Now that Labor Day is behind us, fall is fast approaching. You can tell by the chill in the evening air.
Or is that just the cold offers we’re feeling? Last month, we asked you for stories about firms giving out cold offers to summer associates. As we explained, a “cold offer” or “fake offer” is, in the words of NALP, an employment offer made “with the understanding that the offer will not be accepted.”
This “offer,” made with a wink and a nudge, allows the employing law firm to report (and boast about) a 100 percent offer rate, when in reality it isn’t welcoming back 100 percent of its summer associates. It also has an advantage for the recipient: when she goes through 3L recruiting, she can truthfully say, “Yes, I received an offer from the firm where I summered.”
We recently heard a story about a pretty cold offer (not from summer 2011, but from not too long ago summer 2010). This summer associate, who wasn’t the most popular person in her class, received a full-time employment offer “contingent upon obtaining a federal clerkship.” Given how hard it is to land a federal judicial clerkship, that’s a pretty cold offer — especially considering that the student in question, now graduated, didn’t go to a law school known for cranking out lots of clerks.
But wait, it gets better….
Continue reading “Biglaw Blind Item: An Ice-Cold Offer”
Welcome to our latest round-up of summer associate offer rate news. This post contains the latest list of law firms and offices with 100 percent offer rates. In future posts, we’re going to shift gears and focus on firms with lower-than-average offer rates.
An offer rate that’s lower than 100 percent is not necessarily newsworthy. The fall recruiting process by which summer associates are selected isn’t perfect. Sometimes candidates look great on paper and do well during interviews, but then do something during the summer — turning in disappointing work product, getting drunk and acting inappropriately — that causes them to get no-offered. And sometimes people get no-offered for reasons that aren’t their fault — office politics, discrimination. Stuff happens.
We’re not expecting 100 percent offer rates all around. At the same time, there is such a thing as an unusually low offer rate. If you know of an office with an unusually low offer rate — which we will arbitrarily define here as something under 66 percent, or two-thirds — please email us (subject line: “[Firm Name] Offer Rate”).
Now, on to the updated list of firms and offices with 100 percent offer rates….
Continue reading “Summer Associate Offer Rates: Another Update
(Now we’d like to hear about the no-offering….)“
Smile if you received an offer!
Since our initial call for information about summer associate offer rates at major law firms, a number of people have contacted us with reports. As it turns out, there’s a lot of good news floating around out there for summer associates.
This leads us to two conclusions:
- Biglaw firms only brought in people they could actually hire.
- You class of 2011 people are some boring individuals.
Honestly, listening to your summer stories is like looking at the Facebook photos of a Mormon school group’s vacation to Amish country. We know that people are worried about getting offers in this tough market, but the risk-aversion of the summers this year borders on cowardice.
Live a little, have a drink, ask her for her number. It’s a job interview, not an audience with the Pope.
In any event, 100% offer rates abound. Let’s round them up….
Continue reading “Summer Associate Offer Rates: An Update”
It is the end of the summer and it happened: NO OFFER! Looking back at your summer you are completely caught off-guard. You kissed the right butts, you avoided grabbing the wrong butts, you chewed with your mouth closed, you only got blackout drunk twice, and you even managed to turn in a memo or two that even had footnotes. What went wrong?
Once upon a time, you had to make out with a partner’s wife, send a firm-wide racial joke, and charge over $1,000 on the firm’s bar tab to be “no offered” –- and even then, you would at least get a soft offer that you could show off during 3L OCI. In the new economy of today, “no offers” are much more frequent, and are less about the individual, and more about the firms themselves. While the stigma of being “no offered” reflects less on your capabilities as a Biglaw associate, it still stings, and you are still without a job at graduation.
If you are hit by this truck, and want to learn how deal with the disappointment of a “no offer,” follow the advice of Lateral Link’s Frank Kimball, legal recruiter and former Biglaw hiring partner, after the jump….
Continue reading “Career Center: There is Life After the ‘No Offer’”
Summer offer rates are back and better than ever.
Last week, summer associate programs began to draw to a close. After a summer of fun extravagance work, summer associates are eager to find out if they’ll be getting offers of full-time employment.
We expect the answer to be yes at most places. Sure, during the height of the recession, no offer rates spiked. But Biglaw firms seem to have corrected that problem. As almost any jobless 3L can tell you, firms simply started hiring fewer people to be summer associates in the first place.
What’s bad news for many 3Ls is good news for those who were lucky enough to snag summer associate positions. You know what they say: getting in is the hardest part. Right?
Above the Law has received various reports from summer associates at Biglaw firms, crowing about 100 percent offer rates….
Continue reading “Summer Associate Offer Rates: Open Thread”
So how do firms decide how many summer associates will get permanent offers? Why do some firms have high offer rates, while others tread closer to the 50% offer range? The law firm recruiting process is very similar to the rush process of fraternities and sororities. There are a ton of drinking and “rush events” that summer associates partake in as law firms try to woo in new associates; but on the flip side, summer associates still have to “prove themselves worthy” enough to be accepted in the Brotherhood of Six-Figure Salaries or in the Sisterhood of Big Law Prestige.
Unlike sororities, you will not have to strip down to your underwear as current members take black sharpies and draw marks on the parts of your body that can use some “improvement.” Rest assured, however, that you will still have to work to impress the people at your summer law firm to keep the number of black sharpie marks on your file to a minimum, and ultimately secure that coveted permanent offer….
Continue reading “Career Center: The Mysterious Summer Offer Rate”
It’s a wonderful time of year. No more innuendo: NALP forms have been updated, and firms have had to come clean with their statistics on summer hiring.
Look up your firm here.
