It took us a while, but we now greatly respect and admire Micheal Bradley – the fellow behind boutique Sydney firm Marque Lawyers. Formerly the Chief Executive Partner at Gadens Lawyers, Mr Bradley has incredibly insightful views on a range of legal issues and we read with interest his occaisional opinion peices published in the AFR.
In addition to his opinions on industry issues, Mr Bradley has a considered position on how to manage the arduous seasonal clerkship application process. His firm this year pioneered a novel application process:
Each morning between 29 August and 2 September, we’ll post a question on … our Twitter feed @marquelawyers. You’ll need to be following us, and then it’s on for the day, tweet all you like. Each day we’ll select the 6 top tweets of the day… By the end of the week we’ll have 30 Top Tweeters, and will post their tags on Twitter. That’s an invitation to those lucky ones to email us a clerkship application, complying with our usual rules and so that we can verify that they’re actually studying law.. From that pile, we’ll select our interviewees. And then, some short time later, we’ll have our 2011-12 summer clerk.
If the graduate application process were as quick (and fun?) as this, we’re sure most aspiring grads wouldn’t have the same cause to lament the hours that are lost under the prevailing regime. Yes, we think the following comment from a child genius (seriously, this is a must-read) sums up the attitude of many disillusioned students battling to get their foot in the door:
Having just ran the grad job gauntlet I can honestly say the whole process was a little bit of a let down. The fact I didn’t get a job wasn’t the biggest problem. It was the fact that I was made feel like a generic piece of shit by the HR departments. Even the firms I got interviews with were average when it came to the final rejection.
What I really hated is that a lot of the firms are instructing grads to go the extra mile and personalise their applications. They want us to write about the firm, why we want to work there, why we think we’d be a good fit etc.
Yes, this is a sinister way of forcing the applicant to appreciate just how “lucky” they might be if they’re one of the chosen grads (a message they invariably spread throughout student ranks as they await notification of their application result). But isn’t this crap in there primarily to keep HR “busy” reviewing “something”? It’s not like they’re busy drafting personalised rejection letters. Far from it; they’re circulating trans-firm rejection precedents with feckless abandon, if our irate tipster is to be believed:
I did this for my applications, and got the same… THE SAME, rejection email from 5 different firms.
Grads waste a LOT of time, doing what they are asked to only have HR turn around and treat you exactly how they didn’t want to be treated?!? I can only imagine that this is even more frustrating for a lot of the grads that put the “job hunt” in front of their studies. At the end of the grad period you look back and think, “why bother”? (I know I did!)
From the HR side the excuse is probably that they get a lot of applications and so it is impractical to personalise each letter. You know what might help them streamline the process? Being honest with us and cutting out the bullshit!
The Gospel according to Graduate. AMEN. Remember that scene in Seinfeld where George – in his period of doing everything opposite – tells NY Yankees Chief George Steinbrenner everything that is wrong with his team? It is what immediately sprang to mind when we were reading this caustic rant:
Mr. Steinbrenner : Nice to meet you.
George : Well, I wish I could say the same, but I must say, with all due respect, I find it very hard to see the logic behind some of the moves you have made with this fine organization. In the past twenty years you have caused myself, and the city of New York, a good deal of distress, as we have watched you take our beloved Yankees and reduced them to a laughing stock, all for the glorification of your massive ego!
Mr. Steinbrenner : Hire this man!
Hire George and hire this graduate genius! He/she continues:
They all deny that GPA is important. Liars. It wouldn’t kill them to be transparent. “If your GPA is less than 5.5 you need not apply” – although it seems this may have risen to 6 at some firms. There goes a huge number of applications right there. It also puts to bed false hope because of applicants awesome extra-curricular activities.
What is with the interviews? You go there and it’s the most casual conversation you could imagine. They say they are trying to measure how you fit within the firm culture. You know what might assist the partners and HR determine whether or not you’d be a good fit? Asking questions about the law, and some tricky firm situations; how you would deal with a client perhaps?!
Wow. We really like this guy. Couldn’t have said it better if we tried. But the biblical tirade gets better:
The following questions should be banned outright as well:
• What is your biggest weakness? I mean do they seriously think that anyone is going to give them a completely honest answer!
• Why should we hire you? (This one is particularly annoying!) I have a degree in Law, not HR. It’s their job to say why they should hire me not mine! They have a CV in front of them with an academic transcript. I can only assume that there must be some gap in my application that needs to be filled to help them make the decision. I’d put my money on asking a question that helps fill that gap, instead of asking me to do your job for you!
• What do you do for fun? Who the f*** cares? It’s not like if I get the job I’m going to invite any of the wankers that work at this firm over for dinner or to play poker [ED: Canonise this youngster. Seriously, how can one so young know so much?] Let’s face it, if I’m applying for a job at a top tier firm I won’t get to enjoy fun for several years anyway, so why the hell are you bringing up something that I have just come to terms with sacrificing. …f***wits.
