Calm, cool, and confident. This is what interviews are all about. And before law school, it’s how I felt during them. I’d go to the office, talk to a few people and an hour later, I had a job. In law school…not so much. For starters, interviews for professionals are much more involved. 2L year is the typical OCI job process, and it’s basically speed dating. You bid on firms, and they bid on you, and if you two match up, you get to go on a mini date. They take you two swanky locations (Time Square, Miami, the 13th floor of the law tower) and you talk to an associate for 20 minutes. Sometimes it goes well, sometimes it doesn’t. If they like you, you get to go to their office and meet more people AND IT’S PAID FOR! While there, you talk about yourself to a bunch of partners and associates. None of these steps are hard, but there are many steps and most people can’t get every job.
Still, the reason I’m writing is because I just got back from an interview with a consulting firm, and case study interviews are way worse. Above, you can see how I felt during interview before law school. Now, it’s a little more like this.
In the first round, you take a math test, which even if you used to know how to do math, you haven’t been doing it since you arrived at BU. Then, you go through multiple rounds of case study interviews which are basically open ended broad questions that require math, business knowledge, creativity, and structure. It’s not that they’re terrible, it’s just that this is such a huge diversion from talking about myself for half an hour that I hardly recognize that it’s an interview anymore. I feel like I’m taking a final.
Anyways, just like everything else in law school, there is a lot more work, it’s a lot harder, it’s stressful, and most of all, it can be a lot more rewarding than life before law school.
