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1L Summer Associate Job Placement & the New HLS Curriculum
Poast new message in this thread
Date: November 28th, 2006 6:53 PM Author: 180 whorehouse Last week ( http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=531104&mc=1&forum_id=2 )I posted the first installment of my analysis of the new Harvard Law School curriculum's impact on law firm placement. As expected, some were very skeptical about whether what one learns in law school has any impact on elite firm placement.
I completely agree with those skeptics -- I do not believe that law firms are going to care about the actual substantive knowledge HLS students pick up in these new classes. However, the curriculum does a lot more than just change what classes HLS students take during their first year. Most notably, the curriculum changes will change the total # of classes first year students take (and the total # of grades they receive) and move first year fall exams from mid-January to mid-December. This post will discuss the impact of the latter change on the market for first year summer associates.
I. Background & Regulatory Environment
The first year law student summer job search -- both for summer associate positions and all other employment opportunities -- is a highly unstructured and decentralized process. Unlike second year summer employment, most first year students do not obtain their summer jobs through an on-campus recruiting program or any other formal system. Rather, most first year students, particularly those seeking summer associate positions at elite law firms, begin their job hunt by mass mailing their resume and cover letter to dozens—and sometimes hundreds—of law firms in their preferred legal markets.
However, the first year hiring process is not completely unregulated. Nearly all law schools and elite law firms are members of the National Association for Law Placement (NALP), an organization that has promulgated principles and standards for law student recruitment activities. The NALP standards, first adopted in 1978 and modified several times in subsequent years, place a number of important constraints on the first year law student hiring process. Most importantly, the NALP guidelines prohibit first year law students from communicating with any legal employers, including law firms, before December 1. Furthermore, NALP forbids law school career service offices from providing summer job search advice to first year students before November 1.
About 920 first year law students worked as summer associates during the summer of 2005, with 60 percent of NALP law firms having hired at least one first year student for their summer program.
II. The New Curriculum and its Impact on Harvard's Market Status
The NALP standard prohibiting first year law students from applying for summer jobs before December 1 has traditionally given Harvard and Yale students a significant advantage over peer schools. Because virtually all law schools schedule their first year examinations in the middle of December, most first year law students face a trade-off between applying for summer associate positions on December 1—a time consuming process that can take several hours, or even days—and studying for those all-important first year exams. Given the impact first year grades have on second year summer associate hiring, law review membership, judicial clerkship placement, and even entry into law teaching, it should come as no surprise that many law students are not willing to risk receiving lower first year grades for a higher chance of obtaining a first year summer associate position.
But first year students at Harvard Law School and Yale Law School have never had to make this trade-off between first year grades and the first year job search. Harvard and Yale have traditionally scheduled their first year exams in early to mid-January—approximately a month after peer schools such as Stanford and Columbia. Thus, Harvard and Yale first year students can prepare their summer associate job application materials for a December 1 mass mailing, while still having plenty of time to study for their first year exams. Not surprisingly, Harvard and Yale have placed significantly more of their first year students in summer associate positions than their peer schools.
Harvard’s new curriculum may cause Harvard to lose this competitive advantage relative to its peer schools. Once the curriculum changes are fully implemented, Harvard first year exams will no longer take place in January, but will be held in December, consistent with most other law schools. As a result, future Harvard first year students will have to face the same trade-off between exam performance and job placement as their peers at other schools. This will almost certainly cause fewer Harvard students to apply for first year summer associate positions as early as possible, and likely reduce the number of first year Harvard students employed as summer associates.
My next post in this series will address counterarguments and potential mitigating factors.
*Cross-posted at http://firstmovers.blogspot.com/2006/11/1l-summer-associate-job-placement-and.html |
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Date: November 29th, 2006 1:23 AM Author: Blue Autistic Den Son Of Senegal Columbia troll. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=535274&forum_id=2#7091762) |
Date: November 28th, 2006 7:03 PM Author: peach persian forum I'm not going to read this, but unless the conclusion is that HLS will continue to place more 1Ls than other schools, it's wrong. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=535274&forum_id=2#7088196) |
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Date: November 28th, 2006 7:05 PM Author: 180 whorehouse It may or may not continue to place more, but I would expect the gap to decrease. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=535274&forum_id=2#7088203) |
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Date: November 28th, 2006 7:06 PM Author: peach persian forum Doubtful.
Firms hire 1Ls on the basis of their school. Nothing else really matters. |
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Date: November 28th, 2006 7:10 PM Author: 180 whorehouse When people apply certainly does matter. Or are you saying that, all else equal, doing a mass mail on Dec 1 vs. Jan 1 vs. Feb 1 is not going to have any impact on your 1L summer associate job chances whatsoever? (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=535274&forum_id=2#7088234) |
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Date: November 28th, 2006 7:23 PM Author: peach persian forum It might have some effect at the margin, but most firms don't make their decisions on hiring right away.
They will just wait longer and take the HLSers that they usually take. |
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Date: November 28th, 2006 7:56 PM Author: 180 whorehouse "It might have some effect at the margin, but most firms don't make their decisions on hiring right away."
