Biglaw

Summer Associate Hiring Was Down This Year, But Will It Make A Comeback?

Fingers crossed next year will be better than the last.

By  
on

It’s not just your imagination — summer associate hiring was down for the 2021 season. In fact, according to new data released by the National Association for Law Placement (NALP), 56 percent of law firms reported making fewer offers for their summer program in 2021. And there’s more. Approximately 75 percent of law schools reported a 5 percent decline in on-campus recruiting, and ~29 percent say they saw a 30 percent dip in recruitment for 2020-21.

As reported by the ABA Journal, there are other signs of a down recruitment season:

The percentage of callback interviews that resulted in offers for class of 2022 students in 2021 summer programs decreased to 50%, down from 51% the prior year and from 52% to 54% for five previous years. The yield on the offers increased by nearly 5 percentage points to about 41%. The yield rate is eclipsed only by that of 2009, when the yield was 43%.

James Leipold, executive director of NALP, said although COVID made this year incomparable with previous seasons, firms may have been too cautious in recruiting amid the pandemic:

“There is a story that emerges, however, despite the asterisks, and that is one of both resilience and caution,” Leipold said. “Firms made conservative decisions about future talent at a moment when the future was uncertain. In retrospect, some of those decisions may prove to have been too conservative, and indeed we see that some of the figures measured in this recruiting cycle approach some of the low water marks reached in the immediate aftermath of the Great Recession.”

But it doesn’t look like this hiring dip will be permanent. In a corollary to the hot lateral market in Biglaw, Leipold also sees indictions the next class of summer associates will be larger:

“In fact, word on the street is that the July/August 2021 recruiting cycle for summer associate positions for members of the class of 2023 is already off to a rollicking start.”

Sponsored

Let’s hope COVID is a mere blip, not the harbinger of a new normal, when it comes to recruitment.

Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. 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).

Sponsored

Topics

, , , , ,