Statistics About the Lost Generation

Breaking news from the land of totally obvious statistics: the class of 2009 got rogered, but good.
The National Law Journal reports that the NALP numbers are out, and the statistics confirm what we all already know:

The median number of offers by U.S. law firms for 2010 summer associate positions was seven, according to statistics released Tuesday by the National Association for Law Placement. That was down from 10 offers in 2008 and 15 offers in 2007.
In fact, the offer rate was the lowest NALP has reported since the organization began gathering offer statistics some 17 years ago.
Only 36 percent of interviews last year resulted in summer associate offers, compared to 47 percent in 2008 and 60 percent in 2007.

The details are horrific …


2009 will be remembered as the year of deferrals:

Students who had already accepted job offers in 2008 with plans to begin working last fall were hit with significant start-date deferrals, NALP reported. More than 60 percent of those 2009 graduates who were slated to start working at large law firms were deferred. That translated into between 3,200 and 3,700 new attorneys whose start dates were delayed beyond Dec. 1.

Reaction from around the web to the NALP numbers has been appropriately apoplectic. Business Insider focused on this aspect:

Those numbers confirm the feeling that a) getting a permanent job once you had a summer position used to be a foregone conclusion and b) that it has never been this terrible before — 69% is the lowest offer rate since NALP began collecting the data in 1993.
What happened to those who did not get permanent offers? Nothing good — only 10 of the 300 firms NALP surveyed gave offers to 3Ls.

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The WSJ Law Blog chimed in with this:

Ah, it’s grim. The recession is officially over, the stock markets have largely rebounded on news of strong earnings, and law firms are slowly regaining their footing. But the jobs just haven’t returned yet.

And the ABA Journal reports that things aren’t likely to get much better:

NALP expects law school recruiting to continue hobbling along until at least the class of 2012 graduates, “though the worst does now seem, we hope, to be behind us.”

Was there any good news? The NLJ reports:

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Least likely to have imposed deferrals were smaller firms in the Southeast and Midwest, with a significantly higher numbers of deferred associates in New York.

Law students at schools like Michigan, Northwestern, and Emory, that’s your cue to shove it in the face of Columbia and NYU people. Enjoy.
What is it about being born around 1985/1986? The star that marked your birth was actually a spaceship blowing up in the sky. Now your careers are getting beaten like they stole something. Tough beat.
Summer Associate Offers Hit 17-Year Low, Says NALP [National Law Journal]
The Summer Hiring Numbers Are In, And They Are Bad, Bad And Bad [Business Insider]
Q: Is it Really a Bad Time to Be in Law School? A: That’s a Dumb Q [WSJ Law Blog]
Summer Associate Offers Plummet, Hitting 17-Year Low [ABA Journal]
The NALP Numbers: Yikes. [Am Law Daily]