Law school recruitment: some issues for the recruitment committees

Recruitment in law schools have been changing. While we have discussed that earlier, what should recruitment committees of the law schools handling campus recruitment do now? It has been noticed that rolling recruitment throughout the year has become more popular than placement weeks. A student from NUJS who has some experience in this regard, but wants to remain anonymous, has thrown some light on the issues in this post.

“Why law?” is one question that has gained a permanent place in interviews that follow the entrance exam to a law college. Five years ago this question would divide the interviewees in 3 groups – “My father is a lawyer”; “I really wanted to do law as I found it interesting”; “I did not get through to any other college”. The last option, though a majority, was seldom expressed in as many words.

Things changed. It was realized by the companies that a well paid lawyer could actually make a difference in the final outcome of every deal. Increase in number of law aspirants has been directly proportional to the salaries offered to the law graduates. But the question is that does cracking CLAT actually guarantee entry into “a million a year” segment? Do these law schools get 100% placement each year? Well, the answer is yes and no and a lot depends upon not only the market conditions but also how well the process of recruitment is planned by a batch.

Till the year 2008, every passing batch of a premier law college got overwhelming response from law firms and companies and everyone who wore formals to the interview got a job irrespective of CGPA, moots, publications etc. The year 2009 brought with it a concept that was alien to law colleges. The bargaining power was transferred from the hands of graduates to the hands of recruiters. Some recruiters only wanted to consider the top five students whereas others wanted to conduct viva (read interview) on the phone just to declare that their law firm did not find a single candidate worthy of their consideration. There were also attempts to give the impression that a firm was still doing well but could not recruit for some reason which was beyond comprehension of a law student.

This was probably the first time for top law schools to not register a cent per cent on campus recruitment. Whereas many students did not get jobs, there were others who had to consider options, which, till some months ago were looked down upon by them. Such a situation proves detrimental for the subsequent batch of students as their immediate seniors who are not satisfied with their present jobs reapply and thus reduce the opportunities available to the next batch.

Though the effect of economic slowdown has its obvious effects on recruitment but such effects can be minimized by careful assessment and planning. First of all it is important that a batch finds out the exact number of students that are interested in sitting for placements through campus recruitment.

Next, a batch needs have a fair idea that what kind of employees are these students looking for as there are different options available such as companies, practicing lawyers, law firms, PSUs, NGOs etc. This exercise will enable the Placement Committee of the batch to calculate what will constitute a successful recruitment.

The next important decision to be taken by the batch is regarding the timing and duration of the recruitment. It has to be decided whether it wants rolling recruitment throughout the year or does it want all the potential recruiters to visit campus during a particular week of the last semester. While the latter suggests that a batch has immense confidence in itself, it also may not be the wisest thing to do if one is aiming at 100% recruitment.

While rolling recruitment gradually eases the burden and sounds timely warning if the response is below expectation, a recruitment which confines itself to recruitment week comes as a heartbreak for those who fail to impress recruiters in that duration. Rolling recruitment also gives a candidate enough time to change his style/technique with regard to interviews as for most of the students it would be the first set of interviews they ever faced in life. Another, seldom materialized advantage of rolling recruitment is that those candidates who manage to get jobs in the beginning of the year could work whole heartedly towards the efforts of Placement Committee.

Another extremely important thing is to plan a firm’s/company’s visit to the campus so as to meet its requirements. Some recruiters are extremely particular about ranks and academic achievements whereas others emphasize on interview and the ‘on the spot’ written test. Thus, it is important to first invite major recruiters who only consider rank before anyone else as they might lose interest in visiting campus once the top ranked students are not available for consideration.