Law School Lies

Quite awhile ago I interviewed for a quasi-legal job at one of the multitude of Bank of America’s offices. This was shortly after I was out of law school and I still assumed that a great legal job was right around the corner. But I was starting to have suspicions already that all was not quite what I thought it was in the job market since I was now desperately broke and no one was hiring me. So I decided I should try to come up with a back channel to be hired into an attorney position somewhere. I had heard an apocryphal story of some distant friend of a friend who was an attorney and got hired as a paralegal and soon was promoted to be a real boy an actual attorney with the firm. To be considered a paralegal, you need to have gotten a paralegal certificate (which can be ordered thru the mail from late night infomercials, though I will admit there are a fair number who get them from more legitimate sources – usually community colleges.) And preferably a GED, though not necessarily required. That’s right… I was trying to game the system by applying for a position that was open to high school drop outs.

So with this thought in mind, I noted paralegal positions in my area and applied to a few. One got back to me. Bank of America was running a mass mill review of mortgages they held (*cough* I wonder why…). Anyway, I show up to the interview and find out it is an abandoned shopping mall. Sidenote – why is it that no one else I know has interview stories which include statements like “the law firm was in an industrial park” or “an abandoned shopping mall”… I can’t be the only one. I walk down the eerily empty mall to the BoA office, which is now occupying what looked to have previously been a Macys or some similarly sized department store. The front of the store is now walled off completely with one corner converted into a reception area behind a small wall of security glass and buzzed doors. Apparently today was not just interview day for me, but also for about 300 other people as well. The waiting room was stacked with about 10-12 people waiting, and a new person arrived every 15 minutes or so. There were multiple interview rooms churning through people so you might think this was a well oiled machine; nothing could be farther from the truth.

I will say that while I waited, we were provided entertainment in the form of watching the current employees attempt to use the revolving security door. It was fantastically broken and yet it was the only door they were supposed to be using, so rather than use the regular door 3 feet to the right, they were all trying to use the revolving door. It involved swiping their ID card and the door would start revolving. Ideally it was supposed to revolve sufficiently so you could get to the other side. It didn’t. I watched at least half a dozen people get locked in between the rotation and that was when it worked at all. It seemed that the door was very successful at keeping the employees locked inside the office. An hour and 15 minutes into waiting in the small room that was getting progressively more crowded I decided it was time to call it. I should have left 45 minutes prior, but being broke can help you to put up with a lot. So finally after the umpteenth person pounding on the rotating door to be let out, I stand up and hand my ‘Visitor’ security badge to the secretary who had obviously graduated from the DMV Charm School, and as I turned to leave, I kid you not, the door on the far wall opens and a woman calls my name. I had a moment where I considered remaining silent and continuing to walk, but I was here so I might as well do the interview regardless of my thoughts at that moment.

The office inside was exactly what you would imagine a department store would look like if you emptied it of all the clothes, and instead filled it with half-cubicles from wall to wall. It was like staring at what Dante may have thought up if he had a slightly more sadistic concept of purgatory done up in beige, lit with flickering fluorescent lighting, and scented with a miasma of depression. As the woman is taking me back to a small office we pass by a set of escalators set in the middle of the huge open room which apparently led up to an identical floor above us. I laugh slightly and ask “Was this place previously a department store?” The woman looks back at me and confirms the guess that it used to be a Macys / Sears / etc, and then asks “Why do you ask?” I reply,”well the escalators in the middle of the office sort of give it away.” She then confounds me and says “Oh no. We put those in here.” Protip: If your office has a weird feature in it. Don’t become so complacent that you think it is normal and lose sight of the fact that normal people will find it odd upon witnessing its weirdness, acknowledge that it is weird, but then say ‘hey it works’… and move on.

