NALP Principles and Standards

Recruitment Guidelines


Law schools, legal employers, and law students together share the responsibility of ensuring fair and ethical legal hiring practices. NALP's Principles & Standards are guidelines that offer an ethical framework for all participants in law student recruiting. They guide the timing of responses to offers and set forth the obligations of all participants in the recruiting process. Compliance with the Principles is voluntary, yet virtually all ABA-accredited law schools and many of the nation's legal employers subscribe to these guidelines.

NALP also offers interpretations of the Principles that provide guidance for dealing with specific difficult recruiting situations, such as signing bonuses, exploding offers, establishing a waiting list, and first year recruiting.

One of the thorniest recruiting dilemmas occurs when an employer receives too many acceptances of its offers to law students. Schools and employers can work together to minimize the effect of a rescinded offer.

NALP has prepared a list of some of the questions law students most often ask about these ethical standards. These answers provide students with a quick guide to the essentials of navigating the fall interviewing season with professionalism.


2004 Temporary Timing Guidelines Change Made Permanent

During the April 2005 on-line election, members were asked to vote on a referendum to make the 2004 temporary change in the timing guidelines permanent. An overwhelming majority — 94% of members who voted — voted in favor of making the change permanent. A total of 336 member institutions had representatives cast ballots on this question, 32% of which were law schools, and more than 90% of both schools and employers voted to make this change permanent.

The change to the "releasing offers" provision of the timing guidelines sets earlier dates — September 15 and October 1 — by which students should hold no more than five and four offers respectively, and decreases from four to three the maximum number of offers students should hold after October 15.

By this referendum, the Timing Guidelines change is made permanent, and the temporary guidelines currently in place will remain in force. Read the full guidelines.