Part-time Timeline Questions
Starting part-time law school in the fall and looking for clarity on when I would start participating in OCI and applying directly to firms for SA positions.
What I want to understand is do the firms look at time remaining until graduation to determine 1L/2L etc or do they look for certain courses to be done that defines your school year position? I imagine they want someone who is a year out from graduation to be able to give return offers.
As I’ve read and spoke with many students the timeline has shifted earlier and earlier. I know we don’t know what it will be for this fall as it’s too early but what I want to figure out is would I be interviewing in fall 2027 or fall 2028 for summer of 3L? Or another time I didn’t mention
I put a timeline below of how the PT school year breakdown would be based on other PT students who are now working in big law.
Last question is it seems most common to do SA positions after 2L, how common are SA positions after 1L?
Please no answers of talk to your school about what to do or I’ve never heard of PT students going into big law/it will be really difficult. It has obviously happened for PT students and yes I am well aware of big law challenges. I want feedback from other part time students on what they’ve done or those who have seen PT students hired at their firms and when they were interviewing.
1L fall 2026
1L spring 2027
1L summer 2027
2L fall 2027
2L spring 2027
2L summer 2028
3L fall 2028
3L spring 2028
3L summer 2029 (SA + potential return offer for next year)
4L fall 2029
4L spring 2030 (graduation + bar)
Thank you for the feedback!