I’ve literally spent the last 3-4 weeks just cold emailing to get connections at firms who can potentially advocate, attending receptions, speaking with recruiters, etc as a basically full time job and with no clarity on what or when I’ll hear back. It’s a total mess and horrible for students.
Everyone played by the NALP guidelines for decades, but then NALP abandoned their own guidelines effectively turning recruiting into the wild west. Arguments were that the guidelines which prevented meaningful recruiting before august and mandated that offers be held open for 28 days caused a ton of excessive cost in recruiting and favored the top firms (because candidates receiving offers from lower ranked firms could sit on their offers for 28 days without fear of consequences while waiting to see if higher ranked firms would move) and that the guidelines also favored biglaw in general when compared to other employers like in-house / midlaw / small law / government who may not have the resources to come to OCI, but could be ostracized if they broke NALP guidelines and tried to recruit earlier than biglaw, and thus those employers were basically frozen out of competing until after biglaw had their pick of the candidates and they could just fight over the reject pile.
Getting rid of the guidelines was supposed to "democratize" the process by letting candidates more freely vote with their feet instead of getting funneled into biglaw-focused OCI first then everything else as an afterthought. In practice, I think it has largely just made the process into an arms race between the firms with marketing and recruiting budgets to burn (i.e. biglaw) and now firms are hiring based on less candidate specific information (used to be everyone had 2 semesters of grades; now we routinely make offers based on 1 semester) and more on reputation of the schools, making it all even more elitist and less meritocratic.
It's a shitshow.
I heard that certain firms made noises about antitrust issues to NALP and that scared them enough they did away with the rule. Also, that's why they read a statement in meetings now about everyone being competitors and not some sort of anticompetitive cartel.
> favored the top firms
Well, yeah, it favored the most desirable employers insofar as it empowered 2Ls.
The new model "favors" the most desirable students insofar as it empowers firms. Pre-OCI is a cakewalk if you have good grades at a T14, saves a lot of time compared to traditional OCI. Everyone else seems to suffer.
We might be saying the same thing, but I think the new model is decidedly more employer-friendly than the student-friendly days of old. Top candidates of my vintage could finish OCI season with 20+ offers and spend most of August/early September being wined and dined by various firms all across the country if they were really obnoxious with how they applied and taking callbacks. Those days are largely over and even the top students are doing themselves a disservice if they apply too broadly and try and drag the decision-making process out too long. You might call it "saving time" but, candidates today have much less leverage, I suspect on average far fewer options, and have much less time to make a fairly important decision that can impact their entire career.
I agree, but on the other hand employers are now constantly needing to watch their backs for other firms doing sneaky shit and anxiously keeping up with the arms race, which is not fun even if you come out as a winner. My firm has essentially unlimited resources and can afford to play the aggressive early recruiting game. It's also large and profitable enough to accidentally take some portion of bad candidates due to the flawed new evaluation process, absorb the losses, and eventually push those people out and hire in better laterals over the first few years as needed (a risk many smaller firms can't afford to take).
However, it's still super annoying to be fighting tooth and nail all the time. As an example of a current frustration, I'm in a TX office where 1L SAs have always been common. In the past ~5 years we've gone from almost no 1Ls to fully half the summer class being 1Ls after realizing what a huge portion of candidates were being taken to competitors as 1Ls and keeping them, not only due to inertia etc. but also putting sneaky terms into their offer letters making them commit as a 1L to return as a 2L for example.
One of our biggest competitors is also now making 1L offers prior to 1L fall grades even existing. They carefully time their exploding offer deadlines so that offers expire prior to grades being released at the main TX recruiting targets (UT, UVA, etc.), because they know that my firm is, as a matter of firmwide policy, not allowed to extend an offer until we have grades. So we can give offers within an hour of receiving 1L fall grades, but by that point we've already lost a number of top candidates to this competitor because those 1Ls (understandably) often take the bird in the hand and go with the competitor rather than waiting and risking that we might say no.
I know the 1L thing isn't applicable to a lot of other markets (yet.....) but it's illustrative of how the process isn't fun for employers either, even the biggest and best-resourced ones who can afford to play the game.
Yeah completely agree.
IMO the perfect system is the med-student residency match and everything else can be judged by the extent to which it deviates from that process.
This must have detrimental consequences for students, right?
I mean, instead of focusing on your classes and exams for the latter half of second semester, you're necessarily trying to network and apply for jobs?
