Day Zero of a fresh hiring season for law graduates is just a couple of weeks away, but the excitement is visibly muted at even the campuses of the country’s top 30 law schools. Reason: an increasing number of recruiters are now opting for pre-placement offers, which they feel is a more “holistic assessment”.
Akanksha Antil, Head of Navigator at Vahura, a leading consultancy and placement firm, says, “Day Zero once dictated the rules of recruitment, but the industry’s playing field has shifted from speed hiring to sustained assessment. It’s not just about where you studied anymore – it’s about what you’ve shown you can do,” she says.
Hiring strategy
With an annual pool of 70,000 law graduates who pass out annually from the 1700 law schools across the country, choosing 50 exceptional candidates for a firm is like finding needles in a haystack. Sushma Sharma, Faculty Head of Internships and Placements at the National Law Institute University Bhopal says for many students, “internships that lead to PPOs offer a welcome sense of clarity and security as they get a real feel for the firm’s culture, build connections and avoid the high-stakes pressure of Day Zero placements.”
Chetana Lal, head, industry interface & career advancement office of the Mumbai-based BITS Law School, agrees. Statistics speak for themselves: For the graduating batch of 2024, Trilegal hired 42 % of its 128 fresh hires from the top 24 law schools across the country via PPOs. Khaitan & Co hired just 18 freshers during Day Zero in the same year compared to 56 via PPOs out of the total 74 hires it made from 27 law schools.
Data from top law schools also confirms the growing importance of PPOs. As many as 35 students from the graduating batch of 2025 secured PPOs at the top-rated NLSIU Bangalore, which is more than double the previous year’s number. For GNLU, the number of PPOs was 37. Similarly, for the graduating batch of 2025 at NLU Jodhpur, 19 of 44 PPO offers were accepted by students “This demonstrates that top firms are increasingly valuing sustained internship performance over brief selection rounds,” Lal observes.
Amar Sinhji, Executive Director and HR Head of Khaitan & Co, terms PPOs as a “win-win” for both, recruiters and hires. Khaitan, he says, has pivoted towards hiring nearly 80% of its fresh talent through the PPO route. “This approach ensures that our new hires are not only legally proficient but also culturally aligned, having already proven themselves during their internships with us,” he says. Almost everyone emphasises the advantage of not overly depending on Day Zero, which is limited to quick group discussions and barely 20 minutes of interactions with candidates.
“Neither the recruiter nor the recruitee have a chance to assess and evaluate each other. It’s also very stressful for the students, many of whom have been shortlisted by multiple recruiters on the same day,” says Nidhi Buch, head of placements at Gujarat National Law University. Buch says keeping this in mind, post-Covid, Day Zero was shifted from the end of the eighth semester in April to the ninth semester around the end of July or early August to facilitate more internship opportunities for students. “This has paved the way for multiple PPO opportunities for students with many interning twice with the same firms,” she explains.
Usage of AI
Yet another emerging trend is the use of data and AI tools by some recruiters to screen candidates—tracking consistency, internship feedback, and online presence over time. “This has made long-term engagement with firms even more important, as it provides measurable data points beyond grades and resumes,” adds Lal of BITS. For the recruiters too, the change of timing of Day Zero is more beneficial since it now takes place post the completion of their financial year and gives them a better perspective of how many freshers they can afford to hire. Anand Desai, managing partner of DSK Legal, says “it is crucial to have a cultural fit. Those who join us should understand our vision and want to work towards achieving it.”
Interestingly, most recruiters have become wary of Day Zero also because of 40-50% attrition rate of young lawyers within the first year of joining. During their training period, firms spend money on training young lawyers which is why their exit hits the firms. Some firms like Luthra & Luthra have almost stopped dependence on Day Zero hiring. Others like DSK had stopped hiring from campuses some years ago before entering the fray once again post 2020.
“It is only after they have put in two to three years that young lawyers start stabilising in their jobs as well as in the firm they work with,” Desai avers. Keeping this in mind t DSK has devised a unique “buddy system” where seniors guide freshers during their initial years to negotiate hurdles like accommodation and getting used to a different city and striving for a work life balance. “They almost mentor them into the profession,” Desai says.
Some recruiters, of course, are still sticking to the Day Zero route. Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas, the top law firm with over 1,200 lawyers is among the largest recruiter on Day Zero. Cyril Shroff, Managing Partner of CAM rationalises, “We recruit 150 to 200 fresh graduates annually, with growing intake from a broad range of institutions — including NLUs, top private law schools, and specialised programs — to ensure diversity and depth in our talent pool.”
Lal of BITS Law School sums it up. ” The traditional model of campus recruitment, once centred on a single Day Zero event, is giving way to continuous, performance-based hiring cycles all year round. This evolution is prompting law schools to rethink their career strategies, offering students more structured pathways to build skills and credibility throughout their academic journey,” she says.