Today’s guest blogger, Elizabeth Dilts, gives an inside look at the Big Law interview process from students’ perspectives.
At the Doubletree Guest Suites near Times Square, several dozen top second-year law students were preparing for summer associate interviews last Friday morning. For the early-recruiting seasonwhich seems to get earlier every yearstudents came from Emory, William and Mary, American, and Northeastern, and the interviewers were the usual Big Law suspects: Weil, Gotshal & Manges; King & Spalding; Kasowitz Benson Torres & Friedman; and several others.
While the market is getting marginally better, as many Emory students said they are constantly told, the recruiting classes are still small, and few get many offers. A report from the National Association for Law Placement found that students typically receive an average of 22 offers from their recruiting interviews, with just 46 percent of interviews resulting in offers. Ten years ago, the average student got over 30 offers, and around 55 percent of interviews resulted in offers.
