Entry Level Law Firm Recruiting Up, But Uncertainty Prevails

Law firm hiring of entry-level lawyers was up last year, but some firms have been paring back their summer associate programs, according to a newly released report.

The National Association for Law Placement, which authored the report, said that summer associates received offers of employment at historically high rates for the second year in a row in 2019. But even with a 98% aggregate offer rate, the report said some firms were already making adjustments “with so many political and financial variables uncertain.”

“The largest law firms continue to trim summer program size just slightly, perhaps in anticipation of a possible economic slowdown on the horizon,” said James Leipold, executive director of NALP, which tracks lawyer employment data.

Uncertainly about the economy and the ramifications of major market volatility on the legal industry has only grown in early 2020.

“It’s too soon to know how the coronavirus pandemic will affect legal recruiting, though surely there will be an impact. This is going to be a very different economic interruption than 2008 was,” said Leipold. “We are all watching and waiting to see how this develops.”

NALP’s “2019 Perspectives on Law School Recruiting Report” was based on information from nearly 400 law firm offices. Almost 83 percent of the responses were from firms with more than 250 lawyers.

Mixed Results

The largest law firms already had begun pulling back recruitment activity, according to last year’s NALP report as they faced less demand for legal services and stronger competition for legal business. At the same time, overall law school enrollment has fallen over the past decade.

Law firms with more than 700 lawyers reported an average summer class size of 18 in 2019, down from 19 the year before. The number of summer associates was also down from the average 20 in 2017 and 22 in 2016.

However, the rate of offers to summer class participants hit 98 percent, the highest rate NALP has ever measured.
That was up from 97 percent in 2018 and 95 percent for the period of 2015 to 2017.

The acceptance rate for such offers had hovered between 84 percent and 86 percent for seven years straight, but in both 2018 and 2019, the acceptance rate was 88 percent, a high. Before the 2008 recession, overall acceptance rates were in the mid-seventies.

With regard to specific regions, New York and Washington-area offices made fewer offers for summer program participants than before. Silicon Valley and San Francisco trended the other way, with significant upticks.