No Offers, Summer Associates

Nationwide No Offer Watch: Numbers from Kirkland and Orrick

By  
on

We’ve compiled a lot of information about the summer associate offer rates at Kirkland & Ellis and at Orrick. Overall, summer associates had a pretty good chance at nailing down an offer at these firms — though individual results varied significantly depending on which you summer at.
At Kirkland & Ellis, sources report that the firm’s offer rate was a solid 85% firm wide. In Chicago and New York, that offer rate climbed to around 90%.
But out west, things were not as rosy. Multiple tipsters reported that the offer rate out of Kirkland’s Los Angeles office was between 60% and 65%. In Palo Alto, things were even worse. Sources there report a 50% offer rate.
Firm wide, a summer class of around 158 summer associates yielded approximately 135 offers for full time employment. In this market, those are good odds.
After the jump, let’s take a look at Orrick.


Orrick also had a fairly solid offer rate. But most importantly, summers that received offers from Orrick have a fairly good chance of actually starting with the firm on time after graduation. A firm spokesperson gave this statement to Above the Law:

Orrick began contacting its 2009 Summer Associate class 10 days ago, and we expect to offer at least 72 percent of our eligible summer associates full-time associate employment opportunities at the firm. This number could move as high as 80 percent depending on a number of individual circumstances.
As you know, we restructured our Fall 2009 on-campus recruiting process to enable the firm to create as many full-time associate employment opportunities as possible for our 2009 summer associates. Although we are disappointed that economic conditions created an unfortunate backlog of talented law students wishing to join Orrick at the same time and required us to make less offers than we otherwise might have, we are confident that our early decision to responsibly shift our on-campus recruiting efforts from the normal time-frame to November 15, 2009 through March 2010 has enabled us to make as many offers as possible. At the same time, these steps will also end the unsustainable practice of deferring the arrival of our first-year associates.

The class of 2011’s pain is the class of 2010’s gain.
As at Kirkland, offer rates at Orrick varied significantly from office to office. But because Orrick is still in the process of making offer calls we don’t know if the our office specific numbers will hold. Offices that appear to have a low offer rate could just be slower at making decisions on which summer associates to offer.
As we approach labor day we expect more firms to make offer decisions. Don’t forget to let us know how many offers are coming out of your summer firm.
Earlier: Prior ATL coverage of no offers

Sponsored

Topics