The Biglaw Recruitment Process Is Worse For Everyone

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When you tell people outside of the legal profession that you (functionally) interview for the Biglaw job you’re going to take after law school graduation after only completing 1/3 of law school, they think it’s wild. Like how do firms know how good you’ll be as a lawyer if you haven’t even completed the majority of your legal training? How do you know what job you want two years in the future? Sure, we’ve all been indoctrinated into the system such that it no longer seems weird, but it is a bizarre system.

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And yet, it’s getting even worse.

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The on-campus interview process — which placed initial interviews for summer associateships that beget post-graduation employment offers in the weeks before 2L year or the early part of the semester — is no longer the hotness for Biglaw firms. In an effort to have first dibs on the best and brightest, law schools are taking direct applications from 1Ls as early as April. And, as reported by Bloomberg Law, the direct application process is very popular at some Biglaw firms:

“This direct hire process will likely be filling about 50% of our class, at least,” said Nicole Wanzer, director of attorney recruiting at Morrison Foerster. “Were we to wait for traditional OCI and lean only on traditional OCI, we feel like we would be missing out on some of the talent that’s getting picked up earlier in the process.”

The shift has had a snowball effect. Weil Gotshal & Manges has already opened applications for its 2025 summer program, allowing first-year law students to apply directly—a process dubbed “pre-OCI”. Other prominent players such as Jones Day, Milbank LLP, Paul Hastings, and Davis Polk & Wardwell open up their direct applications as early as mid-April for jobs that start the summer after the second year of school is completed. MoFo is launching its own advanced consideration application system for first-year students this year, which opens May 1.

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And in response, law schools are moving up their OCI to the beginning of the summer.

So what happened to derail the import — and established timeframe — of OCI? Back in 2018, the National Association for Law Placement ditched their rules which dictated how and when firms could contact candidates. We called it “organized chaos” when announced. With the benefit of hindsight, NALP’s executive director Nikia Gray calls it “the free market system.” But in reality, it seems like a lot closer to a shitshow.

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Students in particular are losing out in the new system. Putting the stress of the summer associate interview process before they’ve completed their first full year just sucks. Especially when you consider some of the other developments that came once NALP noped out — like exploding offers that slash the amount of time law students can evaluate a firm or interview with their competitors.

And firms are increasingly concerned that they have less information with which to judge potential associates.

Morrison Foerster is considering adding new assessments or writing exercises to its interview process to help gauge applicants, Wanzer said.

“With the speed of the process, it’s definitely exacerbated the challenge to make sure that the talent you’re seeing—and, more so, the offers that you’re extending—are to people who are going to succeed,” she said.

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Maybe we just should have kept the old system before Biglaw devolved into a prisoner’s dilemma. But what do I know.

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Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Mastodon @[email protected].

Topics

Biglaw, National Association for Law Placement (NALP), On-Campus Interviewing, Pre-recruitment, Precruiting