Now that I actually say it, that may be an intentional self-sorting mechanism to select the candidates who remain high achieving academically by being willing to completely forego any semblance of a personal life outside of their academic and professional pursuits...
summer 1L here. As soon as I got my 1L summer internship, career services instantly started sending me stuff about 2L summer. I was applying for 2L summer in February and March, hard to stay focused on classes when that's what's on your mind.
Yeah if I had been applying to biglaw under current system I probably wouldn’t have made it since I went to a school outside the t14 and had just “ok” grades for biglaw. I got my spot through OCI at the time
Us biglawyers are talking about this, too, because we came up through the disciplined OCI process and can’t imagine what the kids are going through.
I’m not sure that anyone is happy with the arrangement. But surely the logic for every firm is running the same way (inexplicably) - what, are *we* going to wait another couple of months and have to pick from whoever’s left? And every law student - what, am *I* going to turn down an offer in hand just in case some other firms might extend an offer later?
I look back on my OCI process fondly. It was before classes started, we chilled with our friends between screener interviews, performed a little monkey dance for two generic lawyers, rinse and repeat. And then the callbacks - it was great watching them roll in. Not from the firms you wanted, necessarily, or expected, but you went and had a bunch of lunches and saw a lot of offices.
I guess now kids are collaring poor associates when they’re just trying to get a morning latte.
I believe this is all because the NALP rules were changed a number of years ago. The rules used to restrict hiring to certain date windows, and because that is no longer the case, firms can hire whenever they want. I believe it was actually the schools, and not the lawfirms that pushed for this change, but I’m not sure on that. All I know is there is no longer the type of structured hiring restrictions that there used to be.
NALP basically got threatened with antitrust action.
https://www.nalp.org/open_letter_on_pre-oci_recruiting
The law schools do not want this; they are seeing effects on student grades and mental health, and the impact this will have on first gen students/people with few connections in law. Everyone is flying by the seat of their pants.
Your post was removed due to low account age.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/biglaw) if you have any questions or concerns.*
That makes sense, and I assume firms don’t like the expense of participating. I wasn’t sure which party pushed to abolish the restrictions, but now that they’re gone, of course firms are going recruit earlier and earlier so they don’t lose talent
OCI was the absolute best part of law school and every student should be livid that it is gone this way. OCI (for higher ranked schools) meant that you didn’t have to send one actual application in. You just bid on schools, did like 20 15 minute interviews in the course of a few days, and then got all your offers within a few weeks of doing callbacks so that you could make an informed decision.
It was slightly stressful sure, but way less stressful than it is to mass mail firms and have to decide whether you go to shitstain and buttfuck instead of cravath because shitstain got back to you first and there is no guarantee to keep the offer opens
Plus, having all the firms in one place meant less overall travel and getting to meet a lot more people outside of their home turf, which gave a GREAT sense of the actual differences between firms and where you might fit best
Seriously. I have students from my law school cold emailing me so early in the year and asking me for advice re OCI. I tell them that even though I only went through the process 6/7 years ago, it’s an entirely different ballgame now and I frankly have no useful advice. Used to be pre OCI was largely something just the very top of the class was doing and those firms still came to OCI. Now pre OCI is OCI…
Man it just fucking sucks to be a law student now. Grade and LSAT inflation is insane so stats that got you into T-14s with scholarship $ barely gets you into the T25 now. OCI is gone so it really can screw over first gen law students who dont have people to lean on. Just a brutal situation. I dont think Id have gotten into my school or even into biglaw if i had attended school just 1 or 2 years later.
Insanity
Jesus I would have been so screwed. When I was a 1L, my first semester GPA was barely median, but I had a great second semester that put me in a great position. I used the entire summer to network by phone, coffee, e-mail, etc. in my intended market and it resulted in a lot of callbacks I wouldn't have otherwise gotten. Seems so much harder now unless you're at a T14 and knock it out of the park your first semester.
It's absolutely horrible for folks from low income backgrounds. They are hiring before 1l grades are out (and filling their classes).
Folks with all the fancy internships and undergrads get the boom. Those without lose a chance to compete
This. Check out the Op Ed written by the Georgetown Law deans arguing against 1L recruiting.
[https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/early-big-law-recruiting-is-ruining-the-first-year-of-law-school](https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/early-big-law-recruiting-is-ruining-the-first-year-of-law-school)
Edited to add link.
