Booze + Kathleen Sullivan = Morning regrets.

Who would want to spend a weekend with a bunch of tools from a weak firm with a bad reputation for overworking?

Former Stanford dean? What happened?

No, thanks!

worst...idea...ever

who wants to go on a 72-hour interview?

Why Deer Valley in the summer? That's like going to Vermont in March to see the leaves changing. Park City is really brown and ugly this time of year.

UGH: a weekend long interview? GROSS. (What would you even wear?) And not that it would, but if this caught on, how could you juggle firms doing this? (There are only so many weekend left after the harvard kids do their late OCI . . .) Who wants to see other students you know, worry about jockeying for position and the like? BLECH!

Aside from the valid point about being on a 72 hour interview, I would be concerned that my impressions would be even further subject to misleading representations by the firm in a controlled environment full of pre-screened associates and partners. In other words, how will you be able to peek into offices and see if associates are crying at their desks.

This is beyond stupid. These law students, if hired, aren't going to be at the firm for more than 4 years anyway.

Why would you want to work at a third rate shop like Quinn to begin with???

this is the most rediculous recruiting type event I have ever heard

Let me know what weekend, so I can avoid PC. Or maybe I will go -- just to be a fly on the wall when summer associates-to-be reenact "Kid Nation."

What is more obnoxious -- Park City during QE weekend, or Sundance? You decide.

Didn't Kathleen Sullivan fail the California bar? Utah's bar passage rates are high, so maybe there is hope?

I heard Kathleen Sullivan failed the California bar exam the first time she took it after she quit as Dean. Several Stanford students saw her take the exam but her name was not posted among the passers. Any truth to this?

Her firm bio says she was admitted in CA 2006.

I kind of like it. Trial by fire. As ex-biglaw, I think possibly the greatest determining factor of a young associate's happiness is whether s/he likes the people s/he's stuck working with. And really, if you enjoy a weekend with the folks, you'll probably be happy working with them.

On the other hand, I think 3:59 PM's statement is pretty important. You definitely want to see what the atmosphere of the office is like, for any firm you're considering.

I kind of like it. Trial by fire. As ex-biglaw, I think possibly the greatest determining factor of a young associate's happiness is whether s/he likes the people s/he's stuck working with. And really, if you enjoy a weekend with the folks, you'll probably be happy working with them.

On the other hand, I think 3:59 PM's statement is pretty important. You definitely want to see what the atmosphere of the office is like, for any firm you're considering. Though, I would hazard that if you're pretty serious about the firm, they'd be willing to fly you out on a separate day to do a meet and greet. Someone in law school actually recommended that as a great way to continue getting flown out to New York after callbacks had ended.

i'd be pretty suspicious/skeptical about a firm that wanted to send me to a resort instead of its offices to interview me.

but quinn's writing in all lower case - thats so cool and original.

Am I the only one who can get behind firm-sponsored junkets? Come on, people!! Even if you don't want to go to QE - actually, especially - just go for the weekend, make an ass of yourself, and don't worry when you don't get a callback because of said assmaking.

sullivan did fail - it was all over the internet and the news at the time (I think she failed the Feb 2006 test, news in late spring/early summer)

What a hideously terrible idea. So glad I decided not to bid on Quinn Emanuel.

Overall, I think it sounds like fun, if I were a summer associate. And a great way for the firm to weed out the assholes. But Utah's restrictive liquor laws are going to put a kaibash on weeding out the gropers and "fat bitch[ers]." Have you ever had a 6 beers with less than 4% alcohol? I get more wasted drinking old Tang.

They should go to Vegas. And tell the kids that 'everything that happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.' Booze + Strippers + false sense of entitlement = many many ATL posts.

having worked there, this is not a surprise at all. the firm culture is kind of bizarre and incestuous, so this will probably just allow the sketchy LA partners to get an extended preview of what summers may put out for them come next May.

re: 4:07. Yes, detective, Kathleen Sullivan failed the first time. It was on the front page of the WSJ.

Quinn is a TTT toilet and they know it. So they need a gimmick. Can't fault them for trying - but the fact is that if you are an LA-based firm (national or regional), you plain suck ass.

I don't care if you're O'Melveny, Latham, Quinn, Gibson or any of the so-called LA "regional powerhouses." You suck. Quinn? Please. O'Melveny? Please. Gibson? Please? Regional (who but Allen Matkins claims this anyway?) Please.

LA sucks. Get used to it. Gimmicks won't help.

There's no way I think that this is a good idea, although I'm sure the Yale and Harvard kids feel pretty special (and the Chicago kids feel elitist for being included with the Yale and Harvard kids but the Stanford, NYU, and Columbia kids are annoyed at being "second class citizens").

This sounds like the set-up for the worst reality-TV show yet... 72 hours, 25 law students, 25 attorneys from a large law firm, a five star resort in the mountains and more 3.2 beer than you can urinate back out. The winning students get a summer long party plus $3,100 per week... the losers get $100,000 of non-dischargeable student loan debt and diminished job prospects.... Coming this fall on Summer Associates.

