OCI Is Broken—And Big Law Is Losing Its Grip

Above The Law (April 17, 2025)– Stanford just announced that their 2L On-Campus Interviewing (OCI) is scheduled from May 5 to 9. That’s not a typo. That means that OCI—the key moment in top law students’ paths where they secure that 2L summer job that leads to an offer after graduation—is happening before students have started their 1L summer positions. Before they’ve cite-checked a single brief. Before they’ve even figured out where they’re going to be living this summer. As strange as that is, it’s not just happening at Stanford.

More and more firms—especially the big ones—are bailing on the traditional OCI schedule and pushing interviews earlier and earlier. Some are now happening in March or April, which means students are being asked to choose where they want to spend their legal careers before they’ve begun studying for second semester finals. Most probably got those 1L positions just a month or so earlier.

OCI has never exactly been the gold standard of meaningful hiring, but there was some semblance of rigor. Firms would wait until students had grades from 1L year and had done something in the legal field over the summer—even if it was mostly research projects and networking happy hours. There was just enough meaningful data to work with for firms to keep up the illusion that this was all based on merit or experience.

But now, that illusion is pretty much gone. Read more here.