Shifting Paradigm for Law Firms and Legal Education?

There's been a lot of discussion lately about the changes taking place in Law Firm Land (for purposes of this discussion, including Big Law as well as mid-size and smaller law firms) and in legal education. Our earlier posts have addressed some of these discussions in the context of proposed changes to law firm recruitment at law schools, proposed changes to legal education and the effects of clients needs on demand for legal services from law firms.

And here comes another report documenting some of the changes that are taking place in the private practice arena. According to the ABA Journal, a new study released at ABA Techshow, “The Evolution of the Legal Profession: A Conversation with the Legal Community's Thought Leaders on the Front Lines of an Industry,” there is a "sweeping evolution" taking place in law firm structure and management and client expectations. The ABA Journal reports that the study was conducted by Ari Kaplan, a lawyer and technology and marketing author, and "is the first in a series that combines insights from a cross-section of the legal industry." This includes interviews with "practicing lawyers, academics, in-house counsel and CEOs about client expectations, shifting cultures and ways to prepare law students for the business of legal practice."

Some key points from the study:

•There are significant changes to billing structures and client expectations. "Nearly 75% agreed that the profession is experiencing a sweeping evolution that will be marked by permanent changes to billing structures, firm organization and value and efficiency expectations from clients".

•Nevertheless, the billable hour is sill alive and well in Law Firm Land.

•While law firms may be trying to come up with alternative billing arrangements that work for them and for clients, it is a challenge to do so given the business model of law firms (i.e., their capital structure).

•Clients are less willing to pay for 1st year associate work. (85% of those surveyed were aware of instances where corporate clients refused to pay for first-year-associate work done on their cases and one Kaye Scholer partner noted that “E-Discovery tools have eliminated the need to have junior associates review boxes of documents, which is why you are seeing thousands [of] junior associates laid off").

•Despite these changes, a recent study by the American Bar Foundation and NALP Foundation for Law Career Research and Education reported more than 70 percent of lawyers were moderately or very satisfied with their career decision. As the ABA Journal reports, Harvard Law School professor David Wilkins says, "Satisfaction is a blunt instrument, but the portrait of widespread misery is wildly exaggerated.”

Listen to our podcast "The Current Economic Environment: What It Means for Law School Applicants & Students" to hear more on this topic.

The Latest Numbers on Recruiting Law Students

It's hardly news, at this point -- we know that law school grads face layoffs, deferrals and increased competition for fewer jobs. Yet somehow the numbers from the fall 2009 recruiting season seem worth noting. As reported in the ABA Journal, the National Association of Law Placement's (NALP) annual Perspectives on Fall Recruiting (PDF) was released Tuesday and, not surprisingly, recruiting volume by U.S. legal employers on law school campuses "nose-dived."

Some key stats to note:

• Summer associates: the median number of offers dropped to seven for 2010 hiring. The median number of offers for students recruited in 2008 was 10, dropping from 15 in 2007, NALP reports.

• At large firms with more than 700 lawyers, offers extended to 2Ls dropped to eight in 2009, down from 18.5 in 2008 and 30 in 2007. And while larger firms of more than 500 lawyers were the most likely to cut back on-campus recruiting efforts, smaller firms with 100 lawyers or fewer were more likely to have kept to their regular on-campus recruiting schedule.

• Acceptance rates were 42.8 percent, the highest ever recorded -- evidence that law students quickly snapped up offers of employment.

• Almost two-thirds of offices reported that their summer program was at least one week shorter than in 2008. Among firms of 251-500 lawyers and 701 or more lawyers, over 70% did so.

• Deferrals were also way up, with 85 percent of law schools reporting that at least one 2009 graduate faced an offer delay well into 2010. NALP estimates that at least 3,200 and as many as 3,700 graduating law students faced deferrals.

• Third-year hiring all but dried up, with just a handful of offices reporting any activity at all, and with those that did typically making 1 or 2 offers. In total, only about 3% of employers reported recruiting any 3L students.

NALP Executive Director, James Leipold, said in a statement about the report, "this represents an enormous interruption in the usual recruiting and employment patterns that we have come to expect.” Leipold noted "the largest impact was the deferral phenomenon" for the Class of 2009.

While many deferred associates have now started to work, deferrals are still present and, NALP expects those who don't have solid start dates at this point will be deferred.

There is, of course, "tremendous variation in legal hiring -- both by region and by individual employer" but these numbers tell a story and NALP doesn't expect big improvement in this picture for the short term. The ABA Journal reports that "NALP expects law school recruiting to continue hobbling along until at least the class of 2012 graduates, "though the worst does now seem, we hope, to be behind us."

