No Offers

Update: Foley & Lardner Sets the Record Straight.And They're Still Looking For 3Ls

By  
on

Last week, we reported that Foley & Lardner no offered 43% of their 2008 summer class from their Chicago office.
The firm has still not contacted us directly, but multiple tipsters passed along a clarification email sent to all Foley associates late last night.
Straight from the horse’s mouth (CEO Ralf Boer):

Many of you may have heard about blog comments critical of Foley’s hiring decisions from this year’s summer program which just concluded. Some of those comments indicate that we have extended offers to fewer than 50% of this summer’s 2L participants. The purpose of this e-mail is to set the record straight so that all of you have the facts, rather than the rumors which started as we made our first offers and before we completed our offer process.We literally have only completed our offer process at the office level today, and additional offers may yet be made.

As we pointed out in our initial story, some tipsters mentioned that Foley could still have been reviewing summer candidates as of last week. We couldn’t confirm those reports with the firm, but they appear to have been correct.
So what are the final numbers shaping up like?

If we look at the number of offers made to date, the offer percentage is 84% (89 offers to the 106 2Ls in the summer program). That number may go up as we complete our offer process. Thus, the percentages reported in the blogs were calculated as we were in the middle of our offer process and, accordingly, were inaccurate. Some of the blog reports related to our Chicago offer rate. We have, in fact, to date made 17 offers to a 2L class of 21, for an offer rate of 81% in Chicago, not the 50% reported on the blogs. Again, that percentage may also go up.

84% overall, 81% out of Chicago. That is a bit lower than the 90% many firms are reporting, but far better than the bloodbath it looked like last week.
More on Foley after the jump.


One tipster saw an email of this nature from Boer coming a mile away:

The irony of this whole stonewalling approach is that Foley makes a point of being transparent about most things. Management freely shares information about the financial health of the firm and our long-term strategy goals, so I expected them to send an internal email around explaining why this happened and whether we should be concerned about our own jobs.

Sponsored

The tipster’s faith has been rewarded. In last night’s email Boer elaborated on why the firm chose to extend offers to only 84% of the class:

Unlike many of our competitors who have addressed over-staffing in the current difficult economic environment facing our profession through extreme associate personnel moves, we will not pull offers to associates, delay or stagger starting times or do associate lay-offs just to make space for more offers to 2Ls. We care about our associates and will continue to invest in great talent which represents our future, and thus act responsibly in extending offers, knowing that we will honor 100% of our offers and live up to our commitments. That philosophy perhaps causes us to be more cautious than other firms – but we firmly believe that that is the right thing to do.

It appears that Foley does not want to pit summers against full time associates, but if they have to they’re sticking with the hires they’ve already made.
The no offered 2008 Foley summers could probably care less about the “right thing to do,” but we expect Foley to suddenly become a hot commodity for 3Ls still looking for firms. According to Boer:

We are still looking for an additional 12 to 15 IP associates in the 3L market. We therefore expect our 2009 entering class to be even larger than the 87 new law school graduates who joined us last week.

Even though Foley still declines to respond to us directly, the most important thing is that their associates have the correct information.
Of course, Boer made a lot of promises in that email; we’ll do our best to keep them honest.
Earlier: Nationwide No Offer Watch: Foley Didn’t Get the Memo. 43% Offer Rate? Tastes Like Burning.
Prior ATL coverage of no offers.

Sponsored

Topics