Is Kirkland pushing back incoming associate start dates? Forum

[Anonymous User]

Coming off a clerkship and wondering if it'd be myopic or pointless to apply elsewhere. Starting Jan 1 sounds pretty shitty.

Let's give them a few weeks to communicate the start date first. At this point recruiting is familiar with the speculation and panic I'm sure. My guess is we will hear within the next 2 weeks about the start date and that it will be October.

[Anonymous User]

Markets are not improving any time soon. My bet is definitely either staggered starts based on practice area or pushing everyone back to January with a reduced stipend to cover. No way KE starts 400+ new attorneys in this market with overall workloads going down.

Since we are speculating anyway; any guess on latest/earliest start dates? I'll be an incoming associate and am not sure about how busy or slow groups are outside of corporate being slow. If bet plays, corporate would start in January. How about lit? rx? Any world in which they start late september / early october? How busy are those groups right now?

Restructuring + Funds + IP litigation associates will start first - guessing October. General corporate will get pushed to January unless it’s a smaller but busy office that just needs people quickly. No idea how busy general lit has been.

Isn't everyone in corporate "general corporate" until they specialize? Had no idea you could declare an area of interest (Funds) within corporate before you start.

I don't know how Kirkland does it specifically, but other firms you can absolutely start out immediately in Funds.

Even if you can though, I don't think that's a great way to do it tbh, doing basic general corp work for like 6 months is always helpful long term (forming entities, basic operating agreements, resolutions, etc).

[Anonymous User]

Coming off a clerkship and wondering if it'd be myopic or pointless to apply elsewhere. Starting Jan 1 sounds pretty shitty.

Let's give them a few weeks to communicate the start date first. At this point recruiting is familiar with the speculation and panic I'm sure. My guess is we will hear within the next 2 weeks about the start date and that it will be October.

Recruiting may be familiar, but would that matter? Its a firm committee decision probably. Does the firm committee know or care if incomings are stressed? Do you ponder the thoughts of ants?

[Anonymous User]

Coming off a clerkship and wondering if it'd be myopic or pointless to apply elsewhere. Starting Jan 1 sounds pretty shitty.

Let's give them a few weeks to communicate the start date first. At this point recruiting is familiar with the speculation and panic I'm sure. My guess is we will hear within the next 2 weeks about the start date and that it will be October.

Recruiting may be familiar, but would that matter? Its a firm committee decision probably. Does the firm committee know or care if incomings are stressed? Do you ponder the thoughts of ants?

You may be right. Since they just sent us an email with "on boarding tasks" and updated the student portal to read "the next communication will include your start date"

[Anonymous User]

Coming off a clerkship and wondering if it'd be myopic or pointless to apply elsewhere. Starting Jan 1 sounds pretty shitty.

Jesus fucking Christ, do not start making actual career moves based on a 100% speculative TLS thread. The Jan 1 start date was made up out of thin air by a total fucking rando that may not even work at K&E, let alone have any actual inside info. If you act on information this obviously hollow then you’re a moron.

[Anonymous User]

Markets are not improving any time soon. My bet is definitely either staggered starts based on practice area or pushing everyone back to January with a reduced stipend to cover. No way KE starts 400+ new attorneys in this market with overall workloads going down.

Since we are speculating anyway; any guess on latest/earliest start dates? I'll be an incoming associate and am not sure about how busy or slow groups are outside of corporate being slow. If bet plays, corporate would start in January. How about lit? rx? Any world in which they start late september / early october? How busy are those groups right now?

Restructuring + Funds + IP litigation associates will start first - guessing October. General corporate will get pushed to January unless it’s a smaller but busy office that just needs people quickly. No idea how busy general lit has been.

Is IP lit really busy right now? Incoming IP lit associate and would prefer to start sooner rather than later...

[Anonymous User]

Coming off a clerkship and wondering if it'd be myopic or pointless to apply elsewhere. Starting Jan 1 sounds pretty shitty.

Jesus fucking Christ, do not start making actual career moves based on a 100% speculative TLS thread. The Jan 1 start date was made up out of thin air by a total fucking rando that may not even work at K&E, let alone have any actual inside info. If you act on information this obviously hollow then you’re a moron.

Jan 1 is made up but the probable delay isn't. The firm fired first years, has delayed announcing plans for start, has 475 newcomers in a work slowdown, and famously doesnt care about its associates. Those are facts. So hey, genius, what do you infer from that? Sure, it *might* be fine. Probably wont be.

[Anonymous User]

Coming off a clerkship and wondering if it'd be myopic or pointless to apply elsewhere. Starting Jan 1 sounds pretty shitty.

