PDO recommends you send thank you notes or emails within 24 hours of any interview—whether on campus or off campus. The notes should be brief and sincere. Admittedly, it can be hard to make them unique if you interviewed with small groups of attorneys. While they shouldn’t be identical or copied and pasted completely, some thank you notes will obviously be similar. Just do your best to individualize them. Attorneys may actually compare thank you notes with one another.
You need to use your best judgment on whether everyone needs an individual thank you note or email—but be sure to thank everyone who 1) came to campus; and 2) with whom you had substantive conversation and who was part of the interview process. If you met with small groups attorneys during a callback, flyback, or initial interview which took place off campus, you might send an email to two attorneys at a time, for example, if it truly makes the most sense. Err on the side of individualized thank yous if possible, however.
As one attorney who came to interview this fall explained: “One general piece of advice that I would share with students—if you are going to send “thank you” notes after on campus interviews, make sure to send them to all the interviewers. It can be as a group, or individually, but picking and choosing who to thank, and leaving one or more attorneys out sends a bad impression. As always, you never know who is making the hiring decisions, and more likely than not, if an attorney is doing an interview, he or she has a say in the hiring decision.”