second is always the first loser:-(

66% > 10% offer rate. Never forget the Morgan Lewis Massacre. Never forget.

Wait, were they offered to come back as associates or contract temps?

The State of Texas Lathamed an innocent man!

5 - Uh, what?

The ship be sinking...

7 - We're all tired of your ship.

The only goal during a SA gig at CWT should be making it with a hot CWT NYC '05 female associate. A no-offer is a small price to pay for such bliss.

CWT is an awful, awful firm.

No matter how nice the hiring partner was about it, the fact is that a no offeree is screwed. Even if the no offer was due to economic reasons, no one would make such choices arbitrarily. Summer associates would be ranked in some kind of order and the best retained while the ones deemed the worst are ejected. Frankly, this is how it should have been all along. Why should acing an interview after one year of law school determine whether or not a person gets a high paying job? Summer programs were supposed to help law firms figure out if the candidate was in fact a good fit and it is simply ludicrous to insist that everyone who passed the interviews would make the grade. After all, you never know what a person is really like until you share elbow grease with them.

The healthier market practice ought to be that top law firms make offers only to one third or one quarter of their summer associate class. This way you can be sure that none of the summer associates will have an attitude and those who are extended offers will be grateful as well as certified top dogs. Three cheers for a healthier and more rational market for lawyers!

This post is addressed to commenter #4:

It does not matter whether their offer was as an associate or a contract temp as Calwalader is a abhorrent firm. Had these summers been hired at a preeminent peer law firm, they would all have meaningful offers.

Incidentally. I just spent the weekend at Hilton Head celebrating my offer at my father's preemient peer law firm. It was welcome relief from the unwashed and impoverished masses.

ATL needs to reach out to a Morgan Lewis spokesperson and ask them what their offer rate was. A blanket "we extended offers in our large offices" is unacceptable. Get on this people!

I've heard Cadwalader only got to give offers to half their D.C. summers.... Why did the D.C. office, which is doing much better than the New York office, get the shaft and be forced to give fewer offers than the New York office?

This post is addressed to commenter #12:

Congratulations on somehow getting an offer at your dad's firm. You certainly should celebrate such a remarkable achievement and such a stroke of entirely unexpected good fortune.

12,

Hey, stupid. If your father's firm is a "peer" to Cadwalader, that means it's on the same level. The correct way to phrase your diss would have been, "Cadwalader is not a peer firm." Your father knows that.

You suck.

66% offers? I am not impressed with that number. The real number these offerees should be asking is how many of them will get to start on time or whether they will receive an indefinite deferral, which is really a cold offer. This non-peer firm is hedging itself in the event the economy recovers within the next year. It will not. In my opinion, a majority of these offerees will never start to work at this firm.

On a side note, I read an article about how Florida attorneys are staging their own personal injury cases (i.e., involving friends and family) just to have work. This is the future that awaits current unemployed lawyers and law students. Is that change you can believe in?

11-

While that may be true, theoretically, anyone who's been part of the evaluation process knows that's not true. The "ranking" of the summers frequently has more to do with who was lucky enough to get the better assignments, made at random, and then didn't suck at those assignments. The summers ranked lower tend to be just as competent, and just not lucky enough to get the better assignments.

2/3 of Cadwalader summers get to work for Cadwalader? Still better than Latham.

Latham NY laid off more than half the first year class 4 months after they started. They were given no work because senior associates and partners were hoarding. That's pretty much the same thing as an offer rescission at the 11th hour.

In short, Latham and Cadwalader are flaming TTTs.

11,

Decisions aren't made "arbitrarily." They are made using flawed and subjective criteria, with favoritiism and nepotism mixed in. The result is not "arbitirary." But it is not fair either.

18 -
Very True

12 and 17 are on point with dickish humor. 15 and 16 lack brains--and a sense of humor.

Can anyone confirm whether Cadwalader required summers to bill 8 hours per day? In other words, if you attended a research training session from 9 to 2, you had to do billable work from 2 to 10 to stay on track. Attending firm events didn't count as billable, either, so if there was an evening event from, say, 6 to 9, you either got to work at 8 or came back after 9 to finish up. (Or you just bullshitted your hours.)

22 (aka 12 & 17) - Stop posting self-congratulatory posts on your own posts.

