Building a Better Legal Profession's Guide to Law Firms: The Law Student's Guide to Finding the Perfect Law Firm Job First Edition

by Building a Better Legal Profession (Author), Irene Hahn (Editor)

5.0 1 rating

The law firm hiring process is something that the vast majority of students at top law schools will experience during their 2L year, but it’s also something of a mystery. In contrast to the lively availability of guidebooks to the first year of law school, books about law firm hiring are almost non-existent, which leaves students with the burden of figuring it out on their own. Unfortunately, law firm hiring isn’t set up in a way that’s conducive to helping students make informed decisions—law firm interviews are easy and amount to informal chats about the candidate, each of the firms follow the same protocol of flying their best candidates out for second-round interviews and wining and dining them at the same fancy restaurants, and the glossy brochures project the same polished image. So the choice between firms is often arbitrary, and based on subjective criteria such as the relative prestige of the firm. Unfortunately, many students get to law firms and regret their choice—for a job with starting salaries of 165k a year, firm attrition rates are startlingly high, with 40% of young associates leaving the firm within 3 years, and 62% by the end of their fourth. Some of those students didn’t have a clear idea of what firm life would entail. Some of them just picked the wrong firm. Clearly a little more guidance upfront about choosing a firm could save students a lot of trouble later on.

Beyond what BBLP publishes online, Building a Better Legal Professions's Guide to Law Firms gives career guidance and stories from the professionals already at the legal firms reviewed. It's truly a balanced report of factors needed to make an intelligent choice of where to spend your career.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Building a Better Legal Profession is a national grassroots movement that seeks market-based workplace reforms in large private law firms. By publicizing firms' self-reported data on billable hours, pro bono participation, and demographic diversity, we draw attention to the differences between these employers. We encourage those choosing between firms — students deciding who to work for after graduation, corporate clients deciding who to hire, and universities deciding who to allow on campus for interviews — to exercise their market power and engage only with the firms that demonstrate a genuine commitment to these issues.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Kaplan Publishing; First Edition (April 7, 2009)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 360 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1427798389
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1427798381
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.1 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1 x 9 inches

Customer Reviews:
5.0 1 rating

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Videos

Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video!

Upload your video

Customer reviews

5 out of 5

1 global rating

5 star

100%

4 star

0%

3 star

0%

2 star

0%

1 star

0%

How customer reviews and ratings work

Sort reviews by

Top review from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Tim

Incredibly original, comprehensive resource

Reviewed in the United States on June 29, 2010

This book was exceptionally useful as I approached recruiting season at my law school last year. Of the firms that offered me interviews I was able to use this Building a Better Legal Profession book to get an empirical sense of diversity among partners and associates within particular offices of various firms in major US markets. Armed with this data I was able to accurately weigh the commitment to diversity typically espoused by many a major firm, including those that interviewed me. With BBLP data I was able to see in hard numbers, collected from NALP's annual survey of firms, that attrition among women and minority associates is not typical across all firms. Ultimately the informative and usefully organized data in the BBLP book helped me choose a firm that shares an important part of my workplace values.

Also in this book are answers to law firm questions I had thought to ask but never really knew who to ask. What's the deal with international offices, pro bono hours required or encouraged per year (or lack thereof), how do partnership tracks vary across firms and what's necessarily the difference from one office to another within the same mega firm? All these questions were answered in this incredibly resourceful book. I've recommended the BBLP book and website ([...]) to all my law school friends (and even some professors) after discovering this unparalled resource.