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[Monochromatic Oeuvre]

I get that, but I think firms should be committed to training people for years. When a firm gives up on that commitment ten weeks in, I tend to believe it's often the firm not even wanting to take the risk, rather than the summer being hopeless. But of course, each case is unique.

This would make sense if there was any way to tell that someone would be even minimally competent through the legal hiring process.

That isn't true, though.

Maybe not. I don't know. Determining whether someone is hopeless is usually an individual judgment call. And sure, every firm has pulled that trigger--never heard of one who hasn't. But like you said, some firms give their summers the benefit of the doubt, and some have it built into their business model to toss a summer on the street at the first sign of trouble. I think people in public forums should be encouraging the former and discouraging the latter.

[TLSModBot]

Smaug is right. It's a fucked up legal hiring system, and it really sucks that students have to basically commit to a firm two years in advance when the firm has no such obligation, but hey! Welcome to modern corporate America!

Some no-offers are earned. Some are DEFINITELY not. Outing firms and trying to 'collect (anec)data' ITT is not going to work or be helpful. Firms are trying to find people with very minimal data (a resume, transcript, and a couple brief interviews isn't going to tell you if the person is definitely competent to be a lawyer).

I guess the worry is that some firms take in more summers than they ever intend to offer so that they can ensure they get a sufficient number of useful people? That would be a shady as shit practice if they are guaranteeing that some will get no-offered. If there are places that do that consistently (I have no idea), then people should be forewarned of these firms so they can choose intelligently. But a couple no-offers here and there is a different matter entirely, especially when it is traditionally a 100% offer place that probably would've offered everybody if they really felt the whole class was associate material.

[MCFC]

Repeatedly refuses to do work? You gotta be kidding me

People are no-offered all the time for fucking up assignments in...basically exactly the way you would expect of someone who hasn't practiced law before. Not going to endorse ruining people's careers over that.

You don't really think fucking up is the same as just flat out not even trying do you?

...I thought that was exactly the distinction I was drawing? I'm confused now.

I don't know, I read your initial refuses to do the work point as, "is assigned project, decides not to do it". Which seems different?

[skers]

I mean, I get the point that no offers can reall ruin a person's career, but firms aren't really doing these things for charity. If you have a small class and have a couple of complete screwups, that's really bad for the firm once they start for real.

Some no offers are pretextual for economic reasons, which is bad, but people who get no offered for poor work product or being weird are usually so bad it's hard to argue for them and if they got no offered at one firm, there's a good chance they would've been no offered elsewhere.

I get that, but I think firms should be committed to training people for years. When a firm gives up on that commitment ten weeks in, I tend to believe it's often the firm not even wanting to take the risk, rather than the summer being hopeless. But of course, each case is unique.

It is a chance at a job paying 6 figures based on the school name on a diploma and not being complete social diarrhea in a couple 20 minute interviews. The whole auto-offer practice comes a lot more from established procedure in the business, whereas in b-school internships there isn't nearly the same level of expectation.

[DJ JD]

Guessing you only heard one side. Having heard from no-offered people and now from my firm about no-offered people, the stories wind up being vastly different. I tend to believe the rules are a lot different for that firm VIPs like and those they don't.

IMO, a no-offer is legitimate only if (1) a person repeatedly refuses to do the work assigned to them, even after notice that that refusal puts their offer in jeopardy, or (2) the person willfully does something so egregious as to constitute a serious professional liability, and the person is likely to do something similar again. Anything else, I defer to the axioms that (a) it's a firm's job to train its associates to its standard, and (b) everyone makes mistakes.

Oh lord, it's like first year crim-law all over again.

[Monochromatic Oeuvre]

Repeatedly refuses to do work? You gotta be kidding me

People are no-offered all the time for fucking up assignments in...basically exactly the way you would expect of someone who hasn't practiced law before. Not going to endorse ruining people's careers over that.

You don't really think fucking up is the same as just flat out not even trying do you?

...I thought that was exactly the distinction I was drawing? I'm confused now.

I don't know, I read your initial refuses to do the work point as, "is assigned project, decides not to do it". Which seems different?