Are you sure about that? Because a pretty significant number of people at Penn (as well as the 1Ls who worked at my firm over the summer) got their offers in December or early January (in any case, before 1L grades came out). |
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Date: November 28th, 2006 7:10 PM Author: Comical azn trust fund I'm not going to read this either (at least not all the way) but what about the point that HLS 1Ls used to get fall semester grades much later than other students, but will now get them at about the same time? I can see reasons why this might or might not affect 1L job placement.
Also I think 1L firm job placement is such an unpredictable and random process that it's not worth dwelling so much on. |
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Date: November 28th, 2006 7:11 PM Author: 180 whorehouse Yup, you're correct that this may also play a role. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=535274&forum_id=2#7088239) |
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Date: November 28th, 2006 7:16 PM Author: Flesh mind-boggling plaza A significant amount of the 1L firm hiring for HY students is just firms that want 'a kid from Harvard' in their summer class, for reasons ranging from marketing within the law school to marketing within other law schools. There are too many firms hiring 1Ls from Harvard who don't know what an HLS transcript looks like (because they never ask for them from 1Ls or even 2Ls) for this to impact (quantitative) HLS 1L firm hiring significantly. |
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Date: November 28th, 2006 7:21 PM Author: 180 whorehouse The transcript is irrelevant here -- the issue is the structural changes the new curriculum will create. I think it should go without saying that moving exams from early to mid January to early to mid December is certainly going to cause the # of HLS 1Ls who apply on or around December 1 to decrease. Or do you dispute that? (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=535274&forum_id=2#7088298) |
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Date: November 29th, 2006 1:10 AM Author: Frozen Ticket Booth I dispute that it matters when they apply. They get the job because of the school, so if they apply later, it's not like the firms have a bunch of 1L 'slots' and once those are full it's over. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=535274&forum_id=2#7091645) |
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Date: November 28th, 2006 7:22 PM Author: coral swashbuckling background story ape Except for the fact that the vast majority of elite law firms only hire 1Ls in order to help increase 2L recruiting yield. This is a major reason why Harvard wins the 1L summer associate contest -- 1000 employers come to interview 2LS and there are only 500 students. Half of the employers come away with nothing. They are more than happy to hire a couple of 1Ls to help spread the word that their firm is a good place to work.
The law firms want the dutiful little 1L, so grateful that their benevolent employer has given them the opportunity to do absolutely nothing for thousands of dollars (because 1Ls, even more so than unproductive 2Ls, REALLY can't do shit to help the firm's business), will return to Harvard in the fall and keep their name on the radar of a few more students.
The timing of their applications won't matter in the slightest. |
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Date: November 28th, 2006 7:56 PM Author: 180 whorehouse I plan on responding to this argument in the next post in this series. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=535274&forum_id=2#7088564) |
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Date: November 28th, 2006 9:16 PM Author: learning disabled police squad point I have a couple friends who are partners at law firms and they say every year they hire HLS 1Ls because they couldn't get enough HLS 2Ls.
And to quote 174, for all intensive purposes, that applies to every law firm except Wachtell.
It's also good marketing to 2Ls from the other schools at the firm - they are working at a place where someone from Harvard or Yale would work.
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Date: June 2nd, 2007 3:25 PM Author: Alcoholic glittery messiness scourge upon the earth intensive purposes, lol (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=535274&forum_id=2#8202072) |
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Date: November 28th, 2006 8:25 PM Author: wonderful avocado philosopher-king home But 1L jobs at HLS really don't fucking matter. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=535274&forum_id=2#7088847) |
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Date: November 28th, 2006 8:38 PM Author: Racy Purple Turdskin TITCR (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=535274&forum_id=2#7088943) |
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Date: November 28th, 2006 8:59 PM Author: supple famous landscape painting That's a pretty long post to say something that isn't particulary deep or interesting.
"Now HLS students will have less time to mail merge on December 1st."
Has GTO considered that HLS and YLS dominate the 1L job search hunt because they're the two best, most prestigious law schools? |
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Date: November 29th, 2006 1:10 AM Author: obsidian keepsake machete Do you consider YLS to be the Wilmer of law schools? (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=535274&forum_id=2#7091642) |
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Date: November 29th, 2006 1:15 AM Author: Misanthropic hyperactive heaven this is what i was thinking (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=535274&forum_id=2#7091691) |
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Date: November 28th, 2006 9:19 PM Author: learning disabled police squad point Also, grades from HLS REALLY don't matter as far as BigLaw is concerned. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=535274&forum_id=2#7089248) |
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Date: November 28th, 2006 10:45 PM Author: effete tanning salon For people who do well first semester, having exams late and not getting your grades until Feb is a severe disadvantage for the 1L job search. Plus, 1Ls can do the mail merge in Oct if they want to. There is nothing stopping them. It takes about 10 minutes to walk to the post office on Dec 1 and drop the letters in the box. These 10 minutes won't affect your grades.
You are over thinking this thing waaaaay too much. |
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Date: November 29th, 2006 1:08 AM Author: Lascivious French Chef FYI until recently SLS's 1L exams were after break... (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=535274&forum_id=2#7091616) |