So I end up in a small office across a largish oval table from two women. One identifies herself as one of BoA’s attorneys who is part of a group that titularly oversees the mortgage mill. The other is identified as someone from HR, she never spoke the entire interview. So the attorney starts talking to me about the job and about how I am a new attorney applying for this legal-ish position and how they (supposedly) have quite a few JDs working on the project (note she said JDs, not attorneys). She told me that she used to be an in-house Counsel for a small chain of gas station convenience stores. I thought that decidedly odd at the time, yet now I would gladly shank my grandmother for such a job. I found out rather quickly that my idea of a back way into the legal department was DoA at BoA because apparently this was likely the first and last time I would see an attorney for BoA as their offices were not in the same building and I would never really have opportunity to schmooze with them to try to get hired. She went thru some of what would be required for the job and then she came to a bit of a sticky point. Apparently there was the very real potential that they would want me to negotiate with homeowners and / or attorneys relating to various issues, specifically as in mediation. This struck me as odd, and decidedly an action that an attorney would do and not a paralegal. So I brought up the point that as a barred attorney I thought it would be a bit confusing and potentially bordering on malpractice to enter negotiations with another attorney or a pro-se party in a legal proceeding such as a mediation or arbitration relating to legal documents operating as a non-attorney, when I was in fact an attorney. Not to mention confusing to the adverse party that they would be dealing with an attorney who was not operating as an attorney, but working for attorneys but with no actual authority. I voiced this concern to the attorney and asked if there was either provided coverage or indemnity for such an issue. The attorney laughed (yes she laughed at a question one attorney posed to another about potential malpractice) and looked over to the HR person and said “Oh new attorneys are so concerned over losing their license.” (WTF?!) She claimed there was no problem and not to worry about it, but no they didn’t offer any coverage. Now, I am pretty sure every law school teaches that you are an attorney 24/7 and that yes… yes you can be held accountable even if you do something malpractice worthy in an unrelated job. She must have been a bang-up in-house Counsel. But hey, now you know something about the ethics of BoA attorneys. (maybe that explains some of their current issues…)

Anyway, being new to the whole legal interviewing thing and not realizing I was up against people who may or may not have graduated high school, I had brought a writing sample I had written which was filed into a Federal Circuit Court in the not so distant past. She took it and leafed thru it as you would if you had drawn a stick-figure flipbook on the side corner before returning it to the center of the table and saying dismissively “well its nice that you helped work on this…” at which point I cut her off mid-sentence and forcefully poked my finger into the brief and said “I did not help work on this, I WROTE this.” The interview literally ground to a halt. I could have sworn the only thing that could have dropped the temperature in the room faster than what I had just done is if I had slapped her across the face. The interview had been going badly already, the attorney kept stumbling over information in my resume as if she had never heard of any IP related terms and somehow she seemed to have little command over motion practice and what it constituted (what the hell did she do as an in-house? Transactional and nothing else?). This was pretty much the near official end of the interview. She backed off realizing she had effectively just lobbed a rather dismissive insult at me and I had instantly grounded it. She wound the interview down to the obligatory goodbyes and I walked out of the office and I was left wandering out of the abandoned shopping mall.

I don’t really recall hearing back from them, but I am pretty sure neither of us would have said yes to me working there regardless.

‘I want a clean cup,’ interrupted the Hatter: ‘let’s all move one place on.’            — Alice in Wonderland

 

The unexpected happened. And I couldn’t possibly pass it up, if for no other reason than just for the story.

The Gaming Commission offered me a second interview. That’s right. They wanted me to come back and run through more interviews AND do the written and oral defense portion. How could I say no? Truly, I considered it. They were insane last time and truly seemed to hate me, so why would I subject myself to more? But, since I am fabulously unemployed I of course said yes and I set out on the 4 hour trip back to their office for Round 2.

I got the phone call on Wednesday telling me they wanted me to come back for the second interview the following Wednesday. I was told that I should read thru the state gaming act, familiarize myself with the gaming regulations, and watch a video of their proceedings. I was heading out on a flight the next morning and I was going to be gone until Tuesday morning, I initially thought it would be something to read on the plane. The gaming act was north of 170 pages. The regulations were over 790 pages. The various videos ran the gamut to upwards of 6 hours. I poked around and read thru the pertinent parts of the gaming act, took a look at the page length of the regulations and ignored it, and I had to rip the stream of the video because they only offered streaming video which consistently died before the video ended and had no ability for mobile viewing (since I was traveling). Remember… hours and hours of this shit for the honor of a one in three shot at a job working with ‘interesting characters’ with ‘strong personalities’.

