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Meh I was bottom 25% of the class (though at top 6) and had no trouble getting biglaw offers despite it being the middle of the last recession (people getting no offers after their summer jobs, etc). Definitely better chances the better grades you get, but if that ship has sailed not all hope is lost. Some firms value “fit” more than grades as long as you’re within a certain threshold/cut off.
If you are in the top 50% of your class and have a compelling resume/story, you shouldn’t worry. Just do well during OCI and you’ll be fine. My OCI interview with the firm I’m at now was 20 minutes of me chatting up a restructuring partner about the Lehman Bros bankruptcy. Not a single generic interview question.
Don’t think that’s quite right. For T-14 schools around 75% get Biglaw (Federal Clerkships).
Nobody is going to be able to answer this questions satisfactorily for you. T14 is pretty generic (Georgetown and Harvard are quite different), biglaw is quite generic (Cravath and DLA Piper have quite different recruiting profiles). If your question is if you should be able to get a job making market, then the answer is almost certainly yes but depends on school, where you want to go, what type of law you want to practice.
Depends on your definition of Biglaw. If you mean AmLaw 100, then almost any T14 graduate should be able find a spot there. If you mean Vault 20, then it gets a bit tougher, but not impossible
The smaller-market route worked for me. Graduated from a crap law school (now ranked outside of the top 100, I believe) but got a BigLaw gig in Seattle.
The market for big law was much more lenient in the last 2-4 years. Would look back to 2011/2012 given the economy. So I would say top 25% and a very strong interview
Yup people who struck out back when we were interviewing in summer of 2011 struck out because of grades. Pretty much every firm at the time asked for transcripts.
There are some firms where grades are super important and they won't consider you if you're grades are mediocre regardless if school. Think Gibson Dunn, Covington, Cleary just as an example. Some will pass even if your overall GPA is good but your first year was below average.
But other AmLaw 20 firms it may not matter as much (I saw someone mention DLA in a previous reply).
This answer is hard to give more because none of us know exactly what the economy or hiring will look like or where you will be looking, but if we assume it is more like 2011 you probably want to be above the median in order to feel good about having plenty of chances at OCI. But, you won't be fully precluded if you are below that (at least to get into the AmLaw 100 somewhere) if you are looking in a smaller market, as someone else noted, that may be less important.
Any chance you could shoot pm have some questions!
In these times look to 2011-2012. You need to aim for top 25%. The past few years I would say 75% got it if they wanted it, but it’s a different ball game now.