dechert no offers just one more sign of a frosty recruiting season?

[cynthia]

Our sister publication out of Philadelphia, The Legal Intelligencer, has an article up (reg. req.) on the Dechert no offers you might have heard about earlier in the day on Above the Law.

To make a long-ish story short, the firm has made offers to 50% of its 2009 summer class. The remaining half have been informed that they'll have to wait until January 2010 to find out if they've got a spot at the firm.

The implications of this are pretty extensive, especially when couple with ATL's assertion that Dechert is going to be actively recruiting 3Ls.

Gina Passerella of TLI has yet another angle: 

Of the 20 or so firms she is tracking in and around the area, Lennon said only four have given offers so far. Large law firms typically want to give offers to summer associates as quickly as they can once completing evaluations and assessing practice area needs, she said, because they then have to begin recruiting on campus for next summer’s class. They want the students who received offers in the summer to act as advocates during the fall recruiting season, Lennon said. 

With some firms not hiring for next summer and others questioning the lead time between hiring summer associates and bringing them in as full-time attorneys two years later, firms are taking their time this year. 

"Now, here in the real world in 2009, I think firms generally are going to wait as long as they can to make these decisions," Lennon said.

So what's the deal, here? Playing current summers against their law school compatriots, in a fight to the death over an offer? I think ATL got it right: Dechert is trying to trade up.

Comments

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The law firm methods of hiring have always baffled me. Why should they ever have interned and offered later employment so so many law school students every year anyway? The rate of more tenured attorneys leaving the firm every year couldn't have equalled the number of incoming newbies every year.

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They want the students who received offers in the summer to act as advocates during the fall recruiting season, Lennon said.

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