Blank Rome, No Offers, Pepper Hamilton

Nationwide No Offer Watch: Rocky Balboa Division Blank Rome and Pepper Hamilton

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Our continuing coverage of no offers suggests that a 90% offer rate is actually outstanding. Today we have news from two more firms that fell short of 90% but still made offers to the majority of their 2008 summer associates.
Our tipsters were right on the money with the information that Blank Rome no offered 4 summer associates out of a class size in the mid-20s. According to Blank Rome spokesperson Topper Ray:

Our 2008 summer associate class was comprised of 28 summer associates -24 2L’s and 4 1L’s. 20 out of 24 2L’s received offers.

Ray also confirmed that the 4 1Ls received invitations to summer with the firm next year.
In this market an 83% offer rate isn’t terrible, even though Blank Rome was able to extend offers to all of their 2007 summer associates.
The news was a little worse at another Philadelphia powerhouse, Pepper Hamilton. According to Pepper Hamilton spokesperson Polly Coxe:

In 2008, Pepper Hamilton extended offers to 20 of 27 summer associates in Philadelphia (two students withdrew from consideration before we made offer decisions). Firm-wide, we made offers to 30 of 38 summer associates. This is approximately the same number of offers we extended the past two years.

More from the streets of Philadelphia after the jump.


Coxe is exactly right that the overall number of offers extended match last year’s total. In 2007 Pepper Hamilton made 19 summer associate offers in their Philadelphia office. But according to NALP that number was out of a 21 person summer class. 90% of 2007 summers received offers, this year only 74% of the Philadelphia summers were so lucky.
Again, we are left to wonder what exactly the no offered summers did, if anything, to get left off the gravy train.
The summer of 2008 is certainly proving that summer programs are just extended interviews. However, we still don’t know what exactly the firms are looking for.

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