Summer Classes 2021 Edition Forum

[Anonymous User]

Interested in the large NY classes ... anybody have: Cravath, SullCrom, STB, Cleary, Skadden, Debevoise, etc.?

Seconded. It's not much work compiling, folks!

[Anonymous User]

But WSGR usually does most of its recruiting through pre-OCI. This year, WSGR made offers to BYU students before many other firms had started interviewing and set those offers to expire before the students would hear back from other firms.

Interesting to hear about pre-OCI. WSGR seems to have made far fewer offers than usual at my school this year and we have a pretty strict policy against pre-OCI interviewing, so could be that there were only a few spots left in the class by the time OCI rolled around.

My school also "has" a "strict" policy against pre-OCI. But in practice it does not (and will not) have teeth because (a) schools have no way of knowing whether a student participated in pre-OCI unless the student voluntarily discloses for some reason (b) any school will take the boost in employment stats from pre-OCI BigLaw acceptance over enforcing their policy (c) no school will ban a major law firm from OCI because they did pre-OCI. (Can you imagine CLS banning DPW or Berkeley banning WSGR?)

[Anonymous User]

Interested in the large NY classes ... anybody have: Cravath, SullCrom, STB, Cleary, Skadden, Debevoise, etc.?

I'm going to one of the listed firms and we haven't been sent a list yet.

[Anonymous User]

WUSTL seems conspicuously absent — where does it place if not NY or DC? Is the biglaw placement there exclusively Chi or something?

WUSTL dominates the STL market even if there are only like 20-25 spots in "Big Law". If WUSTL sends a little over 50 of its students into 500+ firms, like 15-20 of those will be into the big local STL firms like Bryan Cave, Husch Blackwell, and Thompson Coburn.

Anecdotally (WUSTL 2L), I know of at least 5 to Chicago and 3 to DC. Everyone who was at a big STL firm for 1L summer seems to have accepted return offers to Bryan Cave, TC, etc, and there are a lot of them. I don't know if that's because of COVID, since some people wanted Chicago but seem to have taken the STL offers before we had OCI.

[Anonymous User]

But WSGR usually does most of its recruiting through pre-OCI. This year, WSGR made offers to BYU students before many other firms had started interviewing and set those offers to expire before the students would hear back from other firms.

Interesting to hear about pre-OCI. WSGR seems to have made far fewer offers than usual at my school this year and we have a pretty strict policy against pre-OCI interviewing, so could be that there were only a few spots left in the class by the time OCI rolled around.

My school also "has" a "strict" policy against pre-OCI. But in practice it does not (and will not) have teeth because (a) schools have no way of knowing whether a student participated in pre-OCI unless the student voluntarily discloses for some reason (b) any school will take the boost in employment stats from pre-OCI BigLaw acceptance over enforcing their policy (c) no school will ban a major law firm from OCI because they did pre-OCI. (Can you imagine CLS banning DPW or Berkeley banning WSGR?)

Sometimes it deters the law firms from doing pre-oci. But for target schools it might be a non-issue. NYU forbids pre-oci, so DPW did not do much pre-oci at NYU (I dont know anyone with a pre-oci offer from dpw at nyu, and the only exception I heard are transfers who are not bound by the rules), but they reserve large portion of the class for nyu/cls students anyways, bc they have long standing relations with the top local schools

[Anonymous User]

But WSGR usually does most of its recruiting through pre-OCI. This year, WSGR made offers to BYU students before many other firms had started interviewing and set those offers to expire before the students would hear back from other firms.

Interesting to hear about pre-OCI. WSGR seems to have made far fewer offers than usual at my school this year and we have a pretty strict policy against pre-OCI interviewing, so could be that there were only a few spots left in the class by the time OCI rolled around.

My school also "has" a "strict" policy against pre-OCI. But in practice it does not (and will not) have teeth because (a) schools have no way of knowing whether a student participated in pre-OCI unless the student voluntarily discloses for some reason (b) any school will take the boost in employment stats from pre-OCI BigLaw acceptance over enforcing their policy (c) no school will ban a major law firm from OCI because they did pre-OCI. (Can you imagine CLS banning DPW or Berkeley banning WSGR?)

Sometimes it deters the law firms from doing pre-oci. But for target schools it might be a non-issue. NYU forbids pre-oci, so DPW did not do much pre-oci at NYU (I dont know anyone with a pre-oci offer from dpw at nyu, and the only exception I heard are transfers who are not bound by the rules), but they reserve large portion of the class for nyu/cls students anyways, bc they have long standing relations with the top local schools

lol my dude firms def did pre-oci at NYU, including DPW (I got a pre-oci offer but turned them down)

[Anonymous User]

But WSGR usually does most of its recruiting through pre-OCI. This year, WSGR made offers to BYU students before many other firms had started interviewing and set those offers to expire before the students would hear back from other firms.

