Does anyone have a poor relationship with their alma mater? This can be in general or department specific. For example, I have always felt disappointed with career services from my law school. I feel struggling alumni, like those that failed the bar or remain unemployed long enough to be recorded as negative statistics for the school’s ranking, have already done their damage so they have no incentive to help you any further.

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I actively tell prospective and current students who reach out that I made it to biglaw in spite of my school. Then give them guidance on how to do the same. My law school sucked and should be shut down. My undergrad was amazing.

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TL;dr, there are other ways to carve your chances into law, big or small and I always tell younger lawyers my story.

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100%. My school asked me to be their token minority for brochure photos and I refused. On graduation day, the school mysteriously lost my graduation cords. I like the above comment about how we succeeded DESPITE our law schools.

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100%. In addition to career services, the entire executive team which inflated numbers that lured so many to a school just to be drowning in debt. Many whom have still not obtained meaningful careers

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“You’ll have no problems getting a job. You won’t be rich but you’ll make enough to raise a family, own a house and never worry about having food on your plate.” ☹️

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💯 career services was the worst. Also there was a woman that ran the judicial clerkship program that would straight up not respond to students she didn’t think had the grades or journal experience to get interviews

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Ah, this happened to us. They had a system that actually blocked your application from going out for clerkships and for OCI so they could tailor the applicants coming out of the school. They didn’t really assist anyone except for the top few percent. The rest were blocked and advised to apply to volunteer internships with legal aid instead and other experiential learning opportunities. We weren’t permitted to independently apply either. They said if we did we’d get in trouble with the school administration.

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I had to transfer after my 1L year since my wife got into school in a different state. The school I transferred to wouldn't let me participate in OCI until my they processed by acceptance, and then as soon as it was processed, they told me that the OCI deadlines had passed.

After OCI, career services was completely useless to the point where the counselor told me she didn't think she could help me. And I was in the top 5% of my class at my new school.

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I am right there. I have tried to connect with my alma mater but I am not big firm glamorous and can’t provide them big donors.

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Yup. When I set a meeting to ask about the OCI process, the career services person declined the meeting and told me that I wouldn't make it since I wasn't too 5%.

However, now they see what I do and where I work, so they are constantly sending students my way for advice on the privacy field, and invite me to all their career fairs.

I happily accept those meetings and attend the job fairs for two reasons: 1) To try to help the students in any way I can - I can't blame the students for going there, I made the same mistake; and 2) to rub my success in their faces while having them suck up to me 😎

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Career services at my school is a joke. They only care about who they funnel into big law in the hopes these people donate at some point. Not to mention the director rules with an iron fist and is a raging bitch. They only want to take credit for you as an alumni when you’ve accomplished some huge feat because it makes them look good. It’s a business, and you’re just a cog in the wheel.

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Anyone severely underperform getting their JD and wind up pursuing an LLM to become more competitive in the job market? Tell us your story.

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Any minority lawyers in here that were blacklisted from big firms for a time gap or after layoff? How did you move forward?

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