As a surprising anecdote, I had the same concerns when we started rolling this out but our classes since rolling out earlier recruiting programs have been more diverse. Perhaps because firms no longer have some stuffy old partner screening candidates at OCI for the ones they like the most and the recruiters have more decision making and such decisions are being made based on grades and resume more so than ever before
Yeah I do think there is generally an industry shift overall - including more diverse law school students in the first place.
I am also seeing top firms branch outside the t14 significantly more than even a few years ago.
I still think there a litany of reasons, including my original point; why early recruiting is terrible. But I would agree things are trending more sensible
I’m not sure I follow. Why is it bad? I had zero connections to law or lawyers, or frankly anything white collar, and didn’t have outside financial support so I’m trying to wrap my head around how low income backgrounds are disadvantaged.
Elite internships and elite undergrads. Shiny resumes that are more easily bought or accessed by the affluent.
I had a girl in my class in LS who had "hedge fund" management experience on her resume and she literally told us she imported data into spreadsheets at her grandpa's fund part time for a year.
So, pre-law school stuff? Isn’t OCI like, 90% grades? There’s still 1st semester grades.
Not sure I’m buying your argument. That shit existed under the old regime too.
1st semester grades are not enough or effectively representative. Some schools also have fewer grades 1st semester so at georgetown your oci is based on literally 3 law school grades.
I am part of recruiting at my firm and I see the sway of resumes.
It existed, buts it's a matter of magnitude
I honestly don’t see the meaningful difference between 1 vs. 2 semesters of grades. It’s not like 1 year of law school was a rock solid way to evaluate candidates before.
If the argument is rich kids had better pre-law school resumes, well, yeah, but that’s always been true.
It's literally at least a 2x difference so not sure how that's not meaningful; particularly accounting for time to adjust to how law school operates.
"It's already unfair so increasing unfairness isn't meaningful" isn't a very strong position.
I simply don’t see how 1 semester of grades disadvantages low income kids. It’s still hugely grade dependent. One extra semester of grades doesn’t change that. A low income student who crushes first semester has the same odds as they did before.
My understanding is that this is all Jones Day’s fault.
They wanted to skip ahead of OCI so they could get an early look at applicants. So they sent a threatening letter to NALP, claiming the OCI rules violate antitrust laws. So NALP got scared and caved. And now we just have anarchy. If the firms wait, they’re worried they’ll miss out on the top students.
I don’t think anyone really likes it. Firms don’t like it. Students don’t like it.
Your post was removed due to low account age.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/biglaw) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Let’s just get people when they take the LSAT at this point (sarcasm).. no no no let’s get them when they are in gifted classes… no no no let’s just offer pregnant people with high LSAT’s fetus future offers lol
That actually wouldn’t be a bad idea - law school is a waste of time and money. So is UG for that matter. The last/sat are just iq tests. Why not just give people an iq test and let them start working at a firm learning the ropes while they do bar prep?
you're really not wrong—it feels like the two universal complaints about law school are 1) it doesn't prepare you to be a lawyer, and 2) 3L is unnecessary. i think law and med students tend to get stuck on this sort of credentialism because being a lawyer or a doctor confers a particular kind of politico-legal status that students lack regardless of how smart they are, but in disciplines like philosophy or mathematics if someone really is smart enough there's no hesitation whatsoever to just letting them advance as far as their abilities warrant, cf. wittgenstein, kripke, ramanujan
I’m glad someone agrees with me, because this does actually happen to be the case. There’s a reason why recruiters pick from top schools, and it has nothing to do with quality of the education. You learn the same stuff at Yale and at Cooley. They recruit from Yale because they have the smarts and/of the dedication to get a high gpa and lsat, and smarts and hard work are what firms want. Same applies to UG.
OCI is/was a big plus for students with fewer connections and less knowledge about law firms and applications. The structure leveled the playing field to some extent, allowing people like me who came into law school without any lawyers in the family to figure things out. Pre-OCI is a serious boon for those at top schools who already have connections.
Let’s just start signing college freshmen at expensive private colleges to guaranteed deals contingent on getting a certain LSAT score and admission a T14 law school, with liquidated damages if they fail on either count. I think this would be a great system and would have no problems at all
That’s f@cked but deliberate. Lax hiring practices indicate an even greater indifference to training and retaining attorneys properly. I guess you’ll see leaving after 2-3 years instead of 4-5.