I’m sure being able to comfortably have a beer with a grad and discuss the footy would be great, but it’s probably not going to be so awesome if the firm is getting rolled by a disgruntled client because the idiot grad was too busy banging the hot blonde that was put on because of the “perv factor” I mean, cultural fit.
Yeah, maybe I’m bitter – so what.
To the individual who wrote this, you’ll note that we have edited the “disclaimer” you wrote at the end. If you send us that “disclaimer”, together with your email address, we are going to take the very unusual step of trying to help you get a job. If there are any employers looking for a QLD-based graduate who in 694 words was able to fully dissect the pitfalls of the graduate application process, email us – news@firmspy.com
Send the Firm Spy your news and views!
—
UPDATE: The Furious Graduate contacted us. Here is an interview of sorts:
What are your intentions now?
I guess first thing to do will be to look around at which PLT I do, I’ll just add it to the already high mountain of debt that I can pay off another day! I hear that in some of these you get placed within firms, this might uncover an opportunity. Picking a PLT course is daunting, there is not much really out there about which course is good, and what the firms think of each one. Perhaps FS could investigate? [FS: yes, we'll get onto this]
So far I’ve only followed the grad program that the law society coordinates. It’s my understanding that there are other smaller firms that will start looking towards the back end of the year. I’m not picky. While it would be nice to be up on level whatever of big shiny building, I’d rather just work at this point preferably somewhere that doesn’t just do wills and conveyancing. I guess once the last exam is done, I’ll redo the CV and start knocking on doors.
How sre your marks and where are you thinking about going?
I thought my marks were okay – GPA is around 5.76. I know that out of 4 people I know who got jobs at the firms I interviewed with, all of them except one had a higher GPA (albeit only by a few percentage points), only one was greater than 6 (she also coincidentally had a friend that worked there as well). Funnily enough one of these candidates who scored a job intends to go overseas next year… My forehead still has a bruise from the facepalm. On the flip side I would have given my left arm for that job and there would be no chance I would be jet setting across to Europe or wherever it is they are going.
I don’t think this is really uncommon though, in 2010 when the summer clerkships were going around I had heard rumours that Allen’s was trying to crack down on this because they had lost a large number of grads from the previous year because they all wanted to take off to “find themselves”. Someone should give the HR person who let those slip through to the keeper a medal.
Could send us your CV?
I don’t normally get on the Internet to rage, but there are only so many generic rejection emails you can read before you eventually snap.
Because it was an out of character vent, I am not really keen to let my identity be known, anyone who hired me because of what I wrote would probably remember me forever as “the guy who whinged on FS”. It’s still a pretty small place in Qld. Even those who didn’t disagree with what I wrote might be hesitant to hire someone who they perceive as likely to jump on the Internet and write a lengthy whinge when something doesn’t go their way.
The Furious Grad has promised to keep us updated with their progress. Best of luck to all grads looking for work.
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Most HR departments are full of twats….so to the guy that provided the massive whingefest, perhaps you should consider applying to work there.
As a grad, it is hard to imagine just how important the “cultural fit” element is. However, once you have been working for a while, you realise that it is actually quite important, and isn’t all BS.
You can have solid grades, but at the end of the day if people don’t like working with you, you will get nowhere. So yeah, the interviews are quite casually chatty because they are assessing if you have the social skills to fit in and to not embarass yourself (or more importantly the firm) if you are put in front of clients.
You can’t really assess legal skill etc in an interview, and let’s face it, what you are taught in law school bears very little semblance to what you will do in practice. So that comes during the clerkship, if you are lucky to get that far.
However, I do agree that it is a brutal process and horrible for the students involved. It can be particularly hard if you don’t have anyone who has already bene through the process to help guide you and give you insider tips.
Firm Spy – perhaps you should start a thread where people can offer tips on how to get an interview/clerkship/grad job.
What it boils down to is that the law student is bitterly disappointed he/she did not get a graduate position in a top-tier/CBD firm.
The oversupply of law graduates means that many highly capable law students will not get a graduate position in a top-tier or CBD law firm. That is the cold, hard fact.
What amazes me most is that so many law students are sucked in to the marketing strategies of these firms – that getting a job in such a firm, post-uni, is the only possible career choice that leaves one’s self worth in tact. Top-tier firms are a great place to work, and look great on the C.V, but they are not the only places to work!
There are plenty of good firms to start your career that might lack the prestige factor, but will give you solid experience to launch a legal career.
In my opinion, law students need to lose their entitled attitude. The world does not owe you a living. If a top-tier wants to reject you, it is their right as a private enterprise. If you can’t get a grad job at a big CBD firm, move out to the regions and get some experience. If you’re good, you will prove yourself in the long run.
In short, I think the whinging by the student in the article is a little pathetic and immature. Time for some concrete.
If this guy doesn’t realize that the whole thing is a game and that you won’t win if you can’t play, then he’s never going to get anywhere. Stop whinging about HR and start working on why they don’t like what you’re offering.