NALP's Jim Leipold was a guest on Law School Podcaster's segment, "The Current Economic Environment: What It Means for Law School Applicants & Students." Tune into the full show to hear more on this topic.

In the End, Just a Few Small Changes to Law Firm Recruiting Guidelines

In a recent post, we noted that "change does not come easily to the citizens of Law Firm Land." So no surprise that the board of the National Association of Law Placement (NALP) has, for now, made just two small changes to the law firm summer associate recruiting guidelines: The deadline for students to accept offers will drop from 45 days to 28 days, and the deadline for students who have completed a summer program to accept job offers will move from Nov. 15 to Nov. 1.

The National Law Journal (NLJ) reports that NALP board has backed off the recent NALP recommendation to delay the summer associate offer process by four months -- a proposal that would have initiated a January offer kickoff date for law firm summer associate offers.

Law firm recruiters and law school administrators "largely welcomed" the outcome, reports the NLJ. The NALP proposal to delay law firm summer associate offers to January, met with a chilly reception from many law firms and those involved in law firm hiring.

NALP Executive Director Jim Leipold said that the organization received 800 responses to the proposal since it was unveiled in early January, but there was "no easy consensus or even a trend around one particular idea." Leipold explained that "Law firms and law schools are both conservative and risk-averse institutions. The scope of change was very large and it doesn't surprise me that there was resistance."

NALP's Jim Leipold was a guest on Law School Podcaster's segment, "The Current Economic Environment: What It Means for Law School Applicants & Students." Tune into the full show to hear more on this topic.

The "Go-To" Law Schools, According to the Biggest Law Firms

Law school applicants getting ready to choose a law school will undoubtedly face a competitive legal hiring market, along with the prospect of servicing enormous debt on graduation. While it's fair to say that not everyone graduating from law school wants to or will be able to work in a big law firm, there's no escaping that one measure of a law school is the rankings and statistics that tell us how that school does with placing graduates in the biggest law firms. So, even if you think you might opt to work in the public sector or in another position outside of the big law firm world, it's worth looking at law school placement numbers at the big law firms when making that decision.

The National Law Journal (NLJ),has compiled its rankings of the Top 50 "Go-To" schools based on the percentage of 2009 J.D. graduates who landed jobs at NLJ 250 firms by Sept. 30, 2009, using survey data submitted by the 250 top law firms as ranked by NLJ.


At the top of the NLJ list is Northwestern University School of Law, which placed 55.5% of its graduates at NLJ 250 firms -- a sharp decline from 2008, when the highest percentage of graduates heading to NLJ 250 firms was 70.5%.

The top 25 schools in The National Law Journal’s annual Go-To Law School List are as follows:
1) Northwestern University School of Law -- 55.9%
2) Columbia Law School -- 55.4%
3) Stanford Law School -- 54.1%
4) University of Chicago Law School -- 53.1%
5) University of Virginia School of Law -- 52.8%
6) University of Michigan Law School -- 51%
7) University of Pennsylvania Law School -- 50.8%
8) New York University School of Law -- 50.1%
9) University of California, Berkeley School of Law -- 50%
10) Duke Law School -- 49.8%
11) Harvard Law School -- 47.6&
12) Vanderbilt University Law School -- 47.1%
13) Georgetown University Law Center -- 42.8%
14) Cornell Law School -- 41.5%
15) University of Southern California Gould School of Law -- 41.3%
16) University of Texas School of Law -- 36.6%
17) University of California at Los Angeles School of Law -- 35.9%
18) Yale Law School -- 35.3%
19) Boston College Law School -- 34.6%
19) Boston University School of Law -- 34.6%
21) George Washington University Law School -- 31.6%
22) Fordham University School of Law -- 29.4%
23) University of Notre Dame Law School -- 28.8%
24) Washington University School of Law, St. Louis -- 27.5%
25. University of Illinois College of Law -- 26.7%

The NLJ reports that "the 2009 percentages include deferred associates, so an even smaller group actually went to work last year. Remember, the list consists of the very top performing schools, where job prospects in years past have proven recession-proof. Not so in 2009. We’ve ranked the top 50 law schools by the percentage of 2009 juris doctor graduates who snagged jobs at NLJ 250 firms by Sept. 30, 2009. Numbers are based on information gathered from our annual NLJ 250 survey—statistics we get from the nation’s largest law firms."

The NLJ also identified firm favorites—the schools from which the top law firms on the NLJ 250 recruited most of its first-years in 2009.

Listen to our full podcast "Choosing the Right Law School," for more information on this topic.

