Better than not hearing anything back at all. I've been practicing two years now, and I'm still waiting to hear from a couple of firms as to whether I will be offered summer employment beginning May 2001...

One of you law student bloggers really ought to compile a rejection letter highlights post. There is a wealth of amusing material that can be culled from your peers.

While clerking, I interviewed with a BIGLAW firm that never bothered to get back to me. Ever. So I was in the Judge's chambers one day and my job search came up and I mentioned this to him. Funnily enough, this very same firm had done the same thing to him decades earlier. Well, almost. Actually, he finally accepted elsewhere and then bumped into some folks from said BIGLAW firm. Apparently the fact that they never bothered to get back to him came up. And a week later he received a rejection letter. Even though he had let them know that he had accepted elsewhere and the issue was, therefore, moot. Classy, huh?

My favorite rejection letter episode is from law school though. One Monday, I received a rejection letter from a regional firm. Then on Wednesday I received a letter inviting me to a call-back interview from the same firm. Both letters were signed in ink by the same partner.

It was late in the interview season and my prospects were bleak. So I should have been grateful for the second letter. But I was good and bitter, and my next move was probably not my finest moment. I drafted a subtly mocking e-mail to said partner expressing my perplexity and asking whether the firm wished to interview me or not. Surpisingly, I was invited up for a call back interview. Unsurpisingly, I did not get an offer.