I agree with Black Caviar & Anon,
I went the the trauma of rejection with top tier legal firms and ended up ‘falling back’ on the second limb of my degree (Commerce). I happily concede that I have been fortunate with the type of work I have received over the years (I finished Uni in mid-2003 and started working in 2004) and have had good quality exposure to accounting/legal/commercial issues since my time as a graduate.
Less than 8 years on I’ve been told that I will shortly (within a year or so) be made a Partner in my current firm. I guess my point is that there is a world outside the top tier legal firms, whether it be smaller legal firms, accounting firms or other companies, and that whether or not you fit through the cookie-cutter applied by the HR departments at big firms isn’t the be-all and end-all of life.
As to interview styles, none of the interviews (bar one) I have had involved technical questions – I agree with Anon that the importance of cultural fit can’t be underestimated – its not much good being able to recite the ‘Laws of Australia’ if you can’t relate to your colleagues (or clients).
Bitching about firms not spelling out the GPA they require is a bit trite. If you can’t manage a 5.5 to 6 GPA you most likely lack the brain power to cut it in most law firms or need to be able to supply a solid justification for your low marks.
It definitely is a shame that so many capable law students think that working in a top tier straight out of uni is the only way to go.
My observation as someone who went to a top tier straight out of law school is there are many people who started off working in a small firm (and get great experience in dealing with clients, managing their own files and appearing as counsel) are easily able to move across to a top tier. By the time they come across the grads who started their careers in the top tier have burnt out and left.
And yes, of course the HR departments are all full of crap. Their only real job is at around recruitment time and they have to justify their cushy jobs (and earning more than solicitors who actually bring in the money) by using all this new age HR nonsense of asking stupid questions like “would you rip the wings off a butterfly to get a job here” or “if you were stranded in a desert island who would you want to be stranded with and why”.
The Marque Twitter concept is a really cool idea. It will be interesting to see what sort of success it has. Limiting your pool of applicants to those on Twitter is a bit of a gamble. I guess time will ultimately tell.
The graduate process is brutal, especially at the “top-tier” end. Some firms do it better than others though.
I recently (and unsuccessfully I might add) applied at Cooper Grace Ward, they definitely didn’t treat you badly at all. First thing they did was give you a care package that included a free coffee and USB stick. They also made phone calls, instead of email rejections, I got to speak to their HR team they took the time to provide feedback on the application. I was a little disappointed I didn’t get a gig, but really appreciated their HR team taking time to go the extra mile.
Yes, the summer clerk / graduate recruitment model in big law firms is flawed on many levels. Including …
1. CV mail
Law firms can use CV mail to filter out applications with marks/scores below a particular average/ GPA. I recall a few years back applicants were being rejected immediately upon sending their applications through. They received a standard form email which indicated that their application had been duly considered but unfortunately … yadda, yadda, yadda … sorry kiddo.
When I was last on a recruitment panel, HR told me they set the filter to an average of 65, but it wouldn’t surprise me if other firms set theirs higher.
That said, an average of 90 can be as alarming as an average of 60. Firms don’t want to make offers to people they don’t think will accept them, especially in the mid-tier or boutique space.
2. The first HR interview
The people they roll out for first round interviews are sometimes contractors, in the role a short time, have little job security and purport to speak with authority about the firm’s “culture” when they have never spent a day on a fee-earning floor. They often read off a set list of questions and score applicants in order to determine who gets a second round interview with real lawyers. If you get through the CV mail filter, you stand a pretty good chance of getting through this next hurdle if you smile, answer confidently (but no arrogantly), can recite enough from the website, pretend you care about CSR and pro bono and show an interest in a practice area. It’s not hard. Just speak slow so HR can get all that down.
3. The second round “social” event
These things are really just an opportunity for law firms to roll out their young talent team, rabbit on about their unique culture and show off their new fitout. Professional staff only turn up to check out the fresh meat and get boozed.
4. Interview panels are not uniform and are unpredictable
Some firms (i.e. Mallesons) provide training for all of the people who will be on interview panels with the intention of ensuring that all applicants who are interviewed have as uniform an interview process as possible.
On the other hand, the firm I was at gave no training which meant you had some interviews which focused solely on any or all of academics, career ambitions, extra-curricular activities, sports, interests, legal developments and current affairs etc. But no two interviews were ever the same.
If applicants couldn’t give the impression in the first 5 minutes that they wanted to work at the firm (as opposed to at any firm), they were doomed. If we didn’t get the impression that they would fit socially, they were doomed.
Again, being keen without being arrogant, answering confidently and knowledgeably will get you far.
These questions / answers actually happened during interviews I participated in.
Q: What is the last movie you saw?
A: I can’t remember, I prefer live theatre.
Q: What areas of practice are you interested in?
A: [insert area]
Q: Are you aware that we don’t have a dedicated practice in that area?
A: Yes
Q: [insert junior lawyer] was a former summer clerk and would be happy to take you for coffee if you have time.
A: Sorry, I actually have another interview at [insert firm] now.
5. Feedback
Unless people pressed for it, there was very little scope to give applicants feedback on their interview. Meaning the rejects walked away feeling bitter about the whole process and unaware of their “mistakes”.
