Memorial Day Starts: Summer Slowdown Begins

The kick off of the Memorial Day weekend means the start of the summer slowdown in the lateral recruiting business. This usually happens for two reasons:

1. Money never sleeps – but people take vacations: meaning that it becomes harder to martial the necessary interviewers to complete a lateral hire
2. Summer Associates: The arrival of the summer associates has a two-fold dampening effect on lateral hiring. Firstly, these folks demand a lot of attention by law firm management and recruiting departments - and this attention is usually at the expense of lateral hiring. The second dampening effect is the availability of bright and eager (and relatively inexpensive and temporarily employed) law students to do the kind of work that would otherwise be done by a (more expensive and permanent) new junior-level lateral hire. This latter effect is mitigated temporarily once the summer associates leave - but is then increased again in September as the new first year associates join their firms.

This summer, Lawcruiters will need to deal with the third factor of a potential slow-down in inhouse hiring, as typified by this story in the WSJ about Goldman Sach’s summer hiring freeze.

Speaking for myself (and no doubt for many of my Lawcruiter colleagues), I am frankly welcoming a summer slowdown after an unusually frenzied start to the 2007 lateral recruiting year. It’s been a great year so far, and there is much to look forward to in the remainder of this year. In the meantime, here is wishing a peaceful Memorial Day to all.