Welcome to the APALSA 1L Online Career Panel

Hello from APALSA,

As you may know, 1Ls can begin contacting employers regarding summer jobs on December 1, 2007. APALSA gives annual student career panels to offer more perspectives on your 1L summer options. This year, we are hosting an online Career Panel in the style of such blogs as abovethelaw.com. We hope putting it online will make it more convenient for everyone to access. Granted, you should use Hastings Career Services or employers as your official sources for deadlines and contact information. Our goal here is to offer you first person experiences to help guide your plans. Of course, there are no hard and fast rules in job hunting so stay confident and persistent.

The Online Panel

We've posted some general pointers below to consider as you head into the job hunting season. Then, take a look at the "panelists" statements below. Each Hastings student has posted his/her 1L summer experience and we've tried to find a broad sampling of summer jobs.

The Panelists

Los Angeles District Attorney - Teddy Chadwick

Small Law Firm - Lincoln Tran

California Public Utilities Commission - Judy Walters

Fenwick and West - Michelle Lee

Northern District CA Federal Court - Michael Ho

Post Your Questions and Comments

If you have questions/comments, please feel free to post it in one of the comments sections. You do NOT need to register with the blog to post in the comments section but you should leave your name to identify yourself. All appropriate questions will be answered in a subsequent update on the blog on FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 23. Questions and comments will be moderated for appropriateness – please avoid anything derogatory.

General Pointers/FAQs

Do 1Ls have to apply to summer jobs by December 1?

No. Employers are allowed by the NALP recruiting guidelines to accept your applications starting December 1. However, many employers do not have strict submission deadlines. The government and courts tend to be the most strict so check with the court or government branch you are interested in directly. Law firms often hire into the spring. They are usually trying to round out their summer classes after 2Ls have been hired so 1L hiring is rolling. You will probably improve your chances if you submit your application materials (email is fine) early, and then follow up periodically by phone to show interest. Most 1Ls choose to concentrate on finals in the fall and start their job search over winter break or in the spring semester. There is also a public interest career fair in the spring that will lead to a lot of job opportunities.

Where can I research my options?

Larger firms: http://www.nalpdirectory.com/

More firms: http://www.martindale.com/

Judiciary: http://www.uchastings.edu/site_files/clinical_programs/JudicialExternshipappinfo.pdf

-Also, Vault Rankings are available on the Hastings Careers website. It's best to take the Vault content with a grain of salt, which can be biased or out of date, though the rankings themselves tend to reflect general brand recognition.

What should I research?

NALP and Martindale allow you to look up some very important and detailed information about employers. They allow you to see how many attorneys are in a certain office, and what practice areas those attorneys work in. This tells you the employer's capacity for summer hires, and what kind of backgrounds they might be looking for. Researching employers can be time consuming (all the more reason to focus on it after fall finals), but the more familiar you are with what employers are out there, the better. Further, most legal employers list their attorneys on their webpage. You can contact attorneys or recruiting managers directly to get more information about what they do. Knowing what kind of work your potential employer does gives you a big leg up. It doesn't make a lot sense to apply to a real estate transactional firm if you highlight employment litigation in your cover letter and resume. If you can find an employer that has a fit with your background/interests you can market yourself better. Basic advice, but it puts you far ahead of the applicants who apply generically and think a job is a job.

How can I work for a big law firm?

This is by far the most common question I'm asked. Chances are, you have heard of a select few law firms (like Mofo/Morrison Foerster, a large SF based firm). They pay a lot and have good name recognition and training so they are popular. Keep in mind, however, that spots in these firms are extremely limited. Most 1Ls do not work at well-known law firms. Many big firms offer only one or two spots, to all 1Ls. Many 1L firm jobs arise from specific contacts developed, say, as a former paralegal for a particular firm, or from an advanced technical background. A good strategy if you want to be in private practice is to look for mid to small sized firms on Martindale and by word of mouth. It will take time to research, evaluate and contact different firms, but it gives you the best odds, and will be helpful job market research. That's not to say that if a big law firm is your goal, it's not achievable. It's just that your 1L summer is usually seen as a starting point to gain exposure to the law, and to build your credentials to reach your goals later. Becoming marketable doesn't happen overnight and it can help to be strategic about it if you know your long term goals.

What law firms hire 1Ls?

That said, some Hastings 1Ls have had success getting jobs at law firms. Hiring varies based on law firm needs and special case by case circumstances. Here is a starter list of large to midsized law firms that Hastings 1Ls worked at or drew callback interviews from in the past year or two:

Nossaman Guthner Knox Elliott LLP

Manatt Phelps and Phillips LLP

Pillsbury Winthrop Pittman Shaw LLP

Folger Levin Kahn LLP

Fenwick and West LLP

DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary LLP

Quinn Emmanuel LLP

Holland and Knight LLP

Perkins Coie LLP

This list is by no means exhaustive. If others know of more firms that belong on this list (particularly small to midsized firms) please add them in the comments section.

