Biglaw

The Incredible Shrinking Summer Associate Class

Rut-roh!

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It was harder to get a coveted summer associate position in 2017 than it was the year before — and it’s only going to get worse.

As reported by Law.com, National Association for Law Placement (NALP) data reveals that large law firms — those with more than 700 lawyers — actually cut back on the size of their summer associate classes in 2017.  This is the first decrease in class size since 2012, when recovery from the Great Recession first began.

The good(ish) news is that the summer associate classes aren’t that much smaller than they were in 2016 — the average class size in 2017 was 20, down from 22 for each firm office. But NALP executive director James Leipold cautions this is still a noteworthy decline in class size:

“This is a meaningful dip in recruiting at the largest firms,” NALP executive director James Leipold told the law firm recruiters and law school career services personnel assembled in New York Thursday for the the organization’s annual recruiting summit, where he revealed the latest figures. “For the last three or four years, we had this bump in Big Law recruiting as they regrew their summer classes. That has ended.”

The bad news is the data collected by NALP shows this downward trend will continue in 2018. During the most recent on-campus recruitment season, firms extended fewer offers for Summer 2018 positions than they did in 2017. The median number of offers fell 20 percent.

So good luck finding those Biglaw jobs, because looks like you’ll need it.

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headshotKathryn Rubino is an editor at Above the Law. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

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