Words from a 3L—you’ll be fine
For the many 2Ls reading this, not getting a job offer from on-campus interviews (OCIs) is probably the last thing you want to think about right now. I was in that same position less than a year ago. But one thing that helped ease a small bit of my anxiety going into Offer Day and post-Offer Day, when (spoiler alert) my phone was silent at 5 pm, was Ultra Vires’ collection of articles similar to this one.
For some backstory, going into law school, I was most interested in working in a public-interest setting, particularly within constitutional or public law—not the kind of position that’s abundant in the 2L summer recruit. But like many students who come to U of T Law with these kinds of aspirations, the immense debt load this school imparts on us spiked my anxiety about getting a secure job as quickly as I could. I also felt a kind of fear of missing out. Everyone around me—students, professors, the Career Development Office—seemed to be talking about the recruit, and many seemed to posture it as the be-all-end-all of getting any sort of respectable job. On top of the professional opportunities I’d seemingly be missing out on, I also felt I’d be missing out in a social sense. Being remote probably helped but almost every Zoom breakout room still began with commiseration about OCI application stress.
I ended up applying broadly in the 2L summer recruit. I won’t act like I would have hated working everywhere that I applied—I think I could’ve been very happy working at a litigation boutique or union-side labour firm, for example. But as someone who still has no idea what a capital market is and who has valiantly resisted taking Business Organizations, I probably should not have had so much anxiety riding on whether I secured interviews and offers at firms where I’d have to spend most of my time doing corporate transactional work.
I received a handful of OCIs and a couple of in-firms. While I have my misgivings with the process and more than a few anecdotes about intrusive questions and questionable recruitment tactics, most of them were generally fine. As I spoiled earlier, I didn’t end up getting an offer. Yet, I still ended up having a great 2L summer experience. I was hired by the Hatchery as a Law Connector, where I worked with so many great people and developed many practical legal skills. That role allowed me to explore areas of law I’d never even considered before, including intellectual property and health law, to name a few. It also gave me enough flexibility to take on an additional part-time position—a policy research job with Ontario’s Ministry of Health that I had applied for right after the recruit had ended and all but forgot about until I received an invitation to interview from the director of one of their divisions in early June. There, I worked with a group of policy advisors on developing a framework for data and privacy policy within Ontario’s health system. My work was primarily focused on constitutional and privacy law, areas that I had been interested in since I began law school, and I loved the work.
Both of those positions were just contracts for the summer without hireback potential, so I had to prepare for the articling recruit. While two recruits within six months certainly was not a lot of fun, going through the OCI process made me feel much more prepared for articling recruitment. I knew what kinds of cover letters worked and what didn’t, I knew the general formalities of Zoom interviewing, and most importantly, I knew what types of jobs I wanted to focus my energy on. It also helped that the articling recruit had far more government and other public interest employers, as well as various litigation and union-side labour firms, where I could show a genuine interest in the work. This isn’t to say that there weren’t opportunities for more corporate-minded students as well—I have friends who didn’t secure an OCI job on Bay Street but will now be articling at top Bay Street firms through the articling recruit.
After sending out dozens of applications—the number of employers participating in the articling recruit seemed to be almost double that of the 2L summer recruitment—I ended up completing 12 articling interviews. Unlike the 2L recruit, the articling recruit process only has one round, similar to in-firms. A word of caution: I would not recommend doing 12 interviews. I could fit them into my schedule, as very few of them did second interviews, but they were all substantive. The stress of preparing for 12 substantive interviews all within 48 hours of each other is not something I would wish on anyone. After probably the most hectic week I have ever experienced, I ended up with three official offers, and calls from four other employers saying I was next on their list if anyone declined. One of the offers—the one I accepted—was from my first-choice employer, where I’d be doing all constitutional law all of the time.
