In 2011 consultant Bruce MacEwen thought he had a solution to an intractable problem: finding the best law school graduates for firms without relying on the traditional rigid on-campus recruiting system. Inspired by the matching process used to place medical students in residencies, he and his business partner, Janet Stanton, created JD Match, a website that allows firms and students to rank their interest in each other and pairs students with the firm most likely to hire them. The site launched with great fanfare, earning praise from The Wall Street Journal and legal media outlets, who saw its potential to cut out the inefficiency in the current process.
But two years later, JD Match has failed to make much of an impact. The 6,000 job-seekers who have created profiles on the site outnumber the seven participating firms—Allen & Overy; K&L Gates; Morrison & Foerster; Pepper Hamilton; Proskauer Rose; Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr; and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati—and represent only a fraction of the nation’s 140,000 law students. Of those firms, only Allen & Overy would speak on the record about how it has used the site, and it’s unclear how many students have actually been matched and hired.