Interesting to hear about pre-OCI. WSGR seems to have made far fewer offers than usual at my school this year and we have a pretty strict policy against pre-OCI interviewing, so could be that there were only a few spots left in the class by the time OCI rolled around.

My school also "has" a "strict" policy against pre-OCI. But in practice it does not (and will not) have teeth because (a) schools have no way of knowing whether a student participated in pre-OCI unless the student voluntarily discloses for some reason (b) any school will take the boost in employment stats from pre-OCI BigLaw acceptance over enforcing their policy (c) no school will ban a major law firm from OCI because they did pre-OCI. (Can you imagine CLS banning DPW or Berkeley banning WSGR?)

Sometimes it deters the law firms from doing pre-oci. But for target schools it might be a non-issue. NYU forbids pre-oci, so DPW did not do much pre-oci at NYU (I dont know anyone with a pre-oci offer from dpw at nyu, and the only exception I heard are transfers who are not bound by the rules), but they reserve large portion of the class for nyu/cls students anyways, bc they have long standing relations with the top local schools

lol my dude firms def did pre-oci at NYU, including DPW (I got a pre-oci offer but turned them down)

wow damn i only knew weil and sidley did pre-oci at nyu, oh well lol

[Anonymous User]

But WSGR usually does most of its recruiting through pre-OCI. This year, WSGR made offers to BYU students before many other firms had started interviewing and set those offers to expire before the students would hear back from other firms.

Interesting to hear about pre-OCI. WSGR seems to have made far fewer offers than usual at my school this year and we have a pretty strict policy against pre-OCI interviewing, so could be that there were only a few spots left in the class by the time OCI rolled around.

My school also "has" a "strict" policy against pre-OCI. But in practice it does not (and will not) have teeth because (a) schools have no way of knowing whether a student participated in pre-OCI unless the student voluntarily discloses for some reason (b) any school will take the boost in employment stats from pre-OCI BigLaw acceptance over enforcing their policy (c) no school will ban a major law firm from OCI because they did pre-OCI. (Can you imagine CLS banning DPW or Berkeley banning WSGR?)

Sometimes it deters the law firms from doing pre-oci. But for target schools it might be a non-issue. NYU forbids pre-oci, so DPW did not do much pre-oci at NYU (I dont know anyone with a pre-oci offer from dpw at nyu, and the only exception I heard are transfers who are not bound by the rules), but they reserve large portion of the class for nyu/cls students anyways, bc they have long standing relations with the top local schools

lol my dude firms def did pre-oci at NYU, including DPW (I got a pre-oci offer but turned them down)

wow damn i only knew weil and sidley did pre-oci at nyu, oh well lol

I work at DPW and can confirm that we gave pre-OCI offers to NYU students.

[Anonymous User]

2L here - IME, Weil made a TON of pre OCI offers this cycle. Not sure it really had an effect on the mix of schools though.

[Anonymous User]

2L here - IME, Weil made a TON of pre OCI offers this cycle. Not sure it really had an effect on the mix of schools though.

Yep, Weil associate here who did interviews - pretty sure we did more callbacks before OCI season than after.

[Anonymous User]

Paul Weiss
*New York (1L/2L) NY SA*

NYU (13)
Columbia (12)
University of Toronto, Canada(9)
Howard (9)
Harvard (8)
UPenn (7)
Yale (5)
GULC (5)
Cornell (5)
Cardozo (4)
Stanford (3)
UChicago (3)
Fordham (3)
GWU (3)
University of Texas (3)
BC (3)
BU (3)
Northwestern (3)
Berkeley (3)
UNC (3)
UCLA (2)
Vandy (2)
McGill University, Canada (2)
Osgoode, Canada (1)
UDC (1)
USC (1)
UVA (1)
WUSTL (1)
Brooklyn (1)
Tulane (1)
Duke (1)
Iowa (1)
NYLS (1)

Huh, 12 Canadians? Interesting

thought I would post the PW SA class for last year as well since they sent last year's SA list in this year's offer email:

