If you’ve been paying attention to the slow-motion disaster that is Biglaw recruiting — and we’ve been covering this mess for years now — you won’t be surprised to hear that yet another law school is trying to figure out how to deal with this mess. This time it’s BYU Law, and they’re revamping a core part of their curriculum to deal with law firms’ increasingly itchy hiring trigger finger.
The Provo, Utah school announced today that it is shifting its Academies Program from the spring semester to the fall, beginning with an October run later this year. The reason is exactly what you’d expect: Biglaw is taking direct applications from 1Ls as early as first semester, with firms increasingly locking in their summer associate classes before first-year students have even finished their first year of coursework. The race to the bottom on recruiting timelines has gotten so bad that a law school is now reorganizing a cornerstone experiential program around it.
Let’s be clear about how we got here. The state of Biglaw recruitment has been in flux since late 2018, when NALP made sweeping changes to its “Principles and Standards for Law Placement and Recruitment Activities,” eliminating all the timelines and guideposts that served as the foundation of entry-level recruiting. When the rules are there are no rules, you get chaos — and chaos is what we got. Seven years later, 1Ls are securing their 2L summer jobs before their 1L summer jobs, and offers for summer associate positions that explode before the first year of law school is even over have become a thing. It’s madness.
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And it’s not just students who are suffering. Recruiting teams are pressured to engage early or face the risk of missing out on talent, forcing them to make hiring decisions with extremely limited data — assessing first-year students who have only been exposed to a handful of classes, often before grades, feedback, or professional experiences can provide meaningful insight into their potential fit.
Nobody wins! And yet the prisoner’s dilemma marches on.
So what is BYU Law doing about it? Rather than throwing up their hands, the school is pivoting. Its Spring 2026 Academies will run April 24 through May 2 and will feature the largest slate in the program’s history — 10 immersive, simulation-based programs across major legal markets including New York, Dallas, Palo Alto, Washington D.C., Wilmington, Salt Lake City, and Geneva, Switzerland. Partners include Kirkland & Ellis, Wilson Sonsini, Fragomen, and Potter Anderson & Corroon, among others. There’s even a new AI Law and Policy Academy, because of course there is.
But the bigger news is the fall repositioning. Beginning in October 2026, the Academies will run before recruiting season kicks into high gear, giving 1Ls exposure to practice areas, firm cultures, and career paths before they’re expected to make life-altering decisions about their careers. As Dean David Moore put it, the move ensures “our 1L students are better prepared to make informed career decisions and to compete successfully in an accelerated hiring environment.”
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“Many students count their participation in an Academy as the catalyst behind the career path they ultimately pursue,” said Mariah Christensen, Academies program coordinator. “By continuing the Academies program and adjusting it to accommodate the new recruiting timeline, BYU Law demonstrates its commitment to investing in every student’s future success in a rapidly changing legal landscape.”
That’s a polite way of saying: the system is broken, and we have to work around it.
Worth noting — and this is genuinely admirable — BYU Law funds participation in the Academies entirely, meaning students aren’t priced out of experiential programming that could shape their careers. Law students without lawyers in their families are already disadvantaged by the push of recruitment into 1L year, and financial barriers on top of that would make a bad situation worse.
There have been some small rays of hope on the systemic front. Earlier this year, Cooley took the unusual step of intentionally leaving half its incoming associate seats open to fill later rather than locking in its entire class during the 1L panic cycle, an admission of what everyone already knows: the Biglaw recruiting system is broken. And some firms have gotten creative in… less inspiring ways. Sullivan & Cromwell and Paul Weiss reportedly tapped upperclass law students with expense accounts to wine and dine 1Ls on their behalf — which is, shall we say, a choice.
BYU Law’s approach is trying to inform and empower students before they’re thrown into the, often overwhelming, recruitment morass. The Academies Program has twice been recognized by Bloomberg’s Innovation in Law Program since its 2018 launch, and restructuring it to serve students better in a chaotic recruiting environment is exactly the kind of institutional responsiveness that more schools should be modeling.
The broken system will keep churning. But at least some schools are trying to give their students a fighting chance within it.
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 or Bluesky @Kathryn1