Three Years of Hell to Become the Devil: Dim, Sultry, Flattering Light

Mike O'Sullivan at The Corp Law Blog worries that corporate lawyers are going to lose out in the recruiting race because hot-shot young law students are all going to watch The Practice and Law and Order, and decide that this is where the sexy hunks and 'slinky stick-thins' are.

Actually, I think that even 1Ls are a little more resistant to that kind of Hollywood-driven marketing than people give us credit for. I've found that while attending all the 1L receptions thrown by various law firms, it's pretty easy to tell the ones who were marketed well (their PR agency genuinely captured the ethos and identity of the firm and presented it honestly); the ones who were marketed badly (relentlessly on-message about whatever their PR agency suggested); and best of all, those that didn't seem 'marketed' at all. (I'm not naming names here for obvious reasons--I'm not an idiot, for one--but this isn't saying anything about law firms that isn't true about firms in any industry. Marketing is a very subtle art, and it's dead easy to get wrong. I also know enough from working at a web agency to know not to hold bad marketing against anyone.)

Still, my search for summer employment has been churning for a few weeks: false starts, a few interviews, no real bites. Maybe I should offer to put my evocative talents to use at a firm, finding a way to cast them in the 'dim, sultry, flattering light' that O'Sullivan so demands. I once blogged a whole week in the style of a Sam Spade novel--what could be more 'sultry' than that?

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Giving The Devil His Due

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'slinky stick-thins' Darkly amusing that the writer presumably intended this to be a positive image where I'd literally use the latter half as an insult ! I'm puzzled as to how one goes about doing recruitment for a law firm anyway - surely between location and salary that's almost all the relevant factors covered ?

Posted by: Bateleur | February 4, 2004 6:46 AM

Actually, he didn't mean it as that much of a compliment--just a descriptor of the kind of women who are on most American TV shows. As for 'location and salary', that's certainly not the only criteria: what kind of work people do, what your fellow attorneys are like, work culture... certainly you don't make location and salary your only criteria, do you?

Posted by: Anthony Rickey | February 4, 2004 10:02 AM

you don't make location and salary your only criteria, do you? Of course not, but that's why I long ago ruled out any possibility of working in the field of law !

Posted by: Bateleur | February 4, 2004 12:33 PM

Well, lawyers are no less likely to value those other considerations...

Posted by: Anthony Rickey | February 4, 2004 1:31 PM

Glad to see you're going to the receptions, and especially that you're listening to them. It's really quite possible to discover a lot about firms that way---well, okay, no, it's not. You won't find out "a lot," but you will find out which ones would make you miserable and which you'd like. Which is pretty good.

Posted by: Tony the Pony | February 5, 2004 11:54 PM

Dim, Sultry, Flattering Light

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Giving The Devil His Due

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