Is It Time to Revamp the NALP Rules?
(And: Another firm abandons the 45-day rule.)
“There are no NALP police.”
— James G. Leipold, Executive Director, NALP
Oh, but wouldn’t it be fun if there were? Let’s use our imaginations….
As the Bad Boys theme song plays in the background, a bespectacled Jim Leipold, accompanied by a gaggle of burly NALP goons, breaks down the door at 111 Huntington Avenue — the Boston offices of Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge.
Leipold and his goons find the recruiting department like heat-seeking missiles, where they confront Katherine Kelly, EAPD’s recruiting director. The goons grab Kelly and turn her back towards Leipold.
Leipold handcuffs Kelly. “You are being arrested for your firm’s violation of Part V.C.1 of the NALP Principles and Standards,” he tells her. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to the managing partner of your law firm, as well as the right to blame the managing partner for your firm’s breach of the NALP rules. But don’t be surprised if you get hit with a stealth layoff after doing so.”
Bad firms, bad firms, whatcha gonna do? Whatcha gonna do when NALP comes for you?
NALP, the Association for Legal Career Professionals (fka the National Association for Law Placement), promulgates “guidelines that offer an ethical framework for all participants in law student recruiting.” In past years, these guidelines were generally followed by law firms, schools, and students. This year, however, with the economy in the tank, things are… different.
Over the summer, uber-prestigious Sullivan & Cromwell tried to ditch the requirement that law firms give law students 45 days to weigh offers of summer employment. S&C ultimately backed down. But as reported in these pages earlier today, Edwards Angell has told law students receiving offers that they have three weeks to accept, “or until the summer class fills up” — whichever is earlier.
And EAPD isn’t the only firm that has decided to make offers with shorter fuses. Another firm is giving offerees two weeks to make up their minds.
More information, plus reflections on the NALP rules, after the jump.
Above the Law has confirmed that Dickstein Shapiro is giving law students receiving offers two weeks to decide (although it’s willing to work with students needing extra time). From the firm’s statement:
Dickstein Shapiro is very excited about our 2010 summer program and we have asked students to whom offers were extended to respond more quickly than in prior years. This decision allows us to appropriately manage our summer class size and give courtesy to other highly qualified applicants interested in summer associate positions. We recognize that a student who has been offered a position may require additional time to reach a decision and we have encouraged these students to work with us.
The desire of firms to discard the 45-day rule is understandable. Some time ago, well before the Edwards Angell and Dickstein Shapiro news, the chair of the recruiting committee at an Am Law 100 firm sent ATL this email:
You would be doing a service if you would begin a discussion of modifying the NALP rules for keeping offers open, at least for this coming year. For those firms that still intend to have a summer program in 2010, obviously almost all of us will want a much smaller program with much tighter control during the offer stage so that we don’t wind up over-subscribed; we simply can’t afford to wind up with summer programs twice as large as we have need for. Predicting yield this year will be even more of a crap shoot than it has been in the past, and it has never been easy.This having been said, the current NALP rule that requires firms to keep offers open for 45 days will be unworkable for students and firms alike. Firms will be very hesitant to make more offers than they have spaces, fearing yields as high as 100%. To be conservative, they will then place most candidates on “wait lists” and simply make offers as they get declines. With each offer open for 45 days, the offer process could easily drag on for months.
Accordingly, law schools along with NALP, should either suspend the 45 day rule and allow firms to put as short a time frame as they want on offers, or allow firms to withdraw offers once their classes have been filled.
This email was sent to us weeks ago. What our correspondent hoped for has essentially happened, de facto if not de jure. We have heard anecdotally that numerous law firms, not just EAPD and Dickstein, are not abiding by the 45-day rule — and not getting into any trouble for it.
We reached to James Leipold at NALP for his take on this development. Leipold did not have any specific comment, but he did confirm NALP’s awareness that some firms are flouting the 45-day rule.
And is this really a problem? Maybe not. As we previously observed, “summers aren’t complaining [about violations of the 45-day rule]. The sources we spoke with had no problem making a decision about where to summer in three weeks.”
These kids are smart. As one top law school has told its students, “To provide employers with more certainty in managing their yields, we [strongly recommend that you] respond to offers within three weeks if at all possible.”
Given such advice, a firm stating that it won’t honor the 45-day rule might be comparable to an anticipatory breach (but without any damages) in the contracts context, or maybe like a case of harmless error in a criminal case. If student aren’t using the 45 days anyway, who is really harmed by firms not honoring the rule? To toss in another legal doctrine, does anyone have standing to complain about a violation?