Now, onward to the panelists!

-Damon Nakamura – Apalsa Professional Development Chair

Los Angeles District Attorney - Teddy Chadwick

Going into my first year summer, I knew I wanted to work for a district attorney’s office (DA), the Attorney General (AG), or the Department of Justice (DOJ), so that is where my experience in applying is. The first ones you have to apply to are the AG and the DOJ, because they typically have deadlines of Dec. 31, Jan. 15, or Jan. 30. The way to find them is just to go to their websites and search around for awhile. The Career Services Office is not terribly helpful at finding these jobs, so I wouldn’t depend too much on their help. When you find the jobs online, you just have to see their requirements (usually it’s a resume, a cover letter, and a writing sample) and where to send your materials to.

For DA’s offices, the deadline is someone more flexible, but there are deadlines, and they differ from office to office, so you need to keep that in mind. Like for the AG and DOJ, the way I found the DA’s jobs was just to go to their websites and look around for awhile. Unfortunately, a lot of DA’s offices won’t take first year students, but don’t be discouraged, because a lot still will.

As for what I ended up with, I worked for the DA for Los Angeles County. I personally got that job less through qualifications and more through persistence. I originally sent a resume to them in late January. I followed up in late February, after not having heard from them the whole month, to discover that they had no clue who I was. So I then e-mailed their recruiter about 25 times the next couple weeks, until one day she wrote back that she had a position for me. Side note: knowing now what I didn’t know then, if you’d like to work for the LA DA’s office, the best way to do it is simply to write a little mini cover letter in an e-mail and attach a resume to the DA’s HR person, Regina Mayo (rmayo@lacountyda.org).

The experience itself was amazing. Even as a first year who couldn’t go on record or say anything in court, they still allowed me to go to court practically every day. This was tremendously helpful during my second year OCI, when I could say to all the prospective employers that I’d been to court every day last summer and know what the process is like. The other main thing that I did that was extremely helpful was that even though I couldn’t say anything on the record in court, the deputy district attorneys allowed me interview the witnesses and victims before the trial started so that when we put them on the stand, we knew what they were going to say. This skill is obviously valuable and transferrable to any job where you will be interview clients, witnesses, etc. Finally, I found the work extremely rewarding. It feels good helping out victims of crimes and telling people that we were able to get them some compensation. The only hardships are that sometimes you really feel for the defendants when they have a rough story, and that when you lose a case in criminal prosecution, it really hurts.

Working for the DA last summer opened up my opportunity to work this summer, because I was invited to work for the same office again this summer. This made OCI a lot less stressful, and is obviously very useful because, hopefully, this will open up a job for me upon graduation.
Finally, if anyone has any questions about any of this, feel free to contact me at teddychadwick (at) gmail (dot) com.

-Teddy Chadwick

Small Law Firm - Lincoln Tran

After my 1L year I was hired by a small law firm in San Francisco that dealt with personal injury and wrongful death arising out of exposure to asbestos. I was fortunate to find the job through a family friend who knew a partner.

My experience was enjoyable although limited mainly to discovery work and document review type projects. I would have enjoyed a bigger writing assignment, maybe writing something that actually got filed, but hey first-year law students do what they can. My work experience really gave me something to talk about during my interviews with employers later down the road, and from my impression, employers found my early experience in the private field to be valuable.

After working at a small firm, I knew I wanted to work in the private field, and ultimately with a similar closely-held group.


-Lincoln Tran

California Public Utilities Commission (Administrative Law) - Judy Walters

I found my 1L summer job as a legal intern to Commissioner Rachelle Chong at the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) through HastingsCareers. I applied by sending my application materials (cover letter, resume, writing sample) to the contact person. I think I heard back from them in a month. I had an interview with them the week after spring break, and I heard back from them in a couple of weeks.

My summer was very chill. I liked the people that I worked with, which included a team of lawyers who advised Commissioner Chong on all of her decisions. I was given pretty meaningful work, and learned a thing or two about telecommunications. I think they hired me because I had a mass communications degree from Berkeley, and Commissioner Chong went to Berkeley and graduated as a journalism major. So it helps if you have something like that in common with your potential employer. I also got along great with my co-interns. The CPUC hired a lot of law students this summer, and many of them were from Hastings. I met people that I didn’t meet during my 1L year at CPUC, and it was good to see them outside of the law school context because it seems like they are more real. But I digress… My job duties included a lot of researching for a couple of big memos, such as telemedicine and why California is still having a hard time with extending is broadband network into rural areas. The other big memo was regarding copper loop retirement. I was also given some short term assignments that required me to familiarize myself with agenda items that Commissioner Chong needed to vote on for the bi-weekly commissioner’s meetings. Granted, there was that long cite-checking assignment that was grueling and tedious, but because I did it with the other interns, it wasn’t so bad. Plus, that kind of cite-checking helped me when it came time to do journal editing.