Jesus fucking Christ, do not start making actual career moves based on a 100% speculative TLS thread. The Jan 1 start date was made up out of thin air by a total fucking rando that may not even work at K&E, let alone have any actual inside info. If you act on information this obviously hollow then you’re a moron.

Jan 1 is made up but the probable delay isn't. The firm fired first years, has delayed announcing plans for start, has 475 newcomers in a work slowdown, and famously doesnt care about its associates. Those are facts. So hey, genius, what do you infer from that? Sure, it *might* be fine. Probably wont be.

82 messages of sheer insanity. There is no internal or external message of delay yet at KE (at east not outside of closed committee meetings if its happening there). If KE delays, peer firms will be delaying as well. We are not going to shoot ourselves in the foot over first year start date unless its a market move. You think KE would be the only one to delay among its peers? No way. If you are so panicky that this non-news on a random forum with no support is making you alter career decisions then I would recommend you go elsewhere anyways.

[Anonymous User]

General lit is quite busy, at least in my office. Lots of associates working way too much; could use more bodies frankly.

[Anonymous User]

Coming off a clerkship and wondering if it'd be myopic or pointless to apply elsewhere. Starting Jan 1 sounds pretty shitty.

Jesus fucking Christ, do not start making actual career moves based on a 100% speculative TLS thread. The Jan 1 start date was made up out of thin air by a total fucking rando that may not even work at K&E, let alone have any actual inside info. If you act on information this obviously hollow then you’re a moron.

Jan 1 is made up but the probable delay isn't. The firm fired first years, has delayed announcing plans for start, has 475 newcomers in a work slowdown, and famously doesnt care about its associates. Those are facts. So hey, genius, what do you infer from that? Sure, it *might* be fine. Probably wont be.

82 messages of sheer insanity. There is no internal or external message of delay yet at KE (at east not outside of closed committee meetings if its happening there). If KE delays, peer firms will be delaying as well. We are not going to shoot ourselves in the foot over first year start date unless its a market move. You think KE would be the only one to delay among its peers? No way. If you are so panicky that this non-news on a random forum with no support is making you alter career decisions then I would recommend you go elsewhere anyways.

Yes, and I suspect people like the one you’re responding to feel like they’re sticking it to Kirkland or revealing their secret conspiracy. You know who doesn’t give a damn about your internet rumors? Kirkland.

You know who you ARE hurting with this nonsense? Incoming associates, because you’re jacking their anxiety way up for absolutely no reason. There is literally zero news or even a hint of reliable info anywhere in this thread, and yet you are all freaking these poor kids out.

Shut the fuck up you goons, and hold off the Chicken Little act until there is real news that people should be worried.

[Anonymous User]

Coming off a clerkship and wondering if it'd be myopic or pointless to apply elsewhere. Starting Jan 1 sounds pretty shitty.

Jesus fucking Christ, do not start making actual career moves based on a 100% speculative TLS thread. The Jan 1 start date was made up out of thin air by a total fucking rando that may not even work at K&E, let alone have any actual inside info. If you act on information this obviously hollow then you’re a moron.

Jan 1 is made up but the probable delay isn't. The firm fired first years, has delayed announcing plans for start, has 475 newcomers in a work slowdown, and famously doesnt care about its associates. Those are facts. So hey, genius, what do you infer from that? Sure, it *might* be fine. Probably wont be.

82 messages of sheer insanity. There is no internal or external message of delay yet at KE (at east not outside of closed committee meetings if its happening there). If KE delays, peer firms will be delaying as well. We are not going to shoot ourselves in the foot over first year start date unless its a market move. You think KE would be the only one to delay among its peers? No way. If you are so panicky that this non-news on a random forum with no support is making you alter career decisions then I would recommend you go elsewhere anyways.

Yes, and I suspect people like the one you’re responding to feel like they’re sticking it to Kirkland or revealing their secret conspiracy. You know who doesn’t give a damn about your internet rumors? Kirkland.

You know who you ARE hurting with this nonsense? Incoming associates, because you’re jacking their anxiety way up for absolutely no reason. There is literally zero news or even a hint of reliable info anywhere in this thread, and yet you are all freaking these poor kids out.

Shut the fuck up you goons, and hold off the Chicken Little act until there is real news that people should be worried.

This is true but I actually do think Kirkland would have no problem delaying first years even if peer firms didn’t. Kirkland, especially for corporate, doesn’t give a shit about getting top students from the top schools. They are happy to take from less prestigious schools outside the T14 and they know that they will always easily find 100s of students willing to come to Kirkland regardless of what the firm does. They had no problem dumping mediocre laterals the second work dried up because they know mediocre laterals will always be available again, no matter how the firm acts. Tons of other firms are managed exactly the same way but they aren’t as brazen about it.

[Anonymous User]

K&E delaying would provide cover for others to delay, so it makes sense *some* others would delay.