“When we have an issue, we’ll deal with it,” one law school career services dean told us. But right now, because firms are making offers more slowly and students are accepting offers more quickly, shortened timetables for weighing offers have not yet become a problem. The issue is, in a sense, academic. “We will cross that bridge when we come to it,” said this dean.
Of course, if firms can ignore the NALP rules with impunity — law students can’t, which was the whole point of our recent satirical posts (offering the tongue-in-cheek advice that students turn the tables on firms by accepting all their offers) — then what’s the point of the NALP rules? Good question.
In defense of the NALP rules, it should be noted that they were helpful and effective for many years. But today some adjustment of the current recruiting model may be in order. “Now we need to make sure [the NALP guidelines] continue to work well, with all of the changes taking place in the legal hiring environment,” the career services dean told us.
To its credit, NALP and its member organizations are exploring many possibilities for restructuring the legal hiring process. NALP has established — what else? — a commission, formed to “engage in a holistic nationwide conversation” about the law firm recruiting model. To quote one of our favorite divas, “Let the conversation begin!”
As it turns out, the conversation has already begun. On September 28, The Future of Lawyer Hiring, Development & Advancement, a roundtable discussion participated in by a dozen leaders of the legal profession, took place in San Francisco. You can access a transcript of the very interesting discussion here (PDF). The panelists covered such topics as deferrals, rescinded job offers, how reputational concerns affect the recruiting process, whether the hiring process should be moved from the fall of 2L year to the spring, the 45-day rule (which one panelist called “insane”), whether a more structured hiring process should be implemented (perhaps similar to the medical school matching process), and even the viability of the summer associate program itself.
We are reminded of the Chinese proverb (which some call the Chinese curse): “May you live in interesting times.” These times are nothing if not interesting.
New NALP Commission to Examine Changes in Recruiting Process [Am Law Daily]
The Future of Lawyer Hiring, Development & Advancement [NALP]
Earlier: Edwards Angell Wants Responses to Offers in Three Weeks (or Less)
Harvard Law School to the Rescue
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Comments
45 days to accept an offer is unnecessarily long anyway. Let each firm decide. You wait, you lose, your fault.
Oh sweet crap, Dickstein is a complete toilet........after Ken Adams and Jerry Oshinsky left, what else is there?
http://www.razornomics.com/
legit question: are you high and/or drunk right now Lat?
"“or until the summer class fills up” — whichever comes earlier."
I see a new reality game show in the making. There will be four times as many offers as spots, and the offers can only be accepted in person at a foreign office (revealed in the offer letter).
2009 deferred grad here. I would accept more than 1 offer. Don't turn either one down until the day you set foot inside the firm as a first year associate.
Good grief people, how long does it really take to call a firm and accept?
"tongue-in-cheek advice that students turn the tables on firms by accepting all their offers"? Not serious at all about this ATL? Man, thought you were finally suggesting associates grow a couple...
Way off topic, but how come no posts about the douchey trial lawyer on this season's Amazing Race. He has got to be the stupidest reality show lawyer thus far.
Hey FYI ==> The SEC's 2010 summer program for 2Ls [1Ls only in NYC] is accepting apps through 12/15/09. Also, the SEC's advanced commitment program for clerks and 3Ls is accepting apps and closes 12/15/2009. For experienced attorneys, our Denver, Atlanta, Washington, and Fort Worth offices are now accepting apps for staff positions. The pay isn't close to BigLaw but there are many other aspects of the job that make it worth considering. Good luck to those who apply.
your gay is showing.
Although I think anyone considering the NALP guidelines mandatory is an idiot, a decent grace period to accept an offer is necessary. I received an offer from my 2L firm and I am not accepting until they tell me a start date, if I will receive a deferral stipend, and what group I will be in. Accepting an offer blindly sounds like a terrible option to me.
11 -
Savvy move, seriously. Especially the practice group component.
Wonder what all the snobs looking down at law students accepting multiple offers will think of this.
Firms are already taking their sweet time giving out offers because they know there's no rush. The reasoning that they need a quick turn around carries much less weight this year than in past years because, in the past, firms actually had to hustle to get the talent they might want.
With the current demand, a 180 day 'think about it period' wouldn't be a big deal. Plenty of us won't have jobs in February.
"We need your answer in 3 weeks....because otherwise...uh....well, actually, your classmates will still be available.....but we want to...???"
Who does this 45 day rule benefit?
As a current 2L, here's what benefits me:
1. A clear timeline that I know a firm is very likely to stick to - if they set the acceptance deadline themselves, and plan their summer offers around it, the firm is more likely to stick to it.
