Law School Discussion

After being shunned by OCI and other BigLaw Chicago firms all semester, things have come together rather well in the past 48 hours.

Current situation:

Offer from Air Force JAG, $700 a week.

Offer from relatively prestigious national firm w/ Chicago Office, $2400 a week.

Now the money is a no brainer.

The bigger issue is that I'm fairly confident that I'd like to do JAG after I graduate and I feel the summer clerk program is the best way to feel that out. Money isn't great but it's more than enough to live on.

The law firm job does not rule out JAG but in light of getting an offer from them when I left (assuming this for the sake of argument), them covering bar related expenses, etc, I'm afraid I'll never leave.

JAG strikes me as something I can do now, be done when I am 30 w/ 4 years of solid trial and other experience, and then venture back into Chicago firm life, dodging the crappier elements of being a 1st Year Associate.

The firm, as a branch office, is relatively small (40-50 attorneys), has a very reasonable hour quota (1900), and seems like a solid place to start out and not a Winston/Sidley/Seyfarth type sweatshop.

So, I've gone from zero options to two very promising, though disparate, options.

Anyone willing to throw their $.02 in would be appreciated.

If any of you have experience with the various JAG summer intern programs, can you comment on how long you generally have to wait for an answer?
AF's deadline was last week.
Army is Nov 1.
Navy doesn't have their apps up yet as far as I can tell.

Also, I just read our CSO's posting for the Department of Defense Summer Honors program. Anyone have any insight on this possible gem?


All the best,
2-

Anyone out there with any DOJ summer law intern/honors program/friends in the DOJ experience?

The more horror stories of biglaw I hear, the more the DOJ seems like a sound way to spend my first few years out of law school. I must confess that I know little about it. Anyone have anything to offer?

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I thought this was a fantastic story:


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So here's some good summer associate gossip. One of the girls I work with has a good friend who is a summer at Paul Hastings LA office and apparently witnessed this first hand. I think, though I'm not sure exactly, that this took place Tuesday night.


So they were having a firm sponsored happy hour. You know the drill. One of the summer associates apparently got out of his gourd wasted. He goes to USC (figures), and was reported to be a very quiet and polite Indian guy. Not this night though. A very well liked senior associate was there with his pretty, blonde, fiance. The summer associate starts to say really loudly and angrily about how he would like to F*** her. Everyone around, including the associate can hear this. He keeps going, despite people trying to shut him up and is extremely vulgar and profane. Eventually the associate whose fiance this is comes up to him and tells him that he understands that he is drunk, but he should really just keep it down because he's making a scene. Very nice way of dealing with the situation, considering. Instead of shutting up at this point, the summer associate goes off. Things along the line of "you don't F****ing know me you F****" and apparently threatened to stab the associate. Yeah.

So the next day he has the balls to show up at work, only to find that his desk has been cleared out, his carpets all freshly vacumed, etc. Done for.

I've heard of people not getting offers, but never straight up fired in the middle of the summer. Can you imagine? How will he ever work again? He's going to have to become a sole practicioner in Oklahoma...

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I came across this at http://beingawesome.blogspot.com/