Baby, It's Cold Out There! Law Firms Respond to Proposed Changes in Recruiting at Law Schools

Change does not come easily to the citizens of Law Firm Land. Witness the tepid reaction, if not downright frigid, by some big law firms to the National Association of Law Placement (NALP) Report's (pdf) recommendation to move the period when offers are extended to law students to January, five months after on-campus interviews.

For those not yet familiar with the acronym from the on-campus interviewing (OCI) experience, NALP is the national organization of law schools and employers that, among other things, sets guidelines on the annual on-campus interview season, and determines how long students can hold onto a job offer before making a decision. Tradition is king here -- the process has remained pretty much the same for 40 years, with law firms recruiting on campus in the fall and making offers shortly thereafter.

The recent NALP Commission and subsequent Report (see our earlier post detailing the Report's recommendations) came as a result of the recession, where law firms found themselves overstaffed and forced to lay off hundreds of lawyers in New York and nationwide, and delayed by up to one year the first-year start dates.

Jones Day was an early critic of the plan for an “offer kick-off day” in mid-January during students’ second year of law school and now has offered more details in a critique (PDF) on its website that says the plan is an anticompetitive “radical restructuring” of the recruitment process.

NALP solicited comments to the recommendations in the Report and they are hearing back from member law firms and law schools. According to Jim Leipold, executive director at NALP, "almost universally people felt a January kick-off date was too late." The biggest issue? Recruiting officials at firms have expressed concerned that a January "offer kick-off day" will create a prolonged recruiting season with law firms spending nearly half a year wining and dining top students.

Leipold told the New York Law Journal, reaction to its proposals among the schools and firms is "mixed." NALP is reviewing feedback from more than 825 members, including more than 125 written comments.

NALP's Jim Leipold was a guest on Law School Podcaster's segment, "The Current Economic Environment: What It Means for Law School Applicants & Students." Tune into the full show to hear more on this topic.

Summer Associate Offers In January? NALP Report Recommends Changes in Recruiting At Law Schools

Ever wonder about the "logic" behind incoming 2L law students leaving their summer vacations in mid-August, heading back to campus, wearing their nicest business suits, to join the frenzied fray that is known as "on-campus interviewing (OCI)?"

Whether you look at it from the point of view of the students pressured to participate and decide early before fully considering the full range of employment options, the law firms trying to assess and anticipate future hiring needs two years in advance or the law schools pressured to schedule OCI just as the semester is starting, there's considerable dissatisfaction with the timing guidelines for law firm recruiting. Ashby Jones, Lead Writer for the Wall Street Journal Law Blog, observed in a recent Law School Podcaster show "the thing about law school and hiring is that it all happens in advance to a degree that a lot of people find sort of absurd."

These concerns, made worse by the economy, may finally lead to changes in the recruiting timeline. NALP's (National Association for Law Placement) Commission on Recruiting and the Legal Profession issued an initial report (PDF) this week recommending that law firms shift away from rolling offer deadlines to a framework based on specific dates ("Offer Kick-Off Days") before which offers for employment cannot be made. The ABA Journal reports that the NALP Commission recommends moving back the date for summer associate job offers until mid-January of the second year of law school (establishing an "offer kick-off day") and proposes "shortening the period of time during which offers remain open from 45 days to 14 days."

While this initial Phase I of the NALP Commission's report focused on potential changes that could be implemented as early as the 2010-2011 academic year, and thus focused mainly on timing guidelines, the NALP Commission also plans to look more closely at the topic of fundamental legal recruiting model changes. That could be pretty interesting.

While the American Lawyer reports that some law firms are worried the proposed changes will just mean they have to "wine and dine" candidates for a longer period of time, the NALP Commission suggests that a January Kick-Off Day might open up the possibility for employers "to experiment with more in-depth interviewing and assessment techniques" and "allow law firms to make decisions after receiving year-end financial data."

Jim Leipold, is the Executive Director at NALP, and was a recent guest on our Law School Podcaster segment, The Current Economic Envcironment: What It Means for Law School Applicants and Students. He gave us a bit of a preview of what we're hearing now and some insight into why the economy might be driving some of the possible changes in law firm recruiting. "Things were beginning to happen before the recession for a number of reasons but the recession accelerated most of those changes and I think will support those changes. I think, over time, we’ll see more firms drift toward recruiting later so, rather than the focus being on students as they return to school in the beginning of their second year, recruiting will probably begin to happen later in the second year, whether that’s late Fall or early Spring, and there too, different firms may choose to recruit at different times. So students are just going to have to be prepared for a much broader range of practices and understanding for each firm that they’re interested in what course that firm is choosing.”

To hear more on this topic, tune in to the full show, "The Current Economic Environment: What It Means for Law School Applicants and Students."