Many law firm offices still don't know when they will be bringing on their new class of associates.

Half of law firm offices don't have an official start date for their incoming associates, according to a new survey by the National Association for Law Placement (NALP). And among the offices that have set start dates, 62% won't welcome their new lawyers until January 2021. That means hundreds of recent law graduates are in the dark about when their jobs will begin, and whether they should move for their new jobs.

"There's a lot of uncertainty right now," said NALP Executive Director James Leipold. "The bar exam is a moving target—even jurisdictions that have made decisions [about when to administer the exam] have had to make second and third decisions as the virus surges. So law firms are trying to plan start dates around when they can get licensed lawyers."

New associates typically start in August or September, after sitting for the July bar exam. But a growing number of jurisdictions have moved the test into September and October this year. Some law firms are staggering new associate start dates depending on when each associate is scheduled to take the bar, among other factors, Leipold said.

NALP surveyed more than 350 law firm offices and 167 law school career services offices in the second half of June on everything from associate start dates and summer associate programs to rescinded job offers and pay cuts during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Nearly half of career services offices—49%—reported that at least one graduate had seen their job offer rescinded. But rescinded offers have to this point been rare and concentrated at smaller firms, Leipold said. He said very few large firms have rescinded offers for incoming associates, in part because those firms faced significant shortages of midlevel associate talent for five years or so after gutting new associate classes during the 2008 recession, he noted. Instead, many firms are taking a wait-and-see approach to when new associates come on board.

"The other piece of the puzzle is the uncertainly about the volume of work, and wanting current associates to have the work now," Leipold said. "It seems that most firms that have deferred start dates have provided some sort of stipend—not a salary obviously—but some monetary compensation to help tide incoming associates over until January."

More precisely, 69% of the law firm offices that have deferred their incoming associate start dates are offering stipends or other cash payments, according to the survey.

On the law school side, 13% of career services offices reported that their schools had increased the amount of post-graduate fellowship funding available for the class of 2020 from the previous year, while 69% said that funding remained flat. Those fellowships give recent graduates the opportunity to take temporary legal jobs while getting paid by the school.

Nearly half of law school respondents—49%—said they have invested in new technology to facilitate virtual counseling, interviews and meetings. Another 21% of schools are considering making such investments. Among career services offices that have established operational plans for the coming academic year, 61% plan to offer a combination of virtual and in-person services, the survey found. But half of the responding law school career services said they experienced budget cuts between March and June of this year, and 58% anticipate more cuts in the coming year.