Sounds like a major PITA.

They're inviting them to Utah "to get a better feel for the firm and its attorneys"? How can this happen unless they're inviting them to the firm's retreat?
Or, is Quinn requiring multiple associates and partners to trek out for a non-billable weekend? Will they simply provide the "virtual Quinn experience" without any attorneys at all?

From the firm's perspective, it sounds silly, but it sounds like a decent free trip for a student - I'd certainly try to get a callback.

4:24, eat me. LA is just as relevant as NY, and its national firms are ALL near the top of the Vault. And you left out at least one "regional powerhouse": Munger. Allen Matkins may be a California powerhouse, but Munger is a national fucking behemoth.

Like you said, please.

Terrible idea. No one is going to have any fun knowing they're being evaluated for offers, and if I wasted a whole weekend on this and didn't get a summer offer, I'd be seriously pissed.

Can we get off the LA-bashing crap and concentrate on describing, in excruciating detail, how much QE sucks?

As if half a day at a firm's office isn't stressful enough, these people have to be "on" for a whole weekend. Ugh.

How much fun could you have if you had already accepted an offer at a different firm? I think that someone needs to do this just to raise the bar on inappropriate behavior.

Quinn is trying too hard.

On its face, this is an amazingly great idea (i.e. provided one is snow/alpine inclined and does not mind spending so much time in an "interview" environment). However, it is fundamentally flawed: as posh as Deer Valley is (and it is the poshest), it does not allow snowboards.

What is the deal with the sexual harassment allegations? Has there ever been anything specific? (multiple events/one event, same partner/multiple partners)

If I had to endure this kind of callback, I'm sure that I would have to endure damage to my intestines and kidneys because I'd be holding in all my farts and shits the entire weekend. Is it worth it? No.

Instead of lengthening the callback interviews, how about reducing the summer associate program to one of these long weekends.

There is truth in the old cliche, "They're not interviewing you, you're interviewing them" -- and you can't do that if you never set foot in the offices until the first day of work. If I were interviewing, I would suspect QE had something to hide.

Lat, shouldn't you be covering the Chemerinsky-Irvine controversy? Seems like pretty big deal if you ask me.

This is why I turned QE down. They love to max out on the little things -- you can wear flip-flops to work -- while neglecting the big things -- how is work allocated, what sorts of opportunities for training exist, how formal and extensive will the associate evaluations be, what sorts of structures are in place to help me get my work done? They have no answers to these questions. Instead, they just send one of the sleezy partners (Urquart being the sleeziest of them) to grope you.

They are always thinking of new ways in which to be different -- interview at the local bar, drinking during the interview. I just didnt get the sense that they think of ways to be a better place for a young lawyer to start his/her career. In fact, I think they spend so much time on the first that they actually spend less time on the second relative to comparable firms.

As insecure as all lawyers/law students are, I imagine the rejected prospect(s) will be pretty crushed if he or she didn't do anything outrageous, but just weren't chosen. I know after the callback rejections I always wondered why I wasn't picked.

As an aside, what kind of partners/associates are going on this trip? Are you forced to go as a recruiting committee member? Obviously every firm has a great deal of associates and partners who don't even like to interview, let alone do so for an entire weekend.

This is obviously just a way of facillitating gropage.

I can see it in your eyes. You don't have a single fucking offer.

I see you every time you walk down the halls. You recover from your zombie-like trance just long enough to avert your eyes away from mine. The semester has worn you down and what do you have to show for it? You are a stump of a man.

You hope I don't start up a conversation with you because you know it will lead to the inevitable. That talk and pitter patter about plans for the summer. Great summer plans of getting wined and dined in some far off city. Great plans of meeting new people and getting paid to do nothing. Because you didn't get a single fucking offer. And I can see the pain in your eyes.

I had more callbacks than you had first-interviews. I had more offers than the number of firms who would even deign to look at you twice. I've been to more cities in 4 weeks than you or your grandchildren will ever set foot in during their entire lives. Chicago, New York, LA. I can tell you which airlines fly from which terminals and how many feet you have to walk to get to the 6:50 flight to LaGuardia from the 5:30 flight from O'Hare. I've had more money thrown at me on a single dinner than you spent on food in an entire month. Because you had heard about the stories of excess. And they wouldn't even let you glance inside the window.

For me, normalcy begins again when I write my last exam for my last final of this semester. But for you, it never begins. I see you in the library paging through your casebook. I see you rush to each of your classes: a sense of urgency in the way you move. Because you lost the 1L race, and you'd like to move just a little faster for the 2L one.

C'mon...be a little fair. Sleazy? If you're going to throw around accusations like that you should be sure that you're being accurate.

It's drunk and sleazy, thank you very much.

i like the idea. was always jealous of friends looking at investment banks who got whisked away on the same kind of weekends.

5:34 - Douché.

Obviously some people are pissed they didn't get the invite. I think it's a great idea. Wish something like this existed when I was going through the process.

