Ed. note: Welcome to our daily feature, Quote of the Day.
The decisions being made by law firms with regard to the timing of their recruitment could easily have negative personal ramifications on students and student well-being.
It’s possible that those interviews were really much more about pre-recruiting for 2L summer associates and scouting talent than necessarily being about an increase in 1L summer associate opportunities. But the impact was the same: Students had to miss a lot of class in order to do interviews. If the outcome was that there weren’t more opportunities out there, then it negatively impacted students, because you are still graded on a curve.
— David Diamond, assistant dean of the Career Strategy Center at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, in comments given to the American Lawyer, on Biglaw firms’ increased use of pre-recruiting at the school and its effect on students. Diamond said that while 1L summer placements at the school remained flat between 2023 and 2024, last year, there were 50% more interviews for 1L summer associate positions.
Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Bluesky, X/Twitter, and Threads, or connect with her on LinkedIn.