Top Law Schools

Does anyone know what the history of the V5 is when it comes to 2L summer offers? Obviously there isn't going to be any information on cold offers, but does anyone know what the data looks like over the past 5 years or so? 2L Fall grades just came out, so there's always that residual fear that that GPA decrease could come back to haunt you.

Also, presumably the numbers on Vault/NALP at the moment for the 2012 summer class are for 2L summers that are being considered for offers?

Yours to lose. Just don't let your grades fall off the deep end.

Know for a fact that S&C makes 2Ls who are edge-cases fight in the Octagon for their offer. Lost a good friend last year to them

Is this the same for satellite offices? I've heard rumors of some no offers at some skadden offices...

According to Skadden's consolidated NALP form, they made 136/139 offers in 2012. I assume that's global

.

Some V5s, I know, have not given full class offers. I'm pretty sure I saw somewhere that S&C, for example, no-offered 1 person in 2010. It's very unlikely it was just grades, and if it were, I assume 'going off the deep end' refers to completely bombing out (not a ~.1/.2 drop), since it usually doesn't look good to go from 100% to less than that, and they didn't even cold offer.

The V5 (and their 'peer' firms; V5 is pretty arbitrary) are usually as close as you can get to 100% offer rates. Very few reports of cold offers, either.

My V10 this summer was 100% and everyone I know who was at a V10 or other elite firm also said offer rates were 100%

I saw some where that Cravath no offered a couple of people a couple of years ago.

Wow. Didn't realize the the implications of this thread. Does this mean the farther down you go in the V100 the greater you are at risk of being no offered?

Anonymous User wrote:Wow. Didn't realize the the implications of this thread. Does this mean the farther down you go in the V100 the greater you are at risk of being no offered?

Yes, that's typically been the case. I have some data to back that up; just need to find it.

Helmholtz wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:Wow. Didn't realize the the implications of this thread. Does this mean the farther down you go in the V100 the greater you are at risk of being no offered?

Yes, that's typically been the case. I have some data to back that up; just need to find it.

I feel like I haven't seen you post in ages. How you doin'?

.

Helmholtz wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:Wow. Didn't realize the the implications of this thread. Does this mean the farther down you go in the V100 the greater you are at risk of being no offered?

Yes, that's typically been the case. I have some data to back that up; just need to find it.

Ah, here we go. This is data for 2005-2012:

V5 firms: 99.4% offer rate
V6-10 firms: 97.9% offer rate
V11-20 firms: 94.4% offer rate
V21-30 firms: 93.1% offer rate
V31-40 firms: 92.0% offer rate
V41-50 firms: 90.9% offer rate
V51-60 firms: 82.1% offer rate
V61-70 firms: 80.1% offer rate
V71-80 firms: 75.8% offer rate
V81-90 firms: 73.2% offer rate
V91-100 firms: 69.9% offer rate

As you can see, relatively big dropoffs after the V5 mark, the V10 mark, and the V50 mark.

Helmholtz wrote:

Helmholtz wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:Wow. Didn't realize the the implications of this thread. Does this mean the farther down you go in the V100 the greater you are at risk of being no offered?

Yes, that's typically been the case. I have some data to back that up; just need to find it.

Ah, here we go. This is data for 2005-2012:

V5 firms: 99.4% offer rate
V6-10 firms: 97.9% offer rate
V11-20 firms: 94.4% offer rate
V21-30 firms: 93.1% offer rate
V31-40 firms: 92.0% offer rate
V41-50 firms: 90.9% offer rate
V51-60 firms: 82.1% offer rate
V61-70 firms: 80.1% offer rate
V71-80 firms: 75.8% offer rate
V81-90 firms: 73.2% offer rate
V91-100 firms: 69.9% offer rate

As you can see, relatively big dropoffs after the V5 mark, the V10 mark, and the V50 mark.

Crazy how there is such a strong correlation b/w Vault ranking and offer rate. I didn't think there would be that strong of a relationship. Part of it is probably that the lower ranked firms are often located in secondary markets (for example the good texas firms), and those markets are well known for having lower offer rates

Also worth noting that class size has a similar relationship - the "top" vault firms typically have the largest class sizes, although there may be more variance (especially looking across offices)

I think it's implicit in your post TSL but just spelling it out for panicky 1Ls and 2Ls: huge class sizes also mean that the occasional no-offer is more easily masked by the numbers

My V100 says they have given 100% offer rates the last few years. This seems to be confirmed by NALP. Should I assume, based on this thread, that those numbers are cooked/faked based on cold offers or something?

No. Nothing in this thread suggests those numbers are cooked, nor do many people think they are.

Cold offers are real, but there isn't a widely held belief that they are a very significant percentage.

All of the data ITT is coming from publicly disclosed numbers sourced from the firms/NALP.

A V100 firm could of course give 100% offers. The data is just the aggregated offer rates of the entire "group" of V100s over a period of time. So it reflects a lot of things, including how the firms respond to economic downturns, shifts in the markets, etc.

What's the diff b/w cold offer and no offer?

If it's 97% offers at your firms, it's likely that's performance based over the summer for the 3%. I'm sure much more than 3% of SA's got substantially lower grades during their 2L year.

Anonymous User wrote:My V100 says they have given 100% offer rates the last few years. This seems to be confirmed by NALP. Should I assume, based on this thread, that those numbers are cooked/faked based on cold offers or something?

Is this Schulte? If so, they said they called them all into a room and made universal offers to the whole summer class. I suppose if summer ended, and they didn't call a similar meeting someone's not getting an offer. Personally, the room thing sounds cool because it fosters a more substantial relationship between everybody in the class.

.

The trouble with cold offers is that firms are just stuck between a rock and a hard place. Students and bar members want to see high offer rates, but the firms are constrained by their Vault ranking to no-offer a particular set of the class. A V60 firm can't give offers to more than 82% of its summer class of students who weren't talented enough to land v50 firms without a substantial drop in average associate quality. That's why you consistently see numbers like Helmholtz posted.

It's just too bad that Vault rankings are of such monumental importance to Biglaw hiring practices.