Biglaw

Summer Associate Offer Rates (2019): Make Way For More Record Hiring!

But which firms do NOT have a 100 percent offer rate? Let us know!

‘We got offers!’

Fall recruiting season is upon us at law schools across the country, and this year’s crop of summer associates were on their very best behavior in the hopes of earning big, fat paychecks as first-year associates after graduating from law school.

Last summer, Biglaw firms extended offers of permanent employment to prospective law school graduates at historic rates, with the aggregate offer rate jumping to almost 97 percent and the acceptance rate for those offers reaching a high of 88 percent (which was significantly higher than acceptance rates measured before the recession)

We’ll have to wait for the official numbers to find out how well firms did, but in the meantime, we know of several firms that will have full classes of incoming associates bopping around with visions of $190K salaries dancing in their heads.

Following up on last week’s post on Biglaw offer rates, here is a list of firms that have given offers to all of their summer associates:

  • Baker Botts (Dallas)
  • Brown Rudnick (firmwide)
  • Crowell & Moring (firmwide)
  • Drinker Biddle (Philadelphia)
  • Goodwin Procter (Boston)
  • Holland & Knight (Boston)
  • Holland & Hart (Billings)
  • Holland & Hart (Denver)
  • Holland & Hart (Las Vegas)
  • Holland & Hart (Salt Lake City)
  • Jones Day (New York)
  • Latham & Watkins (New York)
  • Morrison & Foerster (Washington, D.C.)
  • Norton Rose Fulbright US (firmwide)
  • Potter Anderson & Corroon (Wilmington, DE)
  • Quinn Emanuel (New York)
  • Reed Smith (Chicago)
  • Ropes & Gray (firmwide)
  • Shearman & Sterling (New York)
  • Sidley Austin (Dallas)
  • Sidley Austin (Houston)
  • Skadden Arps (Washington, D.C.)
  • Thompson & Knight (firmwide)
  • Vinson & Elkins (Houston)
  • WilmerHale (Boston)
  • Winston & Strawn (Chicago)
  • Winston & Strawn (New York)

If you have offer rate additions to this list to share or if you have corrections to the list — e.g., an office listed above that does NOT belong on the 100 percent list — please email us (subject line: “[Firm Name] Summer Associate Offer Rates”), or text us (646-820-8477). We keep our tipsters anonymous. If and when we receive enough information, we’ll do another follow-up. Thanks a bunch!

Right now, it’s more newsworthy if a firm does NOT have a 100 percent offer rate than if it does. On that note, please let us hear about firms that are NOT issuing offers to all their summer associates. If you know of a firm or an office with an unusually low offer rate — which we will arbitrarily define here as something under 66 percent, or two-thirds — please email us (subject line: “[Firm Name] Low Offer Rate”). If we hear about any firms with particularly low offer rates, we will investigate.


Staci ZaretskyStaci 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.