Law Firm's Innovative Recruiting Idea: Shift Summer Program to 3L Fall, Offer Remote Options
Amidst all the talk of a paradigm shift in law practice, law school recruiting has stayed much the same.
But a 190-attorney Nashville-based law firm has launched a bold new approach that is capturing national attention. Instead of continuing with its traditional summer program, Waller Lansden Dortch & Davis is planning to offer a fall apprenticeship to third-year law students, beginning with the class of 2012, reports the Am Law Daily.
Termed Schola2Juris, the program will offer a $10,000 scholarship for those accepted to the six-week venture, which will include job shadowing at Waller Lansden, work in a virtual law office under the supervision of firm partners and associates, and a weekend social retreat, according to the legal publication and the firm’s website.
The program is predicated on applying for available post-graduation jobs at the firm, and geared to offering apprenticeships in specific practice areas.
It is being offered cooperatively with the University of Tennessee College of Law, and is set up with the idea that participants who get offers at the end of the program will be able to weigh the Waller Lansden position against still-open offers they may have received from other law firms at the end of the summer, according to Above the Law.
The firm’s recruiting director, Kathleen Pearson, tells the ABA Journal that Waller Lansden is also offering the apprenticeship program cooperatively with Vanderbilt University Law School and is open to doing so with other institutions, too.
News of the new fall recruiting program follows an effort by one enterprising law student to eliminate the third-year of law school and concerns that unpaid internships being offered by some legal employers in an employment market glutted with attorneys could violate labor law.
Readers, what do you think? Is the Waller Lansden apprenticeship program an idea whose time has come? Or does it make more sense for law firms to continue to host a traditional summer associate program?
Related ABA Journal coverage:
Updated at 7:52 p.m. to include comment from Pearson.