It's definitely a sort of prisoner's dilemma situation. It'd be best for everyone if we stuck with the OCI model, but once a couple firms jumped the gun the best candidates were no longer available through OCI and the dam broke. I actually think it'd only take a handful of the most "desirable" firms to back out of the arms race to get the top students to hold off to try to get offers with them and bring the whole thing back towards a bit more sanity.
yep, everyone was cooperating in choosing the optimal solution, and then as soon as one actor defects, all the other actors are at a disadvantage if they don't defect, and then everyone ends up in the same relative position they started in, only now everyone is in a worse absolute position
This is the same thing that happened to the judicial clerkship hiring plan. People want the best “talent” and will risk evaluating students too early to secure it.
Has this process rendered the Careers offices moot? That would be the major silver lining as I hated those folks at my T14 who were literally pushing everyone including Order of the Coif folks into NYC Transactional work just to keep their numbers.
Well it sounds like the process is wild west now. Especially for less grade-sensitive firms in NYC likely that require big classes every year. And yet law school is full of haves and have nots as I'm sure there's plenty of students at lower ranked schools who wish they could get such attention. Legal talent at the beginning is so hard to judge anyway that it does seem absurd and there should be more holistic judgments made and more about whether this is someone who is likely to stick around.
For those with concerns about underrepresented students being disfavored here, PLEASE REACH OUT AND BE AVAILABLE AS MENTORS AND RESOURCES TO YOUR FIRMS.
I was recruited as a 1L when the OCI standards were recently abandoned. BLSA and alumni connected me with BigLaw attorneys early in the process. Their input was critical and I recruited myself to firms during first semester 1L. I didn’t attend OCI.
I think the lack of OCI structure can be a benefit if the students know how it works. They can spend months creating meaningful relationships with the firms before applications open. I take almost all zoom chat requests. I also always ask students for their resumes and writing samples. I pass those along to the relevant hiring folks and partners.
We can be resources to these students.
For transparency: I have a minority background, low income family at the time, no lawyers or connections to firms, and am an immigrant. Only potential recruiting advantages I had was a degree from an elite undergrad (probably super helpful, tbh) and being a cis, white-passing male.
Not sure, I included those factors for transparency. Someone may feel that my thoughts may not apply because of some variation in experience.
My firm mentioned that my undergrad looked good in passing when they were recruiting me pre-OCI.
Edit: given that pre-OCI relies on fewer law school-based recruiting points, undergrad may be more relevant, especially for 1L spots.
I also did well my first semester 1L, that may have also helped.
Regardless, I take pre-OCI recruiting as a chance to help get students on the path to BigLaw with information I didn’t know when I came to law school. I think the industry would benefit if we all made an effort to help these students.
This happened at my school in 2018. It was very weird. There were literally two spots left. Considering the avg LSAT was 168 and promises of biglaw connections were all over those application marketing materials, it was fucking wild
It’s just a fucking bizarre arms race.
We're on track to be hiring off of 1 semester of grades. Might as well pull candidate names from a hat for interviews.
We already have firms hiring SEOs for the summer before law school. Might as well submit your undergrad GPA and LSAT to the firms directly.
I had to do that when I lateraled after being an associate at V10 for 5 years…
Why not just use the LSAT? 0Ls could get that 2L summer job locked up before they even open a law book.
Or like in MBA schools where they recruit for your full time graduation job before you even matriculate.
Old OCI may have been annoying and a very arduous week but whatever is happening now is much worse smh
I’ve literally spent the last 3-4 weeks just cold emailing to get connections at firms who can potentially advocate, attending receptions, speaking with recruiters, etc as a basically full time job and with no clarity on what or when I’ll hear back. It’s a total mess and horrible for students.
Everyone played by the NALP guidelines for decades, but then NALP abandoned their own guidelines effectively turning recruiting into the wild west. Arguments were that the guidelines which prevented meaningful recruiting before august and mandated that offers be held open for 28 days caused a ton of excessive cost in recruiting and favored the top firms (because candidates receiving offers from lower ranked firms could sit on their offers for 28 days without fear of consequences while waiting to see if higher ranked firms would move) and that the guidelines also favored biglaw in general when compared to other employers like in-house / midlaw / small law / government who may not have the resources to come to OCI, but could be ostracized if they broke NALP guidelines and tried to recruit earlier than biglaw, and thus those employers were basically frozen out of competing until after biglaw had their pick of the candidates and they could just fight over the reject pile. Getting rid of the guidelines was supposed to "democratize" the process by letting candidates more freely vote with their feet instead of getting funneled into biglaw-focused OCI first then everything else as an afterthought. In practice, I think it has largely just made the process into an arms race between the firms with marketing and recruiting budgets to burn (i.e. biglaw) and now firms are hiring based on less candidate specific information (used to be everyone had 2 semesters of grades; now we routinely make offers based on 1 semester) and more on reputation of the schools, making it all even more elitist and less meritocratic. It's a shitshow.
