Offer rescinded due to counter Forum

[Anonymous User]

Agree that the law student lacks commonsense & shows poor judgment. Law may not be the best career for this student.

That seems a bit harsh to me. I can imagine a KJD from a family who doesn't practice law (or business) and who went to a college/law school without proactive career services not having a good sense of the proper boundaries/approaches in law or business.

I'm not sure that I would hold the student 100% responsible (in some vague moral sense) for being eager. Ignorance of business/professional norms + eagerness + anxiety or uncertainty about getting a job seem like enough to result in that kind of message. Directing the question to the partner rather than HR, for example, is at least understandable in the case of someone who has never interacted with an HR department directly or indirectly.

Strong agree

I encourage you to reread the entire story. Based on his communication, I cannot imagine any law firm hiring this person. Planning to steal a client from another firm is unprofessional & unethical in this case.

Not anon you were replying to, but re-reading it, I missed and overlooked that angle and honestly you changed my mind. I think you're right. Of course, there are other ways to handle this as in emailing back being understanding and saying hey under no circumstances will we want you to be an undercover agent to steal a client, but I understand them just cutting this guy loose now.

[GFox345]

Agree that the law student lacks commonsense & shows poor judgment. Law may not be the best career for this student.

That seems a bit harsh to me. I can imagine a KJD from a family who doesn't practice law (or business) and who went to a college/law school without proactive career services not having a good sense of the proper boundaries/approaches in law or business.

I'm not sure that I would hold the student 100% responsible (in some vague moral sense) for being eager. Ignorance of business/professional norms + eagerness + anxiety or uncertainty about getting a job seem like enough to result in that kind of message. Directing the question to the partner rather than HR, for example, is at least understandable in the case of someone who has never interacted with an HR department directly or indirectly.

Strong agree

I encourage you to reread the entire story. Based on his communication, I cannot imagine any law firm hiring this person. Planning to steal a client from another firm is unprofessional & unethical in this case.

Not anon you were replying to, but re-reading it, I missed and overlooked that angle and honestly you changed my mind. I think you're right. Of course, there are other ways to handle this as in emailing back being understanding and saying hey under no circumstances will we want you to be an undercover agent to steal a client, but I understand them just cutting this guy loose now.

In the words of Samwell Tarly, you can't "steal" a client; they're a person, not a goat. Trying to convince a client to switch to your firm when they've expressed dissatisfaction with their current firm is neither unprofessional nor unethical. That is SUCH a bad take.

In all seriousness though, the kid was a KJD in his early 20s, has only lawyer shows as a reference point for the profession, and clearly has his heart in the right place. Granted, the kid was 100% being cringe, but this was a teachable moment where a partner could have taken 10 minutes to talk with the kid and explain why he shouldn't have said the things he said. Instead of having this short huge value-add conversion that would have been enormously beneficial to the kid, the partner chose to blow up the kid's summer. To me, this is more so a story about how savage of an environment big law is, where people would rather shitcan you and train another person than have a tough 5-minute conversation to help mentor you.

We are all this kid to some degree at some point in our careers. Let's hope we draw someone a little more compassionate to be on the receiving end.

[Anonymous User]

Agree that the law student lacks commonsense & shows poor judgment. Law may not be the best career for this student.

That seems a bit harsh to me. I can imagine a KJD from a family who doesn't practice law (or business) and who went to a college/law school without proactive career services not having a good sense of the proper boundaries/approaches in law or business.

I'm not sure that I would hold the student 100% responsible (in some vague moral sense) for being eager. Ignorance of business/professional norms + eagerness + anxiety or uncertainty about getting a job seem like enough to result in that kind of message. Directing the question to the partner rather than HR, for example, is at least understandable in the case of someone who has never interacted with an HR department directly or indirectly.

Strong agree

I encourage you to reread the entire story. Based on his communication, I cannot imagine any law firm hiring this person. Planning to steal a client from another firm is unprofessional & unethical in this case.

Not anon you were replying to, but re-reading it, I missed and overlooked that angle and honestly you changed my mind. I think you're right. Of course, there are other ways to handle this as in emailing back being understanding and saying hey under no circumstances will we want you to be an undercover agent to steal a client, but I understand them just cutting this guy loose now.

In the words of Samwell Tarly, you can't "steal" a client; they're a person, not a goat. Trying to convince a client to switch to your firm when they've expressed dissatisfaction with their current firm is neither unprofessional nor unethical. That is SUCH a bad take.

In all seriousness though, the kid was a KJD in his early 20s, has only lawyer shows as a reference point for the profession, and clearly has his heart in the right place. Granted, the kid was 100% being cringe, but this was a teachable moment where a partner could have taken 10 minutes to talk with the kid and explain why he shouldn't have said the things he said. Instead of having this short huge value-add conversion that would have been enormously beneficial to the kid, the partner chose to blow up the kid's summer. To me, this is more so a story about how savage of an environment big law is, where people would rather shitcan you and train another person than have a tough 5-minute conversation to help mentor you.

