After ‘Hullabaloo,’ NALP Abandons January Kickoff Day for Job Offers
The National Association for Law Placement has abandoned a recommendation that law firms delay summer associate job offers until a kickoff day in mid-January of the second year of law school.
Instead, NALP’s board adopted two smaller recruiting changes, the National Law Journal reports. Students will be required to accept offers within 28 days, rather than 45 days. And summer associates offered jobs after law school will have to accept by Nov. 1, instead of Nov. 15.
NALP executive director James Leipold told the National Law Journal that his group received 800 responses to the January kickoff-day proposal and “there was no easy consensus or even a trend around one particular idea.”
Jeffrey Boxer, hiring partner at New York firm Carter Ledyard & Milburn, noted the controversy over the proposal. “There was a lot of work and a lot of hullabaloo to come up with a change that was seemingly modest,” he told the NLJ.
Several large law firms had opposed the idea of pushing back offers until January, four or five months after on-campus interviews. Jones Day had argued the idea was anti-competitive because law schools would have to take collective action to punish firms that don’t comply. The law firm also said the later date would disadvantage stable firms and favor those that can’t predict hiring needs far in advance.
