what can you tell me about the summer job search in your own experience? did you have to do a lot of legwork on your own or did the law school help bring the employers to you? are the class percentages as stiff as people make them out to be or is there some flexibility based on character and uniqueness?
I relied completely on OCI, as pretty much every employer I was interested in came to my school. I ended up accepting an offer with one of those firms.
However, there were some firms in some smaller cities I was interested in, so I shot off an resume via email to them. Some of these employers seemed pretty receptive and willing to set up an interview, but I ended up accepting an offer with another employer so none of these came to fruition.
I personally was within the grade requirements traditionally required by the employer. However, judging by others' experiences, yes, there is quite a bit of flexibility. Of course, if you are well beneath their requirements, then it's pretty much an auto-ding. However, usually the situation is the employer would "like a 3.4", and you end up getting an offer with a 3.2. That kind of thing happens and didn't seem THAT rare at my school. IMO though, beyond being a good interview, people with grades that might not have quite met a firm's standard seemed to do well when they interviewed with a satellite office in a secondary market, and they had very strong ties to that market.