Selection 1

With a new marriage, shaky mental state, and math skills that usually result in the decimal place moving to the right a few spaces, I have plenty to offer your firm. While I do hold on to certain ideals, I am confident that after the first five 90 hour weeks those will no longer be a concern. Once the ideals are gone, my marriage is no longer a factor, and my math skills are put to work, my billable hours will soar. Ultimately, I hope your firm can help me achieve my lifelong goal of working like a dog for 5 or 6 years as a junior associate before jumping out of a window during the Christmas party simply to save the firm the trouble of breaking the news that I will never make partner.

Selection 2

There is but one reason to hire me. In your pool of applicants, I alone possess the one trait which others lack. I possess a total lack of self-identity. In other words, I am clay to be molded. Having graduated from law school and completed a judicial clerkship, I've certainly had my share of attempted molding at the hands of professors and judges. They have failed. I continue to find myself searching for that elusive something that I am confident only your firm can provide. Professors and judges are faux-self-important. They feign this self-importance to compensate for their utter lack of legal prowess. They have entered the judicial and educational fields, not because they are the pinnacle of legal genius, but because they lack the one skill necessary to succeed as an associate at a real firm: the ability blindly obey. I need to be shaped by true self-importance. Tell me what to be and I will oblige. Begin molding.

Selection 3

I believe that you should hire me to work at your law firm because I don't care about people. I don't like people, and I don't want to help people -- unless they're one of my clients. In which case I am willing to stand on my head for hours on end if that it what will make them happy with my representation, and your firm.

Selection 4

Last year I billed 4,700 hours. I'm looking forward to moving back to a full-time schedule this year.

Selection 5

My life force is my own insecurity. It is the engine that will drive me to be a billing machine for Anonymous Law Firm. Because of my own feelings of inadequacy I must always strive to prove myself better than everyone around me. If my office-mate bills a 16-hour day, I will bill a 20-hour day. If he bills a 24-hour day, I will charter a plane and fly west so I can bill a 25-hour day. And of course, I will find a way to charge that charter to a client. Because I am driven by a pathetic need for the approval of those around me, a pat on the back for a 3000-hour billing year is far more of a reward for me than a $500 year-end bonus ever could be.

Selection 6

Simply put, I'm the best. Whether the degrading, humiliating, or demeaning job is collating, or summarizing, or coffee-making, or "thank-you-sir-may-I-have-another"-ing, I'm your nonpareil, your ace, your go-to-guy, whatever. World Cup? Never heard of it. Family? Don't have one. Hobbies, friends, a life? Bah. I lost them in my second year of law school. Loyalties? Not yet; but as it turns out, I've been looking for an awe-inspiring, hope-giving, coffee-wanting, blog-writing boss anyway, so this place feels like home already.

Selection 7

This is Anonymous Son. Mom thought it would look good on my college applications. Work experience or something. And she thinks it'll be nice if I actually see you around so I don't have to refer to your photograph to recognize you. Plus, she says the babysitter raised her rates.

Selection 8

Every law firm needs a guy named Carter. It sounds good in client meetings. "Carter, what is your input?" "Carter, can you summarize the facts of the deposition?" "Carter, you forgot to put mustard on my sandwich." See, you need someone named Carter at your firm. And my name is Carter.

Selection 9

I am a young white male with six figures of student loans, no girlfriend, a family I already alienated with those study marathons over holiday breaks, and a Pavlovian response to the concept of a $10,000 bonus for doing twice the required work. My background is as blandly impressive as you can get -- top 20 undergrad, top 10 law school, top 5% of my class, no memberships to any political organizations, and I even showed my charitable side once by donating $10 to a New Orleans relief charity, even though I knew it would be squandered on something silly like alcohol or bread.

Selection 10

I can multiply seven digit numbers in my head.

Selection 11

Although I have completed only two years at Middlebury College, I have developed the skills necessary for Anonymous Law Firm. I spend 168 hours every week reading books and writing papers. Every day I ask myself, "Why 168 hours? Why not 168 billable hours?" There I am, busting my chops for free, bringing in absolutely zero profit for Middlebury! It's a waste of time, really. I would much rather charge $675 an hour so that Anonymous Law Firm could bring in $113,400 per week. Where I would be spending 168 hours per week in the office (I have no other interests or family besides law), I would have no need for an apartment or food (except for maybe the occasional saltine); therefore, that $113,400 would go directly to Anonymous Law Firm to pay you, Anonymous Lawyer, and to fund those dreadful lunches with summer associates. Everybody wins.

Selection 12

Nothing would please me more than to be a slave for such a prestigious firm. As for the book and t-shirt, they are unnecessary. Why give me a book I will never have time to read? Likewise, why give me a t-shirt when I will have no recreational time?

