the coursework of a 4 unit Bar class when I missed a third of the lectures. I did not coast, as my other grades have indicated. I just wasn’t able to catch up.
So while I won’t say you’re a douche for making that comment, I will say that it was an incorrect assumption.
Cut the excuse. When I was a 2L I had so many callbacks, I was flying 2-3 times a week from the Midwest to both coasts for two-and-a-half months and I finished 2L in the top 10% and graduated at the top 8% level. I still have the calendar from that time (1990) as a memento of that crazy time. I also worked 20 hours a week every semester of law school – including when I was on the interview circuit. Don’t blame your callbacks for your grades. I was not even close to being considered a gunner by any standard. Law school is not that hard, sport. My science Ph.D. was a hell of a lot harder than law school. Hell, my undergraduate work was harder than law school. If you received a “C” then you probably don’t have the native intelligence to make it in a BigLaw environment. I skipped so many classes for work and interview reasons it was ridiculous. If you just read through the casebooks the week before finals and use a highlighter and sticky tabs, you should be able to ace virtually any class in law school.
This guy Jocque Stappe probably got his share of pussy, since he’s been practicing law for about 20 years.
I guess you guys are right. The Legal Tease is done posting. I’d like to see the guy who is responsible for that.