To clarify my opinion:

Not doing the work = Good reason to no-offer
Fucking up assignment = Not a good reason to no-offer (necessarily)

[smaug]

To address both Capitol and Mono at once:

@Capitol, yeah there are firms that build it into their hiring practice. It's more common in some geographic areas than others. It's kinda messed up, but they're also firms that are generally not the first choice for people anyway. A 60% shot at an offer is a heck of a lot better than no shot at an offer. I tried to list some firms that have been rumored to have that model above: K&L Gates, Curtiss, Greenberg—I'm sure there are more but I don't think current summers are the best people to ask for that data anyway.

So, even if the goal is to winnow out the firms that consistently hire too large of summer classes, I don't think you're going to find them through scattershot anecdotes.

[Monochromatic Oeuvre]

I get that, but I think firms should be committed to training people for years. When a firm gives up on that commitment ten weeks in, I tend to believe it's often the firm not even wanting to take the risk, rather than the summer being hopeless. But of course, each case is unique.

It is a chance at a job paying 6 figures based on the school name on a diploma and not being complete social diarrhea in a couple 20 minute interviews. The whole auto-offer practice comes a lot more from established procedure in the business, whereas in b-school internships there isn't nearly the same level of expectation.

As much as I don't like saying this to discourage no-offered people, it's often a kiss of death in this profession. It's different from being fired in other jobs in that it's so difficult to recover. I think that difficulty should come with an extreme hesitancy by firms to put anyone in that position. Firms may not see it that way, of course, but it would be better if people knew who did.

[smaug]

(stigmatizes being no-offered)
(chastises those who make economic decisions as being the REAL stigmatizers)

[A. Nony Mouse]

Why should a firm be committed to training someone for years?

[Anonymous User]

Heard from a friend that Skadden no-offered three summers in New York. He's my only source. If someone else at Skadden could verify this, that'd be great.

Pretty sure it was 2, and both were for legitimate reasons. If you're a normal, semi-responsible person, you have nothing to worry about.

It was 3 no-offers in NY. 2 2Ls and a 1L. From what I heard, the 2L behavior was extraordinarily terrible and worth the exception from the usual 100% offer rate.

What was the story behind the 1L or is there just no visibility?

[Monochromatic Oeuvre]

(stigmatizes being no-offered)
(chastises those who make economic decisions as being the REAL stigmatizers)

I mean, sure it would lessen the stigma if we all said "being no-offered is NBD and won't hurt your career," but it's not like it would help no-offered people actually get jobs.

[El Pollito]

Heard from a friend that Skadden no-offered three summers in New York. He's my only source. If someone else at Skadden could verify this, that'd be great.

Pretty sure it was 2, and both were for legitimate reasons. If you're a normal, semi-responsible person, you have nothing to worry about.

It was 3 no-offers in NY. 2 2Ls and a 1L. From what I heard, the 2L behavior was extraordinarily terrible and worth the exception from the usual 100% offer rate.

What was the story behind the 1L or is there just no visibility?

Since when does a 1L no offer require a story? Have things changed so much in a few years that 1L no offers are now uncommon?

[smaug]

(stigmatizes being no-offered)
(chastises those who make economic decisions as being the REAL stigmatizers)

I mean, sure it would lessen the stigma if we all said "being no-offered is NBD and won't hurt your career," but it's not like it would help no-offered people actually get jobs.

From the anecdotes I'm aware, of cold/no offered people generally land on their feet. Not always, but often.

Hard to know what would have happened otherwise. I don't think their career at the firm would have been sunshine and rainbows if the big mean partners didn't no offer them, though.

[Anonymous User]

...

[skers]

I get that, but I think firms should be committed to training people for years. When a firm gives up on that commitment ten weeks in, I tend to believe it's often the firm not even wanting to take the risk, rather than the summer being hopeless. But of course, each case is unique.

It is a chance at a job paying 6 figures based on the school name on a diploma and not being complete social diarrhea in a couple 20 minute interviews. The whole auto-offer practice comes a lot more from established procedure in the business, whereas in b-school internships there isn't nearly the same level of expectation.

As much as I don't like saying this to discourage no-offered people, it's often a kiss of death in this profession. It's different from being fired in other jobs in that it's so difficult to recover. I think that difficulty should come with an extreme hesitancy by firms to put anyone in that position. Firms may not see it that way, of course, but it would be better if people knew who did.

