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Two top law schools are changing the dates of their virtual recruiting programs to make students’ lives a bit less hectic — and make the hiring process a little easier (for their students, at least).
As first reported by Law.com, both Yale and Stanford will be moving their virtual interview programs to June, ahead of their formal on-campus interviews. Not only will this help lighten their students’ loads, but it will increase the likelihood of their students finding employment. It seems that because recruiting is starting earlier and earlier, the administrations at Yale and Stanford were wary that spots may not be available come late July and early August. From Law.com:
The school is moving OCI up instead of “releasing our students into the market early through open direct applications or a pre-season initiative,” which can help coordinate applications and screening interviews in a streamlined and efficient process and can minimize the disruption to summer programs, according to SLS’s announcement.
“We strongly believe that moving OCI earlier will be less onerous on our students than a recruiting process that includes both OCI and direct applications and stretches from June through the end of August,” according to SLS’s announcement. “We think it is important that our students be able to focus on finals and we’d like to minimize as much as possible the impact of the 2L job search on their 1L summer job, which for most of them, is their first legal experience.”
Kelly Voight, Yale’s assistant dean for the Career Development Office, said that the school had “resisted” making this move to June for as long as they could, but “reluctantly” made the change this year in order to “maximize students’ access to opportunities and allow for informed decision-making.” The elite school may shift its interview programming in the future depending on law firms’ hiring practices.
While this plan may work out smashingly for Yale and Stanford students — who, let’s face it, were going to get jobs anyway — we’ve got to wonder how students at other top law schools will be impacted. Will formalizing these virtual interviews turn into a law school arms race for jobs at top law firms? We suppose we’ll have to wait and see… and wait for the potential madness to begin.
In light of this news, will other top law schools follow in the footsteps of Yale and Stanford? If you have any details, please feel free to let us know.
Yale and Stanford Law Schools Move Virtual Interviews to June [Law.com]
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 Twitter and Threads or connect with her on LinkedIn.
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