Biglaw's Summer Associate Recruitment Cycle Has Taken A Dip Amid Layoffs And Fears Of A Recession
NALP's executive director says 'the only solid prediction one can make about the upcoming recruiting cycle is that it won't be dull.'
‘Congratulations on your offer!’ (Image via Getty)
For the past few years, law student recruitment for summer associate programs has been incredibly successful, harkening back to a time when law students quickly accepted the offers that Biglaw firms handed out like candy. The 2022 recruitment cycle, however, was a little different. Yes, recruiting activity was as robust as it’s been, with “precruiting” (pre-OCI offers) becoming more prevalent than ever before, but the overall number of offers made dropped, hinting at the fact that Biglaw firm leaders had recessionary worries on their minds, long before the recent wave of layoffs even started.
As we mentioned previously, according to the latest recruiting figures from the National Association for Law Placement (NALP), offer rates for Biglaw summer programs decreased by about 2% compared to the last summer’s hiring program. This could be bad news, given that the law school Class of 2024 is nearly 12% larger than the Class of 2023. Nikia L. Gray, NALP’s executive director, explained what this could mean for future employment trends:
“What is clear is that the entry-level job market in the private sector is currently not growing fast enough to absorb the additional students in the Class of 2024 and that unless there is a strong 3L hiring market this year—which seems unlikely given recent trends—a greater percentage of these students may need to look at other market segments for employment after graduation.”
There were many ups and downs when it came to this past fall’s law student recruitment. More than 81% of law firm offices visited the same number of schools as they did in 2021, with over 69% reporting that they conducted about the same number of interviews or more. As a result, a little more than half of callbacks (52%) resulted in offers for 2023’s summer associate program — which represented a decline of 6 percentage points from fall 2021. Per NALP’s latest figures, 44% of law offices made fewer offers (but at the same time, 46% of law offices made more offers).
Last year, James Leipold, NALP’s prior executive director, warned that the “hot talent market [would] inevitably cool, one way or another,” and it appears that that time has come. Gray, his successor, is now sounding cautionary notes about entry-level recruitment in light of market conditions, saying, “[A]s an increasing number of reports issued these past few weeks have announced falling partner profits, softening hours, and excess capacity at law firms mingled with projections of record rate increases and bullish growth for 2023, the only solid prediction one can make about the upcoming recruiting cycle is that it won’t be dull.”
Here are some interesting facts about summer recruitment in 2022:
- We may be “post”-pandemic, but the majority of interviews still took place virtually during the fall 2022 recruiting cycle: 93% of screening interviews and 77% of callback interviews were conducted virtually.
- Early offers (“precruiting”) accounted for 23% of all offers made by law firms, the highest number measured since NALP started to track pre-OCI offers. This is an increase of 11 percentage points from fall 2021, with slightly more than one-third (34%) of offices making early offers.
- The median number of offers extended by law offices to second-year students for summer 2023 programs was 9 offers, down from a median of 10 offers for last summer.
Enough of the doom and gloom, let’s talk about what happened with 2022’s summer associates. According to NALP, offer rates for Biglaw summer programs remained close to historic highs, with 97% of second-year law students receiving offers for full-time employment as associates after graduation. Acceptances of those offers matched last year’s all-time high of 89%. That’s all great news, but we can’t help but to wonder if these incoming associates aren’t a little bit worried about their futures with their firms given the cost-cutting measures (including layoffs) that many firms have made in recent weeks and months.
Nevertheless, congratulations to all law students who went through the entry-level recruitment cycle in 2022. We hope that things continue to work out as planned, without any recessionary interferences.
Entry-Level Law Firm Recruiting Activity Holds Steady, With More Offers Made Prior to OCI [NALP]
Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.
