William Chamberlain
Rules: The latest casualty of the economic crisis
October 7, 2009
We are lawyers and we love rules. Not only are they comforting — we can rely on them — but they provide a structure for interaction and guidelines for professional behavior. Rules help us keep things in perspective.
Law students today, however, face a market of fuzzy rules, with the leading law blogs telling one story after another of firms deferring start dates or even rescinding offers.
The hardest thing is not so much the uncertainty about the market — we have survived the first anniversary of the crash, after all — but rather the failure of trust between employers and students. I am not talking loyalty, a long ago casualty of corporate America, but the disappearance of agreed-upon rules.
Playing by the rules engenders trust and ensures fairness. Without trust, do we simply admit that "anything goes" in the recruiting process?
One well-known blogster has opined that if schools are counseling their second-year students to accept offers with large firms within two to three weeks rather than relying on NALP's 45-day rule regarding acceptances, with the implication that law firms may not abide by this rule, why shouldn't students be permitted to keep interviewing after accepting an offer and further, to accept more than one offer?
At first blush, such a suggestion seems blasphemous. One cardinal rule in every Career Center, including ours, is that once a student accepts a job, he or she may no longer interview. This principle is also reflected in the NALP Principles and Standards. As the picture of fall 2009 recruiting comes into ever sharper focus, however, even this rule may not be absolute.
Consider the plight of the returning 3Ls. Many more of them have been non-offered than in prior years. Many employers have cited the economy as a justification. That this is true seems obvious. Summer programs were far more competitive this year than in any previous year in recent memory. Students have reported working well into the night and on weekends to finish assignments. There is of course nothing wrong with giving the summers real life firm experiences but to work extremely hard all summer, get excellent reviews and still end up without a job is a tough nut for 3Ls to crack.
In addition to the non-offers, there are the "not-yet" offers. Some students finished up their summer jobs two months ago and have not yet heard about offers. We are counseling them, as we do all students who are in the market, to apply broadly elsewhere and especially to be sure not to miss the federal government application deadlines.
Then of course there are the fortunate 3Ls with offers. Their lot is not that much better than their classmates in the previous two groups. They have received letters stating essentially: "Congratulations, you have an offer." No salary and no start date. What does a student make of such an offer and what would a student's acceptance of such an offer mean?
Say a student does accept and finds out later that he or she is deferred until "sometime in 2011." Should this student be prohibited from interviewing further, perhaps with government or non-legal employers? Given the recent rescissions of offers, the student who plays by the rules may end up without a job.
The plight of the 3Ls is mirrored in the situation of the 2Ls (at least the 2Ls know that they're starting in 2010). The rules are again turned on their heads. Usually, when a student asks about following up post-callback with a large firm, particularly when they do not have another offer, we assure them that the firm will get back to them one way or another. This year, many firms, particularly outside of New York, have been much slower in getting back to students about offers after callbacks. The delay has prompted us to advise students to follow up with the firms. Particularly this year, in order to respond in a timely fashion to one firm, a student may need to follow up with a second firm. Some students have received multiple callbacks and have not heard one way or the other from the firms for three or four weeks. The extended period between callbacks and offers is more widespread this year and may keep hopes of a large firm job alive in some students who may use the delay as an excuse not to pursue other options.
Of course we know 2L summer classes will be drastically smaller next year and that firms are justifiably afraid of too high a yield. Some firms have no more offers outstanding than the number of spots in their programs. We have seen some students receive "second wave" callbacks and offers.
And for the 3Ls, the firms legitimately cite the difficulty of predicting their needs two or even one year in advance. The economy can certainly be blamed for the rash of deferrals.
With a lack of mutually agreed-upon rules governing recruiting and, too often, a lack of communication between schools and employers, the process breaks down. We have witnessed this to some extent with the leaky but still holding federal clerkship hiring plan.
In terms of the larger economic crisis, the plight of law students unable to get into large firms may not "amount to a hill of beans." For those of us on the front lines of legal recruiting, however, the issue is crucial, particularly given student debt loads. While there are few guarantees in the hiring process, the hope is that from these troubled times will emerge a new set of flexible rules and guidelines that will work for all. Improved communication will restore the foundation for trust and fairness between employers and employed. As both law schools and legal employers begin to contemplate OCI programs in 2010, we should grasp the opportunity to make new rules and adapt existing rules to the new economy.
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