Because of my summer at the CPUC I now have a pretty cutting edge note topic, and I feel like I have an advantage over my other 2Ls because I already have working knowledge and some research on it, and I have lawyers who I can contact at a moment’s notice to ask for advice. (They work down the street on Van Ness and McAllister. One of the biggest perks of working at the CPUC was that it was a great commute from the Tower. The other big perk was that it was one of the only 1L jobs that paid… very little, but more than nothing.) In addition, I think working at the CPUC helped me get onto the journal COMM/ENT. It showed that I have experience and am genuinely interested in communications issues, and I’m really glad that I have some more people I know in the legal community doing work that interests me. They are so accessible, we lunch with them anytime I asked, and they are still available now. And I decided to take Administrative Law so I can learn more about administrative agencies like the CPUC. Working there helped me understand Administrative Law now.

Also, they extended me an offer to continue working there throughout the school year, although I had to politely decline with my journal obligations on top of OCIs. And they appreciated the interns there a lot, always telling us how we do good work for them and how efficient we are. I felt very appreciated, and they even gave us a little placard commemorating our experience there, along with a recommendation letter written on fancy paper that looks really legit. And I have the assurance of knowing that I can always go back to the CPUC after my 2L year, so OCIs wasn’t stressful at all. In sum, I think I’ve gained a lot from my summer experience at the CPUC, and I would recommend it to anyone interested communications issues and enjoys a kick-back work environment.


-Judy Walters

Fenwick and West Summer Associate - Michelle Lee

For my 1L summer, I worked at Fenwick & West as a summer associate.

My job search began after first semester of my 1L year. I have a technology background and my interest is mainly in intellectual property law. So, I applied to IP boutiques and general practice firms with IP departments. I sent my resume, transcripts, and cover letters via email to the recruiting attorneys or departments listed on the firm websites. I also did my best to contact attorneys I had met during the fall semester at recruiting events and emailed them my resume. I spent most of my winter break applying to these firms via email. This resulted in a few call back interviews in early January and February. Overall, I found it to be a very competitive process, and I did not expect to get a summer associate position since law firms hire very few 1Ls or none at all. I also applied to a bay area diversity program that matches up employers with minority students, which is how I interviewed with Fenwick and West. Fenwick gave me a great opportunity, and the firm matched well with my technology/IP interests.

The summer position was a terrific experience. I was exposed to a variety of projects from intellectual property, corporate law, and technical transaction work. The free market system at Fenwick & West allows you to choose work in different departments and attorneys. During the summer, I worked on about 15 small IP and patent projects. Other summer associates chose to work in the corporate, tax, and litigation departments. As a summer associate, you are evaluated on your work for each project and your overall fit with the firm. You have the opportunity to choose interesting work, form relationships with partners and associates, and learn more about the firm through firm events, lunches and activities. I found the attorneys to be very congenial and great to work with. I really liked getting to work with different attorneys, learning about the various practices and law firm life, and making friendships with summer associates in my class.

The experience was tremendous in helping me to decide how I want to shape my career in IP law. I believe it also helped me gain more opportunities for interviews with other firms during my 2L year. If you have the opportunity to work at a law firm during your first year summer, I would highly recommend it!
- Michelle Lee

Judicial Externship (Northern District CA) - Michael Ho

I knew what I wanted for a 1L summer position: a judicial externship. If that didn’t work out, I knew there would be plenty of other options available. Right before second semester started, I looked at the directory of judges who hired externs and ranked them according to ideality of location. I prepared my resume, cover letters, and a writing sample. Once grades came out, I got unofficial transcripts and sent off my applications by February 1. Within a week, I interviewed with two chambers at the Northern District of California, and received two offers. Based on student evaluations, for which both chambers had positive remarks, I decided to work for Judge Illston.

Working for Judge Illston was a tremendously valuable experience. First, I significantly improved my research and writing skills by having to write memos week after week, getting constant feedback from the clerks. Second, I got exposed to many different areas of the law such as products liability, habeas corpus, patent infringement, and equitable tolling. Third, I got to witness civil procedure in action by observing trials and hearings. Fourth, I got to observe how a judge thinks and reasons through her decision by answering her probing questions regarding my memo. In one instance, I worked on a products liability case that would have implications throughout our jurisdiction. I would be fashioning the law regarding technology that goes through a vigorous FDA approval process and determining whether companies could still be liable for product defects. After I made a recommendation on how to decide the case, Judge Illston grilled me with an onslaught of questions that I needed to consider in my memo. As difficult as that was, I learned a lot from dialoguing with the judge in deciding important, cutting-edge issues.

This experience has opened up many doors in my career. Because I was exposed to many different practice areas, I was able to apply to more firms for OCI and talk about more topics during interviews.

-Michael Ho