New NALP Deadline for Accepting Employment Offers: 45 Days
From the ABA Journal:
Under commonly accepted recruiting guidelines, second-year law students have been able to ponder several summer associate offers for months at a time. No more.
New guidelines adopted by NALP for a trial period now require second-years to decide within 45 days whether to accept a law firm's offer of summer employment, reports the National Law Journal. NALP's board decided earlier this month to adopt the 45-day deadline for one year, and will consider making the rule change permanent if it is well-received.
Link here, background information here.
Updated: Reading the text of the rules, it looks like the rule applies to permanent offers as well, and not just summer offers. And the precise deadline is 45 days, or Dec. 30th, whichever occurs first. Offers made after Dec. 15th should be left open for two weeks.
Under commonly accepted recruiting guidelines, second-year law students have been able to ponder several summer associate offers for months at a time. No more.
New guidelines adopted by NALP for a trial period now require second-years to decide within 45 days whether to accept a law firm's offer of summer employment, reports the National Law Journal. NALP's board decided earlier this month to adopt the 45-day deadline for one year, and will consider making the rule change permanent if it is well-received.
Link here, background information here.
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Updated: Reading the text of the rules, it looks like the rule applies to permanent offers as well, and not just summer offers. And the precise deadline is 45 days, or Dec. 30th, whichever occurs first. Offers made after Dec. 15th should be left open for two weeks.
Labels: OCIP/Employment
posted by Patrick Bageant at 10:28 AM
14 Comments:
I really don't see a problem with this. While it was nice to be able to sit on an offer until Dec. 1, it wasn't really necessary. People just dragged out their decision making until the last moment, probably doing themselves more harm (omigodwherewilligo) than good.
The only bad thing is that if people made second trips to both their top two choices, they would be hard pressed to do that now.
I also think this could be a net benefit for students. Now people won't sit on offers they don't intend to take---opening up a space for a student that still needs a job.
I don't see a big problem, either. I accepted an offer well before the Dec. 1 deadline, and so did pretty much everyone I know. I really don't think anyone needs all that time to make a decision. There's just only so much you can think about, and it doesn't take months to think about it.
Even 45 days seems like a very long time compared to most other employment markets.
But this is the new guy talking. Maybe it's necessary.
I agree with mcwho and the anon poster above: most people had made their choices within 30 days of their first call back, so this really shouldn't be much of a problem.
It should also be better for the non-top14 schools, whose 2Ls are often scrambling around for offers well into the spring semester. I also thought it was a little selfish (and ignorant) of us to hold on to offers for no other reason than our freedom to procrastinate.
I see two potential problems:
1) It doesn't look like the new rule sets maximum numbers of offers that you can hold open after certain dates, so if you start doing callbacks in the beginning of October, you can hold open all of your offers until mid-November. Under the old rule, you're supposed to limit yourself to maybe 3 offers by the beginning of November. If students hold open, say, 10 offers for 45 days, this could end up making the process more unpredictable for law firms.
2) The rule will discourage people from starting early and going outside of their school's OCIP. There are job fairs that start in August, but students who get offers from going to those fairs may have to make a decision on those offers before they finish OCIP interviews and calbacks.
3) The new rule encourages employes to recruit students outside of OCIP (before) because it will give them a chance to force acceptances from students who would otherwise hedge their OCIP offers.
I also agree with McWho on this one.
My first offer was one of my top three and came a full three+ weeks before my final offer. That's about as far apart as you could get.
Even factoring in secondary visits with these firms, that'd still leave another three weeks to make a decision - far more than is necessary. Decisions should be made by students as close to these callbacks as possible.
PS: Sen Perata's Dodge Charger is still available. Nobody's going to spend their future summer earnings on buying a pimp-mobile with some history? I guess my sales pitch fell flat...
I interviewed with a small, specialized firm during OCIP. (I won't say what area because that would give away the firm.) They weren't on the big law calendar and could only make about 1 offer at a time. I didn't get my offer from them until mid-November even though I interviewed in early October. The new NALP policy would have made it almost impossible to accept this offer since there were almost 45 days between my first offer and this one. So I wonder if this policy will hurt recruiting at the smaller firms. . .
So does this basically mean that unless a 2L is set on rejecting the offer from their summer firm, they will not be able to re-OCIP in fall of their 3L year?
This rule definitely sucks for people who get offers earlier through job fairs or interviews that happen well in advance of OCIP.
I believe that this rule only applies to the 2L OCIP process, not the full-time offer after your 2L summer. I could be wrong.
"B. Full-Time Employment Provisions
Employers offering full-time positions to commence following graduation to candidates not previously employed by them should leave those offers open for at least 45 days following the date of the offer letter or until December 30, whichever comes first.
Offers made after December 15 for full-time positions to commence following graduation should remain open for at least two weeks after the date of the offer letter.
Students may request that an employer extend the deadline to accept the employer’s offer until as late as April 1 if the student is actively pursuing positions with public interest or government organizations. Students may hold open only one offer in such circumstances. Employers are encouraged to grant such requests.
Employers offering full-time positions to commence following graduation to candidates previously employed by them should leave those offers open until at least November 15 of the candidate’s final year of law school.
Employers offering candidates full-time positions to commence following graduation and having a total of 40 attorneys or fewer in all offices are exempted from the provisions of this section. Offers made on or before December 15 should remain open for a minimum of three weeks. Offers made after December 15 should remain open for at least two weeks."
So I was right. You actually have longer after your 2L summer now. Used to be Nov. 1.
An employer who really wants you won't care about NALP's deadlines. There is almost no way to punish you for missing them besides them withdrawing your offer--which a firm whose invested time and effort in recruiting you likely won't do. It's just an issue of being neighborly and giving up the spot to those with fewer prospects. Which includes plenty of Berkeley students. Not just those at schools that are below T14.
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