Biglaw, Job Searches, Kathleen Sullivan, Reader Polls

What's Up With That Deer Valley Trip? A Quinn Emanuel Q-and-A

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Has Quinn Emanuel’s unorthodox approach to the callback process ruffled some feathers? Maybe. Why does the firm brass keep on sending out emails about it?
Last Thursday, firm founder John Quinn sent out this email. Then, on Friday, name partner Bill Urquhart chimed in:

From: “A William Urquhart”
To: “Attorneys”
Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2007 10:38:28 -0700
Subject:

We have received several questions about the recruiting weekend at Deer Valley. Here are some answers.

Question: Who is attending the weekend?

Answer: There will be approximately 20 lawyers from the firm–both associates and partners. There will be lawyers from all the firm’s four offices.. There will be law students from Texas, Chicago, Harvard and Yale. All of them will have received call backs. As you know, the vast majority of those students invited back to our offices receive offers. If the on campus interview processes operates as intended, this number should be close to 100% because nobody should be invited back unless they meet our minimum objective standards. They should also have met our more subjective standards.

Question: How did you choose these schools?

Answer: These were the schools whose interviews were late in the recruiting season. If this experiment is successful, we may decide to have two such events next year–one in late September for the students of the schools which schedule interviews early (e.g. Columbia, Stanford, U Va, NYU, etc.).

More discussion, after the jump.


Here’s the rest of William Urquhart’s email message:

Question: May the law student receiving a call back still opt for the traditional office call back?

Answer: Yes. In fact, 2 of the 10 Chicago students have done so already. However, we want to strongly encourage the students to come to the weekend. We think that the weekend will provide them better opportunity to learn about the firm.

Question: Who pays for the weekend?

Answer: The firm is absorbing all costs.

Question: Will there be any driving?

Answer: The firm will provide transportation.

Thank God — ’cause some law students are pretty crappy drivers.
So, do you like Quinn’s idea of substituting a weekend trip to a resort for a traditional callback? Let’s settle this one and for all. Take our reader poll:

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P.S. We think Kathleen Sullivan is fabulous. But it does seem a bit weird to spend a weekend out in the middle of nowhere with a distinguished con law professor.
What’s next? Quality time in a hot tub with Erwin Chemerinsky?
Earlier: it looks like john quinn reads this blog
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