Everyone Hates Early Law School Recruiting, But Everyone Does It

It’s become common now for firms to recruit elite law students even before the end of their first semester of their first year of law school, something that would have been unheard of before the pandemic.

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That’s a far cry from the days when firms waited until the summer before the 2L year to start recruiting students through on campus interviews. It’s a trend that hurts everyone involved, according to the guests on today’s episode of our podcast, On The Merits: columnist David Lat and Nikia Gray, the head of the National Association for Law Placement.

Law schools have lost the control over this process they once had; law firms now have to make recruiting decision with far less information about the candidates; and, worst of all, law students now must make important career decisions in some cases just months after they arrive on campus.

“I have not heard from a single student yet that thinks this is a good process,” Gray said, “nor a single school that feels that way.”

“I’ve talked to the firms,” Lat added. “They say ‘Look, we don’t like this process either. But our rivals are recruiting this early and so we can’t sit on the sidelines.’”

Do you have feedback on this episode of On The Merits? Give us a call and leave a voicemail at 703-341-3690.

This transcript was produced by Bloomberg Law Automation.

Host (Jessie Kamens): Hello and welcome back to On the Merits, the news podcast from Bloomberg Law. I’m your host, Jessie Kamens.

So let’s say you’re a 1L. You just wrapped up your first semester as a law student. Is it too soon to start thinking about your first job after graduation? Actually, you’re a little late. You should have been networking and applying during your first semester.

This is a big change. It used to be you didn’t have to start the recruiting process until the summer before your second year. In August, the big firms would fan out to law schools across the country for on-campus interviews, nicknamed OCI. Now firms are opening up the application process in the fall of 1L year and sometimes even interviewing students before their first semester 1L grades are even final.

Today we’re going to be talking about why this has changed and how it’s affecting law students, law schools, and even the law firms doing the recruiting. Our guests today are Bloomberg Law columnist David Lat and the executive director of the National Association for Law Placement, or NALP, Nikia Gray. NALP advises stakeholders in the legal industry about a wide range of issues, including legal employment and recruiting.

Both Gray and Lat say this trend toward recruiting earlier and earlier doesn’t benefit law students or law firms or law schools, but no one is able to stop it. I started off by asking Gray about the role the pandemic played in kickstarting all of this and about whether the traditional late summer OCI process is gone forever.

Nikia Gray: What we’re seeing here really comes down to COVID and the technological and process changes that happened during that time period, right? And of course, everybody listening to this is going to remember that uncertainty in that first pandemic summer in 2020. If law schools that year canceled their OCI programs, and with that uncertainty, we saw our students starting to reach out to firms and ask, hey, how do I apply for your program? My school has canceled OCI. How do I apply?

And so for the first time ever during the pandemic, we see students and firms really engaging one-on-one over these summer associate positions in ways they never had before. And that just explodes the following year. When we get to 2021, the world’s still in the pandemic, but we’ve become adept at operating in it.

Prior to the pandemic, the idea that a firm was going to hire an attorney that no one had ever met face-to-face in the firm was just unheard of. But the pandemic forced firms to figure out that they could, in fact, interview somebody virtually and do it quite successfully. So when we get to 2021, the schools move OCI back to the summer, but it remains virtual. However, the students and firms are already in this modality of direct engagement, and they continue to do so.

And we see that in 2021, 56% of the students said they reached out to employers directly, so not through their school’s OCI program, but directly, and that was a much larger percentage than we’d ever seen before. And over 70% of those students said that they were successful in obtaining a screening interview by doing so.

So we had what had been this analog recruiting process that was controlled by the schools suddenly becoming digital and being driven by multiple parties, each with different interests in the outcome of the process.

So by directly engaging with the students, firms could take control of the process. They could interview the students they wanted to, regardless of what school they went to, and they could schedule interviews at times that were convenient for them. And of course, that meant it also opened up the possibility that they could get to those students first and get an edge over their competitors.

(Host): David, can you tell us what the process looks like right now? Because it seems even beyond the timeline that Nikia just described, it’s gotten even sooner and even more pressure. Can you talk about that?

David Lat: So it’s interesting. The process that Nakia described had a kind of uniformity to it, a kind of consistency. And now we see firms doing a lot of different things. But the main, main change is that this year, this cycle, it is starting crazy early. Some firms opened their portals to accept direct applications as early as October or November of a student’s 1L year.

So think about that. First-year law students who have not yet finished taking foundational courses like contracts and torts and civil procedure, first-year law students who have not yet taken their first-year exams, first-year law students who don’t have any grades, these students are now applying to firms.

