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Do law firms frequently interview people that they have no intention of hiring? Is there a reason (say a need to interview a certain number of women or minority candidates)? Curious about this.

At some (higher-ranked) schools, the school has more leverage in the OCI process and requires a pure lottery interview bidding system instead of preselect. At those schools, it's the responsibility of the student to bid on interviews at places where they have a shot at getting hired, because the firms have to interview everyone on their schedules, even if they only hire people with top 10% grades and law review or whatever.

Sometimes the interview is the favor itself if the partner doesn't want to go further...."hey, i interviewed your nephew, but unfortunately my colleagues say there isn't really any room for him here"

Yes. The reasons vary.

I feel like this happens a lot.

Happened to me. It was the first thing they told me.

Probably true during OCI where a lottery is involved. Not so much with mass mailing.

CanadianWolf wrote:Yes. The reasons vary.

I think this is true. I got interviews at Cravath and Davis Polk and based on my profile I'm not someone they would hire.

How did you end up with the interview? If they affirmatively called you in, then of course they haven't precluded the notion of hiring you. But if you have a pure lottery OCI interview (i.e. you chose to meet with that firm, and they didn't pre-screen you at all), then there is certainly a chance that they would never even consider hiring you, but are stuck chatting with you for 20 min. Usually, they will be cordial about this and not make it so overt (i.e. they will treat it like a real and fair interview).

Honestly, though, you should never think of it as a done deal from the beginning. If you are able to get in front of someone for an interview, think of it as an opportunity to change someone's mind and wow them when they least expect it. So even if you think theres "no chance", you should still treat it as if you are a great candidate for the job.

I am referring to post-graduate hiring, but I can definitely see this happening in a lottery context.

If its a post-graduate interview, I very seriously doubt a firm would waste its time interviewing someone that they had zero interest in hiring. Sure, some candidates may be weaker than others, but getting through the door is often the biggest step.

kaiser wrote:If its a post-graduate interview, I very seriously doubt a firm would waste its time interviewing someone that they had zero interest in hiring. Sure, some candidates may be weaker than others, but getting through the door is often the biggest step.

Eh, it depends on the context. If you have a family/professional connection it could be a courtesy interview. They happened all the time at my old firm (interviewing a client's child or a partner's mentor's child, for instance) and everyone knew in advance that little Jimmy was never getting hired.

Anonymous User wrote:

kaiser wrote:If its a post-graduate interview, I very seriously doubt a firm would waste its time interviewing someone that they had zero interest in hiring. Sure, some candidates may be weaker than others, but getting through the door is often the biggest step.

Eh, it depends on the context. If you have a family/professional connection it could be a courtesy interview. They happened all the time at my old firm (interviewing a client's child or a partner's mentor's child, for instance) and everyone knew in advance that little Jimmy was never getting hired.

Well, thats a very narrow exception to a widely applicable rule.

kaiser wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:

kaiser wrote:If its a post-graduate interview, I very seriously doubt a firm would waste its time interviewing someone that they had zero interest in hiring. Sure, some candidates may be weaker than others, but getting through the door is often the biggest step.

Eh, it depends on the context. If you have a family/professional connection it could be a courtesy interview. They happened all the time at my old firm (interviewing a client's child or a partner's mentor's child, for instance) and everyone knew in advance that little Jimmy was never getting hired.

Well, thats a very narrow exception to a widely applicable rule.

This. I can't imagine there are many other situations where a firm would interview someone that they have zero interest in hiring. Firms do diversity interviewing, but the reason for that is because they also want to diversity hiring, so it's not really a "zero interest in hiring" type of situation at all. It's just a waste of everyone's time to interview someone that has no chance of being hired (unless it's a courtesy interview because of connections). I do think that firms could do a better job of culling out candidates just based on paper because often times that is what causes the weaker candidates to get weeded out. But even there that's not a zero interest in hiring type of situation.

Back when Quinn did OCI, the first thing that at least some interviewers did was to look at the applicant's transcript. They were banned from CLS after an incident in which a partner looked at a student's transcript, told him there was no way he was getting hired, and asked him if he wanted to finish the interview or save them both 20 minutes. IIRC they got in trouble for similar incidents at a minimum of two other schools.

But yeah, any firm that wants to maintain OCI privileges at T14 schools does occasionally have to interview people who, it later turns out, were always DOA. Interviewers are usually advised not to look at your transcript at any point during the interview, so the onus is on the applicant not to waste the lawyer's time/steal a spot from somewhere who has a chance by applying to places with a GPA below their hard cutoff.