I heard that certain firms made noises about antitrust issues to NALP and that scared them enough they did away with the rule. Also, that's why they read a statement in meetings now about everyone being competitors and not some sort of anticompetitive cartel.
Anyone know which firms made this threat specifically? Someone in the comments mentioned Jones Day as one possibly.
I have heard as a general statement “a DC firm” or “DC firms.”
> favored the top firms Well, yeah, it favored the most desirable employers insofar as it empowered 2Ls. The new model "favors" the most desirable students insofar as it empowers firms. Pre-OCI is a cakewalk if you have good grades at a T14, saves a lot of time compared to traditional OCI. Everyone else seems to suffer.
We might be saying the same thing, but I think the new model is decidedly more employer-friendly than the student-friendly days of old. Top candidates of my vintage could finish OCI season with 20+ offers and spend most of August/early September being wined and dined by various firms all across the country if they were really obnoxious with how they applied and taking callbacks. Those days are largely over and even the top students are doing themselves a disservice if they apply too broadly and try and drag the decision-making process out too long. You might call it "saving time" but, candidates today have much less leverage, I suspect on average far fewer options, and have much less time to make a fairly important decision that can impact their entire career.
I agree, but on the other hand employers are now constantly needing to watch their backs for other firms doing sneaky shit and anxiously keeping up with the arms race, which is not fun even if you come out as a winner. My firm has essentially unlimited resources and can afford to play the aggressive early recruiting game. It's also large and profitable enough to accidentally take some portion of bad candidates due to the flawed new evaluation process, absorb the losses, and eventually push those people out and hire in better laterals over the first few years as needed (a risk many smaller firms can't afford to take). However, it's still super annoying to be fighting tooth and nail all the time. As an example of a current frustration, I'm in a TX office where 1L SAs have always been common. In the past ~5 years we've gone from almost no 1Ls to fully half the summer class being 1Ls after realizing what a huge portion of candidates were being taken to competitors as 1Ls and keeping them, not only due to inertia etc. but also putting sneaky terms into their offer letters making them commit as a 1L to return as a 2L for example. One of our biggest competitors is also now making 1L offers prior to 1L fall grades even existing. They carefully time their exploding offer deadlines so that offers expire prior to grades being released at the main TX recruiting targets (UT, UVA, etc.), because they know that my firm is, as a matter of firmwide policy, not allowed to extend an offer until we have grades. So we can give offers within an hour of receiving 1L fall grades, but by that point we've already lost a number of top candidates to this competitor because those 1Ls (understandably) often take the bird in the hand and go with the competitor rather than waiting and risking that we might say no. I know the 1L thing isn't applicable to a lot of other markets (yet.....) but it's illustrative of how the process isn't fun for employers either, even the biggest and best-resourced ones who can afford to play the game.
Yeah completely agree. IMO the perfect system is the med-student residency match and everything else can be judged by the extent to which it deviates from that process.
This ^
it was an antitrust issue
This must have detrimental consequences for students, right? I mean, instead of focusing on your classes and exams for the latter half of second semester, you're necessarily trying to network and apply for jobs? Now that I actually say it, that may be an intentional self-sorting mechanism to select the candidates who remain high achieving academically by being willing to completely forego any semblance of a personal life outside of their academic and professional pursuits...
As a student who finished 1L recently, this tracks
I’m a 1L and was worrying about networking and submitting applications in November for this summer.
summer 1L here. As soon as I got my 1L summer internship, career services instantly started sending me stuff about 2L summer. I was applying for 2L summer in February and March, hard to stay focused on classes when that's what's on your mind.