So yes, the process is crap, but it won’t improve while ever law firms are receiving thousands of applications, some of which are from people who don’t really give a crap about pursuing a legal career and just want to spend a summer working in a large law firm for the money or to fill a line on their CV.
Those people frustrate the hell out of not only HR (who are seen to have failed) but also their mentors/buddies (who have invested time in these idiots).
Summer clerks who piss what is effectively a free ride to a graduate job up the wall by refusing to work after 5pm, who prioritise planning the summer clerk party over doing billable work and who try to position themselves to work for a particular partner exclusively and ignore or refuse opportunities to work with their allocated mentors make it all the more difficult for those who follow after them. These are the people HR are trying to weed out in each subsequent year.
[end rant]
Availability, affability, and ability – in that order, don’t kid yourself otherwise.
@ Pffft:
GPA is not a perfect indicator of future success (although a reasonable one). I know of Partners who failed subjects and got average uni GPAs, and now enjoy good careers and what most people would deem financial success. Not everyone is a high-achieving nerd at University, in fact alot of people see it as a time to enjoy themselves to the extreme. There are plenty of people in any industry/profession who got poor marks at uni, but knuckled down in the work place.
The nerds get brought back to the field once people have to work hard, or lose their jobs (unlike uni).
Anon at 11:58pm – I don’t think top tier law firms want to hire social butterflies. They need people who can come in, are compliant, do the work, hit their billables, don’t make a fuss about shit, and go home. The ideal people with these qualities are students who were married to the law library and got high marks.
Given that you’re not likely to be put in front of clients for a good few years (besides to take notes every once in a while), I doubt your performance in the presence of a client is a major consideration for grad level recruitment.
Anonymous at 11:44am: “My observation as someone who went to a top tier straight out of law school is there are many people who started off working in a small firm (and get great experience in dealing with clients, managing their own files and appearing as counsel) are easily able to move across to a top tier. By the time they come across the grads who started their careers in the top tier have burnt out and left.”
I have to disagree with what you’re saying here. The transition from a small firm to a top tier is a lot harder than you make it, for several reasons:
Firstly, top tiers usually recruit from other top tiers. You will note most advertisements would say something along the lines of “Experience at a top tier essential/highly recommended”.
Secondly, I don’t believe a small firm provides the type of experience that top tiers demand. If you’ve spent several years at a small firm doing a wide variety of law (criminal, litigation, family, property) there is no doubt that you would be a more capable and versatile lawyer than your equivalents at top tiers. However, filling in Magistrates Court forms for debt recovery, Family Court forms for a divorce or appearing as criminal counsel for a bail application or plea in mitigation doesn’t provide you the skills or working knowledge that top tiers require. You really can’t transition from minor stuff like debt recovery to major (energy & resources and construction) litigation at superior courts.
I wish I had known before I started my law degree, how competitive getting a career in commercial law really is. They want good marks, legal aid, part time legal work, mooting and a variety of other experiences outside of law.
At the same time, I accept that law is a degree that offers a wide range of opportunities, and while i’ll be bitterly disappointed if I don’t get those 3 clerkships that I really wanted, I’ll pick myself up and move on.
I understand this guys frustration, but as said above, its all a game. We all go through the same rubbish.
Graduates and students need to be flexible, apply for a wide range of firms and hope for the best.
The reason firms don’t publicly specify a minimum GPA is because they want to preserve the flexibility to take special cases which might be below the threshold.
My experience having a low GPA (but solid work experience) was that most firms interviewed me, about half took me seriously, and a couple made me offers. Some of the firms like Allens, Mallesons and Blakes were focused on my (pretty ordinary) marks. But others, like Freehills, Corrs and Middletons were more interested in my work experience and personality.
This complaint reeks of the sense of entitlement which affects far too many grads nowadays. How dare firms ask for a person to personalise a letter or ask an interview question about why the grad should get the job – don’t HR know that this person is a special snowflake?
Lawyers are paid to be advocates for their clients, but this person won’t even act as an advocate for themselves. If the attitude shown in this rant seeped through during the interview process, I am not surprised they didn’t get a job.
A lot of rubbish above, IMO.
Firms want the beat people they can find. That’s their right. Because demand for spots greatly exceeds supply each year, the market as a whole can develop whatever recruitment trends it sees fit. Law students just need to deal with that – the law firm path has a lot worse in store than the application process and if this bit is too hard you’re best off elsewhere.
The HR crap is necessary because all lawyers think that they are the walking definition of a great lawyer and therefore seek to clone themselves in the hiring process. HR has to find a way to standardise this because otherwise the profession would be even more dysfunctional than it currently is. The problem is that HR have only a passing understanding of what lawyers do and therefore set metrics and questions that I think just aren’t very good at identifying good lawyers. The poor lawyers doing the interviews probably make them ‘casual’ (and why this is apparently a problem i confess i don’t understand) because they cringe at the formal part of the interview.
