No big recruiting changes

Back in January, the National Association for Law Placement issued a report that proposed significant changes to how law firms recruit, including doing away with rolling-offer deadlines. But NALP has backed off the controversial changes and announced Friday its provisional timing guidelines for 2010.

After announcing its proposed changes, NALP got a lot of feedback, which led to the changes. For this recruiting cycle, the timing guidelines will remain largely unchanged, except for two modifications. Beginning in August, students will have 28 days to respond to an offer from an employer where the student hasn’t worked. For offers to candidates who have been previously employed, the response deadline goes to November 1 instead of Nov. 15.

You can read more about the proposed changes from the January report here.

NALP’s Board of Directors adopted the changes on a one-year provisional basis, and the association’s membership will have a chance to ratify the changes at the end of the provision year. Granted, the organization’s guidelines aren’t required, and it’s up to each law school and legal employer to agree to the terms and conditions for recruiting on campus.