Judges. If a judge asks the firm to interview someone, the answer is always yes to the interview.

This happened to me in a pre screened OCI interview. It was bizarre.

Danger Zone wrote:This happened to me in a pre screened OCI interview. It was bizarre.

Happened to me at a pre-screen IP fair interview. Go in, sit down... "We don't really hire people with your technical background. What made you want to interview with us?"

Monochromatic Oeuvre wrote:Back when Quinn did OCI, the first thing that at least some interviewers did was to look at the applicant's transcript. They were banned from CLS after an incident in which a partner looked at a student's transcript, told him there was no way he was getting hired, and asked him if he wanted to finish the interview or save them both 20 minutes. IIRC they got in trouble for similar incidents at a minimum of two other schools.

But yeah, any firm that wants to maintain OCI privileges at T14 schools does occasionally have to interview people who, it later turns out, were always DOA. Interviewers are usually advised not to look at your transcript at any point during the interview, so the onus is on the applicant not to waste the lawyer's time/steal a spot from somewhere who has a chance by applying to places with a GPA below their hard cutoff.

rinkrat19 wrote:

Danger Zone wrote:This happened to me in a pre screened OCI interview. It was bizarre.

Happened to me at a pre-screen IP fair interview. Go in, sit down... "We don't really hire people with your technical background. What made you want to interview with us?"

These situations are really bizarre. I've had a few really competitive fed government interviews lately where it seemed like I was DOA, and I really can't understand why they wasted everyone's time interviewing me. I mean these were situations where there were well over 100 applications for the one position, and they culled me into the handful of interviews they were doing. When I asked what they were looking for, they'd say, "well, we're really looking for someone with X+ years of Y experience," which was blatantly obvious that I didn't have from my resume. I found that really frustrating, since this has happened to me a few times now.

Monochromatic Oeuvre wrote:Back when Quinn did OCI, the first thing that at least some interviewers did was to look at the applicant's transcript. They were banned from CLS after an incident in which a partner looked at a student's transcript, told him there was no way he was getting hired, and asked him if he wanted to finish the interview or save them both 20 minutes. IIRC they got in trouble for similar incidents at a minimum of two other schools.

But yeah, any firm that wants to maintain OCI privileges at T14 schools does occasionally have to interview people who, it later turns out, were always DOA. Interviewers are usually advised not to look at your transcript at any point during the interview, so the onus is on the applicant not to waste the lawyer's time/steal a spot from somewhere who has a chance by applying to places with a GPA below their hard cutoff.

This is funny because Quinn is not even that selective. There are a bunch of shithead associates with no honors from non-T14s at Quinn.

this happened to me at a biglaw firm callback (not even a screener). i got the callback through a diversity fair, so the firm had already seen my transcript and resume and had interviewed me. i got an invitation for a callback a week after, and they flew me out across the country. as soon as i sat down, the first words out of the interviewer's mouth were "we're most likely not going to have this position next summer..." then i got rejected a week later.

why go through all the trouble? they could've saved the money for my flight/hotel. they had plenty of time, imo, to assess whether they were gonna hire beforehand. looking on NALP, seems like the position isn't available this summer. i dunno, i was just annoyed at the huge waste of time.

Monochromatic Oeuvre wrote:Back when Quinn did OCI, the first thing that at least some interviewers did was to look at the applicant's transcript. They were banned from CLS after an incident in which a partner looked at a student's transcript, told him there was no way he was getting hired, and asked him if he wanted to finish the interview or save them both 20 minutes. IIRC they got in trouble for similar incidents at a minimum of two other schools.

But yeah, any firm that wants to maintain OCI privileges at T14 schools does occasionally have to interview people who, it later turns out, were always DOA. Interviewers are usually advised not to look at your transcript at any point during the interview, so the onus is on the applicant not to waste the lawyer's time/steal a spot from somewhere who has a chance by applying to places with a GPA below their hard cutoff.

This is wrong. They totally did the check grades in from of people thing, and yes, I'm pretty sure the line was something like "do you want to go through the whole dog and pony show, or can we take a break." In fact, I think multiple interviewers might have done it.

But, they weren't kicked out of EIP—LJL @ thinking CLS would have the gumption to do something like that. They stopped participating in EIP when they started their cocktail party interview things. Not sure what they're doing for recruiting now.