I was pretty apathetic going into today's interview. I am tired of being rejected, and I wasn't sure how interested they would be in me because I have virtually no exposure to the type of law that they practice.
But it went much better than I anticipated, and now I'm afraid I have my hopes up once again.
The female attorney with whom I had been in contact was conducting initial interviews. It seemed to go ok, but I am a terrible judge. She asked for my expected salary. I threw out my previously decided upon number (which I was willing to compromise) and she said, "That's much too low. I'm going to put down [much higher number] as your minimum expected salary." My new minimum expected salary is almost $20K more than I was previously earning.
Then she said, "I know I only scheduled you for one interview, but I know that I will be calling you back, so if you have time, I'd really like to see if one of our partners can meet with you right now."
Okey dokey, no problem on my end.
Partner was preparing for a trial on Monday, but spent about an hour speaking to me. I think it went pretty well.
I am much, much more interested in the firm now, and not just because of the substantial salary increase. I would be second chairing the cases on which I was assigned--and second chairs get a lot of responsibility. It would be great experience.
The negatives (which aren't really that negative): The firm is very conservative. No business casual, which means I would have to add a few more suits to my wardrobe. I even stopped on the way home to buy Crane notecards so that I could handwrite follow-up notes. These days I generally just send an email follow up.
And they use Macs. I have never even heard of a law firm that uses Macs, and I haven't touched one since high school. I'm sure I can pick it up, but I wonder how much trouble it is sending and receiving documents. We had issues at my old firm because we used WordPerfect instead of Word.
7 comments:
Great news on the interview! And there's no conversion issues with Macs, at least not anymore. JP uses one and I use a PC and we send docs back and forth all the time -- Microsoft Office works on a Mac just the same as PC.
Macs are easy - I too send documents back and forth all the time.
I don't use Pages, but it's apparently better to use than Word, and integrates with Word documents.
They are intuitive to use. I swop between PC and Mac all the time - it's a little frustrating that the keys like Ctrl+X to cut, is Apple key+X on a Mac, but otherwise it's a breeze.
I migrated our firm to Macs last year, and it has gone really well - we use Daylite for case management and Office for the usual reasons. I would love (offline) to hear more about how big the firm is and the software they use if you get the job. :) Even in PDX, it seems much more like the Mac offices are the small, plaintiff-side offices, and all the defense firms are solidly PC.
PS: Good luck!!!
Awesome news! I'll keep my fingers crossed for you.
Congratulations! I will continue to hope all goes well!
Thanks for all of the well-wishes and reassurances that one can survive in a Mac firm.
Shelley, I'd be happy to chat IF I get the job. It is a small firm--the new hire will be the 10th attorney.
That sounds really awesome!! I hope you get the job! Regardless, they sound really impressed by you, and even if it ends up not working out, definitely hit them up for job leads, because they sound like good people.
I just found out my new boss expects me to wear suits every day too. Ugh. At least with the extra $20K you can buy some nice clothes and pay the dry-cleaning! :)
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