Ask a bunch of law firms to decide an industry-wide hiring standard for summer associates, and what do you get? Legal pontification, of course.
It’s a "restraint on trade" cried Jones Day, when the folks over at NALP recommended restricting 2L summer associate offers until after January.
"The idea, the commission said, was to slow down a process that had grown increasingly compressed as more schools raced to get their students in front of firm recruiters by scheduling on-campus interviews in August — before those students even started their second-year classes," writes Zach Lowe over at our sister publication, The American Lawyer.
Jones Day, however, went so far as to say the commission's recommendations could violate antitrust laws.
(FYI, the firm was part of NALP's 17-member commission to decide this stuff, but then it dropped out. Lowe heard from another dozen schools or firms that oppose the new guidelines.)
Jones Day hiring partner Gregory Shumaker said it's all a ruse.
"They are embracing the notion that the recruiting system was flawed, and therefore they had to hire too many people and were forced to let these people go or defer them," Shumaker told Lowe. "It's a fallacy. A lot of these firms unloaded dozens and dozens of lawyers and now they are reporting record profits per partner. It's unseemly."
— Amanda Royal
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