Thanks for your advice guys.
bigs5068, I've had a few callbacks at biglaw but nothing worked out. I don't think I'm a terrible interviewer, but obviously not good enough. Just to give you some sense of my effort so far:
Attended 2 job fairs (one in Chi and one in SF) and emailed every firm for a walk-in interview, and walked into a few while there, and dropped off resumes to everyone else. Total screenings from these job fairs - ~14.
At OCI, did the same strategy - landed about ~17 screenings.
Emailed about ~400 total firms in NYC, DC, all of California, Chicago, Seattle, Portland and netted 3 callbacks.
The above were for 2L summer jobs (I'm actually slated to graduate in Dec.).
Applied to HP's new graduate program, and got the only callback from my school. Recruiter said that the guy they selected ended up having more experience than I did.
Applied to honors program jobs at FTC, SEC.
Contacted my network in Bay Area for legal internships, and applied to a few so far. Also applied to some in-house positions that seemed to indicate that non-law experience was okay.
I'm also constantly checking indeed.com and simplyhired.com for all jobs listed as:
"junior associate" - usually have to add "law" and "years" to see exp. requirement in summaries
"summer associate" - usually nothing
"legal internship"
"ip licensing"
I agree that you have to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. It seems to me like #3 is the default option anyway - meaning that even if I tried #1 and #2, I'd just end up at #3 if nothing pans out. So, given that thought, what can I lose by taking the other options? The pigeon-hole problem is something I'm concerned about but I was thinking that I could de-emphasize the tax-LLM for non-tax jobs (either not present it, if that's ethical, or somehow minimize it).
BikePilot, I'll look into the patent office. I heard that they're expanding their honors program (or whatever junior attorney program they might have). But, I've had no responses from government agencies so far. I've also heard that unless you interned with an agency, the chances of getting called in for an interview for the honors programs are almost zilch.
john4040, another reason #2 appeals to me is because I can keep the student health insurance during withdrawal; it's something that's actually very important to me. I have an opportunity to do some contract work right now with a startup company (doing tech stuff), but with an opportunity to also handle some of their legal work (mainly coordinating with their outside counsel, and probably some other simple things I can try to do myself). My thought is that I can roll that experience into something more substantial later on, i.e., if I make a case for that experiencing counting as ~1yr of in-house legal experience.
The other thing is, I'm going to try to pass the patent bar before graduating in both #1 and #2. I have 1 more chemistry class to take before I qualify to sit for it.
Thanks again for your thoughts. What are you guys doing right now, or how did you go about your job search?