Season 4: Finale: Alexander Gonzalez Castillo
Partner at Arguilar Castillo, Former attorney at Latham & Watkin (NY), Simpson Thacher (NY) and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer (DC)
Alexander Gonzalez Castillo
Partner at Arguilar Castillo, Former attorney at Latham & Watkin (NY), Simpson Thacher (NY) and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer (DC)
How did he land jobs in BigLaw (three times)?
When Alexander came to the U.S. for his LLM, he had seven years of experience behind him. He thought he’d secured a job after a couple of formality interviews. Four months in, there was still no job prospect. He cast a wider net, focusing on firms and practitioners that could hire him, and started including senior associates in the emails. After he was hired at his first BigLaw position. He learned that the partners didn’t see nor responded to his email but a senior associate saw his email and recommended him to the partners. They called him in for an interview and offered him a job eventually.
What’s his tips for getting hired at Biglaw? (He did it not once, not twice but three times!)
How to network effectively to land your next internship or job?
What classes and activities in law school were the most helpful to secure his job?
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Tell us about your professional background.
I'm originally from Guatemala. Before joining Georgetown, I was an in-house counsel and manager at a company called Grupo Terra in Central America. After attending Georgetown, many opportunities showed up. I started my career in the US at Freshfields in their trainee program and became a foreign associate for a year and a half. Then I joined Simpson Thacher, focusing on the M&A and private equity groups. After that, I joined Latham & Watkins, where I became a domestic associate, working in private equity and capital markets until my fifth year. Now I am a partner at Aguilar Castillo Love, one of the biggest law firms in Central America, operating in nine countries.
There are quite a few months between being admitted and coming to the U.S. to pursue their LLM. What should the students be doing to prepare for their LLM?
It depends on whether you want to work in the U.S. after you graduate. I wanted to explore my options in the States and was very strategic about choosing my courses and who I approached. I already had some friends in DC law firms, which helped. For anyone who is completely new, I'm happy to help put people in touch with those currently in DC. Selecting my courses was very important. I chose a few that I really liked and made sure I had enough credits to take the bar. My intention was to stay in the States, so I started networking very, very early. One thing I learned during my process was that many positions are filled by December. It's crucial to hit the ground running. People sometimes think they have time to get settled and start talking, but in reality, it’s a very fast process. Start thinking early about where you want to be, what type of practice you want to develop, and who to contact to help you achieve your career goals.
What classes and activities were most helpful to develop your career?
There were definitely some things I did in law school that made a difference in my career. One was that after I picked my courses carefully, already thinking of what I wanted to do with my long-term career, I had some very important classes that really made an impact on me, such as international economics class, contracts, corporations, advanced international arbitration, which were all very helpful to build my career.
One thing that people should keep in mind is that when you go to class, you should focus on two things. First, the content of the course and getting good grades are very important for your job hunt later. But that’s not all. Second, your professors are a key element in your network for finding a job.
I made friends with my professors, who provided great advice both about the subject matter and about ways to get a job. Some of my professors put me in touch with key people who made a difference down the line.
Besides faculty, don’t forget the friends you make in your classes. You can become very focused on work, grades, and sometimes even working at the same time. But it's important to remember that when you leave Georgetown, you leave with a strong network of alumni. The friends you make can become crucial contacts in your career.
For example, one of my classmates ended up being the General Counsel at a very big oil company. When I became a partner at my firm, I could knock on the door and ask for help.
How did you get your first job in the United States?
I'm actually going to share a couple of stories that I think could be very helpful to any international students. Number one piece of advice is that networking, job hunting, interviewing, and the rest of the job search process are very different in the United States than in other countries.
For example, I'm from Guatemala originally. You go to two to three interviews, and you almost always land a job because you're highly qualified. In the States, for international lawyers, you find that things are very competitive. So, I learned that my resume had to be absolutely perfect.
I learned that you have to network a lot. In the beginning, I was thinking that maybe after three or four coffees, I was going to start getting job offers. Particularly in my case, I had a lot of experience before coming to Georgetown, compared to my friends. But it was not the case.