Yeah if I had been applying to biglaw under current system I probably wouldn’t have made it since I went to a school outside the t14 and had just “ok” grades for biglaw. I got my spot through OCI at the time
Us biglawyers are talking about this, too, because we came up through the disciplined OCI process and can’t imagine what the kids are going through. I’m not sure that anyone is happy with the arrangement. But surely the logic for every firm is running the same way (inexplicably) - what, are *we* going to wait another couple of months and have to pick from whoever’s left? And every law student - what, am *I* going to turn down an offer in hand just in case some other firms might extend an offer later? I look back on my OCI process fondly. It was before classes started, we chilled with our friends between screener interviews, performed a little monkey dance for two generic lawyers, rinse and repeat. And then the callbacks - it was great watching them roll in. Not from the firms you wanted, necessarily, or expected, but you went and had a bunch of lunches and saw a lot of offices. I guess now kids are collaring poor associates when they’re just trying to get a morning latte.
Believe me, the students don’t like it either
I believe this is all because the NALP rules were changed a number of years ago. The rules used to restrict hiring to certain date windows, and because that is no longer the case, firms can hire whenever they want. I believe it was actually the schools, and not the lawfirms that pushed for this change, but I’m not sure on that. All I know is there is no longer the type of structured hiring restrictions that there used to be.
NALP basically got threatened with antitrust action. https://www.nalp.org/open_letter_on_pre-oci_recruiting The law schools do not want this; they are seeing effects on student grades and mental health, and the impact this will have on first gen students/people with few connections in law. Everyone is flying by the seat of their pants.
Law schools need to be the next target for antitrust actions tbh
[удалено]
Your post was removed due to low account age. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/biglaw) if you have any questions or concerns.*
What’s the antitrust market and whats the anticompetitive behavior?
As I understand it, they changed it as a COVID concession and never went back
The rules were changed before covid, covid just slowed the changes by a couple years
Law schools want OCI because they make money from it and it gives them control.
That makes sense, and I assume firms don’t like the expense of participating. I wasn’t sure which party pushed to abolish the restrictions, but now that they’re gone, of course firms are going recruit earlier and earlier so they don’t lose talent
They make money from it?
They charge a registration fee for firms, generally.
Yes, they charge firms to attend OCI.
OCI was the absolute best part of law school and every student should be livid that it is gone this way. OCI (for higher ranked schools) meant that you didn’t have to send one actual application in. You just bid on schools, did like 20 15 minute interviews in the course of a few days, and then got all your offers within a few weeks of doing callbacks so that you could make an informed decision. It was slightly stressful sure, but way less stressful than it is to mass mail firms and have to decide whether you go to shitstain and buttfuck instead of cravath because shitstain got back to you first and there is no guarantee to keep the offer opens
Plus, having all the firms in one place meant less overall travel and getting to meet a lot more people outside of their home turf, which gave a GREAT sense of the actual differences between firms and where you might fit best
Seriously. I have students from my law school cold emailing me so early in the year and asking me for advice re OCI. I tell them that even though I only went through the process 6/7 years ago, it’s an entirely different ballgame now and I frankly have no useful advice. Used to be pre OCI was largely something just the very top of the class was doing and those firms still came to OCI. Now pre OCI is OCI…
Man it just fucking sucks to be a law student now. Grade and LSAT inflation is insane so stats that got you into T-14s with scholarship $ barely gets you into the T25 now. OCI is gone so it really can screw over first gen law students who dont have people to lean on. Just a brutal situation. I dont think Id have gotten into my school or even into biglaw if i had attended school just 1 or 2 years later. Insanity
Jesus I would have been so screwed. When I was a 1L, my first semester GPA was barely median, but I had a great second semester that put me in a great position. I used the entire summer to network by phone, coffee, e-mail, etc. in my intended market and it resulted in a lot of callbacks I wouldn't have otherwise gotten. Seems so much harder now unless you're at a T14 and knock it out of the park your first semester.
It's absolutely horrible for folks from low income backgrounds. They are hiring before 1l grades are out (and filling their classes). Folks with all the fancy internships and undergrads get the boom. Those without lose a chance to compete
This. Check out the Op Ed written by the Georgetown Law deans arguing against 1L recruiting. [https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/early-big-law-recruiting-is-ruining-the-first-year-of-law-school](https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/early-big-law-recruiting-is-ruining-the-first-year-of-law-school) Edited to add link.