Firms are divided in terms of whether they will interview them in the fall before exams or not. Some firms did do interviews. Some firms did not. Some firms are waiting for first-year grades to do interviews. Some firms interviewed students but are waiting on grades to make offers. We have heard a few reports, including reports from Bloomberg Law, that some firms have made offers. I think most of the large law firms are, as of now, as of this recording, waiting on grades to make offers. But the big, big change is it is very, very early.

(Host): There’s a couple of things I’ve read about that certainly weren’t part of the deal when I interviewed at law firms. First of all, I’ve read about a jumbo offer. And I’ve also heard, I used to hear about this with clerkships, exploding offers. Can you talk about that, David?

David Lat: Yes, sure. So the jumbo offer is an offer to a law student to work at the firm for both their 1L and 2L summer. So firms are recruiting people in their 1L year to work for the summer after that first year and the traditional big law summer, the summer between 2L and 3L. So that is the so-called jumbo offer.

And then in terms of exploding offers, back a number of years ago, there were guidelines from NALP, which had recommendations about how long firms should keep offers open. But now, some firms are basically just kind of doing what they wish. And so an exploding offer is one with just a very short timeline. Most students I’ve talked to seem to get two weeks to decide whether that is exploding or not. I guess you can debate. It is not like, say, during the clerkship process where some judges wanted students to accept on the spot or the offer would explode right there before their very eyes. But I don’t know. Maybe Nikia can speak to what is considered exploding.

Nikia Gray: Yeah, absolutely, David. We typically refer to that as anything shorter than a week. So two weeks seems to be the kind of the standard timeline we’re seeing right now for acceptance rates. And that seems to be handled pretty well by the student. But it’s where we’re seeing even shorter than that, typically down in that one week or less time range.

(Host): I’d love to hear from both of you on this. What do you think the stakes are here for law students? Does this benefit them or does it put more power in the hands of the employers?

Nikia Gray: Yeah, and I can kick that off. I don’t think it benefits the students. I think it’s really hard to convey to anybody outside of legal ed just how negatively this is impacting students. The level of stress that this has added to the whole law school experience, which is already stressful in itself, is unprecedented. And we’re hearing a lot from folks about how students are experiencing mental health challenges as a result, even up into mental health crises as a result.

The first semester used to be this time where you could figure out how to be a good law student. You could figure out, you learned how to do critical reasoning and legal research and all of those things. And instead, these students are trying to figure out how they draft unique cover letters and how many networking events they need to go to. And they’re engaging in interviews in that early time period of law school.

And we’re even hearing about negative impacts happening after the students accept offers. We’ve heard from a number of schools now that they’re seeing decreases in interest in participating in things like law review, journal, moot court, all those activities that used to be resume boosters. And so students are not seeing the value in participating in those activities. They’re saying, why do I want to put another thing on my plate? And that’s a real loss for them because those things are still valuable experience. So I think this whole process is very negative for the students.

David Lat: The power is lying in with the law firms, right? The law firms can change this behavior or not. It is also forcing them to make career choices at a much earlier stage before they have a good sense of themselves, their interests, and the legal industry and the legal profession. These students have not even finished their foundational 1L courses. And now they’re trying to decide which firm to go to.

And contrary to the stereotype or what you sometimes hear from people who I would submit don’t know the industry that well, contrary to the claim that, oh, all the firms are the same, that’s not true. Firms are very, very different. They have different business models. They have different cultures. They have different areas of practice strength. And if you don’t know whether you want to be a corporate lawyer or a litigator, if you don’t know whether you want to be a trial or appellate litigator or whether you want to do private credit or M&A, how are you supposed to pick a firm when you don’t have any idea of what these areas of law are even about?

So in addition to distracting them from their studies and taking them out of the focus on law school and on activities like Law Review and Journal, this process is also forcing them to make these career decisions, sometimes for their 1L and 2L summer if they’re going for the jumbo offer, before they even have a sense of what they should be looking for in a firm.

(Host): I would think that this would have an effect on first gen law students where no one in their family has gone to law school before and that there might be some advantage for those students who say had a paralegal job for a couple of years and have a sense of the business.

Nikia Gray: Yeah, absolutely. And I do think first gen students are going to be the ones who are left behind in that process. I mean, look, we already see that employment in private practice and judicial clerkship increases with higher level of parental education, right? Those students who have at least one parent with a JD degree, which we call them continuing gen JDs, are likely to have the highest rates of employment in both of those areas and first gen students have the lowest, right? And we expect when we look at the graduate employment data for the classes of 2025 and 2026, that those disparities that we’ve historically seen are going to be amplified by this early recruiting process.