When I came to DC, I had a very good relationship with some law firms like White & Case and others like that. I was the client back then. So, I thought this is a done deal. But then, these things didn't come through.
So I started talking and asking some friends. In my case, what ended up getting me my job was that after I sat down at my computer, and I'd already been trying for a couple of months, it was easy to get discouraged. I was like, Well, four months in, what am I not getting a job yet? What's going on?
What I did is I made a list and I started being strategic. I thought what law firms and what practice group in the law firms could be interested in my experience? I had experience in energy and in arbitration. I went through the Law 100 list and started tackling law firms.
When you're looking for a job, it's not the time to be shy. Sometimes we feel like we don't want to bother people. And maybe we don't want to send them an email because we've never met them. In my experience, this is more about casting a wide net.
Eventually, I got hired by Freshfields. I sent emails to two partners and a senior associate who are in the practice group I’m interested in. And the funny part of this story is that neither partner answered, but the senior associate did.
I found out later after I got hired that the senior associate actually saw my email and went to the partner’s office and said, hey look, we have this guy who just wrote to me and we have this opening. Don’t get discouraged. You never know who’s reading the email.
From Freshfields, I went to Simpson Thacher. From my position at Simpson, I started working with BlackRock and all these people, which got me my job at Latham as a domestic associate in BigLaw.
How did you overcome the visa sponsorship issue?
I suggest you be very careful when preparing your Optional Practical Training (OPT) documents. I had a challenging situation regarding visa because I was too shy to ask for help. My first suggestion is to go talk to the people who can help. In my case, I tried to do it myself without asking questions, and I put the wrong date on my work permit application. This mistake reduced the time I had to look for a job. Fortunately, I got my job, but my deadline was August 28th, and I got my job on August 29th. It was so close.
What is your most meaningful experience during your LLM year?
One of my most meaningful experiences was having class late at night, around 7 or 8 p.m. I loved biking to class in the evening, it was such a good life experience riding next to the Capitol, getting to Georgetown. I'm someone who often doesn't stop to smell the flowers, but that was a time for me to really enjoy the actual experience. Coming from a Latin American country, being in places I only saw on TV most of the time was remarkable.
Walking around in DC seeing the Secret Service everything, it was quite an experience. One of the most treasured experiences of mine is with my professor of international economics class. The course was challenging, but it was the course where I learned the most.
We had coffee around campus. And he invited me to his home for breakfast one day, I was very impressed by how this high-level professional, who was a VP at GE (General Electric) before becoming a professor, was so open to talking with me and building a professional relationship.
My suggestion to everybody in this line is when you're about to embark on this journey, most of us are pretty nervous, facing big life experiences away from home for the first time. But once you're there, realize that you've made it. You're already part of a very selective group in the world, you're going to have a great experience in a great city.
What advice would you have for next generation of internationally trained lawyers, who are interested in gaining practical experience here in the United States?
The first piece of advice: if anybody wants to chat, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. Talking with people who have been successful is very helpful. I came to the U.S. for my LLM with seven years of experience on some really good cases and transactions, and still, it was very hard and very different than I expected. But I talked with the right people, who gave me the right pieces of advice, the technical advice I got from the conferences—be very careful about your resume, be strategic about your interviews—these things made a big difference. Don’t get discouraged. I was very persistent, and that made the difference for me in the end.
Some of my friends were less experienced but fit the model the law firm was looking for at the time better than I did. Some of my friends got jobs in December or January. I went to the New York event for job fair and barely had any interviews, so it was easy to get discouraged. But I got my job in July. Keep pushing; it's not over until it's over.
Definitely cast a wide net when you are looking for jobs. Personalize your resume and cover letter, but also be very active so you're getting your name out there to a lot of people. I did this three times, moving law firms three times, and it's different every time. When you're new, coming out from LLM, your strategy is different than when you're already within a law firm.