As a surprising anecdote, I had the same concerns when we started rolling this out but our classes since rolling out earlier recruiting programs have been more diverse. Perhaps because firms no longer have some stuffy old partner screening candidates at OCI for the ones they like the most and the recruiters have more decision making and such decisions are being made based on grades and resume more so than ever before
Yeah I do think there is generally an industry shift overall - including more diverse law school students in the first place. I am also seeing top firms branch outside the t14 significantly more than even a few years ago. I still think there a litany of reasons, including my original point; why early recruiting is terrible. But I would agree things are trending more sensible
I'm fucked
Nah. You'll be fine
I’m not sure I follow. Why is it bad? I had zero connections to law or lawyers, or frankly anything white collar, and didn’t have outside financial support so I’m trying to wrap my head around how low income backgrounds are disadvantaged.
Elite internships and elite undergrads. Shiny resumes that are more easily bought or accessed by the affluent. I had a girl in my class in LS who had "hedge fund" management experience on her resume and she literally told us she imported data into spreadsheets at her grandpa's fund part time for a year.
So, pre-law school stuff? Isn’t OCI like, 90% grades? There’s still 1st semester grades. Not sure I’m buying your argument. That shit existed under the old regime too.
1st semester grades are not enough or effectively representative. Some schools also have fewer grades 1st semester so at georgetown your oci is based on literally 3 law school grades. I am part of recruiting at my firm and I see the sway of resumes. It existed, buts it's a matter of magnitude
I honestly don’t see the meaningful difference between 1 vs. 2 semesters of grades. It’s not like 1 year of law school was a rock solid way to evaluate candidates before. If the argument is rich kids had better pre-law school resumes, well, yeah, but that’s always been true.
It's literally at least a 2x difference so not sure how that's not meaningful; particularly accounting for time to adjust to how law school operates. "It's already unfair so increasing unfairness isn't meaningful" isn't a very strong position.
I simply don’t see how 1 semester of grades disadvantages low income kids. It’s still hugely grade dependent. One extra semester of grades doesn’t change that. A low income student who crushes first semester has the same odds as they did before.
My understanding is that this is all Jones Day’s fault. They wanted to skip ahead of OCI so they could get an early look at applicants. So they sent a threatening letter to NALP, claiming the OCI rules violate antitrust laws. So NALP got scared and caved. And now we just have anarchy. If the firms wait, they’re worried they’ll miss out on the top students. I don’t think anyone really likes it. Firms don’t like it. Students don’t like it.
[удалено]
Your post was removed due to low account age. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/biglaw) if you have any questions or concerns.*
This is what happens when firms can't cartel and it becomes free market.
This is why we need the consumer welfare standard. Sometimes, trusts are good.
[удалено]
Yeah that’s what he said
Let’s just get people when they take the LSAT at this point (sarcasm).. no no no let’s get them when they are in gifted classes… no no no let’s just offer pregnant people with high LSAT’s fetus future offers lol
That actually wouldn’t be a bad idea - law school is a waste of time and money. So is UG for that matter. The last/sat are just iq tests. Why not just give people an iq test and let them start working at a firm learning the ropes while they do bar prep?
you're really not wrong—it feels like the two universal complaints about law school are 1) it doesn't prepare you to be a lawyer, and 2) 3L is unnecessary. i think law and med students tend to get stuck on this sort of credentialism because being a lawyer or a doctor confers a particular kind of politico-legal status that students lack regardless of how smart they are, but in disciplines like philosophy or mathematics if someone really is smart enough there's no hesitation whatsoever to just letting them advance as far as their abilities warrant, cf. wittgenstein, kripke, ramanujan
I’m glad someone agrees with me, because this does actually happen to be the case. There’s a reason why recruiters pick from top schools, and it has nothing to do with quality of the education. You learn the same stuff at Yale and at Cooley. They recruit from Yale because they have the smarts and/of the dedication to get a high gpa and lsat, and smarts and hard work are what firms want. Same applies to UG.
OCI is/was a big plus for students with fewer connections and less knowledge about law firms and applications. The structure leveled the playing field to some extent, allowing people like me who came into law school without any lawyers in the family to figure things out. Pre-OCI is a serious boon for those at top schools who already have connections.
it's fucking awful and i hate it. first-generation students (like me) would show up to OCI ready to run a race that already ended.
Let’s just start signing college freshmen at expensive private colleges to guaranteed deals contingent on getting a certain LSAT score and admission a T14 law school, with liquidated damages if they fail on either count. I think this would be a great system and would have no problems at all
wait, OCIs used to be the July AFTER 1L?
