Early recruitment or “precruiting” has garnered increasing popularity among Biglaw firms for entry-level recruitment. According to a survey, 66% of the largest law firms and 34% of all law firms try to fill their summer associate classes before formal On-Campus Interview (OCI) programs begin. Precruiting has proved to be effective, with 23.3% of all offers to second-year students resulting from early recruiting.
However, amid the rush to outpace rivals, some Biglaw firms are adopting a controversial ‘exploding offers’ approach, leading to mounting tensions between law schools and law firms. These ‘exploding offers’ mandate that students decide before the OCI process commences, else their offer will be relinquished.
Fingers are pointed at the National Association for Law Placement (NALP) upon the approval of exploding offers in 2018 with its new set of rules for entry-level recruiting.
NALP executive director Nikia Gray expressed her concerns saying, “It’s a very unfortunate situation. It’s a pressure tactic. [The students] don’t know if they’ll receive another better offer.”(American Lawyer)
In an article by Am Law, Dean Erwin Chemerinsky of Berkeley Law even asserted that the school “doesn’t support precruiting” deeming it as an “unfair process that disadvantages qualified candidates who happen to be less obviously credentialed or as well-networked as their peers.”
Law students are advised to lean on their career services offices for guidance, and students “have more power in the process than they realize.” Gray emphasizes the students’ potential negotiating power as they “are the commodity that law firms are trying to get.”(American Lawyer)