Hillbilly Elegy

call it FIP—short for Fall Interview
Program—and it’s a marathon week of
dinners, cocktail hours, hospitality suite
visits, and interviews. On my first day of
FIP, just before second-year classes
began, I had six interviews, including
one with the firm I most coveted—
Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, LLP (Gibson
Dunn for short)—which had an elite
practice in Washington, D.C.
The interview with Gibson Dunn
went well and I was invited to their
infamous dinner at one of New Haven’s
fanciest restaurants. The rumor mill
informed me that the dinner was a kind
of intermediate interview: We needed to
be funny, charming, and engaging, or