So I arrive at 10 in the morning for the interview. Mind you, I woke up that morning before 5 so that I could get ready and on the road to drive 4 hours to this interview. I’m ushered into a conference room with the other two applicants who are already there, and they leave us in the room alone and close the door. After a minute of silence, my curiosity got the better of me and I leaned forward and asked with a slight smile to them, “So I gotta ask, how did your first interview go? Because I’m a little confused why I am here.” The first guy says, “pretty good I thought it went well.” I look over to the woman seated next to me. She says, “I thought it went very well.” I process this for a moment, and then just go “huh.” And I lean back in my chair laughing quietly. The guy looks a little concerned now and asks me “why? What happened with you?” I lean forward to answer and at that moment the door opens and in walks the lead attorney. I look at the other applicant and I smile and shrug wordlessly.

The lead attorney surveys us and then tells us he is going to split us up for part of the morning. At which point he points to the other guy and says “You stay. You other two, follow me.” So the woman and I stand up and walk out with the lead attorney leaving the other applicant sitting in the empty conference room. He hands the woman off to his law clerk to take her on a tour and leads me to a small office where none other than Mr. Maritime Fan and another of my favorites from interview one are sitting. And we all start to engage in small talk. The lead attorney starts out and mentions he likes my suit, and that it is a good color on me and basically makes a point of saying I look pretty. (this will come back later) I don’t think much of it, but for your benefit of the mental image, I’m wearing a charcoal suit with a light grey shirt and a solid red tie. Nothing exceptional, just a standard nice suit. After this, the lead attorney asked if I watched any of the videos. I told him I did and identified which one. His response was “Pfft… that piece of shit.” Now I had a list of about 150 possible videos to watch, and no mention was given as to preference as to which they wanted me to see… So I picked a random recent one and explained that I figured watching something seemingly on point to petitions would be good. I apparently randomly chose wrong. We talk for about 10 minutes and pretty much in the middle of a conversation the lead attorney stands up and says “come with me.” So I follow him back to the conference room where we left the other guy.

The door opens and the room is packed with people. Sitting on one side of the table is the applicant, and on the other side are arrayed at least 10 or so other people curving around the table. He points at the other guy and says “You come” points at me and says “you, stay.” It was reminiscent of the Disney version of Alice in Wonderland’s Mad Hatter screaming ‘New Cup’ and rotating around the table. So the other guy heads out, and I take his place across the table. No introductions, no information given. So I sit down and everyone shuffles some papers and pulls out my resume. Breaking the ice I fire off a joke and say “this might well be the most people who have ever actually looked at my resume.” No one laughs… tough crowd. So these people start asking me questions about my resume. The questions had a very stilted quality to them, some of them were just odd. At a certain point, I stopped something I was explaining and apologized and asked who I was speaking to in the room because the lead attorney didn’t tell me who anyone there was… are you all lawyers, are you staff people, are you someone else? The whole idea of knowing your audience may have been why I was striking out on the conversation points. This was the first thing that people laughed at, someone said “Figures” another said “Yeah you should get used to that if you want to work in this office.” They were all the rest of the attorneys from the office. Most of the questions had a rather empty feeling like they had been told that each one of them had to come up with a unique question to ask the applicants; it led to several questions where they would ask about something specific on my resume and within the first 2 sentences of my explanation I knew they were lost. I would try to restart thinking it was supposed to be a question that was meant to spark a conversation, and instead find out they really didn’t have a reason for asking the question and seemingly didn’t care about the answer. It seemed to be a space filler.