The biggest problem, I think, is that firms are now so big that a formal HR role seems a necessary evil. Lawyers don’t even see 80% of the CVs – i’d bet there are some fantastic future lawyers who we are incapable of recognizing because of a few beer soaked nights in first year. Then, Because we don’t recruit people we will necessarily work with, we just recruit for the firm. So ultimately I’m a little ambivalent if ‘so so’ candidates get through as they’ll probably just end up in banking and finance or IP anyway (so not my problem). If individual partners were required to ‘sponsor’ individual candidates (ie, take responsibility for them) I think the success rate would rise. But that ain’t going to happen.
The next issue is that all processes are so similar – HR people all seem to have taken theIr interview questions from the same book. Which means that students in the know give scripted rather than honest answers. I laugh inside whenever someone I interview talks about the characteristics of a good lawyer (or similar). While we ask this question straight faced and therefore have to accept responsibility for it, these guys have no idea and nor should we expect them to. But ‘commerciality’ is the current buzzword so you can be sure all candidates will drop it in a few times. Not that any of them have any idea what it means.
Finally, firms have all bought into the ‘we are all unique and individual snowflakes’ rhetoric we preach. We simply cannot understand that to a student, we all look the same until they get inside for a while. Which means we expect and even reward dishonesty from students who accept seasonal clerkship offers stating that working at our firm is their lifetime dream yet reject at grad offer time if they get an offer from firm X as well.
Oh, and to students: firms aren’t travel agencies and you shouldn’t act as if they are in interviews for global firms (whatever they say in the marketing gumpf about enhanced opportunities in far flung offices). Also, your undying love for pro Bono work will not assist you to obtain employment at a commercial firm. Doing pro Bono is important and a rewarding part of what we do but it should not be a key focus for someone who wants to work in a commercial firm – there are other places that will cater for that desire.
Rant over.
@ Bob’s your uncle
In the current job market anyone who views Uni as a time to just party and gets lower grades does so at their own peril and is in no position to bitch about how hard it is to get a job.
I agree that GPA by itself does not determine whether someone will be good as a practising lawyer but it is not difficult to get a 5.5 or higher GPA and have a life so it is quite reasonable to expect firms to use this as a filtering mechanism.
As for partners that failed subjects, that is all well and good but the legal profession was significantly different when they graduated. There is no reason to expect firms of any size to hire someone who has just scraped through their degree a job when there is an oversupply of grads with well rounded CVs and better grades. There are some people who will have justification for obtaining a lower GPA and good luck to them. For those who got lower marks than firms consider acceptable because they were too busy enjoying the Uni experience or they lacked the grey matter – that’s life.
This is a bit of an essay, sorry if it’s longwinded, but hopefully some good with come out of it for a poor graduate out there competing against the odds to get a position.
In the past, I’ve interviewed applicants for summer clerks at my firm, which happens to be one of those international giants that seem to cop the most abuse for their methods of dealing with the masses of job applicants every year. I’d imagine a lot of the recruitment process is similar for grad positions too.
A few points I’d make to the angry applicant (AA):
1 Rightly or wrongly, grades are the easiest way to cull the hundreds of applications down to the 30 or 40 that make it for an interview. Occasionally, if someone has extra-curricular activities that blow us away, we’ll take a look. I’m not sure there’s a better way to take care of this process? I can’t see our partners arsing about with Twitter competitions.
2 I agree HR needs to cut the bullshit and be more personal (within logistical reason). I’d like to think that we’d at least call those that made the interview process but didn’t get an offer, but I’m not sure if that is the case.
3 Totally agree with the frustration of dealing with bog standard HR questions. We have ours given to us. I dealt with a few HR officers – some were experienced, others not. The experienced ones avoided these questions and only used them if the conversation hit a brick wall (which basically meant if you got asked those questions, you’re not going to make it anyway). Needless to say, the inexperienced HR made it a matter of course to ask them, usually while I was cringing and trying to stare out the window to go to a happy place away from both the stupid canned question and the predictable rehearsed answer. Seriously, every student has prepared for these types of questions, so how does it add anything to the process?
4 My approach was, as AA gripes, was to make the interview as casual as possible. I avoided asking really difficult questions and tried to make them relax and get to know what they’re like and, yeah, whether I’d get along with them over a drink and the footy or whatnot. I figured given the brutal culling process, we only end up interviewing type A personalities anyway – every single applicant pretty much has straight Ds and HDs, competed in all the right competitions and won prizes all while juggling 3 jobs at the same time. I don’t need to ask any tough questions to know that you’re probably pretty capable. I wanna know whether you’re going to be a hermit that sits in his/her office all day and doesn’t add anything to the firm other than billables (yes, some big firms do value personality – after all, given the amount of hours we work, we’d at least want to enjoy being around the freaks we call colleagues), or whether you’re going to annoy the living shit out of your team or, worse still, clients. So yeah, as Anon and Dave said, I reckon “fit” is important. (Funnily enough, I’ve had my workmates over in the past for dinner pissups and poker.) Hopefully by chatting to someone for 30 minutes like I would over a coffee I’d be able to suss out what they’re like to be around. And asking what you do for fun outside of uni/work might give an indication that you’re an interesting person – generally a good thing y’know?