But how many need to? The economy isnt *that* bad and most firms didnt hire like K&E did.

[Anonymous User]

K&E delaying would provide cover for others to delay, so it makes sense *some* others would delay.

But how many need to? The economy isnt *that* bad and most firms didnt hire like K&E did.

Depends on what you mean by need to. I think almost every firm can afford to pay salaries. But a lot of firms had their biggest ever summer class. I'm in a satellite office that in most years onboards 1-3 new associates. We have 5 first years have 5 new associates joining in September. We don't even have work for the current juniors, which is a problem because they aren't learning anything. So in a few months we'll have 10 useless bodies, and about the same total other associates. It's a problem. Even if we do right by them all, we're never going to be able to train and utilize them all.

[Anonymous User]

K&E SP here - I haven't heard anything about pushing back 1st years. We had a slow 2nd half of 2022 but we're already busy again right now - all of the 20+ associates in my team have been billing at least 40 hrs a week for the past month, and the NSPs are even busier.

[bajablast]

Why are people surprised? Kirkland is notorious for fucking over its associates lmao.

[Anonymous User]

K&E SP here - I haven't heard anything about pushing back 1st years. We had a slow 2nd half of 2022 but we're already busy again right now - all of the 20+ associates in my team have been billing at least 40 hrs a week for the past month, and the NSPs are even busier.

Why are you laying people off and have a hiring freeze then?

[Anonymous User]

K&E SP here - I haven't heard anything about pushing back 1st years. We had a slow 2nd half of 2022 but we're already busy again right now - all of the 20+ associates in my team have been billing at least 40 hrs a week for the past month, and the NSPs are even busier.

Lol the fact that “all” 20 associates are only working 9-5 actually pushes this towards deferred dates

[Anonymous User]

K&E SP here - I haven't heard anything about pushing back 1st years. We had a slow 2nd half of 2022 but we're already busy again right now - all of the 20+ associates in my team have been billing at least 40 hrs a week for the past month, and the NSPs are even busier.

Lol the fact that “all” 20 associates are only working 9-5 actually pushes this towards deferred dates

^ you realize that billing at least 40 hours/week tracks for a 2000+ hour year?

[Anonymous User]

K&E SP here - I haven't heard anything about pushing back 1st years. We had a slow 2nd half of 2022 but we're already busy again right now - all of the 20+ associates in my team have been billing at least 40 hrs a week for the past month, and the NSPs are even busier.

Lol the fact that “all” 20 associates are only working 9-5 actually pushes this towards deferred dates

"billing at least 40 hrs a week" does not equal "working 9-5" lol.

[Anonymous User]

K&E SP here - I haven't heard anything about pushing back 1st years. We had a slow 2nd half of 2022 but we're already busy again right now - all of the 20+ associates in my team have been billing at least 40 hrs a week for the past month, and the NSPs are even busier.

Why are you laying people off and have a hiring freeze then?

Not laying off people and we're still hiring laterals with relevant experience.

[Anonymous User]

K&E SP here - I haven't heard anything about pushing back 1st years. We had a slow 2nd half of 2022 but we're already busy again right now - all of the 20+ associates in my team have been billing at least 40 hrs a week for the past month, and the NSPs are even busier.

Why are you laying people off and have a hiring freeze then?

Not laying off people and we're still hiring laterals with relevant experience.

Lmao ya'll are wild for this. Literally pissing on us and telling us it's raining.

[Anonymous User]

K&E SP here - I haven't heard anything about pushing back 1st years. We had a slow 2nd half of 2022 but we're already busy again right now - all of the 20+ associates in my team have been billing at least 40 hrs a week for the past month, and the NSPs are even busier.

Why are you laying people off and have a hiring freeze then?

Not laying off people and we're still hiring laterals with relevant experience.

Lmao ya'll are wild for this. Literally pissing on us and telling us it's raining.

[Anonymous User]

K&E SP here - I haven't heard anything about pushing back 1st years. We had a slow 2nd half of 2022 but we're already busy again right now - all of the 20+ associates in my team have been billing at least 40 hrs a week for the past month, and the NSPs are even busier.

Why are you laying people off and have a hiring freeze then?

Not laying off people and we're still hiring laterals with relevant experience.

I misspoke, I meant to ask why you suddenly have a lot of underperforming associates who deserved to get fired, and why "relevant experience" now means "partners with a book of business".

[Anonymous User]

Not surprised. Kirkland has always been a soulless biglaw mill obsessively focused on maximizing profits to the detriment of its associates. Sorry Kirkland, you will never be Cravath or Wachtell

[Anonymous User]

I thought Cravath was a ticket for working harder for less money? Unless you can direct deposit prestige; maybe I missed that innovation