Pretty sure I'm spiralling -- OCI grades

[Ryn]

10 minutes ago, Chief Keef said:

Jesus Christ this isn’t a troll post?

I think the only person we can reasonably say is a troll is that career office rep. 

[Mal]

16 hours ago, BlockedQuebecois said:

Lenczner is a great firm, but it’s not better than any full service firm if you want to do lit. 

Lit boutiques are great, and they definitely have advantages over full-service firms for litigators, but they also have disadvantages. Whether a strong lit boutique like Lenczner or NST is better or worse than a top tier lit group at a full service firm is going to depend on the individual’s career aspirations and areas of interest. 

+1. This is anecdotal but I worked on a file with Lenczner representing one opposing party and BLG representing another. The BLG work was much higher quality than Lenczner -- and the file was very high dollar value at issue (think $500+million).

[Chief Keef]

3 hours ago, Ryn said:

I think the only person we can reasonably say is a troll is that career office rep. 

I’m baffled that this actually occured

[Stacci]

While we are on the topic of litigation boutiques, do you have to have been a finalist in 1L moots to have a chance or is participating and showing interest in litigation sufficient?

 

[pinball]

I can't imagine any litigation boutiques choosing to only hire 1L moot finalists. Moots don't have much in common with the type of litigation you'll do early in your career anyways.

[Ryn]

12 minutes ago, Stacci said:

While we are on the topic of litigation boutiques, do you have to have been a finalist in 1L moots to have a chance or is participating and showing interest in litigation sufficient?

 

I won't pretend to know anything about litigation boutiques, but that criteria seems to narrow the field of otherwise qualified candidates considerably. There are many students who would do great at litigation firms who don't get into moots until later for a variety of legitimate reasons, or just struck out of 1L moots because their team was weaker (as typically 1L moots are not selective at all and may even arbitrarily assign teams). I think showing a strong interest in litigation generally is good, along with all the usual factors (grades, etc.).

Edited June 10, 2021 by Ryn

[chicken]

31 minutes ago, Stacci said:

While we are on the topic of litigation boutiques, do you have to have been a finalist in 1L moots to have a chance or is participating and showing interest in litigation sufficient?

 

Not at all. Firms know the 1L moots are all low prep, with a fact pattern given to you, with no factum drafting, and little to no research needed. And that is what working in litigation is - the research and writing, not the fictitious mooting.

Working in litigation is most similar to your legal research course. 
 

Upper year competitive moots are more representative of an interest in litigation, however I’m pretty sure you can’t do them in 1L at any school.

[chicken]

2 hours ago, Mal said:

+1. This is anecdotal but I worked on a file with Lenczner representing one opposing party and BLG representing another. The BLG work was much higher quality than Lenczner -- and the file was very high dollar value at issue (think $500+million).

And to add to this, I experienced the exact opposite, with Lenczner delivering far superior work and professionalism compared to the other large bay st firm. This is also anecdotal, and it is heavily dependent on the team who is staffed on the file.

[QueensDenning]

7 minutes ago, chicken said:

Not at all. Firms know the 1L moots are all low prep, with a fact pattern given to you, with no factum drafting, and little to no research needed. And that is what working in litigation is - the research and writing, not the fictitious mooting.

Working in litigation is most similar to your legal research course. 
 

Upper year competitive moots are more representative of an interest in litigation, however I’m pretty sure you can’t do them in 1L at any school.

Would it be a red flag if you did not participate in any 1L moots? With this year being online, and the fact that, as you've mentioned, there was no research or writing components to the 1L moots, I skipped them because I was busy and not that interested in what looked like pretend court to me. I also thought I was intent on transactional work until recently. Will this be an issue in OCI's with litigation-heavy firms?

[chicken]

3 minutes ago, QueensDenning said:

Would it be a red flag if you did not participate in any 1L moots? With this year being online, and the fact that, as you've mentioned, there was no research or writing components to the 1L moots, I skipped them because I was busy and not that interested in what looked like pretend court to me. I also thought I was intent on transactional work until recently. Will this be an issue in OCI's with litigation-heavy firms?

Interest in advocacy can be demonstrated in many ways. That is what matters. Find a way to demonstrate it through your experiences. 
 