5 Just to give you an idea of our job, we have about 500+ vacation clerkship applications and only about 30-40 make it for an interview. Of that, only between 15-20 will get a gig. So basically you need to be in the top 4% of applicants to land a spot. For grads, you can halve the available positions. Not good odds. There’s the added problem of nepotism as well, since a number of spots are invariably reserved for friends of partners etc.
I don’t think it’s a perfect process. If I were to apply again, there’s a snowflake’s chance in hell I’d get in. I didn’t get clerkships or offers from any of the big guys when I was a grad, so I had to settle for working in crappy sole practitioners firm for my first job earning roughly the equivalent salary of a Maccas drive through attendant for a few years. I totally sympathise with the view that culling based on GPA is unfair, since you’ll miss the (very) occasional diamond in the rough.
People will have all sorts of reasons for shit grades (mine was partying too much). But after a few job changes to progressively bigger firms, I’ve managed to become an SA in a an international. Not saying it to anonymously brag on an anonymous blog, but I think the experience slogging it out in shitty little firms improved me as a lawyer, and I didn’t find the transition to a big place difficult. All the selling points of a small place (variety, client contact etc) are true in my experience.
So don’t despair if you don’t get a job – most don’t. Working for a small place isn’t a death sentence, and if you really want to work for a big place badly enough, you’ll probably get there eventually anyway.
Good luck
I agree with much of it, especially the part about HR needing to be more honest. indeed, they could be more honest with employees as well as applicants.
However, I am always confused by those applicants who would prefer to be grilled on the law as opposed to having a really casual, enjoyable chat with a partner and/or SA. Once your application gets to the interview stage, partners have a right to expect that your legal skills (such as they are in your penultimate year) are up to the firm’s standards and so really it is about ‘fit’ and ‘firm culture’. no one wants to get stuck working with someone who just won’t gel with the team (and i really wouldn’t want to work with someone who prefers to be grilled on the law in preference to chewing the fat)
Having been on the other side of the process, I wish we could give honest feedback to people about why they didn’t make it through. In all honesty, some of the students we interview or have ask clerks don’t have a clue. I wish I could give them honest feedback to help them with their next interview/clerkship (particularly if they’ve totally blown their chances with us). But most of the time if we did, we’d get in trouble for being “mean”.
We once had a guy through our firm who had managed to get interviews at most of the top tiers, but acted like a complete tool. He was so bad that one of our partners pulled him aside and give him some friendly advice that he could not behave that way and expect to get a job. Unfortunately, we were the last firm he was at – he had already done the rounds of the other top tiers in Melbourne. I later heard that he didn’t manage to find a graduate position at all.
Oh grow UP, little precious law grad! So you didn’t get in? Tough luck. Try harder. The assembly-line process, the short time frames, the mass emails…all designed to give the top tiers the same, fair access to the best grads. The cream of the crop get to shop around then sit back and wait for the offers to roll in while the firms all dance around them, hoping to get a look-in. That the same system then also disadvantages the average and below average grads is an unfortunate, but realistic side-effect. You wanna play with the big boys? Be prepared to get stepped on.
Yes, the questions can be trite. If you’ve got nothing to say, that is, but a gauche, overly rehearsed and massively trite little speech. The good interviewees have real life experiences to talk about, making for a meaningful conversation. As for GPA, hey my own sucked, but how else do you shortlist from 500 to 50? Fact of life man, get over it. Again.
Not everyone can hack it in a top tier. They are toxic, awful places. Six years there felt like 20. They are not for everyone and if they are not for you then think yourself lucky. The system is designed to find those who can not only cope, but know how to work it and do well.
So as others have said, open your eyes to other career possibilities, and wait till the top tiers come knocking on YOUR door. Which they will, guaranteed, in 3-5 years. This is approximately how long it takes to burn out those amazing little grads you beat you at uni.
There are obviously a lot, lot more applicants than clerkship/graduate positions available (for big firms, at least 10x times). This means a lot of people are going to miss out. Don’t stress. I applied for 42 clerkships, and didnt receive anything. I then fell ass-backwards into a top tier firm a year later by complete fluke. I then realised how horrible life is at a top tier firm and quit, (almost in tears) a year later. I have never been as unhappy at work as I was in that first position. I now work in house and have never been happier and they couldnt have given a rats a*se about my GPA. Your personality, attitude, people skills, problem solving ability, organisation and professionalism are far, far more important than what grade you got for Constitutional Law 8 years ago.
Don’t think that if you miss out on a clerkship your life is over, the law can be very much a right place at the right time industry. Keep your ear to the ground, jump on ANY opportunities that come up, no matter how random they are and stay positive. So many of these so called high-flyers that get these positions end up leaving a few years later, burnt out and hating the law. Many of them are geniuses but dont have people skills. It’s not for everyone.
If you struggled with your grades, didn’t really enjoy studying law and are not sure if you even see yourself as a lawyer but are only applying for everything because everyone else is, what makes you think you will even enjoy working in a big firm? Uni is an absolute cake-walk compared to the baptism of fire you will experience in a big firm.