2. A summer offer strategy that is not likely to lead to over subscribed summer classes - if a firm makes offers using two or three week deadlines they are less likely to make a relatively large number of offers early on, which means a smaller likelihood of an oversubscribed summer class.
3. A summer offer strategy that requires people to make a decision early on, so that more offers can be extended if the class doesn't fill up on the first round.
The 45 day rule doesn't help me on any of these fronts.
I fail to understand how the 45 rule benefits me as a law student. When Harvard bullied S&C into adhering to the 45 day rule the DID NOT DO LAW STUDENTS A FAVOR. They did the better students at Harvard and Yale a favor, and hurt everybody else.
The 45 day rule is outdated and needs to go. It will be better for all but a very, very few law students when the 45 day rule dies.
(And no, i'm not bitter. I was quite happy with how OCI worked out for me. But getting rid of the 45 day rule will benefit all of us.)
11:
Do you have an ace up your sleeve, or are you just that sure of yourself? What makes you so sure they won't rescind your offer if their yield climbs and they decide they don't need you?
I got 7 days to accept or reject offer. The day after I accepted it, a richer offer came in. Could be worse I guess.
7 says: "Good grief people, how long does it really take to call a firm and accept?"
Um, longer than 2-3 weeks. I know this might sound crazy to you, but for those of us who have multiple offers, it takes time to set up all the interviews, go to them, wait to hear back from each firm, and figure out which offer is best.
Yeah, I know some folks will say "just grab whatever job is offered." But this is kind of a big decision. Maybe all big firms are similar, but still, where you are going to start your career, especially these days, can be a huge decision. So yeah, it takes awhile.
are we still pretending that these NALP rules regarding offers and time constraints, etc apply to more than just a small fraction of law students?
After all, even in the boom times of 2000, as of 6 months after graduation, only about half of all law students had a lawyer job. And those halcyon days are long gone.
I will put it bluntly: this issues in this article apply only to a small subset of all law school grads--those at the top.
19: It's good to be the king.
I just love that Kate Kelly is featured prominently in this post. BTW, I can say from experience that she is an absolutely top-notch person and professional, and I can assure you that none of the BS being pumped out of EAPD's HR department has anything to do with her. (She's the Blaster, not the Master.)
@21 -- I couldn't care less about Kelly, but I just had to give you props for that Thunderdome reference. Awesome.
I agree with 21. Kate Kelly is awesome and has done a great job during tough times.
Agreed. I sat next to Kate in law school and she was one of the brightest, cutest people I have ever met. Congratulations Kate!!!
15 is right. The 45-day rule is good for the law review kids at Harvard fielding multiple offers.
Does it help the rest of us? Not so much.
Interesting post Lat. Thanks.
14 FTW. Very funny comment.
I just want to thank Lat and Kate Kelly for such an interesting post, and for being such great people in general. Congratulations David and Kate!
15:
A good observation. Again, the Harvardites are promoting the blind incest that has led to a collapse of BigLaw in the first place.
What happens when a slew of self-entitled megalomaniacs (whose sole legal ability consists of exuding arrogance and dragging out discovery) run the legal profession? Revocation of offers without warning. Dishonest recruiting. Broken promises. Unethical treatment of law students, who said self-important goons see as fungible indentured servants interchangeable as trains.
There are no true ethics when elitist, self-entitled hacks run something. Whatever lines their pockets becomes the ethical.
15....
It's kind of sad how a rule that has been around for 2 OCI seasons can already be outdated.
While you're right in the current climate it may only affect a small subset, in good economic times the 45-day rule is actually excellent. It puts a nice end timestamp on any offer, forces people to make decisions and opens up jobs for other people earlier.
Anyway, I remember back when I interviewed, we were allowed (and often did) keep offers open till Dec. 1st. People often kept multiple offers on the table till the last minute. The 45-day rule is a vast improvement over that, and allows firms (and ultimately students) plan in advance far better.
Since the rule doesn't actively hurt those people who don't get multiple offers, I still think it's a good thing to keep right now and will be useful again when things pick up. As far as enforcement, that's a separate issue....
Guys at my high school violated the 45-day rule all the time, it was no big deal.
Why are those posts satirical? When I read them, I thought you were serious. I accepted all of my offers and I'm very happy with my summer jobs.
18 - I think you should have read the whole comment you are referring to.
Kate Kelly is awesome. Anyone who knows her will share that sentiment.
Signed,
- An EAPD associate who is thrilled that Kate is still with our firm.