Let’s crowdsource this baby. You look at your firm and tell us in the comments if somebody surprisingly massacred their summer class, and we’ll follow up next week.
I’ll get the ball rolling….
Continue reading “Updated NALP Forms: What Were the Real Offer Rates?”
This email messages from a reader is representative of many we’ve received, as well as many comments on recent posts:
As a Biglaw summer associate waiting to hear about my future, I’d really like the site to focus on and publicize firms that give offers to all or most of their summer classes. [Last week's] story entitled “Summer Offer Rate Open Thread” generated tons of discussion at my firm from associates and summers.
I know it will likely not control any hiring partner’s decisions, but you realize your site generates buzz and has some say in how students/other associates view firms. If you continue to publish summer offer rate stories, both good and bad, the site may be able to contribute to a higher summer offer percentage. Good job otherwise, I’ll keep reading.
You want to talk about summer associate offer rates? Fine, let’s talk about summer associate offer rates. Here’s the eagerly awaited follow-up to our earlier post on the subject. Have at it, in the comments.
We’ll kick off the discussion with some positive news. Negative news, at least under one of our bylines, will come later. Before we report out negative news, we need to talk to the firms in question first — you know, due process, journalism ethics, etc. That reporting will take time. We’re a small operation, and we’re short staffed this week, with Elie out on vacation. (If YOU want to share negative news on offer rates, of course, feel free to post in the comments.)
But who wants to hear negative news anyway? Get your fix of happily high offer rates, after the jump.
Continue reading “Summer Offer Rate Open Thread: Happy Happy Joy Joy!”
In late October, we received this question from a federal clerk:
To date, I’ve seen at least six posts in a series ATL has been doing about firms rescinding unaccepted summer associate offers to 2L’s due to oversubscription of the summer class. I would be interested to know whether firms are actually, or at least contemplating, rescinding unaccepted offers for full-time associate positions that were being held open for former summer associates that are doing judicial clerkships this year?
I have an offer from a biglaw firm and was assured (albeit almost one year ago) that my offer would be held open until I had completed my clerkship and could formally accept. Needless to say, I am getting more than a bit nervous about whether my job will still be waiting for me come September ’09.
At the time, we told the questioner that we hadn’t heard anything like that from any major law firm during this recruiting cycle. Nobody’s going to rescind offers to clerks!
We thought.
We hoped.
Yesterday, we had a couple of interesting conversations with folks over at Wiley Rein. We now believe that the chair of Wiley Rein’s recruiting committee placed a number of phone calls over the weekend to current judicial clerks. The recruiting coordinator was careful to say that Wiley was not “rescinding” offers, but that the clerks should seriously consider looking at other options for full-time employment when their clerkships are up.
More details after the jump.
Continue reading “A Winter of Discontent for Clerks:
Wiley Rein ‘Cold Offers’ Judicial Clerks”
We’ve reported that firms with “oversubscribed” summer classes are calling up 2Ls and encouraging them to not accept their 2009 summer associate offers. Unlike Akin Gump’s move, the tactic is a clever dodge around the NALP guidelines. As we understand it, firms are not committing these “cold offers” to email, instead using the telephone and avoiding a paper trail.
Career services departments are trying to cope with this new law firm tactic. Some Michigan students received this email from their career services dean:
Hi. It is my understanding that you have an offer from White and Case in New York. After talking to contacts in the New York legal market, it appears that White and Case may have over-hired for next summer and has a particularly large class. Therefore, it may be in your best interest to take another offer if you have one.
According to the WSJ Law Blog, White & Case claims ignorance over why Michigan would send out this email:
A spokesman for White & Case told the Law Blog: “We don’t know, honestly, why a law school career services office would send out these letters. No on has talked to us about the situation, and we’ve certainly not encouraged anyone to send out letters to students.”
Notice how White & Case did not say “we intend to honor every summer associate offer we’ve made.”
We have been consistently encouraging 2Ls to accept their offers sooner rather than later. Many career services departments have echoed that advice. White & Case joins Proskauer as one of the firm that has been “outed” as telling people that they should look elsewhere for offers, but we suspect that many firms are doing this.
After the jump, speculation about other firms.
Continue reading “Accept Your Offers Part 7:
White & Case v. Nervous T-10 1L?“
August marks the end of extravagant lunches and open bars, and the return to the starving-student lifestyle for this year’s batch of summer associates. This time of year also presents summers with a big, anxiety-inducing question:
Am I getting The Offer — i.e., an offer to return to The Firm on a more permanent / full-time basis, after graduation?
Some summers find out about their future employment prospects while still at their law firms. This might happen during an exit interview, or it might happen in more public fashion:
The DC office of Latham & Watkins just called all summer associates into a conference room and announced that they were extending offers to 100% of the DC summer associate class.
We haven’t confirmed this with the firm, but if true — congratulations, Lathamites of Washington!
(We also hear, through the grapevine, that Shearman & Sterling gave offers to all 135 of its SAs. If you know of other 100-percent-offer shops, feel free to note them in the comments. Please note, however, that what appears in the comments is unverified. So caveat lector.)
Update: Shearman gave offers to 139 out of 140 summers who were considered for offers. See here.
Other summer associates don’t learn their fates until after the end of their programs. Word might come a week or two after the program ends — or even later. Our estimable (but outgoing) editor-in-chief recalls that Wachtell Lipton didn’t notify its summer class about offers until September. (That was several years ago; WLRK’s current practice may differ.)
Read more about cold offers — including a more detailed explanation of what exactly is a cold offer, for those of you who aren’t familiar with the institution — after the jump.
Continue reading “Fall Recruiting Open Thread: Cold Offers”