And to the OP – if you don’t like the industry and they way they choose to operate, why do you want to work in it?
Just as Tetsuya said, the reality is that these processes are never perfect and it’s inevitable that some good people will miss out on getting offers.
That said, from my own experience of being involved in recruitment panels for a few years, I offer this:
1. Your law grades are important. The initial filtering is done on grades. People with freakishly good law grades will get interviews and people with terrible law grades won’t. If you’re in between, then there’s a bit of discretion involved based on what else you do: middle of the road law grades, good grades in your other degree, part-time job to support yourself and sport at a national level (or something like that – although by the end I was sick to death of students who were trying to emulate what’s his name by starting their own not for profit entity), then you’re going to get an interview.
2. The interviews are casual because the interviewers want to work out whether they can work with you and/or put you in front of clients. Can you do small talk? Are you funny or interesting? Does your manner put the interviewer on edge or, worse, make the interviewer want to smack you? Do the stories you tell indicate a degree of idiocy that the grades conceal? Do you seem totally naive about what working in a big law firm will be like? (The idea of asking legal questions in the interviews makes me want to laugh – it takes such a long time to know anything much about one area of law and, more than that, it takes much more than legal knowledge to be a good lawyer. In some areas, being a tough negotiator is what’s necessary. Other people can build entire legal careers out of their networking skills.)
And, for what it’s worth, the cocktail parties were not, in my experience, truly part of the assessment process. That said, they may be an opportunity to muck things up for yourself. Being totally objectionable at one of these things is a deal breaker.
There is a lot of HR bashing going on here which I think is unfair. I’m a HR Manager with experience at one of the Big 4 and it’s not as easy as people seem to think. The recruitment is one side where you get thousands of applications, there is just no way you can go through every aspect of each one at the first stage. Grades are the common denominator, and therefore the logical first cut is made based on such factors (plus residency, type of degree, etc). Additionally there is no way that HR can send personalised rejections to each candidate, we’d never get through the recruitment campaigns if we focused on that.
Another thing to consider is that at the big firms, they usually have HR recruitment teams which are entirely separate to other aspects of HR. HR Managers are very rarely involved in the day to day of the Grad and summer clerk recruitment campaigns other than to oversee and manage the teams of consultants/senior consultants.
The day to day aspects of HR are the most difficult, as you are trying to balance the best interests of the staff against the interests of the business (partnership). In firms where you have 450+ bosses this can be difficult as they all have their own ideas. Then HR have to balance that with the law. HR often find themselves in difficult situations which require excellent negotiation and communication skills, along with an excellent understanding of the business/industry.
Let’s keep some perspective here.
Just a general off side comment regarding HR structures in law firms…
I have heard many young grads express concern about having their immediate post law school futures influenced by HR personnel who went through a 3 year degree, 6 to 8 contact hours per week, with their most demanding academic task being the odd 2500 word assignment and short answer/multiple choice exams.
Hey Spy – Forget about the furious graduate!!! If you have the inside word on people that are looking to hire, post the details for the rest of us. It would be the right thing to do!
HR staff think and act as if they are as important as the lawyers. Yet they are that small cafe outside Woolworths in any shopping centre.
I think Furious Graduate needs to accept this is how the graduate recruitment process works and learn how to play the game. It’s not going to change for him/her! When you work at a law firm, the law is only the most basic knowledge you need to succeed. Being a lawyer is all about knowing what clients want and how to give it to them (within the confines of the law of course), because they are paying your salary. Getting a grad job is all about knowing what the HR people/hiring lawyers want and how to give it to them, because they are the ones giving you the job. If you can’t play the game at the recruitment stage, how are you expected to be able to play the game when you’re actually dealing with clients?
Yes the HR process is a facade but if you want to get in you need to learn how to give them what they want. When I was going for clerkships I had to spin the most ridiculous crap – I recall at some point being asked to describe myself (awkward question at the best of times right) and telling them “I know what I want in life and I’m not afraid to go and get it.” Complete rubbish but they lapped it up and I got the job!
In saying all this I sympathise that the graduate recruitment process is highly frustrating – best of luck to furious graduate. Hopefully he/she gets a job and becomes a little less furious
On FS’s comment on PLT courses, the choice largely seems to be either College of Law or QUT, with Griffith a distant third. I think they’re weighted all about equally by firms (the only reason you’re doing it is to get admitted, and once that’s over with they couldn’t give a damn how you did it).
Significantly, College of Law requires students to find their own placement, while QUT will arrange it for you (taking into account your preferences for location and area of law). QUT might also have a shorter placement period compared to College of Law. Whether you can translate your placement into employed work is a matter of arriving in the right firm in the right time with the right attitude. I can’t comment on Griffith’s placement arrangements.
The QLS website says that Bond, Southern Cross and Central Queensland University also offer PLT, but I’ve never heard any details of their offerings.
I think a lot of the comments here are wrongheaded.
