Law Students Wooed With Free Flights and Fare

"Firms spend a tremendous amount of money on campus and they usually spend quite a lot on you," says William R. Moore, a second year Harvard Law School student. "More money gets thrown around here than any other school."

Law firms have subjected the Stoughton Hall proctor to sumptuous meals, trans-continental flights and first class hotel accomodations in order to obtain his services.

Moore, like hundreds of fellow Law School students, are feted each year in a manner rivaling the wining and dining conducted annually at the Business School by Wall Street.

Moore's long hours in Langdell Library are frequently interrupted by trips to California for job interviews. He was interviewed by 24 firms in Los Angeles, 13 of which offered to fly him out to California. He made five trips to the West Coast before accepting an offer.

Nearly all job placement begins on-campus with the Law School Placement Office serving as a clearinghouse for both law firm and student, according to the program's director N. June Thompson. More than 700 companies conducted on-campus interviews with nearly 1000 second and third year Law School students last October as part of the School's job placement service. And in March, 90 companies met with several hundred first year students about summer clerkships.

Law firms usually attempt to acquire potential employees in their second year of law school, frequently by offering students lucrative summer internships between their second and third years. Full-time jobs often await these students after graduation.

Based on these on-campus half hour interviews and resumes, the companies reduce their pool of applicants for the next round of evaluation. Most U.S. companies based outside Boston fly students to their premises to meet and be scrutinized by senior members of the firm.

Professional recruiters say academic performance is just one of several major yardsticks to measure the skill of future lawyers. "We're not just looking for grades," says Patty G. Buiks, hiring coordinator for Donnovan and Leisure. "We look for hard workers and people you'd like to work with."

Most firms recruit as intensely at a half dozen other Universities as they do at Harvard. "I think we do our best job recruiting anywhere we go," says Jean Ledoux, director of professional recruiting at the Los Angeles-based law firm Buchalter, Nemer, Christie for Younger. "We always put our best foot forward." A majority of Harvard law students do not want to work on the West Coast, Ledoux says, so firms such as hers recruit more heavily within their region.

Students' criteria for accepting job offers vary from financial considerations to "gut feelings." "One of the benchmarks in law firms is how much they pay," says Michael T. Anderson. "In the world of law firms, money is one of the few distinguishing things. To me it's pretty important. Law firms more or less are a whole lot similar. To a certain extent they're all pretty much alike."

He adds, "I think most students when they think of which law firm they select is what city it's in. Then they look at the mix of litigation versus contract writing and transactions, they look at the size of the firm, the general prestige, and how well it pays."

"Some people will say that different law firms have different attitudes," Anderson says. "I don't entirely buy that, but there are a lot of people who think that's true."

But Moore, who signed on with Buchalter, Nemer, Christie, Fields for Younger, disagrees. "I decided on the basis of the size of the firm, the nature of the practice, and most importantly, the personality of the firm," he says. "I was really impressed with the fact that they had a Black recruiting coordinator and they have a very liberal policy on what group of associates they want to let into the firm."

"Some of the firms are really cutthroat," Moore adds. "I don't feel that I have to work somewhere where my performances are being evaluated and measured constantly against some artificial standard."