11, 18 -

I can confirm that one V20 made layoff decisions based on race, and guess which associates lost out...

23, summer hour requirement is a joke anyway. I don't think anybody realy looks at it.

Wow. How times have changed! Back in 2006 CWT in nyc was hiring any warm body laterals they could get, including attorneys from TTT law schools with nothing exceptional on their resume and absolutely no experience in capital markets (as long as they were hot females).

22 is on point with praise for 12 and 17

To 18,

It is nice to believe that assignments were random and person who was in charge of managing the summer associates was a bitch who hated your guts, but try telling that to a partner at another law firm and see how far you get. A certain degree of randomness is inevitable, but the fact remains that the selection process is never entirely random. Letting people know that they will not offered is hard and everyone knows that doing so will really screw up the no offeree’s life, even in the best of times. This is why you can be certain that a lot of thought went into the decision. If a law firm can only retain a portion of the summer associate pool for whatever reason, then they will want to pick the ones who can best help grow their franchise. The reasons may have nothing to do with ability, but you can be certain that there would have been very good reasons why person A was chosen over person B. The tragedy for the no offerees is that these reasons will never be made known and thus it will never be certain that their rejection was not due to performance factors; regardless of what anyone from that law firm says to the contrary.

20

On the nepotism point:

Latham NY laid off 3 of the 4 first years who failed the bar. The survivor is the son of a partner.

23 - No, CWT did not do that.

10 = law student with no experience practicing law

Cadawalader gives no offers for the LULZ

25,

Let me guess: Asian guys. :)

To 20,

Seek fairness in paradise. I hear from Al Jazeera that some people believe that if you strap a bomb to yourself and kill a lot of innocent people when you blow yourself up, you get to go to paradise. Yeah! Worth a trip huh if you are so hung up on a just and equitable world.

35,

Would you please post the link to confirm what you "heard" on Al Jazeera?

Something tells me there will be a post about Justice Sotomayor at the gym in the near future.

22. Vomit. Fail.

25 - The caucasoids?

39: You mean the cockasoids?

Any news on McDermott?

How has the Milbank Massacre gone unreported? They no offered over 50% of the 2009 summer class and have no intention of bringing on the January 2010 starters.

ATL, get on this!

@32 Hey newbie, 10's thing is an old, and always funny joke, used in moderation of course...

Speaking of old faces we haven't seen in a while...WTF happened to Nervous t10 1L?

5, who did Texas Latham?

Oh how I long for pre-crash days of the TTT CWT associate pussy pass galore......

Yeah. I worked at CWT in 2005/06 and there was some fine TTT tail there at the time. Had no place being in Biglaw credential-wise, but were nice eye candy. Funny, they are all gone now!

Purely economic reasons = 2/3 of people were hired despite economic conditions = 1/3 of people weren't nearly as good as the other 2/3.

No matter what you call it, a spade is still a spade. It is still a performance based no-offer.

11/29 - Have you ever even worked at a law firm? You appear to believe that even the "random" factors are based on performance. Let me guess - you also believe that all of the associates that were laid off based purely on work product. Keep drinking that kool-aid and see what your future holds. Back when I was a law student, I also believed that hiring and firing decisions were made based on merit...

To every summer associate reading that person's posts and scared silly about their future, let me leave you with this: I was a summer associate during the last recession. When I got back to school, I found that several of my friends did not receive offers from their summer firms, for various reasons (the firm only gave out a few offers, only offered people with significant connections to the state where the firm was located, etc.). Out of all of those no-offers, only one was clearly attributable to performance reasons - 1 guy was the only one in his summer class to not receive an offer. All of those people are fine today. A couple got offers from other firms in the 3L season; several clerked for magistrate judges and either turned those clerkships into federal district court clerkships or offers from firms in the area. Now I know this market is much worse and it's a harder, longer road, but if those people ended up OK, you will too.

23 - not required, unless you wanted to earn an offer.

What is a cold offer, has anyone ever gotten a cold offer or heard of anyone who ever got a cold offer. They are not necessary today if they ever existed at all.

Wow. Even for law students and lawyers, there are some arrogant fucking people around here.

50 - a cold offer is when you desperately want to work in, let's say litigation, and you get an offer in, let's say securitization.