All this consoling advice about you dont need to join the top tier to have a satisfying career etc, – yes you do. If you dont get top tier straight out of uni, you basically never get it, and the top tier is where the money is.
Really this stuff about how law is a broad degree, you haven’t missed the boat etc, not its not and you have!
The person interviewed is understandably pissed off about not getting a job – but, join the club buddy. There’s a ridiculous oversupply of graduates, maybe we should do something about that…
@ Anonymous
“If you dont get top tier straight out of uni, you basically never get it, and the top tier is where the money is.” – the money is there only if you’re willing to burn away most of your 20′s and 30′s working for corporate assholes. The trade off for all that money is having a wife/husband who you never see (and who would not stay with you but for the money) and kids who get raised by nannies.
“Really this stuff about how law is a broad degree, you haven’t missed the boat etc, not its not and you have!” – saying that a law degree is broad is just spin employed by law schools to justify them continuing to churn out a huge number of law grads which is disproportionate to the number of legal jobs out there. Law is a professional qualification, it’s not an arts degree.
Lets demolish the myths one by one:
“You haven’t missed the boat” – yes you have. Biglaw is the only branch of law that pays well (because most of its clients are government departments or public companies, who notoriously overpay for legal services)
“You can work your way up in a regional firm’ – earning 35k if you are lucky and saddled with death threats, you will discover the true meaning of ‘shitlaw’. You’ll also discover that ordinary people do not value legal services, and you have lower social status than a social worker – and lower pay.
“After you get a few years experience, you can transfer across to boutique firms or biglaw’ – No. The ‘experience’ you get in small time law is basically valueless and certainly not valued by biglaw, who only recruit from biglaw.
“The Law degree is a broad degree which will stand you in good stead in other careers’ – which ones? You’ll find a law degree is resume poison. But also what is this nonsense about wasting thousands of dollars and your time on a law degree only to then not use it and get jobs elsewhere. The law school cheersquad who push this never actually name the other careers you’ll be qualified for – but also miss the point of paying ferrari prices for a mini minor job.
Law degrees are a useless waste of time.
Anon @ 7:51pm,
You’re right when you say all the money is in big law (however, when you divide your earnings by the hours you work, the money doesn’t seem good at all). There is an exception to this, if you’re a sole practitioner or a small practice employing up to 3 other solicitors, you’ll be making pretty good money.
Consider this scenario:
Sole practitioner, criminal law, small serviced office next to Central Law Courts.
Overheads = office rent + outgoings, secretary, insurance, technology and subscriptions
Turnover = 5 billables per day at 350 dollars for a minimum of 230 days per year = 4 x 350 x 230 = $402,500 (this is not including plenty of fixed fee jobs such as bail hearings, traffic matters, restraining orders)
402,500 – 70,000 (experienced medium aged secretary) – 40,000 (office space) – 10 000 (insurance, technology and subscriptions) = 282,500
I know several practitioners who aren’t yet 30 years of age operating in this fashion, who were former biglaw solicitors. If you land 2 or 3 drawn out cases a year, you can add an extra 100k on the calculation above.
Point being, you can make a good living out of small law (whether it’s criminal, family, property etc) but only if you operate with minimal over heads.
@anonymous
““You haven’t missed the boat” – yes you have. Biglaw is the only branch of law that pays well”
Law degrees can get you into IB. IB pays much better than big law. Nuff said.
Couldn’t agree more – a law degree really is resume poison. Whenever you apply for a job outside of the legal profession you will be asked “why aren’t you working as a lawyer”?
A law degree is a waste of time and money. If you do not intend to practice, then cut your losses and change into another course at Uni.
There is hope – I graduated in 2009 with 1st class hons and didnt get a look in anywhere except a Government department grad program. During 2010 I did the program as well as my GDLP, and during 2011 I’ve worked hard to get legal experience in the department. This year I decided to apply for grad programs again and I’ve just accepted a 2012 grad position with a top tier in Brisbane (sorry).
SO, as everyone else has said: suck it up with a teaspoon of cement – this is just how it is and 96% of us have gone through the same BS. BUT as I said – there is hope – if you really want to get there, keep trying and you will.
Most of the time HR can only follow their script … but you have to learn how to give them what they want … for example, at the end of the second interview for a 4year lateral hire job, the partner was wrapping up and said to the HR person in the room ‘I think that’s it, is there anything you want to ask?’ at which point the HR person looked at their notes and then turned to me and said ‘so Anon, tell us about yourself’.
The obvious answer would have been ‘My name is Anon and I’m not stupid enough to work in HR’ but the required answer that was a brief summary of my qualifications and experience.
I’m curious as to what GPA is needed these days to get into a top tier. Furious Graduate mentions that he/she has a GPA of 5.76. I thought that to get into the top tier you should ideally have a distinction average (GPA = 6) or else a high credit average with solid extra-curriculars / work experience / connections. And that was in the pre-GFC days.
As to the rest, I agree that the clerkship process is a brutal one. Interviewing is a game. Some people are naturals at it but if you’re not one of them then find a friend who can teach you the ropes. Good luck Furious Graduate!