Are You Employed, Sir?

UPDATE:  I am moving this up in case there is any follow-up discussion to be had.  I have two points to make:  First, make sure that your resume reflects correct contact information.  You'd be surprised how often this is an issue.  Second, I went back and checked the blog's various OCIP threads over the years for an informal study.  I simply tabulated the number of firms listed each year on the blog.  Not very scientific as I'm sure CDO has more accurate figures.  But the trend is remarkable.  Here is the graph, followed by the numbers:

Year	Firms
2007	120
2008	127
2009	99
2010	98
2011	82
2012	72
2013	71

I will be traveling later today so don't expect any updates or anything but what I would consider fascinating is having Boalt's average fees for each of those years.  If anyone is bored enough to collect that data, I'd be happy to revise the table and graph.    

* * *
 
Ah yes, it's that time of the year.  Ostensibly, you expect to see the best in people--their sharpest suits, brightest smiles, politest manners--but you end up with elevator gossip, transfer-hate, and enough anxiety to fill some area of large volume.  This is now the ninth year we've done a post on the on-campus interview process, which for whatever random reason is now called EIW.  Sounds more like a tax credit I should claim.  I'll try to use the contemporary terminology, but I apologize in advance for reverting to the old OCIP (pronounced Oh-Sip) term.  Every year, there's plenty of sage advice on the meaning of this interview process.  I can't really add much more to the threads of years past.  I'll just repeat some key points that everyone should keep in mind.

• If you came to law school thinking you're guaranteed a place in Big Law, you made a mistake in your calculations.  Just in the past 10 years, firms like Brobeck, Thelen, Howrey, Heller, Dewey LeBoeuf, etc. have collapsed.  These were not start ups, but old firms that had been around for decades (if not longer).  Many had made summer associate and associate offers.  Then?  Poof.  Moral of the story?  Expect firms to be conservative in their hiring.  
• Hiring is not a zero sum game.  There is a LOT that goes into the decision to extend call back offers and then summer offers and yet again full time offers.  If you can go through the process with a positive attitude, congratulations, you're already a success.  When something unfortunate happens, like a law firm collapsing just before the start of the summer program, those who are not assholes tend to be the ones who land on their feet.  Don't let the negativity surrounding EIW infect you.  (Insert reference to The Walking Dead about how we're all already infected).  
• There are 8 million fine lines, you should be prepared to walk all of them simultaneously.  The toughest one is probably the fine line between maintaining your personality, while appearing marketable.  The extremes are easy to define:  if your personality is to shower once a week, then I strongly recommend ditching that personality and adopting some basic hygiene; or if you have a healthy sense of humor, don't suppress it just because someone said you should never crack a joke during an interview.  The harder cases are the gray areas.  There's no right or wrong answer here, it's just something you should ponder. 

This isn't meant to be some sort of an Eastern thing.  Just my ranting.  With that out of the way, here are the rules.

RULES

1. We will take comments posted below regarding offers/rejections [REVISED: for call back interviews] and incorporate them into the body of this post. The process is tedious and generally not fun. There's a lot you can do to expedite things along.

2. PLEASE READ THE BODY OF THIS POST AND THE LAST FEW COMMENTS TO SEE IF ANYONE HAS POSTED THE SAME OFFER/REJECTION THAT YOU ARE ABOUT TO POST.

3. SEE NUMBER 2.

4. Post the offers/rejections in the following format:

Firm name, Office, +/- to indicate offer/rejection respectively. For example:

Orrick, SF +.

The location abbreviations are as follows:

Atl -- Atlanta; Bos -- Boston; Chi -- Chicago; Dal -- Dallas; DC -- DC; EBay -- East Bay locations (Oakland, Walnut Creek, etc.); LA -- LA area offices (includes Century City); Mia = Miami and South Florida; Minn -- Minnesota; NY -- New York/New Jersey; OC -- Orange County area offices; Por -- Portland; Sac -- Sacramento; SD -- San Diego; SF -- San Francisco; SV -- Silicon Valley offices (includes Palo Alto, San Jose, Menlo Park, and all other South Bay locations).

5. This is now the ninth EIW that N&B has had this thread. Without failure, each previous thread contained comments that were ummm worthy of staying up. So, while we will delete comments that are only posting +/-, more substantive comments will stay up. At the same time, it's probably wise not to identify yourself to your prospective employers. So don't write anything silly that's going to reveal who you are.

Best of luck to all of you, but for the love all that is holy and good, please follow Rules 2 and 3.