Paul Weiss 107 all offices

HLS - 12 NY (9 2Ls and 3 1Ls) + 4 DC
NYU - 11 NY (10 2Ls and 1 1L)
Yale - 10 NY (8 2Ls and 2 1Ls) + 1 DC
University of Toronto - 11 NY
CLS - 10 NY (9 2Ls and 1 1L)
Penn - 8 NY
SLS - 4 NY + 1 DC
Howard - 3 NY + 1 DC
Fordham - 4 NY
GWU - 2 NY + 2 DC
Cardozo - 3 NY
Michigan - 1 NY + 1 DC
NU - 2 NY
Cornell - 2 NY
GULC - 2 DC
UC Irvine - 2 NY
Duke - 1 NY
McGill University - 1 NY
Osgoode - 1 NY
Ohio State - 1 NY
UVA - 1 DC
UCLA - 1 NY
USC - 1 NY
Tulane - 1 NY
Vandy - 1 NY
WUSTL - 1 NY

If you look at 2L numbers in NY office alone, UToronto takes the lead I dont think canadian schools have meaningful presence in any other top US firms SA programs

[Anonymous User]

MoFo
*San Francisco 1L/2L SA (42)*

Berkeley (16)
Hastings (5)
Columbia (3)
Harvard (2)
Stanford (2)
NYU (2)
Northwestern (2)
UCLA (2)
Duke (1)
Michigan (1)
Georgetown (1)
USC (1)
ASU (1)
Irvine (1)
Davis (1)
U of Miami (1)

[Anonymous User]

MoFo
*San Francisco 1L/2L SA (42)*

Berkeley (16)
Hastings (5)
Columbia (3)
Harvard (2)
Stanford (2)
NYU (2)
Northwestern (2)
UCLA (2)
Duke (1)
Michigan (1)
Georgetown (1)
USC (1)
ASU (1)
Irvine (1)
Davis (1)
U of Miami (1)

Tremendous

[Anonymous User]

thought I would post the PW SA class for last year as well since they sent last year's SA list in this year's offer email:

Paul Weiss 107 all offices

Thanks for posting. You can really see how consistent the school numbers are from year to year. There’s not any huge increase / decrease; only Howard jumps out in that regard.

I consider myself informed on biglaw recruiting but I have never heard of the Paul Weiss-UToronto connection before. Are there any other large firms with a random hook-up like that? (Latham-UVA?)

[Anonymous User]

Milbank NY (70):

This is just 2L SAs.

[Anonymous User]

WUSTL seems conspicuously absent — where does it place if not NY or DC? Is the biglaw placement there exclusively Chi or something?

WUSTL dominates the STL market even if there are only like 20-25 spots in "Big Law". If WUSTL sends a little over 50 of its students into 500+ firms, like 15-20 of those will be into the big local STL firms like Bryan Cave, Husch Blackwell, and Thompson Coburn.

WUSTL definitely does not dominate the STL market and it's actually harder for some people to land because firms have a perception that WUSTL students don't want to stay in STL

[Anonymous User]

As with any T20 and better, you'll see WUSTL folks all over the place. They have one going to Husch Blackwell in Denver, for example.

[Anonymous User]

MoFo
*San Francisco 1L/2L SA (42)*

Berkeley (16)

Tremendous

2L at Cal. At least 4 are patent folks, including 1Ls in the two-summer patent program.

[Anonymous User]

The big gains in summer class size make sense when you consider the insanely profitable year most firms had in 2020...

[lawbear2022]

MoFo
*San Francisco 1L/2L SA (42)*

Berkeley (16)

Tremendous

2L at Cal. At least 4 are patent folks, including 1Ls in the two-summer patent program.

I wonder if the fact that MoFo was the only firm to have a big networking event before the pandemic hit last spring played a role. Obviously Berkeley always places really well at MoFo but this is kinda ridiculous.

[LS989]

The big gains in summer class size make sense when you consider the insanely profitable year most firms had in 2020...

Where'd you grab this from, just for general curiosity purposes?

[Anonymous User]

The big gains in summer class size make sense when you consider the insanely profitable year most firms had in 2020...

Where'd you grab this from, just for general curiosity purposes?

The American Lawyer (compiler of the Am Law 100/200 lists), as reported out here on Law.com. (Paywalled but you should have access through your law library.)

[Anonymous User]

Interested in the large NY classes ... anybody have: Cravath, SullCrom, STB, Cleary, Skadden, Debevoise, etc.?

I'm going to one of the listed firms and we haven't been sent a list yet.

Do some firms not send info out before the first day of the summer program?

[Anonymous User]

What is the standard amount firms offer as an advance before SA? (NYC, if it is office-dependent)

[Anonymous User]

The big gains in summer class size make sense when you consider the insanely profitable year most firms had in 2020...

Wow.. A 23% decline in profits... Does anyone know what's going on at Shearman?