My personal experience in the 2L recruit, paired with anonymous stories shared through UV’s recruit survey
The recruit is an intense marathon that no one can complete perfectly. Goofs and gaffes are an inherent part of the experience. Sharing our blunders is important because mistakes are an unavoidable part of life, and it is better to be able to laugh at our past mistakes than to allow them to haunt you. I hope this article lets anyone who has participated or will participate in the recruit know that we all had a silly, goofy process. Welcome to the 2024 2L recruit confession booth. I will go first.
Personally, all of my most notable recruit blunders occurred in the span of only 30 minutes at a reception held at the end of day one when I was running on fumes. I did not want to go at all, but I told myself I would show up, talk to five people, and leave.
I entered the reception and picked up my name tag, which had a simple white background with only my name on it. I attached it to my blazer and headed in. About 15 minutes into the event, after I had floated between a couple of different lawyers and fellow law students, I was beginning to notice that everyone was frequently looking at my shirt. I thought I must be paranoid or people were just double-checking my name. I lived in blissful ignorance until one lawyer said, “It is so nice you brought your own name tag with your school’s name so nobody needs to ask.” I panicked and looked down, only to realize that I had forgotten to remove my final infirm of the day’s HIGHLY BRANDED name tag before entering the reception of a completely different firm. The entire time, I had been wearing two name tags, one on either side of my blazer. I cringed, quickly pulled off the bonus name tag, and shoved it into my pocket.
Unfortunately, the worst was far from over. A few minutes later, a senior lawyer asked me, “So, who did you interview with today?” My sleep-deprived brain assessed the situation as some sort of power move. I recalled that the Career Development Office (CDO) had said that if a lawyer asks what other firms you are interviewing with, you can be as specific or vague as you want. In a split-second small-brain decision, I decided to return the power move and began explicitly listing other firms. The lawyer then PANICKED and cut me off. He clarified that he was only asking which lawyers from THIS firm I had spoken to and that he would absolutely never ask a student about the other firms they were seeing. At this point, I decided I had done enough damage and told everyone I was off to bed. This firm did not contact me for a second interview, and I do not blame them.
Next, I will summarize the goofs and gaffes shared through our anonymous recruit survey. Thank you to everyone who shared!
Recruit mistakes begin as early as the pre-application networking phase. One student shared:
I asked a Seven Sisters associate for a coffee chat in-person, but asked to switch to Zoom the morning of because I failed to manage my time that day. She called me out for being disrespectful of her time, and I decided to meet her in-person after all. She was hungry, so she asked if we could get lunch instead of coffee. That ended up being my most expensive coffee chat—I paid $20 for a salad, $20 for an Uber to get to her office on time, and another $20 to get to another event afterward.
Now, to the application phase, starting with one of my own blunders. Personally, I was a major stickler for errors in my materials, and the night before they were due, I noticed I had made a small formatting error on all my cover letters. It was midnight, and I was having a campfire with my friends in my hometown. “Surely the firms will not care about something so minor,” I assured myself aloud. My very non-law friend replied, “I don’t know Olivia, I think if I were some big fancy law firm, I would care.” Naturally, this sent me into a spiral. I ran into the house and stayed up all night correcting my materials to avoid any further firms opening my package early and seeing my shame. However, it turns out that firms care a lot less about application errors than you may expect!
One recruit participant sent a Bennett Jones cover letter to Blakes, who did not seem to mind and still gave them an OCI. Another participant applied to five OCI employers on the U of T portal by submitting just their resume. They ran out of time to write cover letters for these employers and submitted on viLaw before the 5pm deadline. They then emailed all the employers apologizing and sent the materials via email, and all five accepted the materials! They even got OCIs from two of the five!
The OCIs are also a prime time for mistakes. Feel free to read my previous OCI reflection piece from the last issue of Ultra Vires if you are curious about my personal OCI horror stories. An anonymous participant shared:
I blacked out right before the application deadline and included a throwaway line about maritime law in a cover letter to a firm that offered me an OCI. I know nothing about maritime law and only discovered this about 20 minutes before my OCI. Shockingly, I was not called for an in-firm.
The social events were where I committed the majority of my recruit sins. My fellow recruit participants also shared some event-specific sillies. One participant shared:
During lunch with a law firm on day two, I went to wipe my mouth with my napkin that was on my lap. However, I accidentally wiped it with my tie and didn’t realize until it was too late! Because of this, I had a gnarly grease stain on my tie for the rest of the day, including for my second interview with my now-employer.
Another participant shared a cautionary tale for future recruit participants:
Double booking meals may be suboptimal when you realize you need to cancel one of those meals.
Writing thank you emails can also be very stressful, especially if you are juggling a lot of active in-firms and need to write a lot of thank you emails very quickly. One participant thought they could reduce their stress by recruiting a friend to help. Unfortunately, friends can goof and gaffe as well.
My friend drafted a thank you email to a recruiter for me. I went to the washroom during another firm dinner to copy and send my email. Later, I realized that the recruiter’s first name was very clearly spelled wrong (it wasn’t one of my favourite firms, so it worked out in the end!).
I found in-firm interviews to be the most stressful portion of the process. The previous numbers that insulated you during applications and possibly OCIs were now gone.
Scheduling in-firms is a difficult dance. I personally completely burned my prime 8am call spot on call day by playing favourites and phone tag. My 8am slot ended up empty and my favourite firm ended up placed at 4pm on day one.
One participant shared they had forgotten to wear their blazer to their first interview at 8am. Another participant shared during in-firms that they forgot their host’s name mid-conversation, so they just referred to him as “my host” for the rest of the time. A second participant also completely blanked on people’s names right after interviewing with them.
The recruit is a wild ride, but thankfully the 2024 recruit is finally over.
Editor’s Note: The comments in this article have been edited for length and clarity.
