divine angst

I have stopped bothering to attend law firm receptions. I have a hard time understanding the purpose of them. Sure, I can schmooze with people and enjoy the free food and drink but, barring the unexpected, such events aren’t really fruitful for either me or the firm. If I meet nice people and chat with them for a while, I can collect a business card, sure, but in six months, when I’m doing OCI, is that person going to remember me? Am I going to remember, short of the business card, what firm that person worked at?

Firms put on these events to play themselves up for us. That’s great. But in the end, of course, most of the firms end up looking the same: they have similar offices in the same four-block radius, they have the same kinds of clients and the same kinds of cases. The associates all went to the same law schools. They’re all eager to talk up their firm. They never tell you that the hours are awful or that they never see their spouse.

So I’ve stopped bothering to go to them. I suppose this could be at least partially because I am totally anti-schmoozing. But I think more of it is because I have so little time that spending it at fluffy social events doesn’t really appeal.