In This Issue:

September 1999—Vol. 28, No. 1

Jobs

By Donna Gerson

Read this if you’re thinking of going AWOL from OCI

Let me begin with a brazen confession from a career services veteran: I despise the On-Campus Interviewing season. One day, in a heretical outburst, I suggested to the dean at my law school that we cancel OCI. After all, I reasoned, the students who benefit from OCI will get their summer associate jobs and internships regardless of my intervention, leaving the career services office to focus its time and resources on the rest of the class. Unfortunately, the dean didn’t see it my way. "But everyone else does it," he said. "We can’t just cancel OCI!"

Therein, gentle reader, lies the problem. Most law schools offer OCI and will continue to do so. Law schools will continue to be judged by, among other things, how many OCI employers recruit on campus and how many of them are from outside the school’s region. Until Harvard and Yale see things differently, OCI is here to stay.

Everything one hears about OCI is true: It takes an enormous amount of planning and resources, yet precious few students seem to get jobs through this process. Statistics from the National Association for Law Placement bear this out: For the Class of 1997, only 17 percent of graduating law students found full-time employment through the OCI process. For law schools not ranked in the top 20, this percentage is probably much lower.

But even stats do not tell the entire story. Although chances of getting hired through OCI are relatively low overall, more employers are casting increasingly wide nets. According to NALP, 90 percent of all law schools reported an increase in the number of employers on campus in the fall of 1998, compared with the fall of 1997. For many of them, the OCI process provides a framework to reach out to many different students and to educate students about their practices.

With that in mind, perhaps it’s time for law students to view the OCI process differently. Instead of watching the parade of anointed ones signing up for their umpteenth interviews, OCI can be considered an organizing principle for every law student, regardless of academic credentials or ambition. OCI is prime time for students to initiate contact with employers. It could be the season when all law students would benefit from dusting off their interview suits, proofing their résumés, drafting cover letters, and beginning their individual campaigns to find a summer job or, in the case of third-year students, a full-time position.

For those who avoid the OCI process, a job search can be a series of fits and starts, of hopeful leads and disappointing dead ends. Few working people found their current jobs by dropping off a résumé with a company. Most people–about 80 percent, according to most business surveys–find their work through networking.

Therefore, OCI can be valuable not only for interview opportunities themselves but also as a time to focus on networking in general. For the student with vision, law school is bursting with networking resources.

Professors are a great place to start. While some are truly ivory-tower scholars, many faculty members are active in the community and have solid alumni connections for students to tap. A student who makes her intentions known to the right faculty members could soon connect with some high-powered alumni for job search help. A student who worked last summer in a legal job and made a good impression could call his former employer to provide contacts.

Family is another great resource. Don’t wait until the 11th hour to take your uncle up on his offer to help. The refrain I hear from law students– "I want to find my job on my own"–is silly. Remember, everyone lands his or her own job. Although most people have a little help getting in the door, they still have to perform well if they intend to stick around.

Students can use OCI season more fully by visiting their career services offices. In addition to facilitating the OCI process, these offices offer valuable career resources such as job postings, "mentor binders" containing information on alumni who can help with job searches, and educational programs that focus on job search skills and career opportunities.

Internet résumé posting services can also be helpful, although I don’t recommend using these as a sole search method. Try the EmplawyerNet database for a start. Student feedback on this service has been very positive, and it seems to yield promising leads. EmplawyerNet is free for the first three months, after which students pay a nominal monthly fee.

Job fairs are another resource for students conducting independent job searches. Specialty job fairs, like the Patent Law Interview Program sponsored by Loyola University-Chicago School of Law, are held all over the country. Your career services office is likely to maintain a full list of job fairs open to students from your law school, necessary because some job fairs are restricted to certain law schools, particularly regional consortia. A gem of a job fair, the National Association for Public Interest Law Job Fair, is held in October in Washington, D.C. For details about this event, check out the organization’s web page at www.napil.org. Don’t be fooled by the name–while the job fair does offer employment opportunities traditionally associated with public interest (legal services offices and groups like the American Civil Liberties Union), it also offers job interviews with some key federal, state, and local government agencies.

This OCI season, try to take the opportunity to focus on both your course work and your job search. If you’re a 2L or 3L and feel that your first-year grades don’t reflect your true ability, now is as good a time as any to remember where you stashed that interview suit last spring.

Donna Gerson is the director of career planning and public interest opportunities at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law.