Just b/c people nodded and smiled inoffensively while their interviewers entertained w/e bullshit story about how they always wanted to be a lawyer and couldn't dream of doing other than enjoy bidding Delaware doesn't entitle you to dick and Idk why it's the law firm's responsibility for someone else's career w/ hiring in those circumstances. The stigma comes more from rarity than anything else most likely

Maybe it's just survivorship bias or stockholm syndrome, and I'm sure there are definitely cases where it's not deserved, but there's probably something to the DF school of thought that if you can't survive a 10 week beauty contest that might be more on you.

[Desert Fox]

[UVAIce]

I think there is a marked difference between firms that routinely offer 90%-100% of their summer associates offers and those that regularly cull 30%-50% of the summer class. In the former group there is probably some legitimate reason why the person was hit with the hammer. But, there is a serious opportunity cost for folks that go to the latter, and not everyone knows that certain firms are that way. For example, I had a 1L SA and was told to my face that the assumption was everyone received an offer (this was at a fairly good sized firm in a minor market). Summer classes were normally around 3-4 2Ls and 1-3 1Ls. But come to find out they routinely no offered a 1L or a 2L every year. One of the 1Ls with me was no offered and was law review at HYS. The guy was awesome, but they just figured he wasn't going to come back and hammered him for a fairly BS reason. Now, given his lot in life he received a great 2L SA and is going back there as we speak. But you never know what kind of opportunities were denied him because of that or how it may have made the OCI process a little more difficult.

[jbagelboy]

What is this whole debate about. Doesn't chambers provide this information? Also, law students (should) know which firms have some economic risk - the weil's and omelveny's - by following up on news in the industry (like any other professional). So I don't get it. Sure, there's extraneous stuff that those sources won't have, but lol at the idea that posters on TLS have access to that unique insight.

I think people want to out the firm because it feels good to shit on employers and this place is super gossipy, not because of any measurable information gradient.

[Anonymous User]

no weil is a disaster

Weil was 100% this year and made it clear from beginning that everyone was going to get offers.

they still did mass layoffs very recently and have had mass defections

Different anon. The "mass layoffs" we're over two years ago and I'm not sure about the "mass defections" but it would appear that people shuffle about Biglaw/leave pretty regularly.

[Anonymous User]

I don''t have any insights to share with respect to the whole offer/no-offer situation, but I recently spoke with a partner at my firm because I am still trying to decide which office I want to go to and I was worried about the cost of living in NY at $160k with student debt. The partner, who works at the NY office and wants me to come there instead of the secondary-market office I am also considering, told me that $160k is the "old" base salary and that I will be "pleasantly surprised" to hear what the firm's" new" base salary will be in several months. I asked if that meant that the firm's base salary was moving to $190k and she said something along the lines of "I can't officially tell you yet, but let's just say the number you just stated could very easily be what your starting salary is in a year from now."

[Anonymous User]

NYC TO 190!!!!!!!!!!!!

[5ky]

I don''t have any insights to share with respect to the whole offer/no-offer situation, but I recently spoke with a partner at my firm because I am still trying to decide which office I want to go to and I was worried about the cost of living in NY at $160k with student debt. The partner, who works at the NY office and wants me to come there instead of the secondary-market office I am also considering, told me that $160k is the "old" base salary and that I will be "pleasantly surprised" to hear what the firm's" new" base salary will be in several months. I asked if that meant that the firm's base salary was moving to $190k and she said something along the lines of "I can't officially tell you yet, but let's just say the number you just stated could very easily be what your starting salary is in a year from now."

lolk. did she also tell you that associates almost never work on the weekends too?

[wiz]

I don''t have any insights to share with respect to the whole offer/no-offer situation, but I recently spoke with a partner at my firm because I am still trying to decide which office I want to go to and I was worried about the cost of living in NY at $160k with student debt. The partner, who works at the NY office and wants me to come there instead of the secondary-market office I am also considering, told me that $160k is the "old" base salary and that I will be "pleasantly surprised" to hear what the firm's" new" base salary will be in several months. I asked if that meant that the firm's base salary was moving to $190k and she said something along the lines of "I can't officially tell you yet, but let's just say the number you just stated could very easily be what your starting salary is in a year from now."

Can you cross-poast this to the thread I actually care about?

[Anonymous User]

I summered at a non-Kirkland, very high PPP office in Chicago. Chair of the firm and many lawyers basically said everything possible about salary raises except the number $190k. Many associates and partners alluded to the market moving soon and that the firm will follow.