And it’s because, you know, these students have fewer resources to help guide them in figuring out how to adjust to law school. What is the recruiting process? How does it begin and so forth? And now there’s just less time for them to get their feet underneath them and figure this all out.

(Host): So how are law firms evaluating students so early? What are they looking for?

David Lat: So they’re trying to get as much information as possible and some firms are either asking for things they didn’t previously ask for or are focusing more on things that maybe they asked for but didn’t look at that closely. So I have talked to law students who have encountered firms that want your LSAT score, that want your undergraduate transcript. Firms are also increasingly focused on pre-law school employment, whether in or not in the legal sector, because again, that’s what they have to judge you on.

So folks like me, I was a so-called K through JD, I went straight through from college to law school. I didn’t have any employment experience. So I think people in that boat are somewhat disadvantaged. So they’re making judgments based on things like that.

Also, I do think that this new process gives a much greater weight to students at elite or well-known law schools. So I think this process does exacerbate what many have viewed as problems of elitism and inequality in the legal profession, because again, if you don’t have first or second year grades from someone at say a regional or state or local law school, somebody who might be a great, great law student and a great, great associate, well, you’ll just go hire the people from Harvard and Stanford and Yale because at least you know the name on their resume.

(Host): How are law schools reacting?

Nikia Gray: It is not working well for them, and that’s because, again, firms do not have to go through the schools anymore. And they don’t want to. They find it easier to go directly to the students and do direct recruiting, is what we call it. And I don’t think it matters where the schools place OCI or these early interview programs. Firms are not looking at that as their main vehicle for recruiting those students. They’re saying, we’ll participate in those programs, you know, at the end to top off, round out our classes. But it’s not going to be our main vehicle.

And we’re seeing that in our data. We’re seeing a lot of firms who even participate in those programs not giving out any offers to them. So I think it’s a really challenging process for the schools. What we have seen them start doing is things like zero L advising, where they start advising students on the recruiting process even before they arrive on campus to try to get ahead of this since it is happening so early. But there isn’t a lot of good solutions right now for this.

David Lat: I would say I talked to some students, 3Ls and 2Ls, who felt that last year and the year before, they felt their schools were caught somewhat flat-footed by the changes in the timetable. But this year I heard students say my law school was more well prepared. I think the law schools have realized, look, if we can’t change this behavior, we need to prepare our students as best as we can, because all of our rivals are going to be doing this. And employment outcomes are extremely important to law schools.

And also I mentioned how some law firms are waiting on 1L first semester grades. I have heard of some schools pushing up the deadline for professors to get those grades in because they want their students to be ready to get these offers sooner than or as soon as or sooner than the students at rival schools.

(Host): You both talked about how you don’t think this is good for law students. Have you met students who have had a great experience with this or does it largely back up the larger feeling that this is not going well for students?

Nikia Gray: I have not heard from a single student yet that thinks that this is a good process, nor a single school that feels that way. Where the silver lining in this may be is that the move away from OCI allows firms to consider a broader section of students for these positions, right? Because they’re no longer constrained by what schools they can fly out to and interview at, right? So they can consider students from a broader range of schools.

Now, whether they actually will hire them is another question, because as David Lat was talking about, with less grades to look at, they are relying more on school reputation to make some of these hiring processes. But at least that capability is there, which is going to become very, very important in the future as we start looking at what happens now that the SFFA decision has come in and we no longer have affirmative action. We do think that we are going to see some shifts in where underrepresented minority students go to school as a result. And so the fact that firms can consider a broader range of schools and students from a broader range of schools may help us there in continuing to ensure that those students have a pipeline into these big firms.

David Lat: So I talked to one law student out of many who said, well, I like that I can get recruiting out of the way so early in my law school career so I can focus for the rest of this two and a half year period on my studies and my activities. But this student, a 1L at my alma mater, did say something that I found a little troubling. This person said, well, I get it out of the way, and all the firms are the same anyway. And as I was just saying, I do not think the firms are all the same. And I think this student’s comment, not to knock this student—again, a student at a great law school—I think the students don’t know what they don’t know. When I was a 1L or even a 2L student about to embark on this process, I thought all the firms looked the same too. So I think that that is a significant issue. And so I don’t agree. I respectfully disagree with this student who said, well, at least I get it out of the way early.

And then I talked to one other student who finds the process—this is a 1L at Columbia—she finds the process stressful and doesn’t like the timing. But she wanted to emphasize that everyone she’s dealt with in the process, from the law firm people, the law firm recruiting folks, the partners, the law school people, people have been very pleasant.