And please don't try to suggest that someone can actually get a feel for what it's like to work for a particular firm just from 2-3 hours of interviewing with office's most personable people and a lunch with a couple of associates.

5:32. Lame. You have cut and paste this same comment into a dozen different strings for at least a week. Very lame.

uh...that was supposed to be 5:32, not 5:34.

*smacks head*

MTV did the same thing when it cast Real World: Back To New York. The season was a dud, and MTV never repeated the experiment.

heard from a friend that works there that they are bringing people from all their offices. apparently, a bunch of associates want to go. it's being billed as a fun time - curious to see how it goes.

Several of the "Quinns" of Quinn Emanuel fame, including Judge Anthony Quinn and Maryanne Wood (Quinn), still live in Utah... Maybe it is an excuse for a family reunion of sorts (on the firm's, as opposed to the family's, dime)...

It's either going to be a 72 hour interview (which sucks), or pretty much anyone invited has an offer for the summer, assuming they don't do anything stupid.

Apparently Quinn Emmanuel is taking Fordham call-back students to the local Burger King and actually paying for their soda refills, which I suppose is a step up from using their cover letters as kindling to heat the ranch they use in Utah for the real students.

Chicago doesn't have "late" OCI... in fact, I think they're already finished.

7:11 is correct. Chicago starts school late, but OCI is done over a period of two weeks before classes start.

Back in the day (50s and 60s) The Citadel (South Carolina's premiere military academy) used to invite its out-of-state athletic recruits to spend a weekend at the school's beach house. During this recruiting weekend these out-of-staters were not given an opportunity to see the actual college, instead people from the school came to them. When the weekend ended, the school asked these kids to commit to their program. It was only after the athletes returned to campus during the school year that they discovered what life at a "military" academy was really all about.

Calling The Citadel SC's "premiere" military academy is rather disingenuous, considering it's the only one in the state that offers a 4 year degree.

But, if you tried to talk me into going there, you'd have to keep me away from all the kids that went there anyways. Enjoy wasting the best 4 years of your life locked in your room.

/irrelevant SC rant

Late, early whatever, I know someone at UChi who got invited on this boondoggle. In any case, whats the etiquette for this? Go? Dont go? Does going obligate acceptance of their offer? Hard to believe people are really gonna dinged after a weekend of skiing and drinking.

It sounds fun to me but what do I know, I didnt bid on Quinn...

Wow, didn’t anybody here go into PE, VC, banking, or consulting out of undergrad? Or had a sister in-law at b-school? These things (boondoggles or whatever you call them) are very common in the industries that actually know who to recruit talent. Hopefully, Quinn will also be giving cases in the final round.

Is this why they were cancelling callbacks a month ago?

writing as someone who has a callback from QE, but doesn't go to harvard, yale, or chicago, this is a horrible idea for us.

perhaps it will help recruiting efforts at those three schools, but i it will harm recruiting at other top schools, since for whatever reason it was decided that our schools weren't important (i go to a school that is generally considered better than chicago).

they should offer this trip to all of us.

This is enough to get me to interview with them. The odds I actually take an offer are still pretty slim.

The problem is, what if you get halfway through the weekend and decide you don't like the firm, but you have to stick around with a bunch of douchebags for the rest of the weekend, unless you want to fork over cash for a ticket home?

(This is not to say that QEUOH attorneys are douchebags.)

I heard that associates at qe didn't get the usual biglaw SA treatment of free lunches and parties all summer long... can anyone confirm?

2:23:

It might just be that the idea for this trip was conceived recently and those from schools with earlier callbacks already had flight/hotel/callback reservations, whereas the Harvard, Yale and Chicago students do not.

10:23--Chicago did not recruit late. Lat needs to gets his facts straight and stop "reporting" by reading what a press release says.

Chicago just finished OCI yesterday.

11:57 (and others):

Unless Quinn decides to hold this recruiting trip in December, there isn't going to be any skiing going on. Ski season in Utah rarely starts before Thanksgiving.

If quinn were really cool, they'd do this at the Pasadena Ritz.

2:23 - "i go to a school that is generally considered better than chicago"

that would have to be stanford because neither columbia nor nyu are "generally considered" better than chicago.

when was stanford's oci?

I think "late" refers to schools that fall late in the season, viewed from the law firm's perspective. E.g., Chicago, Yale, Harvard.

These schools are "late" relative to Columbia, NYU, Georgetown, etc.

Chicago doesn't start late, it just runs longer than other schools (Aug. 28 - Sept. 12).

Stanford's OCI runs from Sept. 1 - Oct. 15, so its exclusion is utterly ridiculous.
http://www.law.stanford.edu/experience/careers/ocs/employers/recruiting/

Who has the time to spend a whole weekend on a callback - imagine having to spend the whole weekend watching what you say and how much you drink.

And imagine getting lots of people asking the most annoying questions over and over again - "what more can we tell you about our firm?". To any attorneys involved in recruiting - never ask this more than twice during a callback!

Lawyers could find a way to complain if they woke up and found $30,000,000 next to them.

"But it's not sixty milliooonnnn..."