About 15 minutes in, in the middle of a sentence, the door flies open, and the same pronouncement is made. New Cup!.. I mean “You come. You stay.” And I stand up and walk out. This time I get taken on a tour of the office complex by the law clerk. By far the most normal of anyone I have met at the office which is saying something considering he was the prototypical Aspie. At one point he told me that I could ask him any question I wanted because he had no say in the hiring and nothing would get back to the lead attorney. I figured, why the hell not, at least I’ll get an honest answer out of someone. So I started out, “Well I am sort of curious as to why I am here. My first interview didn’t just go badly, it was horrible.” To his credit, his reaction was actually one of confusion. Then he asked me “Was it in the afternoon?” yes. “Oh that’s why. They are cranky in the afternoon.” (what?) Then he stopped and said “what day was your interview?” Wednesday. “Oh… oh Wednesday was not a good day. Not at all. And in the afternoon.” And that was my explanation. I guess.

That didn’t explain all of my burning questions however. We were nearing the end of the tour and I said, “You know, there is one other question I had. In the last interview I was told I would be working with ‘interesting peop’…. well bluntly I was told I was going to be working with someone who is an insane asshole who is going to try to get me to do potentially illegal things. Is that true?” The clerks brow furrowed and he said “No… no the office you’ll be at has a great attorney, great person who is very nice etc etc…. … and I can’t think of who he would be talking…” and suddenly he stopped. “Oh… OHH!!” he exclaimed. “You didn’t hear it from me. I’ve said too much.”

The obvious problem was he hadn’t said anything. Although he did effectively confirm that there was some random crazy person who I would be working with. I suppose that independent verification is something though. I think the only new bit of creepy as hell information I got from the clerk was that apparently the office sends out people to talk to your neighbors as part of their background check (among other things). This brought a brief moment of joy to my life as I briefly thought of someone trying to talk to my neighbors (did I mention one of my neighbors was recently put into a sanitarium? Several of the others aren’t much better, so I sort of relished the thought). Shortly after this exchange the lead attorney comes back and brings me back to the conference room where the other 2 applicants are now sitting across from the 10 or so staff attorneys. As I start to sit in the chair the lead attorney points at us and says to his attorneys “One, two, three. I want you to rank them in order of preference, write it down and hand it to me.” There is silence in the room. And after a moment one of the attorneys says “Now?” and the lead attorney blasts back “Of course now! Why else would I say that if not now!” The attorneys start shuffling their papers a bit and at least to their credit one of them loudly mutters “Well this is awkward.” as they wrote down who they liked best on small slips of paper. I wasn’t sure whether it felt more like a 4th grade popularity contest, or judging at a dog show where we were the dogs. I had a brief flash through my mind that I should ask the assembled table is they wanted to check my teeth before making a determination. My better demons told me not to say anything.

All but one of the attorneys filed out leaving us with the lead attorney and staff attorney. The staff attorney starts talking “I printed out the questions…” and was cut off by the lead attorney.

“I didn’t ask you to do that. If I wanted you to print it out I would have asked you.”

“But I forwarded you the questions we were talking about…”

“And I didn’t like them so I wrote new ones.” said the lead attorney.

The staff attorney was now standing in the room holding out a pile of papers somewhat blankly, and then sighed and dejectedly walked out of the room. This did not appear to be a unique occurrence. The lead attorney now turned and focused his attention on us. We were each handed a copy of the gaming act, the regulations, and what I can only describe as a Law School exam question on gaming law. And we were told that we had approximately 2 hours to write out an answer using the act and regulations and that at the end of the time, we would have to orally present and potentially defend our answers in front of the lead attorney, Mr. Maritime, and another from the first interview. The only take away worth mentioning about this whole section was that it turned out not all the answers were located in the nearly 1000 pages of the act and regulations. In fact, they weren’t listed anywhere, they were just things they do and you should have probably included it in your answer even though there was no way for you to know about it.

So the interview is over and as we’re winding down I find out I am the only person who applied for the position who was not from the capital, and the only person not from the one law school they listed the job at. (nepotism *cough*) So I was the only person driving 8 hours for this interview. Which, if you recall, was for a job in the city in which I live. As I get up to leave, Mr. Maritime stands up and shakes my hand, and again drops a WTF out of left field. He says “Don’t listen to what (lead attorney) says. I like your suit. I think it actually does look good no matter what he says.” The lead attorney is sitting about 3 feet away and quite literally, just grunts at this statement. And with that, the interview is over, and I am left to ponder what the hell I just sat through.

My most recent interview has seriously made me consider revising my resume.

