Anyone want 50 highlighters?
One of the benefits of going to a "good" law school is that "good" firms come to recruit. Sure, some 1Ls have lined up interviews/offers at firms. But mostly, this semester has been more about these aforementioned firms coming to school to make their name known with the 1Ls so we will bid and interview with their firm come the fall.
After going to several of these law firm receptions (free food and booze) to mingle with lawyers, I've noticed just how much money these firms, (a) have and (b) have to throw around. A reception, by definition, requires that lawyers give up time to spend mingling. That's 3 hours per lawyer, average of 4 lawyers per firm at each reception, by the $400/hour per lawyer in billable time the firm is losing out, all of which equals a lot of money. Then there is the cost of the food and booze. Then there is renting the reception place. Then there are the travel expenses for the lawyers to come. Finally comes the price of all the goodies they give out (I've gotten flash drives, numerous pens, keychains, highligters [including the top of the line highlighter and post-it flag combo], flashlights, around $50 in Starbucks gift cards, umbrellas, and even a dart set, all for just talking with them. I'm not sure how much that adds up to, but that's surely a lot of money to talk to people they will not even be interviewing until we are 2Ls.
[Note, here's a post from a 3L UCLA blogger about how much it costs a firm to recruit an incoming associate.]
Compare these recruiting budgets to the recruiting efforts of government and public interest organizations, and you begin to see the real disparity in resources. The more money they have to squash the little people I guess.
In other exciting news, East Coast firms last week raised their starting salaries to 160K and West Coast firms to 145K.
After going to several of these law firm receptions (free food and booze) to mingle with lawyers, I've noticed just how much money these firms, (a) have and (b) have to throw around. A reception, by definition, requires that lawyers give up time to spend mingling. That's 3 hours per lawyer, average of 4 lawyers per firm at each reception, by the $400/hour per lawyer in billable time the firm is losing out, all of which equals a lot of money. Then there is the cost of the food and booze. Then there is renting the reception place. Then there are the travel expenses for the lawyers to come. Finally comes the price of all the goodies they give out (I've gotten flash drives, numerous pens, keychains, highligters [including the top of the line highlighter and post-it flag combo], flashlights, around $50 in Starbucks gift cards, umbrellas, and even a dart set, all for just talking with them. I'm not sure how much that adds up to, but that's surely a lot of money to talk to people they will not even be interviewing until we are 2Ls.
[Note, here's a post from a 3L UCLA blogger about how much it costs a firm to recruit an incoming associate.]
Compare these recruiting budgets to the recruiting efforts of government and public interest organizations, and you begin to see the real disparity in resources. The more money they have to squash the little people I guess.
In other exciting news, East Coast firms last week raised their starting salaries to 160K and West Coast firms to 145K.
posted by The Fox at 12:30 AM
3 Comments:
The receptions are nice. An actual 1L summer job would be a whole lot nicer though. If only they gave those away along with the booze and highlighters.
Yeah. When you go to a less good school, you visit career services and they say
"So... do you know any lawyers?"
I want some highlighters.
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