Someone accepted an offer today. Next summer's class is starting to shape up. I hate the people who take forever to decide, and make us send them cookies, or brownies, or t-shirts. Those things shouldn't make a difference. After all of these years, I still haven't figured out how law students make their decisions. We track the firms we're competing against, at least to the extent the people with offers tell us who else they're looking at, and there's no way to predict consistently what people will do. It's not as if we consistently get people who are choosing between us and one particular firm, and lose people choosing between us and another particular firm. There just isn't much of a pattern. We also track by reasons students give for turning us down, and there's no rhyme or reason there either. "Didn't feel right" is what we hear most, which is just students trying to be polite. Practice group issues are also things we hear a lot, because people want to do one thing and we're weaker in it, or at least they perceive us to be weaker, not that they know anything. For years we were thought to be weak in a specific practice, and everyone at the firm knew it wasn't true and we were building competency and clients and would soon be a big player. And we would tell students that. But they wouldn't listen. Now, we're one of the best at it. And people choose us for it. One thing I don't understand are the students whose resumes show them really dedicated to something -- environmental issues, human rights issues, education issues -- and then they choose a firm to work in that practice group, even though the work the firm does is on the "wrong" side of the issue. There's a firm with a human rights practice group I know of, and Burma is one of its clients. There are firms that recruit at schools with top environmental programs for students to staff their cases defending companies that pollute. I am in complete support for firms doing this kind of work - it's lucrative, no doubt. But I don't understand how they (and we) get students to come on board, especially students who have spent their time at school working on the other side of the issue. My angle has often been to try and push the generally uncommitted "corporate people" or "litigation people" into the "difficult to justify morally" practice areas, but that isn't the pattern lately. I read somewhere recently that there are firms lining up to defend Saddam Hussein. That's a tough sell in the recruiting process, or so I would expect. Although perhaps I'm wrong.
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