It’s become downright trite to say COVID-19 has “massively changed” some aspect of everyday life we used to take for granted. Seriously, anyone who has been around for the last year or so already knows that — hell, even infants know something’s up. But with everything thrown into a tizzy, it is easy to forget all the “massive changes” that have been racked up, unless they directly impact you. That’s just the normal way human brains deal with overwhelming amounts of information. So, unless you’re actively involved in law student recruitment, how it’s being dealt with in pandemic time easily could have slipped your mind.
Anyway, back in the spring of 2020 (when we are so naive that many believed the length of the pandemic would be tracked in weeks, not years), many law schools and Biglaw firms made the move to change the dates of their on-campus interviews. Most elite law schools traditionally have a week in the late summer/early fall dedicated to getting top Biglaw firms in search of the next generation of legal talent to meet with their rising 2Ls for summer associateships following the upcoming academic year. But as in-person meetings and non-essential travel were verboten in August 2020, those were largely pushed to January.
That’s what happened at Duke Law. But even though hiring for summer 2021 was moved, folks wondered what would happen for summer 2022 hiring. With slow vaccine rollout, that Zoom-life isn’t going anywhere anytime soon but Duke has decided how it’ll handle the next recruiting season.
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Rather than stick with the later January date, Duke is moving back to August for on-campus interview week. Though, as detailed in the email below, the August OCI will still be virtual.
While we haven’t heard much about how other top law law schools will handle the next recruitment season, I predict they’ll also move back to the summer. There’s a bit of a herd mentality, and if this is what one elite law school is doing, others are sure to follow.
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Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).