Elie (or Kash or Lat),

Could you do a post on which law firms have still done the following:

(1) 100% offers for summer associates (or if they no offered someone it was someone who got drunk and yelled at a partner)
(2) associates can enter the fall after they graduate
(3) no economic layoffs, no stealth layoffs

My understanding is that there are a few firms like this: Covington & Burling, Williams & Connolly and I imagine a few more.

While the number of firms who have violated #1-#3 is pretty large there is no reason not to praise those who did not violate them. I look forward to the Class of 2013 or whenever it goes back to normal choosing Cov or other firms over the ones who could not handle the recession and fired people or delayed people.

nice glamor shot

nice glamor shot

How you like me now?

53 clearly has a career in abysmal tween movies. So why does he care? Oh wait, is that the casting director of One Tree Hill calling for him?

any word on whether the summers that attended the strip club event were amongst the 1/3 no-offerees?

It was December 16th, 2012. President Obama's calm yet glorious TV presence echoed through the hallways of my apartment. A light snow shower sprinkled down outside on the wet streets of Manhattan. Obama's voice was interrupted by the ringing of my phone, and I answered. It was Lat.

"We need to speak about that post, Elie. It has more comments than any other post in the site's history. Right now, it's at 830 plus, and still going. On a Sunday, no less."

I was amazed that he was calling me with this news. "But that's a good thing, right?" I asked.

"NO!" Lat exclaimed. "It's not a good thing. Elie, you wrote a post that agues Obama's loss is unconstitutional through the 19th Amendment because Sarah Palin is a Republican woman, and the 19th Amendment was enacted to advance women's rights, not set them back. For crying out loud, dude, you think the 19th Amendment supersedes the results of a Presidential Election because Sarah Palin is a Republican. Are you an idiot? What did you think the readers would do?"

Puzzled that Lat doesn't see the brilliace in my articulate, albeit novel, legal analysis, I fire back. "I admit that it's not a traditional way to interpret the 19th Amendment, but it's far from unsound, Lat. Besides, if it's popular and it's getting us a lot of hits, that should be a good--"

"No, Elie, it's NOT good," he interjected. "It's bad, very very bad. I don't want this site to become a laughingstock. ATL isn't the Volokh Conspiracy and we should know our limits. We have to cover the election, but--"

"But what, Lat? When you hired me you said I'd be able to sound off on legal issues if I wanted to. And now you're telling me--"

"Look, just come in early on Monday. Not in the middle of the afternoon like usual. Okay?"

"Fine." I was nervous. For the first time since I started my career as an internet journalist, I was worried for my career, and my future. I hung up the phone with trepidation, and only moments later realized that Lat hadn't even bothered to say goodbye. I feared he was reserving a longer, more permanent farewell to me the next morning at the office.

To be continued...

To the 2/3 that got offers:

Sorry to say, but you guys are marching blindly to the slaughterhouse. You'll be laid off before you even start.

-Wise One

cue "Dow is Up" Guy

This decision had little or nothing to do with performance. The firm based its hiring decisions on quotas. Ask CWT HR what the offer rate for white heterosexual males is and you will see.

i'm not so sure about that 62

cwt SA

Wonderful, because they've laid off approximately 1/3 of their Associates. Way to manage!

62, do you mean they hired a lot of white heterosexual males, or not a lot?

63 - I am. Track down a list of the no-offers.

-62

66 - White guy bloodbath

63 - I am shocked at your skepticism. Take a moment and think back to your diversity lunch. Do these words sound familiar?

"Cadwalader has a financial incentive to diversify. Between 35 and 40 of its clients have required the firm to sign diversity pledges, creating carrots and/or sticks for reaching diversity goals. These carrots include a 5% bonus from Microsoft. The sticks include threats to terminate relationships with the firm."

Look around the current associate stock and guess whether the firm has been hitting its quotas. You already know the answer to that. It made financial sense to bolster its NALP stats with a diversified incoming class, rather than make hiring decisions based on performance.

Cadwalader blows - ruined my life.

In 2006 CWT had a "TTT hot female lateral" quota that they had to fill.

They were told by clients, "Look, you will lose our business if you don't hire some TTT grad from a low ranked school that has absolutely zero experience in capital markets, but looks good."