Selection 13

I'm a hard worker and everything, but I totally need next Tuesday off. I've had this thing planned with a guy for a while now. Oh, I also need some time off in August for a holiday I have planned. But that's it. Other than that, I'm your man. Full-time. Nose to the grindstone. Every day. I mean, until Christmas. I can get, what, like two weeks off then?

Selection 14

I'm pretty much the same as all the other candidates. In admitting to this rather than striving to differentiate myself, I'm able to reduce the hiring partner's workload. Furthermore, I reduce the accountability involved. If I don't work out -- who cares? It was a shot in the dark. Conversely, if I do, full credit can be taken. Finally, I understand that what I have to say is not important enough to use 200 words. I'm willing to use 100, because meeting minimum expectations can be important, and I certainly don't want to stand out for submitting the shortest application.

Selection 15

Unless the client specifies they want to be billed in base-10 mathematics, who am I to assume that they didn't want to be billed in base-5 -- remember, I read partner minds, not client minds. For every 10 minutes a sucker from second-tier schools like Harvard or Stanford bills in base-10, I can bill 20 minutes in base-5. I'm not limited to 24 hours in a day.

Selection 16

I am a 20-plus-year veteran of high technology companies. Three out of my last four jobs ended in layoff, so I leveraged my technical expertise and willingness to take abuse into a new direction, and am now a registered Patent Agent. My experience in technical writing and attention to detail give my work such immense length and monotony that Patent Examiners, instead of reading it, often issue rubber-stamp approvals. I would much rather place my fate in the hands of a soulless Law Firm than a soulless technology entrepreneur. In my old career, I was pathetically willing to spend late nights utilizing expensive equipment that was unavailable during the day for my lowly projects. For you, I will be pathetically willing to bill many hours writing documents that your clients do not understand, in order to get them patents that will never repay their original cost.

Selection 17

My father is your firm's biggest client.

Selection 18

I am as qualified as any other recent legal grad to apply for this position except for one key difference that will vault me ahead of the pack. I have never, ever gone through the flim flam sham of ever pretending that I am pursuing a legal career for anything other than money. And maybe chicks. Seriously.

Selection 19

The military has taught me many things. One of them is the ability to put up without sleep or sex for months. Another is learning to smile with a nice wide grin while I get chewed on and spat on by my commanding officer, while he reams me up the arse for not killing enough enemy soldiers. My specialties lie in small arms combat, armored warfare, covert operations and demolitions. I am proficient in the use of C-4, grenades, the M203, machine guns and anti-tank weapons. You need someone taken care of, consider it done. Anything to advance the empire of the Anonymous Law Firm. I also got an A+ in the Law of War class offered in my law school (top tier of course). P.S. If you don't let me work at your firm, I'll hunt you down. You can't remain anonymous forever.

Selection 20

In a word, "dedication." So dedicated in fact that when my thumbs were too stumpy and pudgy (from a combination of bad genetics and years of foregone exercise) to work the keys of my Blackberry® with proper dexterity that I went to my wife's plastic surgeon and had them sharpened. Fifteen hundred dollars and fifteen minutes later I was wailing away at 150 words per minute. I don't know what it was he used, one thing that looked like an angle-grinder and another that I'm pretty sure was an industrial pencil shaver. Now my fingers are as sharp as my Brioni suits and as lissome as my BMW.

Selection 21

I hate life, but am afraid to commit suicide. I am confident that several years of practice with your firm will solve my problem.

Selection 22

I'm confused as to why you are having this "contest." By allowing people to apply for associate positions through this online forum, you're allowing the entire firm machine to break down. You can't hire people just because they have an "innate ability to sort through emails" or confess that they won't hold on to ordeals after several consecutive 90-hour weeks. You need graduating 3Ls who think this is what they want to do. People who think they can actually make a difference as a first or second year associate. You think anyone who reads your blog is going to last two weeks at Anonymous Firm? Heck -- they already KNOW they have no shot of making partner!! How do you get someone to pull all-nighters and work weekends without lying to them?! It can't be done. (By the way: I'm a rising 1L and I got an A in Torts both semesters. Lie to me all you want for $125K the first year.)

Selection 23

This one time my friend Billy broke his arm and he had to get a cast on it but I never broke my arm and never got a cast but this one time I fell off my bike and broke my collar bone but I didn't have to wear a cast but Billy wasn't on his bike when he fell and then I got to sign his cast. That was great. Everything since then has been a big let-down and I\'d like to get a job where I got to sign stuff all the time.

Selection 24

Please hire me. I'm begging you. I graduated from a second tier law school and haven't gotten a single offer. Ok, a third tier law school. Well, maybe it was in the top of the fourth tier. God, I should have gone to nursing school. Do you need a paralegal?

Selection 25

I'm not willing to waste your valuable time by forcing you read some inane drivel.