Today's law students are not impressed. And, given the high cost of graduate recruitment, no law firm can afford to get it wrong. Cameron Timmis reports. Law firms are cutting costs in many ways, but one area is sacred - recruitment. Gone are the days when a nod and wink from a family friend, and young Carrot-top was installed behind a decrepit old ledger in a corner of the senior partner's office.
Nepotism is dead.
But go back a step, and consider the staggering costs of the selection process itself. First, there are the opportunity costs of partnership fee-earning hours devoted to interviewing. Some firms, such as Freshfields, have a full-time recruitment partner. Rather than wait for university career fairs, law firms have begun bombarding potential trainees with information from day one of their university careers. To justify that kind of expense, firms need to guarantee that their recruits are the best they can get.