Will OCI Disappear At Law Schools Thanks To Biglaw’s ‘Precruiting’?

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Is it time to wave goodbye to OCI as we once knew it?

Ed. note: Welcome to our daily feature, Quote of the Day.

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I think the reality is that pretty soon we’re not going to be participating in OCI at all. I’m not going to say that definitively, but it feels like we’re headed in that direction.

I wish it didn’t come to this. It was so great in the old days, we knew exactly what was happening. There are advantages to the new way of doing things—we are more in control of the candidates we see—but it’s hard because I feel like students are not getting as much time to consider and explore all their options before making a decision that’s going to impact their career for a long time.

— Caroline Menes, director of legal recruiting at Sheppard Mullin, in comments given to the American Lawyer on what the precruiting of law students outside of formal on-campus recruiting programs could possibly lead to in the future. Yale and Stanford Law have already moved the dates of their virtual on-campus interviews to begin earlier in the cycle than their recruitment programming typically has, while other law schools have yet to make a move. Nikia Gray, executive director of the National Association for Law Placement, noted that in 2023, a little less than half of all summer associate offers came prior to the start of law schools’ formal interview programs.

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Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter and Threads or connect with her on LinkedIn.

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Biglaw, Law Schools, Law Students, On-Campus Interviewing, Precruiting, Quote of the Day