The National Football League’s lengthy draft of entry players recently concluded. Watching a portion of it led me to wonder just how things might play out if law firms or other organizations that hire aspiring lawyers operated under a similar system. Just imagine, for a second, the president of the American Bar Association striding to a podium and declaring: “With the 14th selection in the third round, DLA Piper selects Courtney Johnson of Harvard Law School. Kirkland & Ellis is on the clock.…”
This, of course, is unlikely to happen. Organizations, though, that still hire law school grads, essentially conduct drafts of their own as they compete against other firms for talent. While the NFL is a big business, the legal industry is a behemoth in its own right. Moreover, the consequences of what lawyers do, many might argue, has far more material impact in so many aspects of our lives as compared to whether a football player is successful in making a first down. Nevertheless, I believe that NFL teams know much more about the new players they draft than legal organizations do about the newly minted lawyers they hire.
