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&lt;p&gt;Last Friday, NALP announced that, after &amp;ldquo;a spirited and thoughtful dialogue&amp;rdquo; about its proposed recommendations&amp;rdquo; to change the law firm recruiting process, &amp;ldquo;it became clear that there was no consensus among the membership about the nature and scale of change that might be appropriate.&amp;rdquo; As a result, the organization&amp;rsquo;s 2010 Timing Guidelines &amp;ldquo;will remain largely unchanged.&amp;rdquo; There will be no January &amp;ldquo;Offer Kick-off Day,&amp;rdquo; the most controversial of NALP&amp;rsquo;s proposals. Students will have 28 days to consider new offers&amp;mdash;less than the 45 they had last year but substantially more than the 12 days NALP had originally proposed. For offers to students who have already completed a summer program, the response deadline will be pushed up from November 15 to November 1.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the responses to the original recommendations were decidedly mixed, the reactions to the final proposal are hardly more enthusiastic. But satisfying all of NALP&amp;rsquo;s constituents would have been an impossible task. As NALP Executive Director Jim Leipold told &lt;i&gt;The National Law Journal&lt;/i&gt;, &amp;ldquo;It became clear that there was no easy consensus or even a trend around one particular idea,&amp;rdquo; he said. &amp;ldquo;Law firms and law schools are both conservative and risk-averse institutions. The scope of change was very large and it doesn&amp;rsquo;t surprise me that there was resistance.&amp;rdquo;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;While there has been some &amp;ldquo;applause for NALP&amp;rsquo;s restraint,&amp;rdquo; there has also been a chorus of angry voices, of varying degrees of coherence. Opinions of the original proposals and the final compromise fall into several different camps, including:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;I&amp;rsquo;m so mad I could spit&lt;/b&gt;: &amp;ldquo;I don&amp;rsquo;t know when &amp;lsquo;it&amp;rsquo;s too hard&amp;rsquo; became an acceptable excuse for refusing to reform broken systems.&amp;rdquo; &amp;ndash; &lt;i&gt;Elie Mystal, editor at Above the Law&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;If it ain&amp;rsquo;t broke, don&amp;rsquo;t fix it&lt;/b&gt;: &amp;ldquo;I certainly didn&amp;rsquo;t think the system was broken. It would have been possibly problematic if [the offer date] got moved back to January.&amp;rdquo; &amp;ndash; &lt;i&gt;Aaron Marks, hiring partner at Kasowitz, Benson, Torres &amp;amp; Friedman&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;An Offer Kick-off Day would have been overreaching, unfair and possibly illegal&lt;/b&gt;: &amp;ldquo;Far from improving the process, the Commission&amp;rsquo;s proposals would impermissibly alter the competitive market for the hiring of law students and would constrain students&amp;rsquo; ability to reach early employment decisions that they individually judged to be in their best interests.&amp;rdquo; &amp;ndash; &lt;i&gt;Gregory Shumaker, firmwide hiring partner at Jones Day&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Much ado about nothing:&lt;/b&gt; &amp;ldquo;There was a lot of work and a lot of hullabaloo to come up with a change that was seemingly modest.&amp;rdquo; &amp;ndash; &lt;i&gt;Jeffrey Boxer, hiring partner at Carter Ledyard &amp;amp; Milburn&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Who needs NALP anyway?&lt;/b&gt; &amp;ldquo;The process by which law firms recruit from law schools fails to serve the interests of law students, law schools or employers. The enabler of this system is NALP&amp;hellip; [which is], and for some time has been, a market imperfection &amp;mdash; no more and no less. For the common good, it should be abolished, and we should start from scratch.&amp;rdquo; &amp;ndash; &lt;i&gt;K&amp;amp;L Gates chairman Peter Kalis&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Back to the drawing board&lt;/b&gt;: &amp;ldquo;To make any kind of significant change, everybody needs to be on board or the changes won&amp;rsquo;t be followed.&amp;rdquo; &amp;ndash;&lt;i&gt;Mark Weber, assistant dean of career services at Harvard Law School&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Go your own way:&lt;/b&gt; Aric Press offers &amp;ldquo;a different way to think about law school recruiting,&amp;rdquo; with or without NALP.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p align=&quot;right&quot;&gt;- posted by vera&lt;/p&gt;

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