CWT understandably went out of there way to hire TTT eye candy that was totally undeserving of a shot at Biglaw.

But heck, life's not fair.

I suspect that a lot of posters were no-offered at CWT. Instead of blaming the economy, perhaps said posters should return to elementary school.

Specifically, referring to CWT as "they" instead of "it" leads me to believe that some CWT summers are inept. They = plural tense. CWT, however, is most certainly a singular entity demanded an "it." If these posters do not know the difference between tenses, how could they possibly submit well-written legal work on highly complicated issues?

what a nerd

"CWT, however, is most certainly a singular entity demanded an "it.""

Perhaps it is 71 that should return to elementary school.

"CWT, however, is most certainly a singular entity demanded an "it.""

Perhaps it is 71 that should return to elementary school.

71, although correct, is a TTT. Also, it is demanding not demanded, which 73 already pointed out. If you're going to judge someone's grammar, it would be prudent to use proper grammar yourself...

71: Did you get an offer? If so, I know who you are.

I got an offer eleven years ago.

71 & V25 Partner

Partner Emeritus - I have neither an interest in nor an expectation of changing your political beliefs, but let me briefly answer the rhetorical question you seem to keep asking over and over again.

Your anti-Obama rhetoric comes from either a misunderstanding of his views or simply your outright disdain for them, but in either case you're clearly ignoring his point.

Obama said repeatedly during the campaign that he doesn't view the strength of an economy from the top-down, he views it from the bottom-up. You can disagree all you like about what's the best way to fix an economy but you're misusing his words to accuse him of breaking a promise he didn't make.

"Change we can believe in" is about helping those who need it most first, and making big business and high income citizens the secondary priority. Again, you don't have to like it. But the fact that people who earn six figures are having a comparatively tough time is consistent with the platform on which Obama ran and was elected. If you want to discuss how his plans are working, you a) obviously have to wait longer, but b) also have to start by examining how lower-to-middle class people are doing, because that's his administration's first priority.

Maybe you don't care how lower-to-middle class people are doing, but our President does, and that's why he's our President and you're a joyless old relic whose only remaining pleasure is to ogle the ladies of Rick's Cabaret.

Then how come you can't write a gramatically correct sentence?

62, what makes you think that you performed better than a non-white heterosexual male?

what's the word on latham summers? any TTTipsTTTers?

I Am Future Elie needs his own continuing series like "Note From the Breadline" - best shtick in months. Keep it up.

This comment is addressed to post no. 78.

I understand Commissar Obama's agenda all too well. He is waging a class war and he is targeting those who have worked hard to amass a small fortune and provide jobs throughout America (i.e., middle and upper classes). Millions of Americans have died in wars to prevent socialism from polluting our system and those fallen soldiers are being dishonored by Commissar Obama's plan to take away from the hardworking to give to the lazy plebes that only care for handouts. I never thought in my lifetime that I would see the former Soviet Union as more capitalist than the United States. Yes, this sure is change. If I wanted to live in a socialist state with better political leadership, I would have moved to Cuba or Venezuela.

CWT, I thought surely by now you would have figured out where to draw the line.

lame

Let me see if I have the argument straight so far.

PE: Obama's "change we can believe in" is a lie/doesn't work.

Me: He's actually keeping his promises, you just happen to disagree with them.

PE: Obama's a socialist.

Since the only response you could muster was to state something factually untrue (try asking the socialists if they agree with Obama), I accept your concession of defeat. Enjoy your lapdance, as well as your insecurity, shame, and crippling fear of actually having to work for a living.

A particular SA at my V20 firm spent a lot of time at almost all of the SA events talking smack about CWT and other firms. That particular SA was not given an offer to return next year. (I'm sure some of you know who I'm talking about).

Perhaps some of you should think twice before talking smack.

87, they have already been no-offered by CWT. Nothing left to lose.

58- some were, some weren't

Baker Botts Lathamed 1st years. CWT met its quotas.

83: PE, the proud keeper of the Social Darwinist flame.

Sounds like a sure case for Section 90 of the Restatement. Don't know why no one has thought of that.

blaming your "not getting an offer" on a firm's diversity initiative is cowardice. maybe you just did not make the cut. or, maybe the person of color was a better candidate.