It’s hard to get a job at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, the prominent law firm based in New York. But thanks to an iPhone and iPad app the firm has developed, Skadden applicants may find the recruiting process a smidge easier to navigate.
The app, called Skadden Start Here, is available for free from the Apple App Store. It allows users to follow Skadden’s recruiting schedule, locate its global offices and learn important facts about the firm. (Did you know Skadden offers a flexible maternity leave program? Now you do!) And the app comes preloaded with contact information for Howard L. Ellin, the partner in charge of global hiring, and Carol Sprague, a recruiting director.
The app is part of an intensified recruiting process at Skadden, which mirrors similar efforts at other white-shoe law firms. This year, Skadden’s efforts to court second-year law students for summer associate positions beginning in 2012 have included setting up free pizza trucks at top-flight law schools. Law schools have pushed the recruiting process, which used to begin in October, up to late summer, and many firms are already conducting interviews for their 2012 summer associate class.
“It was time for us to do an update of our marketing materials, and seeing all of our summer associates connected to their mobile devices, we said, ‘Let’s put this information out there in a fun way,’” said Christina Fox, Skadden’s global manager of attorney recruiting.
Skadden Start Here isn’t the only law firm app. Both Benesch Friendlander Coplan & Aronoff and Morrison & Foerster have their own informational apps.
But Skadden’s may be among the most technologically advanced. One of the most notable features in the app is a text-recognition system that allows applicants to scan business cards they receive from Skadden contacts and automatically add their contact information to a digital list.
True to Skadden’s competitive spirit, when DealBook tried to scan a business card from a competing firm, the app froze up and had to be restarted.