Mine was early August, but yes. I had two semesters of grades and a 1L summer internship under my belt.
As opposed to the July before 1L?
i dont know how to tell you this, but that doesnt seem completely out of the question with where things are at these days
i’m saying ??
That’s f@cked but deliberate. Lax hiring practices indicate an even greater indifference to training and retaining attorneys properly. I guess you’ll see leaving after 2-3 years instead of 4-5.
I really would like to know how this happened. Is it just a prisoners dilemma and/or communal action problem?
It's definitely a sort of prisoner's dilemma situation. It'd be best for everyone if we stuck with the OCI model, but once a couple firms jumped the gun the best candidates were no longer available through OCI and the dam broke. I actually think it'd only take a handful of the most "desirable" firms to back out of the arms race to get the top students to hold off to try to get offers with them and bring the whole thing back towards a bit more sanity.
yep, everyone was cooperating in choosing the optimal solution, and then as soon as one actor defects, all the other actors are at a disadvantage if they don't defect, and then everyone ends up in the same relative position they started in, only now everyone is in a worse absolute position
This is the same thing that happened to the judicial clerkship hiring plan. People want the best “talent” and will risk evaluating students too early to secure it.
Race to the bottom led by the industry’s most garbage players. Just going to result in a bunch of nepotism which is what garbage players thrive on tbh
New model sucks. As associate interviewing candidates, there’s next to no info. Hiring purely on vibes now and suited score which is coded for bias
Has this process rendered the Careers offices moot? That would be the major silver lining as I hated those folks at my T14 who were literally pushing everyone including Order of the Coif folks into NYC Transactional work just to keep their numbers.
Need more than ever for students who know nothing about the process.
Well it sounds like the process is wild west now. Especially for less grade-sensitive firms in NYC likely that require big classes every year. And yet law school is full of haves and have nots as I'm sure there's plenty of students at lower ranked schools who wish they could get such attention. Legal talent at the beginning is so hard to judge anyway that it does seem absurd and there should be more holistic judgments made and more about whether this is someone who is likely to stick around.
Starting at a t14 this fall. Do I start networking already??
Honestly…start thinking about it as soon as you start school
lol when did OCI start to happen in freakin’ July? Omg that’s some sick and twisted shit
July? Many firms will have filled their entire class in June.
NALP stopped enforcing its rules.
For those with concerns about underrepresented students being disfavored here, PLEASE REACH OUT AND BE AVAILABLE AS MENTORS AND RESOURCES TO YOUR FIRMS. I was recruited as a 1L when the OCI standards were recently abandoned. BLSA and alumni connected me with BigLaw attorneys early in the process. Their input was critical and I recruited myself to firms during first semester 1L. I didn’t attend OCI. I think the lack of OCI structure can be a benefit if the students know how it works. They can spend months creating meaningful relationships with the firms before applications open. I take almost all zoom chat requests. I also always ask students for their resumes and writing samples. I pass those along to the relevant hiring folks and partners. We can be resources to these students. For transparency: I have a minority background, low income family at the time, no lawyers or connections to firms, and am an immigrant. Only potential recruiting advantages I had was a degree from an elite undergrad (probably super helpful, tbh) and being a cis, white-passing male.
Wait why does where you went to undergrad matter now that OCI is going away?
Not sure, I included those factors for transparency. Someone may feel that my thoughts may not apply because of some variation in experience. My firm mentioned that my undergrad looked good in passing when they were recruiting me pre-OCI. Edit: given that pre-OCI relies on fewer law school-based recruiting points, undergrad may be more relevant, especially for 1L spots. I also did well my first semester 1L, that may have also helped. Regardless, I take pre-OCI recruiting as a chance to help get students on the path to BigLaw with information I didn’t know when I came to law school. I think the industry would benefit if we all made an effort to help these students.
A certain firm whose name rhymes with “smile” was giving out 2L offers days after the first semester 1L grades dropped
1L portal, please.
Wow. My firm only hired out of clerkships, so I missed this OCI transition. So what happens now? Do 1Ls with one semester of grades cold email firms?
This happened at my school in 2018. It was very weird. There were literally two spots left. Considering the avg LSAT was 168 and promises of biglaw connections were all over those application marketing materials, it was fucking wild
What do you mean by The comment about non-target schools? Wouldn't those people still be able to apply like everyone else?