It has become an employee’s market, and jobseekers are being more forward about what they expect from employers. In the world of legal employment, that has translated to some tangible trends. One casualty may be the prehire arbitration agreement.
Major law firms, including Orrick Herrington, Skadden Arps, Kirkland & Ellis, and Munger, Tolles & Olson, have dropped prehire mandatory arbitration agreements in an effort to attract and recruit elite new lawyers. Because DLA Piper, America’s second-biggest law firm with 3,750 lawyers, hasn’t dropped prehire arbitration agreements, a “Dump DLA” movement has begun at major Ivy League law schools. Watch for that movement to grow and for more big law firms to drop the requirement, at least until arbitration comes back into vogue.
