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Has anyone ever received an email back from a firm rejecting them, but then saying "We will keep your materials on file should anything change..."? If you had, did you or do you know anyone who saw anything come of that? Or is it just a soft rejection? (Guessing the latter)

Plenty of times. It's (arguably) a more polite ding.

It's boilerplate.

Roy McAvoy wrote:It's (arguably) a more polite ding.

I'm not sure I think it is polite, but I'm sure they think it is, which is why they do it. Why keep someone's hopes up like that if they could just say "thanks, but all SA positions are filled" and accomplish the same thing? I'm sure it's happened on occasion, but I've never heard of a firm saying "never mind" to its rejection.

I've had an employer contact me about a year after receiving a "we'll hold your info" email. It wasn't a law firm, though.

I have actually had follow-ups. I can only think of one firm off the top of my head, but I could swear there were maybe 2 or 3 employers (firms and otherwise). But that's out of hundreds, if not thousands, of apps that I've sent over the many years during law school and my clerkship.

Probably even rarer for SA positions, and for biglaw firms. Smaller firms or other employers can have their hiring needs change a lot more quickly and often.

It's their way of saying "please don't call or contact us again...We'll call YOU [probably never]"

Yeah this is just a way of saying you don’t need to follow up with anything, it’s out of your hands now. It helps with the 1% of people with no boundaries.

Yeah, I always interpreted it to mean: don't email us again because we have your stuff already.

It's a rejection.