exploding offer
n.— «So how do judges compete with one another to attract top law students? The most favored method is the pre-emptive strike, or “exploding offer.”…By interviewing and making offers to students just a few days earlier than her colleagues and making a take-it-or-leave-it offer to the best interviewees—under which the chosen students must decide whether to accept the offer within a very short time frame, or even on the spot—a judge can ensure that she, rather than another judge, gets her first choice of law clerks.» —“Federal judges go to extremes to select law clerks” by Michael C. Dorf CNN.com Oct. 31, 2000. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Amid court-ordered busing in the 1970s, a middle-school teacher tried to distract her nervous students on the first day of class with this strange assignment: find a monarch caterpillar. The result? A memorable lesson in the miracle of metamorphosis...
There was a time when William Shakespeare was just another little seven-year-old in school. Classes in his day were demanding — and all in Latin. A new book argues that this rigorous curriculum actually nurtured the creativity that later flourished...