Biglaw, Job Searches, NALP, Summer Associates

NALP Glitch Gives Early Preview of 2009 Summer Program Numbers

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There’s a pretty interesting glitch happening right now over at NALP (here at ATL, we know something about “technical difficulties” — we’re working on ours). Even though the new numbers haven’t been made public yet, if you know what you’re doing you can get a sneak peak at the 2009 NALP numbers.

We’re not going to tell you how to do it, but we’ve done it and we’ve obtained some pretty interesting numbers to report about the New York summer programs at the top 20 firms as ranked by Vault. We’ll give you some numbers about the V10 today. Tomorrow we’ll expand our look to the Vault 20.

Getting an offer at one of the top nine firms in the land (the NALP glitch didn’t work for S&C) was considerably more difficult this year than last year. We compares the number of summer associate offers extended to 2Ls in 2007, with the expected numbers for that same group in 2008. Overall 2Ls offers were down a whopping 20% at the top 10 firms. And you have to wonder what percentage of those summer jobs are going to turn into full-time offers for employment.

For 1Ls, it gets even worse. We explain that and some other highlights, after the jump.


We were only able to access information on two top Vault firms about their 1L summer associate hiring. But we expect what we did find could be a general trend. In 2007, those two firms offered 22 1Ls the opportunity to summer with the firm. In 2008, that number careened down to one. One single 1L.

But, as you well know, one can do a lot of funny things with statistics. While the overall 20% drop is significant, we’re not looking at an across the board, 20% cut, for the nine firms we looked at. Firms like Skadden and Cleary look like they will maintain a consistent level of 2L summer associate participation.

At other firms, it’s a different story. Davis Polk is looking at a 10% drop in 2L summer associate offers. Cravath is reporting a nearly 25% drop in summer offers.

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Not entirely surprising, Latham skews the numbers for the entire top ten. The firm reportedly handed out 67.5% fewer summer offers.

So, congratulations to those that survived the fall gauntlet to snatch to become a 2009 summer associate at a top ten firm. But, don’t let down your guard just yet.

We’ll get into the next batch of firms tomorrow.

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