The Light at the End
I finally forced myself to pick a law firm today. The job search, particularly the on-grounds interview process, was the worst thing I ever went through... worse than Army camp, worse than 1L finals (I guess that says a lot about my pampered life). It brought out the absolute worst in a lot of people, some of whom will likely never regain my respect. It took too long, was too opaque, and interfered too much with my long-forgotten role as a student. Still, I met a lot of nice people, saw the insides of a lot of law firms, and had a good deal of success.
A lot of the tangible stuff was pretty fungible between the firms I considered, so as is often the case, intangibles became vital in narrowing things down. The single most frustrating and elusive piece of the puzzle was prestige. It's always been a hard thing to understand, both in its determination and its consequential importance. What does the Vault guide actually measure? Is it relevant that I would never work for the top 5 firms in their prestige rankings? Does that suggest it is measuring something I don't value? Is there a difference in prestige between the 11th and 19th firms? The 19th and 47th? Does anyone else ever care about these things? Will it matter where I summered as a 2L when I look for jobs coming out of the Army in 2010?
I never in my life made a decision based primarily on prestige, and keeping that in my mind helped me narrow things down, eliminating a couple firms for which prestige was the most attractive quality. In the end, however, the two firms I was left with were the most prestigious place I interviewed with, and the least prestigious (a relative term I suppose, since all the places I interviewed with are in the Vault top 50). The former is in the city I love most and I heard rave reviews from their previous summer associates at my school. They have universally lauded practices in almost every area. The latter, however, is much smaller (at least in the office I interviewed with), a quality I value pretty highly, and yet they are very strong in the practice area that interests me most. I felt most personally comfortable with the people at the latter, and loved their office interiors and location. They also were recruiting me strongly, and thus were able to offer a lot of flexibility in terms of my potential future active-duty military service (e.g. keeping an offer open if I get called up right out of law school, or letting me work for the 6 months before I start at the JAG school).
So I never did figure out what to do with prestige, and I'm certainly not an anti-prestige crusader, but it does feel good in a sense to have taken the offer from the less prestigious firm. I did it for the reasons that matter most to me, and have successfully guided me to a pretty good place in life. The conventional wisdom probably would have taken me to the most prestigious firm, but lawyers are conventionally unhappy people, aren't they?
Anyhow, I'll be in D.C. next summer, so maybe I'll finally get to meet some of y'all.