On my resume is my background in Maritime law. In nearly every interview I’ve had, this has come up at some point in the conversation. I had previously considered this to be a positive; something that not many people know about and would set me apart as a bit unique. Plus, its a good conversation starter; an interviewer can use it as a jumping off reference to start the conversation going. And honestly it is quite interesting (in legal circles) when you actually get to talking about some of its stranger aspects. The problem as I see it now, is that everyone brings it up; Which cuts both ways depending on who decides to bring it up.

In my last interview, I ran across the enthusiastic idiot. They seemed very taken with the concept of Maritime law, and also seemed to have read something about it a very long time ago which they only dimly half remembered. The problem became one of saving face. The enthusiast had started this conversation in front of 3 attorneys he worked with, including his boss. Once he started in, he was committed. We had been talking a bit about the qualifications with maritime law, and then they decided to go balls-to-the-wall and show off their knowledge of the field.

Here is a rough transcript of the conversation:

The Enthusiast started – “You know the ‘King’ case?” Followed by an expectant pause, waiting for me to verify whatever half memory they had.

I replied, “King case? Is King the name of the ship? I don’t really recall a ‘King’ case.”

He followed it up, “Yes. It was the name of the ship. It was an important case.”

And now I made the mistake of starting the guessing game, “Are we talking about Salvage here? Because that might be litigated under the insurance company’s name…”

“It probably was salvage.” he said.

Oh crap. It was at this point I realized he had no idea. And worse yet, I just gave them another word to latch onto. My mind was spinning on how to get out of this, but while I was thinking I was talking. “Hm, salvage, well a bunch of the big salvage cases I remember happened around the Cape of Good Hope…”

Suddenly the enthusiast backed off. “It’s not a test, don’t worry about it.”

I started to say something else, and he repeated more emphatically “don’t worry. nevermind. It’s not a test.” And he changed the subject.

I was a bit confused, whereas before he was all gung-ho about some apparently important case that he couldn’t remember the name of the ship, the content of the case, or nearly anything else… and suddenly he was trying to shut it down. I realized in that moment that geography had saved me. They had no idea where the Cape of Good Hope was, and he was about 5 seconds away from looking very stupid. But, so long as he stepped away now, he could try to play it off that I just didn’t know what I was talking about. Had the interviewer been doing it on purpose, it would have been an excellent example of game theory.

This might have been the end, but it seemed like they couldn’t completely leave the topic alone. “What if there was a gambling ship on (some navigable riverway) and they built a pier? Would that make it maritime?”

The number of problems with that statement quite literally made me squint. The waterway and the ship made it maritime. The pier could fall under maritime jurisdiction depending on what you are talking about, but why would that matter. The only things usually contested on piers are damage to the pier, and injury of people on the pier. He hadn’t stated any sort of problem to determine jurisdiction but he seemed to be inferring from the conversation that somehow the pier inherited the status of a gambling establishment. Somehow. I started explaining that really Maritime law could do much of the same things as regular state law, but its real power lay in shifting the liability of the parties significantly if pulled into Federal Maritime jurisdiction.

This answer was met with the beaming face of the enthusiast as he waited expectantly for the answer I had just given him. My heart dropped. This part of the conversation was going to end up just like the last.

 

For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what case he might have been referring to. Later, driving back from the interview, a thought occurred to me as I was mentally listing the names of cases and ships… HMS… His Majesty’s Ship. The interviewer had no idea what the name of the ship was nor the content of the case, but somehow was able to half remember that it was (probably) a British flagged naval vessel. And this became ‘King’ in their mind.

I’m going to go with some particulars on this one. Because you just can’t quite gauge the WTF-ness of the interview without it. I’ve talked it over in a postmortem with a few people and basically everyone has told me the interviewers were just fucking with me, or potentially this was their idea of ‘testing’ applicants. Regardless, it definitely hits squarely in the midst of the stranger interviews I’ve had.

