Match Game: A Modest Proposal on Revamping Law-Firm Hiring

[WSJ Law Blog]

The Harvard Crimson on Wednesday offered up an article, the topic of which struck near and dear to our hearts.

The article chronicles the difficulties experienced by Harvard Law students this fall in finding BigLaw job opportunities. This year, the school has seen a 20 percent reduction in the number of firms participating in its recruitment process, according to Mark A. Weber, assistant dean for career services at the Law School. Students are still getting jobs, it seems, but not with the ease of past years.

That alone was interesting (if not enough to make us shed tears — it is Harvard, after all). But what really drew us to the article were the following two paragraphs, which showed up late in the piece:

Law Professor Asish Nanda (pictured) said he is leading a movement to reform the recruiting process that would entail transitioning law schools to a system similar to the method medical schools use to match students with residencies.

Under such a system, firms would interview all applicants in the spring of their second year. Firms would then list preferences for applicants, students would list their firm preferences, and a matching program would pair students with firms.

Wow. Really? A Harvard Law prof actually mixing it up with the nitty gritty of how law firms do their hiring?

Yes indeedy. We found this piece, written by Nanda at the end of August, laying out his modest proposal. First, he (correctly, in our view), goes through the myriad ways in which the law-firm hiring process is deficient: It’s inefficient; overly rigid and needlessly time-consuming; and the competitiveness of it, with firms jumping ahead in line to try to give offers before other more prestigious firms, strips the system of order and predictability.

However, these issues, writes Nanda, might be alleviated through a matching system, much like the one that services medical students. Writes Nanda:

These. . . problems . . . can be overcome if a significant number of law schools and law firms coordinate the recruitment process by using a centralized “matching authority.” Participating law firms interview candidates for summer placement. . . . However, the law firms do not make offers directly to the students they interview . . . . Instead, the law firms give to the matching authority their preference ranking of candidates along with the number of seats they have available and students give to the matching authority their preference ranking of law firms. On a preannounced “match” date, the matching authority matches the law firms against the candidates, taking in account preferences on both sides of the market.

The benefits would be manifold, writes Nanda:

Because matching is done by a centralized authority on a particular date, problems associated with decentralized matching disappear. Since matches occur at the same time [contemporaneously?], inefficient matches are avoided. If a candidate or a law firm is unable to get its first rank choice, it can seek the second rank choice before moving further down their preference ranking.

Market unraveling is prevented by the matching authority disciplining law schools or law firms that try to preempt others by encouraging or making offers ahead of the match date. . . .

Once unraveling is prevented, recruitment can be rolled back to dates closer to the summer internships. Law firms have more information on candidates. Students focus on learning in the early part of the second year, and develop a deeper appreciation of their own interests and strengths before the recruitment begins.

LBers, it seems not only to us but others far more steeped in law-firm hiring processes, that something needs to change in order to avoid a repeat of what began last year — with law firms hiring far more summer associates than they needed. Is Nanda’s proposition the one to adopt?