We are all this kid to some degree at some point in our careers. Let's hope we draw someone a little more compassionate to be on the receiving end.

Agreed. Having been in biglaw for 6 years, I think it's better to live on the assumption that partners don't have any compassion for their associates. All they care about is their bottom line. I have seen a colleague getting laid off after having worked so hard for several years just because the firm couldn't keep him busy for 3 months. When you make a small error or fail to keep billing many hours for a few months, they will haunt you down. All this is true at my cutthroat V20 that's been trying to be like K&E over the past few years.

[Barb1461]

Unfortunately I agree with this last response. While I just starting off having finally passed the bar, I have worked in plenty of law firms in different capacities, and sad to say, mostly they don’t give a crap about actual people working there. It’s a bottom line - how much money and how many clients have you brought it lately -mentality. Not sure if it was always that way or not.

[Anonymous User]

That seems a bit harsh to me. I can imagine a KJD from a family who doesn't practice law (or business) and who went to a college/law school without proactive career services not having a good sense of the proper boundaries/approaches in law or business.

I'm not sure that I would hold the student 100% responsible (in some vague moral sense) for being eager. Ignorance of business/professional norms + eagerness + anxiety or uncertainty about getting a job seem like enough to result in that kind of message. Directing the question to the partner rather than HR, for example, is at least understandable in the case of someone who has never interacted with an HR department directly or indirectly.

Person who wrote this post here. To clarify, I was not opining on how the firm responded or should have responded. I was just suggesting that viewing the kid as irredeemable is too harsh: a good chunk of people start off unprofessional because they never had a real opportunity to learn professionalism, at least in the context of law (and maybe business more generally).

[Anonymous User]

There is a certain amount of risk when issuing a counter, but I suspect an employer that will rescind over a counter is probably not the one you want to work for anyways (unless the counter was completely unreasonable).

I had an (in house) employer ghost me post-offer after I made a fairly aggressive counter offer. I wasn't willing to work for them for less than my counter offer (would have been a step down in w/l balance), so I stuck to my guns.

I don't knock them for denying the counter. Employers have budgets and my counter probably would have blown theirs for my position. However, it is frustrating that employers can't just do the right thing and simply say "no."

[Anonymous User]

When I countered for an in house job, I didn’t manage to actually increase the comp and HR was kind of snippy with me. Made me worry I was entering on the wrong foot. But when i took the job anyway and started, my actual boss said he was happy I made a counter, if for no other reason than that it would be annoying for me to be working day-to-day wondering “what if.” He said he’s figured best practice is to always push on salary until told no.

Wasn’t a novel or hot take or anything, but stuck with me for whatever reason.

[Anonymous User]

When I countered for an in house job, I didn’t manage to actually increase the comp and HR was kind of snippy with me. Made me worry I was entering on the wrong foot. But when i took the job anyway and started, my actual boss said he was happy I made a counter, if for no other reason than that it would be annoying for me to be working day-to-day wondering “what if.” He said he’s figured best practice is to always push on salary until told no.

Wasn’t a novel or hot take or anything, but stuck with me for whatever reason.

Yeah, I have pushed back on salary in each of my in-house roles. Once it worked and once it didn't. Didn't matter at all with the job. I did have recruiters for both as intermediaries. Big law got hired through OCI so obviously no negotiation. But I think when you are a lateral it is dumb not to ask for a guaranteed bonus

[Anonymous User]

When I countered for an in house job, I didn’t manage to actually increase the comp and HR was kind of snippy with me. Made me worry I was entering on the wrong foot. But when i took the job anyway and started, my actual boss said he was happy I made a counter, if for no other reason than that it would be annoying for me to be working day-to-day wondering “what if.” He said he’s figured best practice is to always push on salary until told no.

Wasn’t a novel or hot take or anything, but stuck with me for whatever reason.

Anon from above. I agree that if HR is managing the process, nobody who matters is going to know or care once you start. In my case, the counter had to go an executive committee which included my (would be) boss and the CFO (that right there was probably a bad sign). The hiring manager said they would get back to me after the committee met on a certain date and then nothing. The recruiter (who had been exclusively retained to fill the position) called a month later to apologize for the lack of response, but that's the last I ever heard from them.

[Anonymous User]

Got an offer from a firm rescinded because I asked for more time to decide. They were not my first choice and the response from the partner proved that. They went from offering me a position at the firm to telling me they thought I was laid off from my firm anyway, told me there were "whispers that I was being forced out". I was a 3rd year associate, I don't think I was that important to be whispered about.

[Anonymous User]

Op here, for those interested , I requested guaranteed eoy bonus and received it. Accepted right after.