So I applied to an entry-level attorney position with a State based Gaming Commission… as in gambling. For anyone not an attorney reading this, Gaming Law is a niche field. As in a teeny tiny niche that pretty much is relegated to a handful of state attorneys per state and an equally limited number of generalist private attorneys who list it as one of 50 fields they claim some limited knowledge of; or corporate attorneys linked to casinos. It’s not something you ever read about in law school, and it’s not something you would run across in standard practice. It is a very small niche field generally under the umbrella of Admin law, and it is vastly different from state to state. Anyway, I show up at the office. Wait, did I say merely show up? No… you see although the position is going to be located at the office that is maybe 20 minutes away from where I live, the phone call to setup the interview tells me I have to drive almost 4 hours to go to the the state capital where the main office is located. Which is in the middle of a shopping mall right across from the food court. (getting the general flavor for the interview yet?)

So I show up at the interview and I am seated across from 3 of the senior attorneys of the office. The interview starts and about 5 minutes in, the chief enforcement attorney for the gaming commission wanders in and sits down across from me. He proceeds to slouch down over the table and start scribbling on a pad of paper and does not look up or speak to me for the next 40 minutes. One of the other attorneys continues on with the open ended “tell me about yourself / education / etc”. This leads another attorney to ask about my background in gaming law.

And here’s where it all just spins out.

I replied honestly that I have no background in gaming law. This shouldn’t be a surprise, all of these people across from me are staring at copies of my resume. But my response is met with what I can only describe as an icy stare back from the attorney. There’s a beat of silence in the room, and I continue on and say, “My understanding is that this was an entry level position.” I receive a general affirmation that it is… and then they continue on with the same line of questioning about my knowledge of gaming law. This line of questioning goes on for an uncomfortable few minutes before they decide unsatisfactorily that I am not going to admit I was just joking and I actually have an encyclopedic knowledge of gaming law. They abruptly turn the questioning and ask if I had visited their website. And I thought, ah-ha! I did, prior research will finally pay off. “So what did you think of it?” … oh crap. What did I actually think of it? It was useless to nearly everyone. It used a standard template and provided a useless mission statement and information that may as well not be public facing, because honestly when was the last time you ever wanted to file a petition to place a slot machine. The first thing thru my mind was that they must have recently paid someone too much money to update it and now I was stuck trying to come up with something nice to say. I generally sidestepped the issue by saying I used it only to try to do a bit of research on who I might be talking to and what the job would entail. This was partially a lie because the only way I was able to do any real research on the office was thru Google and various news articles because there was nothing of interest on their website.

Then they wanted to know if I read the Gaming Act for the state which clocks in at a good 170+ pages (which was linked on their website… maybe that was supposed to be a smooth transition that didn’t work out for the interviewer). “No.” I stopped short at adding “why would I?” This interview had long since crossed the line from conversational interview into the realm of adversarial interview. This answer also didn’t sit well. (Again, as an aside for any non-legal reader who might think their expectation is normal… it isn’t. If you apply for any entry level position the expectation is you will learn the information, not that you know it now. You became a lawyer and were intelligent enough to go through law school and pass the bar, the expectation is that you can apply your knowledge and learn any sub-specialty of law needed. You aren’t asked what your favorite local criminal statute is when applying for a prosecution position, nor are you expected to know how best to defend a client from tax evasion until you’ve been learning on the job for a little bit.)

I’m going to skip the majority of the middle part. Mostly it was stilted question and answer akin to the above, with the exception of some advanced tax law information on my resume an interviewer mistakenly asked about, because the most basic answer went so far over the head of the attorney who asked about it, it was ridiculous. (the silence I was greeted with after finishing my answer was a wee bit uncomfortable)

