Well, with more and more firm hiring students pre-OCI, we heard from firms and students that the process needs some structure. How can we provide the structure that OCI used to offer, but without the limitations that make it difficult to recruit in 2024 (having to choose specific schools to interview from, no pre-select, offer timeline restrictions, etc)?
And from the student’s perspective, conducting the job search from a computer screen just doesn’t cut it anymore. Especially not in the age of pre-OCI, where early and real engagement is key. I always say, ask any student why they chose their firm. The answer is almost always.. the people they met. It’s almost never because of the firm’s online profile or website. Our Summer Associate Hub programming helps firms showcase their people and engage with students in a genuine way throughout the school year, and the 2L Job Fair was a great example of that.
So, we decided to host the 2L Job Fair to do just that. It’s a first-of-its-kind offering – a structured 2L recruiting program outside of OCI. By all accounts, the event was a success. We had close to 250 students attend the Job Fair, exclusively rising 2Ls.
I’m very grateful to the top firm Recruiting Directors who approached us with this idea and convinced us to host a 2L Job Fair.
Student Engagement
Our goal was to make it easy for students and firms. The Job Fair was in the evening (starting at 5:45pm), so students can come after their 1L jobs. We offered a travel stipend for students to travel to NYC, which students appreciated – we had a large number travel in from DC, California, Chicago, St. Louis, Boston, and other places. For students at top schools in other parts of the country interested in the NYC market do not have as much access, and this is a great way for them to get in front of firms.
The Job Fair had two components: a Networking Reception and an Interview Program.
Networking Reception
Our Networking Reception had constant engagement between students and the 13 firms that were represented there. I’m proud of the set of firms that participated in our 2L Job Fair: Fried Frank, Proskauer, Willkie, Winston & Strawn, Fenwick, Cadwalader, Benesch, Blank Rome, Schulte, Lowenstein, Troutman Pepper, Foley & Lardner, and Manatt. The firms were a nice mix of size, prestige/rankings, geography, etc and all of the firm representatives mentioned to us how pleased they were with the quality and quantity of the connections they made with students. Two firms, Willkie and Fried Frank, also had separate hospitality suites to house interview schedules and engage with students in a smaller setting, and those had a consistent flow of students throughout the evening.
The reception had food and a small bar, providing a casual yet elegant setting for students to meet firm representatives, matching the format that many firms use for in-office recruiting events.
There are several reasons to participate in the Job Fair, and each firm had unique reasons why it was value for them. Some firms wanted more brand awareness for students in NYC and this was a great way to do that – one firm just opened an office in NY and hiring summer associates for the first time in NY, and was excited to participate to kickstart that. Other firms have a strong reputation in NYC and used our Job Fair to make their recruiting process more centralized – to access and interview students in one place and let us do the work.
The biggest compliment we received from a law firm partner who attended the Networking Reception for her firm — she had no idea this was the first year we hosted the event. It was so well organized and attended, she assumed it was a long-standing annual event.
Interview Program
Our Interview Program ran very smoothly. We had eight time slots for 15-minute screeners with 3-minute breaks in between, running from 7-9pm. We used a unique double ranked system, where students applied and ranked firms in advance, and firms reviewed packets and ranked students to interview. Our Summer Associate Hub team organized all of the applications for the firms, and used our proprietary program to create the schedules based on mutual rankings. Students arrived on time, prepared and ready to go. Firm interviewers were very pleased with the process and enjoyed meeting the students. They had the paper materials ready on their table when they showed up, and emailed in advance.
It was fun to make the rounds after the event seeing interviewers and recruiting managers huddling up, circling names, etc. It was kind of surreal that real recruiting decisions were happening in this event we put on from scratch. I was very proud of that. It will be interesting to see the matches that come out of the Job Fair. I’ve already heard about a bunch of callbacks, and that’s just from students who I know personally. I’ve also heard from several students that they secured screeners outside of the Job Fair from the firm seeing their application from our Interview Program (i.e., they didn’t match in the Interview Program but the firm wants to meet them) – some of these firms would have never attracted those students if they weren’t laid out on a silver platter in our Interview Program application portal.
One interesting tidbit I noticed from seeing the firm selections – consistent with what we’ve heard from firms, especially in the age of pre-OCI, grades were certainly not the only factor. We saw students ranked very highly from firms despite middle-of-the-road grades, because of strong engagement those students had throughout the school year (including on our SA Hub virtual programs), or specific experience that a student had and highlighted in the cover letter. Each student in the Interview Program had an average of 1.5 interviews – in other words, there was a wide variation in the students firms selected, versus having a few students dominate the entire program and secure 5-6 interviews each. This was based on our objective dual-ranking system, without any intervention. It was all refreshing to see.
Overall, our Interview Program was limited this year. Almost 150 screeners were conducted – this is a lot! But in future years, we expect to be conducting a few hundred, as more and more firms use us to run their screeners instead of their recruiting team being swamped all summer. And as more firms see how successful and organized our first year was.
We received consistent feedback from students throughout the evening about how much they enjoyed the opportunity to meet and interview with firms, how organized our communication has been for both the Interview Program details and Networking Reception, and our Summer Associate Hub newsletter content generally to help them with this process.
Highlights
There were a few highlights to the event for me:
- So many students stopped me to mention how much they enjoyed the event, and how much they appreciated the content in our Summer Associate Hub newsletter and platform. They read and watched our interview advice, networking tips, practice area videos, and everything else. They referenced specific points. When you put something out in the world, nothing better than seeing how it comes back.
- One T14 law school career dean attended to support her students and see the event – excited to continue to support and promote in the future to make her students succeed in pre-OCI. Many top schools have been supportive of Summer Associate Hub, and it is nice to see.
- Seeing students in real life who have been engaging on our Summer Associate Hub virtual programs for the last few months. Many of these students secured multiple interviews purely from engaging with firms on our virtual programs. And many are big fans of SA Hub, seeing how valuable it was for them – it was great to meet them and many are excited to help get the word out for the new class of 1Ls.
A Small Team is a Fast Team
I say this often, and those of you who have seen our presentation at the NYCRA Mini-Conference have heard me say this — a small team is a fast team.
We organized this event, marketing it, attracting hundreds of registrations (some schools had very long waiting lists), attracting firm signups, finding a venue, catering, organizing a travel stipend program, collecting hundreds of 2L applications/rankings, collecting firm rankings, creating interview schedules, organizing the Interview Program, providing detailed instructions to both students and firms, and every other detail that we handled. All of this with our mighty team of me (Albert) and Katie Mastaler and all while we continue to grow and attract great candidates on Lateral Hub. With the right mix of dedication, hard work, good automated processes, efficiency, smarts, time management, organization, communication, skills, and more dedication, (oh, and a great idea that has obvious value for firms and students) you can do pretty incredible things, and that’s what’s happening here at Lateral Hub & Summer Associate Hub.
What’s Next?
As pre-OCI continues to become more prevalent, we expect our SA Hub Job Fair to become a core part of the 2L recruiting process for both firms and students. Later this summer, we look forward to collecting feedback from firms and putting together our menu of programs and Job Fair details for next year.
If you are in the midst of summer recruiting right now and thinking about how to improve that for next year and create genuine engagement with students… get in touch with us.
