Complete Failure

[Is my life a complete failure???]

Is my life a complete failure???

Yes

 20 (44.4%)

No

 25 (55.6%)

Total Members Voted: 45

[raider1218]

I love how people act like the DA and PD's office will hire anyone with a JD and a pulse.

Sorry to crush your notions of superselective average DA/PD offices but it is, without a doubt, easier to land small town PD and DA jobs than biglaw, and it gets easier to land DA/PD job the less desirable the geographic area is.  It matters whether the guy has artifically narrowed his search and is only applying to firms in NYC...

You elitist attitude is perfect for the biglaw sweatshop which has no doubt made you an offer of permanent employment.  For the record, I have no desire to ever work in the DA/PD's office and I am actually a practicing attorney at a successful law firm in small town America.

As far as whether it is easier to land a biglaw job, you might want to define your criteria because the last time I checked the career services offices at T14s were nothing more than placement agencies for biglaw in major markets.  I'm not sure how hard it is to get a biglaw job, if that is what you truly desire, once you have achieved a 170 on the LSAT.   

[jacy85]

I don't think YBR was elitist - it's a fact of life. In Atlanta, it's extremely, extremely rare to get a DA position in any of the metro counties right out of law school.  Competition is fierce because many grads either (a) need to make the salary offered in metro areas to afford loan payments; (b) don't want to move out to a rural county where they have no family or contacts; or (c) simply hate the idea of living in a small town in a rural area. The only person I know who got a job at a metro area DA office interned for 2 summers and got very lucky in that a position was open when this person graduated.  

So if you're looking to work in a metro area, Biglaw is more likely for recent grads than PD/DA.  All of the other people I know that have gotten DA positions right out of school took jobs in counties that are not considered metro, and some are quite far away from the city.  Once you get away from metro areas, PD/DA is much easier to land if for no other reason the applicant pool is smaller for the reasons above.  It's less competition and not because the jobs are in some way subpar. 

[Miss P]

Also, biglaw tends to hire in fall of 2L year and you get your offer in fall of 3L year, so people who are left in the job applicant pool post-graduation tend to be people who didn't get biglaw or midlaw or small law with SA programs.

Or the people who didn't apply for those positions because they planned on going into public service.

I agree with the others here.  You may be right that there are lots of government and public defender positions available to recent grads without stellar credentials in small towns in some parts of the country.  There was nothing wrong with suggesting that the OP look into these jobs.  In big cities and on the federal level, however, public defender and prosecutor positions and, to a lesser extent, other government attorney positions, are very competitive.  I don't know how you would draw the comparison between biglaw competition and public sector competition (absent more narrowing factors), but you certainly haven't offered any evidence that private sector hiring is more competitive than public sector hiring in general.

[Miss P]

but you certainly haven't offered any evidence that private sector hiring is more competitive than public sector hiring in general.

I didn't make that claim (and certainly wouldn't sector-wide).  My only claim is that biglaw (Vault100, generally) is more selective than the average small town DA/Public Defender job. 

Fair enough.    Your argument about the competitiveness of the post-biglaw-hiring job pool seemed to suggest otherwise.

[Dip827]

sorry for the late response i went to Rutgers - Camden and i'm still waiting for my bar results

[Dip827]

I went to Rutgers-Camden, graduated with a 3.36(even though not great - thought i'd have something by now) and still waiting on bar results

[Dip827]

I went to Rutgers-Camden, graduated with a 3.36(even though not great - thought i'd have something by now) and still waiting on bar results

[TimMitchell]

I went to Rutgers-Camden, graduated with a 3.36(even though not great - thought i'd have something by now) and still waiting on bar results

I wish you the best of luck! Where does that put you as far as class rank, with a GPA like that I'm suprised you're having trouble. Have you tried looking into places like lower Delaware or rural Pennsylvania?

[Dip827]

camden doesn't rank outside the top 15% so i know for sure i wasn't in the top 15%. I've looked into DE and PA but still shooting blanks

[TimMitchell]

camden doesn't rank outside the top 15% so i know for sure i wasn't in the top 15%. I've looked into DE and PA but still shooting blanks

Really sucks, I hope you find something soon. I'm a 0L so the only advice I can give you is what has been said on these boards, Matthies had a great thread about networking and finding a job that many graduates and students appreciated.