So getting to the end of the interview the lead attorney seems to wake up and for the first time looks at me and speaks. I’m told they are going to select 3 people for a second interview to find ‘the one’, and that the second interview is not really an interview it is a mock trial. Wait.. What? That’s right, if called back I would be given an exemplar case and I would have to argue this before a larger group of agency attorneys who would have an opportunity to haze question me about it. I’m then told that basically I would have to study the state gaming act prior to the second interview and be prepared to come back and argue a case. Thinking quickly I ask if granted and denied petitions are available as public record so that I would know what I would have to be arguing. Most people would consider this to be an intelligent question, a lucid well considered idea that was showing that I was planning on putting forth effort in the endeavor. Instead it was met with the statement that no, everything in the office was confidential and not open to public records requests. Most normal interviewers would have ended the statement there acknowledging at least the initiative of the interviewee, but instead I was then told that any and all leaks of confidential information are thoroughly investigated and criminal charges are filed against the perpetrator who leaked them. The following silence and stare towards me was attempting to convey either the gravity of those words, or possibly meant to show that they knew my secret desire was to fling confidential memos all about me as I ran down a busy airport concourse. It could have legitimately been either one. I felt like somehow given the very emphatic stance taken during the interview, Edward Snowden had released something damning about this office and it just hadn’t made it to the media yet. This was followed up with a short statement that if hired I would be afforded enough time to learn the job, but that I would be very closely scrutinized and if I was not up to par I would be “kicked to the curb.” (I am directly quoting there). Yes, the interview had quite obviously taken the turn from adversarial directly to antagonistic.

Then in a strange about face, the tension broke for a moment and the head attorney leaned back and asked me how I worked with people who had strong personalities. And then he sorta amended it and said ‘interesting characters’ with ‘strong personalities’. Two attorneys at the end of the table snorted and sorta chuckled. Then it was amended again to how I would deal with these strong personalities when they tried to get me to do things which I shouldn’t be doing. This was getting good. Apparently the office I would be potentially working at had far crazier people than this, and they would be trying to force me to do things I wouldn’t want to do.

I hadn’t even made it to the second interview and they had already effectively threatened to fire me, file criminal charges, and told me I would be working with insane ‘characters’ with ‘strong personalities’ who would try to strong arm me into compromising situations. Nice. The interview ended with the head attorney asking if I had driven in the 4 hours just for the interview that day. Yes I had; Here I thought I would at least win a minor point showing commitment to getting the position. His response was that at least I had shown that I could make it on time to an appointment a far distance away. I maintained a judicious silence, because truly.. what could I have said to that anyway. And with that, the interview was over.

The job posting itself was posted in only one place online. Which is rare. Usually these types of jobs are splashed across a dozen job boards and scrubbed of identifiable info and re-posted on the scamsites of placement agencies. It turned out that it was only posted to the job board of the alma-mater of one of the attorneys, and potentially their own agency website. My nepotism radar definitely dinged on this, but whatever. Early in the interview (before it went bad), one of the attorneys made a point of bringing up that I had correctly included “THE” in front of Ohio State University on my resume, and we laughed about it. (for those not in the know, this is a running joke with Ohio State relating to their trademarked name… Ohio State is registered as “The Ohio State University” and if your T-shirt or whatever OSU branded item doesn’t include the “THE” then it is likely not a legitimate licensed item. Everyone who went there has had the indoctrination to this stupidity early on from some university functionary.) Now the normal assumption to most people, is that the person I was talking to was somehow connected to OSU. As I am leaving the interview he gives me a jovial handshake and says “we won’t hold that you went to OSU against you.” And I said.. Oh, I thought you had gone there too. He said, no I went to your rival. Again… from anyone at OSU, there is only one rival and that is Michigan. So naturally I say, “Michigan?” and he looks slightly confused and says no… and names a different state. One which not only doesn’t hit the level of being a rival, but which hasn’t come anywhere close in rankings in many many years. I mutter something about not being into sports so don’t hold it against me.

So I’m being walked out by the junior(ish) attorney in the room. And he starts telling me a little bit about the benefits on the way to the elevators. I figure why not considering how shitty the interview had gone, and I interrupt and ask him if the other applicants they had were actually experienced in gaming law, effectively trying to gauge the competition for the crazy I had just walked out from. They said no, not really, especially considering that the money being offered wasn’t that great and someone with more (any) experience would be making more nearly anywhere. I responded, you wouldn’t have known it from that interview. He said something to the effect that they were just trying to find someone who they thought could pick it up.

And with that, I went down and passed by the next applicant headed up the elevators. I almost said something. Almost. I wouldn’t want to ruin a surprise like what was waiting for him upstairs.