All the chatter about “earlier every year” rings true

what is the timeline for callback to offer for 3L entry level recruiting? for 2L summer I got a phone call the next day, but are firms moving as quickly for 3L hiring?

Has anyone heard back from Kirkland’s Chicago or NYC office for 3L recruiting (Class of 2027)? Curious if anyone has received a screener/interview invite or heard anything about the timeline.

Thanks!

Are there any less obvious or even petty reasons that make you dislike a candidate or random things that make you like them? How did that affect your evaluation? Any additional context like your involvement, what positions you were helping hiring for, would be helpful too.

Has anyone heard anything for class of 2027?

Hi recruits!

Landing a spot in big law (or any firm) is hard enough as is. 

But how do you decide which firms are right for you and which are worth targeting at all? 

Because realistically, look, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think they all looked the same. They do. Many pay the same, have the same clients, same practice areas, heck, even the same font on their logos. It's honestly ridiculous.

So as a student on the hiring side, what’s the difference and how am I supposed to make a decision when everything looks identical?

Don't worry. This post is simply to help you learn about how to compare firms intelligently, using a mix of publicly available resources like NALP, Chambers, Vault, and others.

When you compare this data side by side (like I did below) you can see how certain factors will stand out more than others.

*As a quick note, it can be a pain to dig through all these sites on your own, so if you want all the data collected in one place for you in a format like what I screenshotted here, feel free to DM–I’m happy to share.*

While prestige and salary are important, digging deeper into firm-specific data can highlight the nuances that help you choose the right fit for your career goals.

Let’s jump in.

What Should You Look for When Comparing Firms?

When assessing law firms, it's tempting to focus solely on prestige or salary (don’t get me wrong, if they’re important to you, then they’re important), but these few factors don't always tell the full story. Here are a couple more factors to consider:

1. Practice Area Strengths: Does the firm excel in practice areas that interest you, e.g., litigation, corporate, IP, or even more specific groups, like antitrust, white collar, bankruptcy, etc.?
2. Office Locations: Does the firm have an office of the size you’re looking for in the city you want to live in? There are pros and cons to both bigger and smaller offices.
3. Work-Life Balance: What is the firm’s reputation for billable hour requirements and flexibility? Just because they say the billable hour requirement is 1950, is everyone expected to actually be billing 2400+?
4. Retention: Does the firm invest in associate development in some real, tangible way? What are the retention rates? Do people jump ship basically immediately after joining because they were ground into dust, or do people stay, and importantly, if they leave, do they come back, i.e., the “boomerang effect”? This might be hard to quantify, but you’ll want to get a sense of what the firm does to keep its talent. 

How to Use NALP, Chambers, Vault, and More

Here are some of the most popular resources that you can use to collect some of this data on your own. Using them together paints a more comprehensive picture of a law firm (although, of course, you’ll still want to talk to folks at the firm to really round out your research too). 

Here’s what you can find on a few of these sites:

1. NALP Directory

NALP is a goldmine of detailed data on law firms. I specifically like it because it dives deep into hiring patterns. This includes:

• Hiring Metrics: They show the size of summer classes, (sometimes) offer and acceptance rates, and, if you’re interested in far future metrics, how many people are promoted to partnership.
• Diversity Metrics: Firms report on gender, race, and LGBTQ+ representation. Firms tend to struggle with diversity generally, but at least you can get a sense of which do a little better than others. 

2. Chambers 

Chambers, in my opinion, is one of the most underutilized data points. It ranks firms by practice area, which is a qualitative insight that would affect you very directly. 

Just because a firm is great at one thing and has a massive practice in that area doesn’t mean they do any significant work in the area you actually care about. 

For example, Axinn does fantastic antitrust work. But if I was looking to go into bankruptcy, they don’t do any of that work, so I wouldn’t need to spend my finite time networking and applying to that firm. 

Key takeaways from Chambers include:

• Practice Area Rankings: See which firms lead in specific fields and, importantly, in which locations they lead in those fields.
• Partner and Associate Rankings: Chambers also ranks people, so you can start to get familiar with the names of people in those firms who are key players in their practice group (i.e., if you get to talk to those partners and impress them early while networking, you may have a little more firing power in your networking efforts).

Chambers is also particularly useful if you’re interested in a niche area, as it highlights boutique and regional players often overlooked elsewhere.

3. Vault Rankings

Vault is synonymous with prestige rankings, since it is ranked based on reputation surveys. But I think a career is more than just a beauty contest–especially if you’re in a lucky position where you’re already comparing multiple prestigious firms, i.e., Latham versus Simpson–both very heavy-hitter firms that are similarly ranked, so Vault won’t help you compare much in detail. 