Barely any 1L will have real litigation experience. It is advocacy they look for, and advocacy can manifest itself in many different ways. 
 

The red flag is having nothing to show for your interest in advocacy at all. 1L moots are certainly an easy way to do it, but you will be fine if you have other experiences to show advocacy.

[chaboywb]

9 minutes ago, QueensDenning said:

Would it be a red flag if you did not participate in any 1L moots? With this year being online, and the fact that, as you've mentioned, there was no research or writing components to the 1L moots, I skipped them because I was busy and not that interested in what looked like pretend court to me. I also thought I was intent on transactional work until recently. Will this be an issue in OCI's with litigation-heavy firms?

I do think, all else being equal, not doing a 1L moot will hurt you for litigation boutiques if most other applicants did. But what can you do? Apply anyway and keep your fingers crossed.

[Pyke]

Several things.

First, I think the OP is sharing way too much personal information in the initial post. The problem with sharing this degree of personal information is that the legal community is surprisingly small. The more information you share, the more identifiable you become. Sometimes, that may require someone to exert a fair degree of effort to identify you. The risk of that is probably pretty miniscule, unless you're a long-time poster on this site and, for some reason, it's still running in 2031, and still posting. That's not likely to happen. It's not like the last site lasted for more than ten years... oh, wait... Kidding aside though, there's the situation where the amount of information in your post makes it easy to identify you. The grades probably weren't sufficient, but then the OP also included the firm they were applying to and the courses for which they received those grades. It's not outside the realm of possibility that members of the bar could be reading this thread. Consider this my public service announcement of the day.

Second, I want to briefly touch on the statement that everyone is reacting to: That the career services department at the OP's law school has advised that he or she is not competitive. Maybe I misread the original post, but I don't believe they expressly stated what law school they attend. I am certain that it is the case that there are law schools for which the OP would not be competitive for Toronto jobs, with specific firms. My recollection is that the Toronto based schools had a higher number of on-campus interview days than the other firms in Ontario. I expect (but don't know) that the same holds true for law schools outside of Ontario. In this context, the grades which may be sufficient to get an OCI with this specific firm from a Toronto based school, may not be sufficient from a non-Toronto based school. I would suggest that the people who should know best are likely not the people on this forum (well intentioned though they may be), but rather, the people in the student's career office who has a much better picture of all relevant factors.

Third, independent of whether the OP has (or does not have) good chances with any particular firm, the course of conduct is the same: Put the best application package together that the process allows, prepare for every stage you get invited to as best as you can, and hope for the best. There is zero benefit to focusing on the things you cannot control. I recognize that most law students (in my experience) and lawyers (again, in my experience) are impressive and generally successful people. The entire nature of OCIs, and frankly, professional life in general, is such that you will not always succeed. This may not be because of anything you did. The reality is that if there's 40 exceptional people who apply to one job, 39 of them are not going to get it. It's kind of like a video I watched recently on March Madness - it's a tournament that creates a lot of losers. Every year, one team wins, but 67 teams (if you count the first four), lose. It can really skew your perception of what it means to be successful. A related point to this is that, you may have colleagues who were uncompetitive at 95% of the places they applied, but were ranked #1 by someone, and gets a job, while you are competitive everywhere, but do not get a job, because you came #2 in every competition. All you can do is control your part of it.

Fourth, remember that this is not the end, it is simply the beginning to one, very specific path. You have an entire career of decisions in front of you. Whether you succeed or fail to secure a position through an OCI process is not going to determine whether you have a successful career, unless you let it define you. There are plenty of people who end up on Bay Street through other means (sometimes its through articles, sometimes they end up elsewhere and apply for jobs at those firms, and get them). Check the Ontario Reports if you don't believe me. You will frequently see advertisements for associate level positions. Surely if the only way to work for these firms was through OCIs, that wouldn't be necessary. Moreover, the herding of students towards this path really does disserve to the rich diversity of opportunities that will be in front of you, in your career, that do not have the economic incentive to hire a bunch of 2nd year students every year. 

Fifth, finally, and most importantly: the single most important thing is to remember that your mental and physical health is paramount. Make sure you take all necessary steps to prioritize it.

Good luck.