***

Akin Gump, LA +
Arnold & Porter, LA -, SF +
Baker Botts, SV +
Baker McKenzie, SF +
Bingham, LA +/-, SF +/-, SV +
Boies Schiller, Oak -
Bryan Cave, LA +, SF +/-
Cadwalader, DC +, NY +
Cleary, DC+, NY +/-
Cravath, +
Cooley, Den +, NY +/-, SF +/-, SV +/-
Covington, DC +
Crowell, OC +/-, SF +
Davis Polk, NY +/-, SV +
Davis Wright, Sea -
Dechert, NY +
Drinker Biddle & Reath, SF -
DLA Piper, LA -, SV +
Fenwick & West, SF -, Sea +/-, SV +
Foley, LA +, SF -
Garvey Schubert, Sea +
Gibson Dunn, NY +, SF -
Goodwin Proctor, LA -, SF +/-, SV -
Gunderson, SV +
Haynes & Boone, Dal +, SV -
Hogan & Lovells, LA +, SF +, SV +
Holland & Knight, SF +
Irell, LA +, OC -
Jenner & Block, Chi -
Jones Day, LA +, NY +/-, OC -, SF -, SV +
King & Spalding, NY +, SF +, SV +
Kirkland & Ellis, LA -, SF +/-
K&L Gates, LA +
Kramer Levin, NY _
Latham LA +, NY +/-, SF +/-
Littler Mendelson, SF +
Manatt, LA -
Mayer Brown, LA +
McDermott, SV +/-
McKool Smith, SV +
Milbank, LA +
Morgan Lewis, SV +
MoFo, LA +, SF +/-
Munger, +
Nixon Peabody, SF +
O'Melveny, CC -, LA +/-, SF +/-
Orrick, LA +, SF +, SV -
PaulHastings, LA +/-, NY -, SF +/-, SV -
Perkins Coie, SV -
Pillsbury, NY +/-, SF +
Proskauer, LA +/-, NY +
Quinn Emanuel, SV +
Reed Smith, LA +, SF +/-
Robbins Gellar, SD +/-
Ropes & Gray, SF +, NY +
Rutan Tucker, OC +
Schiff Hardin, SF -
Sedgwick, LA +
Shearman & Sterling, NY -, SF +
Sheppard Mullin, LA +, OC +, SF +/-, SV +
Sidley, Chi -, DC -, LA +/-, SF +/-
Simpson Thatcher, NY +, SV +/-
Stradling, OC +
Skadden, LA +, NY +/-, SV +/-
Sullivan Cromwell, SV +
Vinson & Elkins, Dal +
Wachtell +/-
Wilson Sonsini, SV +/-
Weil, NY +, SV +
White & Case, LA -, NY +, SV +
Wilmer, LA +, NY +/-, SV +/-
  

In Other News

Apparently Dean Edley has decided step down as Dean effective December 31.  (I got an e-mail from the Alumni Association, the text of which is posted in the EWI thread).  I actually did not know about the Dean's medical issue, but I wish him and his family the best.  I'm hoping he does not turn to cooking meth to secure the financial security of the law school (or acting as the lawyer for meth cooks?).  Jokes aside, it's a bit too early to write the history on Dean Edley's tenure at the law school, but this is the law school that I entered in 2004 along with a freshly minted Dean, who for the first time was not a Boalt insider:

-- No wireless or electrical outlets in classrooms.  If you sat in the front row and had an exceptionally long power cord, you could plug in your laptop to a surge protector.  And the battery power in laptops those days were not what they are today.  You'd see solitaire on people's screens in class. 

-- Chairs would break.  During class.  With people sitting in them.  Torts.

-- Ranked 13th.

-- The law school's website has neat graphs on faculty numbers. Suffice it to say, we've hired some top caliber talent during Dean Edley's tenure, including Interim Dean Lester.

-- The elephant in the room is the increase in fees.  I used to be of the mindset that Dean Edley was correct to try to set Boalt on a path that followed the Michigan / UVA model.  That made sense in an era of one budget crisis after another.  It also made sense in an era of boom law firm hiring.  With the benefit of the economic collapse of 2008, I've been gradually second-guessing the wisdom of that plan.  There is now no legitimate public law school option in California.  I think what really bothered me the most is that we went from a really crappy loan repayment program to a really good loan repayment program funded by increased fees  and donations to a government sponsored loan repayment program.  A large part of the fee increases were earmarked for loan repayment.  If current Boalties are using government loan repayment programs, where's the extra money going?  Deep down, I'm bothered by that.  It's one thing to increase fees knowing that the school will guarantee loan repayment for those who work in public sector / public interest jobs.  If that were the case, the nominal fees would be high, but in terms of actual costs, the school would continue with its core mission of serving as a public law school.  Instead, we are back to square one:  depending on the whims and wishes of legislators eager to cut funding.  I don't get it. 

Regardless, I'm terribly sad to see Dean Edley step down.