• David Abunaw is a law student at UPenn. He recently spent a summer at the elite law firm Gibson Dunn.
  • A former pro athlete and first-gen law student, he started networking before school started.
  • His efforts paid off in the form of two summer offers before the official recruiting period began.

David Ako Abunaw III is a former professional athlete and a student at the University of Pennsylvania's law school. He spoke with Insider's Jack Newsham about his unorthodox path to a summer-associate role at a top law firm and his playbook for navigating the competitive recruiting landscape, where law firms have been focusing more on recruiting students before the traditional time for on-campus recruiting, or OCI. His remarks were condensed and edited for clarity.

This was not my plan at all. I'm from Hartford and got my master's at the University of Connecticut, where I played soccer, and then I wanted to play pro soccer. For about 2 1/2 years, that's all I did, traveling to Germany, Oklahoma, New York, and West Virginia. I had a real-person job for about three months in Boston, but I was like, "I have to go back." I was just chasing the dream.

In 2019, I was getting ready to go back to Germany. I was training with Hartford Athletic. A cross comes in, and I head the ball — something I've done a million times — and everything in my head shakes. I went to the emergency room. They said I had a mild concussion and to give it a week.

A week went by, and I tried to play. It went awful. Everything was foggy, so I saw a neurosurgeon. It was worse than I thought; I was very upset. And at the end of the appointment, he went: "How were your grades in school?" And I was like: "They were good." And he went: "You should go to law school. Everyone I know who made money really quick went to law school."

I went home and googled, "How to be a lawyer." It said, "Take the LSAT." Then I googled, "What is the LSAT?" I did 15 practice questions. I was like, "Yeah, let's do this."

I started studying for the LSAT, which was pretty hard with a concussion. I would get headaches all the time, and I was irritable, but it all worked out. At first, I thought I'd go to UConn. I didn't know anything about rankings; I saw that it was ranked, like, 50th, and I'm like, "Oh, that's pretty good." But two things changed my mind.

Research, Reddit, and my desire to win helped me get into a top law school

First, my background was in athletics, so I wanted to be in that field with my law degree. I took a random sample of 30 people on LinkedIn practicing sports law. I wanted to see what schools they went to and where they worked. I noticed that the lawyers at the leagues — the NFL, NBA, and NHL — all went to T14 schools and worked for all these Big Law firms. I knew I wanted to work hard, maybe be the president of the NBA one day or something like that. So I was like, "That's interesting."

[Editor's note: The T14 schools are the 14 law schools that generally top the US News & World Report rankings.]

The second thing was that I was on Reddit. The r/lawschooladmissions subreddit can be toxic; all they talk about is the T14 schools and Big Law. But it pushed me. It helped me put two and two together: If I wanted to work in the leagues, I should work in Big Law. If I wanted to work in Big Law, I should go to a T14 school. So I started pushing to go to the highest-ranked school possible.

I did a lot of research about how to succeed in law school. I always want to be the best at whatever I do.

Most people don't research the competitions they're in or look closely at the rules, but I realized when I was applying for law school that I did. I won about $3,000 in a Spanish singing contest — the rules let you sing in English. That's the wildest one. For the last performance, the voting was by clapping. I found out that in these types of contests, you should go last. So I told the organizers, "I want to go last." And I did, and I ended up winning.

Similarly, there was a musical-chairs contest at the University of Hartford. I looked up, "How to win musical chairs," and I found out that the person controlling the music usually gives a signal. There was a band, so I just watched the conductor. It was easy.

I started to realize that I kind of had a background to be in law. I look at rules and scrutinize them and look at every word, that type of thing. Before law school, some people said things like, "Oh, don't do anything." But I feel like it's common for law students to be very type A, so that's never going to be me. Before school started, I did a program called LEEWS, the Law Essay Exam Writing System, and it teaches you how to think like a lawyer.

Networking with law firms was key to getting early interviews and offers

I started networking before law school. Some people do it right before on-campus recruiting, but if you do that, you look like you're just trying to get a job. My first thing was finding the top firms for sports law, and Proskauer's name is synonymous with sports. My godsister went to law school, and at the time, I didn't think anything of it, but I noticed she was connected to someone at Proskauer on LinkedIn and she got me in touch.

I also had a mentor. I googled, "Top sports lawyers," and found a list and saw that one of them, Lyman Bullard, was connected on LinkedIn to someone I knew from when I was going to work for a team in Providence, Rhode Island. The team didn't end up happening, but he put us in touch by email, and Lyman, throughout the second half of my admissions process, was a great resource for me.

When I got to law school, I kept networking. I spoke with people at several law firms, either UPenn graduates or people I had something else in common with. In December, I applied for 1L summer programs. I had this whole spreadsheet in Google Docs: what the requirements were, who I'd talked to at the firm.

[Editor's note: Many law students work as summer associates in the summer after their second year of law school, or 2L, but many big firms now have a small number of 1L summer-associate roles.] 

But I applied weeks after the application window opened, which was apparently too late. I applied to, like, 55 firms, and I got two interviews, with White & Case and Venable.

White & Case sent me a letter saying it couldn't make me an offer for the 1L summer, but if I'd send it my second-semester grades, I could be considered for a 2L position. Some older students with the Black Law Students Association told me that meant I basically had an offer as long as I didn't fail. So I sent them my second-semester grades and got an offer in about a week.

I also got an offer from Fried Frank. They hosted one of these optional virtual events in my 1L year. I loved it — they were super bubbly and likable. The recruiter said something at the end of the event like, "If you guys are interested, just reach out. We usually treat people who reach out really well." So as soon as I got my second-semester grades, I emailed, "Hey, it's David, I'd love to talk." I had a callback immediately. Then, a week after my callback, I got an offer from Fried Frank.

By the time OCI rolled around, I could focus on fewer firms with strong sports and entertainment and international practices. Right before OCI, around late July, I went to an event hosted by Gibson Dunn at a nice restaurant in Harlem, Manhattan. It was me, a few other law students, and its top Black lawyers from all over the country — Ronald Kirk, Veronica Moyé, Mylan Denerstein. During that event, I got the email with the firms I'd be interviewing with at OCI. I wasn't matched with Gibson. So I mentioned this to one of the lawyers at the party, and she said, "Email me tomorrow." And the firm's OCI interviewers ended up interviewing me during their lunch break.

I'm glad it worked out the way it did. If I have any advice for students, it's to be proactive. If you just sit on your butt and don't do any research, you won't have any information. I didn't know how much going to events would matter in my 1L year, but being at a firm this summer, I can tell you that they track everything.

Also, don't be deterred by career services. The woman I had advising me at UPenn was great, and come to think of it, I still need to get her a gift. But I've heard stories of people being discouraged. I think you should shoot your shot.

For firms, I don't really have any advice. I wish some of them were a little more responsive. I didn't hear things for weeks and weeks on some applications, even when I asked. But I like being able to be rewarded for working harder.