Start Dates, Summer Associates

Skadden Summers: Welcome to the New MarketClass of 2010 start dates pushed to 2011.

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Summer associates started at Skadden yesterday, and it doesn’t look like the firm hid the ball when it came to talking about market realities. We have news about expected offers and start dates for the class of 2010 — and it’s not even Memorial Day.
At one of the summer associate welcome meetings, summers were told something like “the offers are there, but you have to earn it.” At that point, the collective sphincter-tightening among summers in the room made an audible noise. As one summer puts it:

They said the usual bs about how if they brought us in it’s cuz they wanna offer us, how we’re not competing against each other, there’s room for everyone, etc, But what wasn’t said is as remarkable as what was said. They didn’t point out the 98 percent offer rate the year before, they didn’t even ever explicitly say they expect to give most of us offers. They only said that we’re all eligible to earn an offer based on merit, as every year. The room got VERY quiet and awkward the whole time the guy was speaking, and other partners felt the need to interject with reassurances throughout.

But other sources have told Above the Law that Skadden does plan on making offers commensurate with previous years. The specific “you have to earn it language” was apparently on a PowerPoint slide — the same slide that is shown every year. We’ve heard rumblings that some firms will have summer offer rates of 50% or less, but none of that talk is coming from Skadden. Our understanding is that Skadden fully expects its offer rate to remain unchanged.
So, as long as you can breathe out of your nose instead of your mouth, things should be okay.
But after you get your offer, when can you start? After the jump, we have a clear indication from Skadden.


Above the Law has been able to confirm that current Skadden summers will not be able to start with the firm until 2011 at the earliest.
Sources at the firm report that the idea was to let summers know as early as possible that they would have to come up with something else to do between graduating from law school in 2010 and starting with the firm.
So get those clerkship applications rolling, kids.
The other benefit of knowing that you can’t start until 2011 is that you can build public interest relationships over the summer. Skadden partners are available to help people find these opportunities, but doing quality pro bono work over the summer could also lead to an important long-term connection summers can take advantage of after law school graduation.
Of course, the message from Skadden is one of the clearest indications that the class of 2010 will be in a very similar situation to the class of 2009. But at least they’ll have more time to adjust.
Skadden sources we spoke with told us that it was too early to tell when in 2011 new associates would join the firm, or what kind of deferral stipends will be available to those incoming first-year associates.
But it is not too early to for summers to start thinking about their own futures. They are likely to get full-time offers from Skadden, but that alone will not translate into immediate post-graduate employment.
At least everything is out in the open.
Earlier: Skadden’s Sidebar: Phase One Complete

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