QUINN EMANUEL URQUHART & SULLIVAN — MEMORANDUM — LAW SCHOOL RECRUITING
From: John Quinn
Sent: Monday, June 29, 2015
To: Attorneys
Subject: Law School Recruiting
The firm is going to experiment with a change in our approach to law school recruiting. In recent memory, the basic approach of all law firms to law school recruiting has been to recruit second-year students to participate in formal “summer associate” programs from which most law students are hired. For several reasons, we have concluded that this traditional way may not be optimal. Although we do our best to ensure that summer associates do real and meaningful work, summer programs are unavoidably unrealistic to a degree. Especially when it comes to the trial work we do here, it’s difficult to parcel out projects that fit within the two months summer associates are with us. Try as we might, there’s nothing like the real thing of having full-time associates integrate and litigate as long-term members of a team. The programs are also very expensive. Increasingly, clients don’t want to pay for summer associates’ time, even though they do valuable work at very reasonable rates. All this raises the question whether this money can be employed in recruiting in a more impactful way.
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We think it can be. We intend to shift the focus of our law school recruiting efforts to recruit third-year students and judicial clerks. We will still have summer associate programs but they will be extremely limited; perhaps only five to ten summers firm-wide. The principal purpose for continuing our summer program will be to have outstanding candidates on law school campuses who have had personal experience with our firm. We will redirect money saved on the summer associate program to signing bonuses for summers, third-year students and judicial clerks who join us on a permanent basis.
Some will point out that law students will be most comfortable going back to the law firms that they “summered” at and will be reluctant to cast their lot with a firm that they haven’t worked at. I am sure that’s true of the average law student; but, we’ve never been looking for the average law student. We know that, in fact, many students do continue to interview in their third year. And, once it is known that essentially the only way to get a job at the premier litigation firm in the world is to interview there your third year — well, we think we will still see excellent candidates. We think those candidates will appreciate our efforts to put more money in their pockets as they come in the door rather than excessively spending on summer programs that many view as a waste of time. Also, we intend to ramp up our focus on judicial clerks in a more meaningful and structured way.
John B. Quinn
Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP