Law firms, like all the rest of us in business, seemed to have developed a respect for those Black Swans. They're the unexpected developments or events which have profound, game-changing impacts. Financial-markets expert Nassim Taleb chronicles how they play out in his book by that title.
So, law firms are not being coy with summers in not handing out offers a year before the start date. Who knows what will happen in that year? Also, the tradition of hiring a year before is being looked at the same way as the publishing industry is reviewing the practice of printing a large amount of books without knowing if any of them will sell.
In THE AMERICAN LAWYER, Susan Hansen quotes a summer at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher who pleads, "For the love of God, please be more transparent about the offer process and outlook." I think that the summer would find transparency just as frustrating as no information. Full disclosure for a law firm would be: We don't know.
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