More Trauma For Duke Law School Students

This seems like a stressful time to be enrolled at Duke Law School. The news of firms pulling out of on-campus interviewing at the school continues to grow. The latest big name firms to partially pull out of Duke recruiting are DLA Piper and Kirkland & Ellis. Here’s the email Duke students received late last week about DLA:

We received notification from the employer, DLA Piper (Austin, Dallas, CA offices), that they will be canceling interviews. You will not need to contact them as we have forwarded your resume on file to them (unless you wish to send an updated resume). In addition, they have posted a resume collections via Symplicity for your convenience. They will review your resume and contact you if they are interested in speaking with you further.
There is nothing else that you have to do at this point. I am sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused and wish you well in your other interviews. You will be removed from this interview and your interview schedule will reflect this change.

At least they can still interview for DLA New York.
But today, Duke students found out that K&E was also dropping them. K&E Chicago never signed up to recruit on-campus. K&E D.C. dropped out today:

Unfortunately, Kirkland & Ellis’ Washington, DC, office just contacted us to say they will be canceling their on campus interview schedule. We know this news is frustrating for you. They have posted a position and are soliciting resumes on Symplicity, and we strongly encourage you to apply.
To reflect the change, you will soon see the firm removed from your interview schedule. As you plan and conduct both your on-campus interviews and outreach to employers, please stay in close touch with the Career Counselors so we can help you maximize your success.

But as summer opportunities continue to dry up, Duke Law students are still trying to figure out whether they’ve made it onto law review. And once again, what should be a simple notification process seems totally screwed up.
More details after the jump.


On Friday, we reported that the process for notifying Duke students about which journals they have been accepted to was flawed. But the school assured students that the problems would be worked out quickly:

We are working to redo the selection process as quickly as possible, and will be working through this weekend. We expect to have this process completed by the end of the day on Monday and have the corrected selection lists sent to the journals then.

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By Monday, no results were posted. Instead, Monday night, the Duke Director of Publications sent around this message:

Dear Students,
I am writing to update you on our efforts to correct the calculation errors in the journal selection process. When I wrote to you Friday, I indicated that several Law School administrators would be working through the weekend to address the problems and redo the calculations necessary to each journal’s selection process. We did so, and have made excellent progress. As part of our efforts, we also have worked with journal editors to review and confirm all original data and
selection criteria. Because we want to be absolutely certain of the accuracy of this process, we were not ready to release the final, correct invitation lists to the journals today. I will update you on our progress tomorrow.
I understand that many of you are anxious to know the outcome of this process, and we appreciate your understanding as we work through this complex data. If you have specific questions, please feel free to contact [Redacted].

Well, it’s now Wednesday. And Duke students still don’t know their journal placements. Instead, they have another email from the publications director:

Dear Students,
As promised yesterday, I’m writing with another update on our efforts to correct the calculation errors in the journal selection process. We made good progress again today. Unfortunately, we found some additional problems in the data submitted to us, and this has further complicated the process. Still, barring any unforeseen circumstances, we are committed to completing these calculations in the next few days and to delivering lists to the journals by Friday.
We appreciate your continued patience. Again, if you have specific questions, please feel free to contact [Redacted].

I think Duke Law students are just getting Punk’d. One tipster says:

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No credible law school could display this kind of incompetence, unless they are doing it on purpose. What purpose? Somehow Duke is going to put everybody on law review, to help recruiting.

Try to remain calm Blue Devil friends. Soon this will all be sorted out. Some of you will make law review and some of you will almost certainly get jobs. It’s going to be okay.
Update (1:15): A tipster highlights an important factor to consider when assessing the situation at Duke Law School:

The only reason Duke has to notify students of each firm pullout is because they made them bid in June. Duke isn’t notifying the whole class of each pullout, just the impacted students .
It sort of looks like employers are fleeing Duke when they’re really fleeing everywhere but most schools don’t have kids already commuted to interviews.

Good point. Duke’s early bidding process is forcing firms to proactively cancel interviews with people who have already signed up. Firms may be backing out of other peer schools without having to publicly admit to the decision.
Earlier: Duke Law’s Notification Process for Journal Acceptance Is A Total Train Wreck
Ballard Spahr And Thompson Hine Cancel Their 2010 Summer Programs