If you talk to the firms, and I’ve talked to the firms, they say, look, we don’t like this process either. But our rivals are recruiting this early. And so we can’t sit on the sidelines. So you have a total classic collective action problem, prisoner’s dilemma, race to the bottom, whatever you want to call it. Where the law students are unhappy and the law firms are unhappy.

(Host): Can NALP fix this?

Nikia Gray: Yeah, that’s a great question. One, I get a lot. And the answer is no, we can’t. And that’s because of antitrust regulation, which, of course, prevents competitors from agreeing to limit the ways they’re going to compete in the market, right? And so that really puts a constraint on what we can do. What we can do is educate folks on both the best practices of dealing with this process, but also the harms that it’s causing and encourage them to make good decisions.

And one of the things I keep trying to educate the firms on, and David Lat talked a little bit about this, is what’s really behind a lot of this is this perception of scarcity, right? And in fact, that perception is self-created. It’s self-created because firms are trying to recruit from the same cluster of schools as all of their competitors are. When in fact, you know, the class of 2024 had 40,000 students graduating in it, right? There was enough students in that class for every big law firm to hire five times the number of associates that they did, right? And I’m talking about when I say big firms, I’m talking about firms of 250 or more. We’re not just talking about the really big ones there, right? So there are plenty of students there. But firms need to think more broadly about what their pipeline is.

(Host): Is this happening at law firms across the country, at regional law firms, or is it really just the biggest ones?

Nikia Gray: What we’re seeing here with the timeline moving so early is it’s happening in a subset of the market, in a very particular subset. And it’s the larger law firms. We’re starting to see it in some of those more mid-sized firms, right? But it hasn’t yet crept all the way through the market. We’re also only seeing this happen at a certain subsection of the schools, right? And of course, it’s those more elite schools.

(Host): What advice do each of you have for law students who are facing this process?

Nikia Gray: Yeah, great question. I’d say two things. First of all, I think all students need to understand that this first job is just their first job, right? It does not determine their career. I see so many students approaching their job search like this is the job they’re going to be in until they die, right? It adds such a layer of stress to this process. And it’s so not true. So the first thing students need to do is, you know, take a breath and stop approaching their careers like they’re trying to decide, you know, what do I want to be when I grow up? And instead ask, you know, what experience do I want for the next two to three years? Because in reality, that’s the longest they’re likely to be in this position, those positions, right? This generation of lawyers are highly, highly mobile and they’re not staying in positions longer than a couple of years. So that hopefully if they approach their job search that way, it takes a little bit of that stress off of them.

And then second, you know, as we were talking about earlier, career service offices are now starting to prepare students very, very early, even before they arrive on campus. Students need to open those emails. They need to read them. They need to pay attention. And if they are not at a school that’s offering that early counseling, then they need to go make an appointment with their career service offices, talk to them about what their aspirations are and then what the timing of the recruiting is for that type of position so that they don’t miss out.

David Lat: I agree with all of that. And I would just urge the students, in light of what Nikia Gray was just saying, that this first job, this summer job is not your career. The firms might try to box you in, but don’t box yourself in. One thing that’s happened with this accelerated timeline is firms have been expecting law students earlier and earlier to have an idea of what they want to do. And that’s fine. Go do your summer, do the work you want to do. But just remember, you can change. You can pivot in law school and even afterward. Because my fear is that people are going to get locked in to say what they do in their 1L or even 2L summer and not discover the practice area that might be their real passion.

I spoke to an office managing partner for my column who is a very well-known and extremely successful litigator. And this person told me that when they were a 1L, they were pretty sure they wanted to be a transactional lawyer. And if you had forced him to have picked a firm in his 1L year, he would have picked an M&A firm or a firm just known for its transactional focus. And instead, he wound up going to a litigation-only firm. So it’s just, again, you’ll feel pressure to sort of pigeonhole yourself or put yourself in a box. Just that’s the nature of the profession, a big, big, big-scale change. It’s just increased specialization, except for certain people or firms that have the luxury of being generalists. But just remember, this is your first job. It’s not your last job. Continue to be curious in law school and beyond. Try to learn about different practice areas. Use this recruiting process as an opportunity to educate yourself about firms, about different areas of law. And just, again, try your best—easier said than done—try your best not to be too stressed.

(Host): That was Bloomberg Law columnist David Lat and NALP executive director Nikia Gray. And that’ll do it for today’s episode of On the Merits. For more updates, visit our website at news.bloomberglaw.com. Once again, that’s news.bloomberglaw.com.

The podcast today was produced by myself, Jesse Kamens, and David Schultz. Our editors were Chris Opfer and Alessandra Rafferty. And our executive producer is Josh Block. Thanks, everyone. See you next time.