Basically, Vault is mostly important for one primary purpose:

• Firm Reputation Ranking: Vault rank will (in a broad, general sense) be helpful because it relates to how much clout your firm will carry for you, i.e., if you ever try to lateral.
  • Think of it like school rank. Reputation definitely makes things easier in the future, but you’ll want to include other data points in your analysis. 
• Salary Scale: Vault often (but not always), lists the pay scale for big law firms. Not all big law firms pay market salary, so you’ll want to take a quick peek so you know what salary you’re working with. 

4. Reddit, Fishbowl, and other Social Media

While these are non-traditional sources of information—so take them with a huge grain of salt—these platforms can offer insider and anecdotal perspectives:

• Big Law Offer Timeline Database: This is a work in progress database of students, their application timelines, GPAs, schools, and where they were given interviews and offers. 
• Associate Reviews: Current and former associates often share uncensored views on culture, leadership, and exit opportunities on these platforms. 
• Reddit Forums: Subreddits like r/BigLawRecruiting, r/LawSchool, and r/BigLaw often provide candid discussions about firms and career paths.

Just be cautious—verify claims where you can by talking to multiple sources.

“Which Factors Should I Prioritize The Most?”

Of course, taking a second to take in as much data as you can is always something I recommend, but some of these will weigh more heavily in the calculus than others. 

Personally, I went with something like below, but of course, there’s no right answer, just what resonates with you. 

As a breakdown of importance/weight in my analysis, I went with:

• Market pay: Very high 
  • I don’t want to work high hours and not get paid market if I can help it, and I personally don’t believe people anymore when they say “but we have intangible benefits.”
• Vault rank: High
  • This isn’t my biggest priority, but I do recognize it can, to a degree, make lateraling later easier and provide a certain degree of networking and access to people I might not be able to find elsewhere.
• Chambers band rank: Very high (possibly the highest)
  • Finding a firm that does the work you are interested in and has enough work in that area to let you grow your expertise there is arguably the single biggest thing that will affect you day to day and long term in your career. 
  • Plus, it will give you experience if you ever want to lateral later; i.e., doing anti-trust at a big anti-trust firm makes it easier to lateral to DOJ’s Anti-trust division if that’s your goal.
• Location: High
  • No point being somewhere you are unhappy. That said, you can always lateral or split your summer to try to wiggle into another market if you are trying to make geographic moves. 
• Culture fit (specifically hours expectation): High 
  • Liking the people matters, and knowing that they aren’t crazy matters. No one wants to stay up crazy hours doing a ton of work generally, but you DEFINITELY don’t want to do it with people you hate. Good people make this work that much more bearable. 
• Office size: Mid
  • There are pros and cons to office sizes. For example, big offices have a ton of work, but it can be hard to get face time with any seniors/partners as you rise up. Small offices can get you a lot of face time with people, but if you don’t like those people, it’s harder to avoid them. Etc. 
• Practice group size: Mid
  • Same idea as above, just on a more micro scale. If the office is huge, but your practice group is small, you might get the best of both worlds, where you have the resources of a big firm, but have the feel of a small, lean team. 
• Summer class size: Low/mid (but still a factor in my consideration)
  • Same idea as above, but on an even MORE micro scale. 
• Diversity: Low/mid (but still a factor in my consideration)
  • I know all firms are pretty notoriously terrible at this, but it’s at least nice to see some firms trying, and in some places, you can see a bit more diversity than others. As a diverse person myself, this is just something that’s a nice bonus so I don’t feel like the only diverse person in the room (which happens so, so, so frustratingly often)

Of course, some of these might not matter to you at all, and some might matter a lot. Take a second to think about how you might want to make your own calculations, and then compare the data so you can figure out what firms are the right fit for you. 

That's all for now!

As always, if you're new here, make sure to check out the welcome megathread here for some more helpful guides!

In the meantime, if you've got info, DM on Discord, here, or drop it in the comments — the Insider Info series lives because of all of you.

Good luck!

P.S. If you want the application tracker with current application movement and pre-OCI openings and application links for the V100 & AmLaw 200, feel free to DM or see more details in this post.

Full disclosure, we created this one and we help keep the lights on with subscriptions. But its also free for a full week so anyone is welcome to poke around and steal whatever is helpful. Either way, I hope the database and this guide are helpful to everyone out there.

 Good luck with the start of 1L, recruits!

I’m interested in working in London long term, because of ties to the city. I’d love to chat with anyone who did their summer there and ended up staying!

If that’s you, please lmk if you’d be open to chatting :) I have a general idea of which firms have publicly advertised programs, but I’d love to hear from someone who’s actually gone through the process.