John Quinn of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan.

For the first time since nixing its summer associate program three years ago, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan will head to 19 law schools across the country this fall to interview second-year law students for a summer position at the firm.

The decision comes after the 770-lawyer firm overhauled its recruitment strategy, mostly doing away with its summer associate program in 2015. Quinn Emanuel had already stopped conducting on-campus interviews three years before that.

At the time, managing partner John Quinn said that since the firm is so focused on trial litigation, “it's very hard to involve summer associates who are only there for the course of the summer in our work in a meaningful way, so the question is, how valuable is that?”

The Los Angeles-based litigation powerhouse instead focused its efforts on recruiting third-year law students and law clerks who had already identified litigation as their area of focus, handing $35,000 signing bonuses to those hired at the firm.

“We found that somebody who's a 3L in law school is probably a bit closer to making that decision than 2Ls, and certainly people who have already completed federal clerkships are there already,” said Jennifer Barrett, administrative partner of Quinn Emanuel's New York office.

“But with that being said, we did re-evaluate, and we recognize that there are really fantastic second-year law students who do know that they want to focus on litigation, and we certainly don't want to leave those people on the table,” Barrett said.

This summer Quinn Emanuel hired five 2L summer associates in New York who were selected through limited on-campus interviews and self-submissions, said Rebecca Fogler, Quinn Emanuel's New York director of recruiting. In all, the firm is hosting 20 summer associates this year.

Last year, the firm had six summer associates firmwide. The average summer associate class size at law firms with more than 700 lawyers was 20 in 2017.

With its new recruitment strategy, Barrett said that Quinn Emanuel is hoping to host similar numbers of summer associates in future years as it did before shrinking summer associate classes in 2015.

“It's a reflection that Quinn Emanuel is very willing to think creatively and to be nimble when it comes to our recruiting,” said Barrett. “We're constantly focused on making sure we have the best people, and sometimes that means readjusting and re-evaluating.”

Note: This story was updated to reflect that the firm is hosting five summer associates in New York this year, not firmwide.