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How to describe the summer associate recruiting scene? In a word—stable.

Firms hired law students in similar numbers as the previous three years during last summer's on-campus recruiting season, according to new data from the National Association for Law Placement (NALP). By many accounts 2018 was a record year for large firm profits but that didn't translate into a bump in summer associate recruiting. The latest numbers offer further evidence that summer associate and associate hiring has settled into a “new normal” that falls short of the more robust Big Law hiring practices that predated the recession.

“After a period of great volatility following the recession marked first by a prolonged slowdown in law student recruiting and then a period of rapid escalation in recruiting, we have seen the recruiting market stabilize over the last four or five years,” said NALP executive director James Leipold. “The recruiting climate is most accurately described as steady in 2018, though as with law firm profitability, there remain large differences between individual firms in terms of the number of offers being extended for summer programs and the size of the summer programs themselves.”

Put another way, there's wide variation in how law firms are approaching summer associate recruiting. Nearly half of all law firms—49 percent—reported extending more summer associates offers in 2018 than the previous year, while 40 percent said they extended fewer. The average size of summer associate classes in 2018 remained at 14, yet the most common summer associate class size is one, followed by two. So while some firms still bring in large groups of law students over the summer, many more offices have scaled back to host just one or two. (A quarter of law firms reported bringing in one or two summer associates in 2018, compared with 16 percent in 2008.) Large summer associate programs remain most prevalent in the New York market, according to NALP.

On the upswing are post-graduate job offer rates to summer associates, which hit historic highs last year. Firms reported extending associate offers to nearly 97 percent of 2018's summer associates. Acceptance rates also climbed to 88 percent, up from between 84 and 86 percent the previous seven years.

That high acceptance rate helped tamp down the recruiting of third-year law students, NALP reported, as firms did not need to return to law schools in large numbers to fill gaps left by summer associates who declined an offer to join the firm permanently. Leipold described the 3L recruiting market as “anemic.”

NALP also surveyed law students who participated in on-campus interviewing last summer to gauge their experiences and the factors that drove their decision-making. Students reported that the Vault law firms rankings and input from alumni and classmates were the most commonly cited resources used in choosing which firms to interview with. But office location came in at the top of the list of factors influencing those decisions, followed by firm culture and the strength of particular practice areas.

Students also reported that the attorneys they interviewed with on campus were a major consideration when choosing between summer associate offers from multiple firms. More than 62 percent of students said they considered the people they met during the interview process, followed by the firm's prestige, at nearly 48 percent.

“If there is a takeaway from the student surveys that were completed, it is that who you send to campus really matters,” Leipold said. “At the end of the day, students report that the lawyers they met were extremely influential in students' assessments of where to accept or reject offers of summer employment.”