Business of Law

Recruitment season is moving up as firms search for summer talent

Job candidates illustration

The start of recruitment season for both 1L and 2L summer opportunities keeps creeping forward. (Photo illustration by Sara Wadford/ABA Journal)

It’s long been a rite of passage.

Just before their 2L year, law students don their best suits and nervously sit for on-campus interviews with potential employers for that summer’s positions. Then they wait to see which offers come in, weighing each carefully before taking the step that could set up their entire career.

Not surprisingly, post-COVID-19, many in-person on-campus interviews have been replaced by Zoom conversations.

But what’s startling to those in academia is how the start of recruitment season for both 1L and 2L summer opportunities keeps creeping forward. In fact, students increasingly have offers for 2L summer positions before spring arrives during their 1L year, and outreach by firms sometimes starts just after students receive their acceptance into law school, they say.

Recruiting changes have been especially fast and furious the past two years.

“I don’t know that any of us at law schools have figured out how to do it,” says Patricia Roberts, dean of St. Mary’s School of Law. “This has been happening so quickly, and it just moves up further and further and further.”

For students, securing a summer job offer—especially when facing mounting student loan debt—can feel all-important.

“The more disparate the salaries between BigLaw and the public sector become, the more attractive this path is,” says Amy Mattock, assistant dean of the Office of Career Strategy at Georgetown Law.

Off to the races

Historically, first-year students were intentionally kept out of career services until Oct. 15 and did not talk to potential employers until December, based on the National Association for Legal Placement’s voluntary recommendations.

“The idea was hands-off,” says Terence Lau, dean of Syracuse University College of Law. “Let them focus on being law students.”

Law firms had to wait to meet students.

“The students had time to reflect. What am I looking for in a firm? Do I want to be a litigator? Do I want to be a transactional lawyer? Do I want to do trusts and estates?” says William M. Treanor, Georgetown Law’s dean.

But in 2018, NALP dropped its guidelines in order to “support flexibility and encourage innovation” in entry-level recruiting, according to a memo to members. Timing guidelines for advising and recruiting first-year students were scrapped, and law schools and law firms were free to create their own policies.

At first, not much changed. But in 2020, the pandemic inspired a seismic shift to online interviews, avoiding the time and costs of flying interviewers around the country, bypassing career services and controlling the timing of interviews to be convenient for the law firms.

“It made the on-campus interview less important,” says Caroline Menes, director of legal recruiting at Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton.

That encouraged direct—and early—contact without involving the schools’ career services. Some recruiters now reach out regarding 1L summer jobs before the students even start law school, according to people interviewed by the ABA Journal.

“We had a student post on social that she was accepted, and a recruiter reached out via LinkedIn before school even started in August,” says Lily Yan Hughes, assistant dean at Syracuse College of Law.

Getting-to-know-you interviews for 1L summer positions can occur early in the first semester, with most offers coming after those grades come out. For some, offers come even earlier. A few of Francesqa Kaggwa’s classmates at Tulane University School of Law had 1L summer job offers before the end of their first semester and before grades were turned in, she says.

But Kaggwa, a first-generation law student, says she couldn’t devote weekends to applications.

“I couldn’t juggle all of it,” says Kaggwa, a member of the ABA’s Law Student Division Council and a former diversity and inclusion delegate. It added stress. “You want to be one of the first ones to apply.”

The stakes are high. A summer job in BigLaw—with its possible invitations to return—could potentially set up a law student’s entire career, to say nothing of allaying financial concerns. Nevertheless, Georgetown’s Treanor worries about how this could impact students’ mental health.

“Being a law student is a full-time job, and looking for a job is a full-time job,” Treanor says. “To have both of them at the same time is just too much.”

Roberts adds that many first-generation students might be at a disadvantage, especially if they are not familiar with law school and recruiting demands.

“It’s a real challenge,” Roberts says. “The people who are going to be ready in November are the people whose parents are lawyers.”

Some wonder when it will stop. “I worry that we are going down a slippery slope,” says Akua Akyea, Cornell Law School’s associate dean for career development. “Law school is pressure enough. And then you’re adding job searches to just the regular stress of law school, being in a new environment, meeting new people, learning in a different way,” she adds. “It’s a lot.”

Pressed for time

Akyea says that moving the job process forward “puts pressure on the whole system,” including career services. It also pushes professors to turn in grades faster.

Tips on job-hunting and networking processes now are often part of orientation, administrators say.

“We want to give our students the tools that they need to navigate this successfully before they start engaging with employers,” Georgetown Law’s Mattock says. The Washington, D.C.-based law school’s first on-campus career services event was held the first week of October for the 1L summer posts.

Despite the direct connections, many law schools still conduct on-campus interviews. But a NALP report shows that in 2024, fewer than half of summer job offers—44%—were still made at on-campus interviews.

“That’s a major change from what we’d see historically,” says Nikia Gray, NALP’s executive director.

And Latham & Watkins reportedly has ended all OCI, advising law students to submit an online application through its recruiting portal.

“The market seems to be moving toward a more direct relationship between the candidate and the employer,” says Hannah Kelly, director of product marketing at Flo Recruit, a virtual interview platform designed for law school recruiting events.

Sheppard Mullin’s Menes agrees. “We get to see the candidates we select.”

To get in front of students, employers are increasingly directly partnering with student groups, sometimes as early as September, says Georgetown Law’s Mattock. Students weren’t getting tapped by employers for on-campus meetings the first week of law school 10 years ago, she says.

Things move just as fast for 2L summer positions, with that year’s job search potentially overlapping with the 1L job hunt.

“Some people are being hired for their 2L jobs in February of their first year,” Georgetown’s Treanor says.

Sheppard Mullin’s Menes sees the origins of this 2L summer rush to hire stemming from fall 2008, back when recruiting for 2L summer associates typically kicked off in early August and stretched though October. But when Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy on Sept. 15 of that year, “every student with an offer started accepting because they were afraid other firms would not continue to make offers,” she says. “A couple of days later, I was at my limit for my summer class, yet I still had a lot of offers outstanding and a lot more on-campus interviews.”

As a result, each year since, schools slowly pushed up their interview dates to get ahead of the others, she says. “It was like leapfrog,” she adds. “You saw the first July OCIs around 2013.”

The 2L summer season interviews now peak in July, followed by a steep decline in August, says Flo Recruit’s Kelly. And the shifts earlier will continue, according to Flo Recruit’s figures. For instance, Cornell’s 2L summer recruiting program was in August last year, but will be in mid-June this year, Akyea says.

And some employers are reconsidering OCIs. “We are debating how much OCI we’re going to participate in this year,” Menes says.

Why the rush?

A robust job market is making employers hungry and competitive for new lawyers, as firms want to get in front of the best potential hires early.

“Our data shows clearly an increase in outreach networking, trying to get to know students, brand-build, to be on their radar,” says Flo Recruit’s Kelly.

“The rush is to get the best talent,” Menes adds.

And extra pressure comes as firms simultaneously attempt to grow their size, profitability and market leadership, says Kent Zimmermann, a consultant with Zeughauser Group. “It’s very hard to do.”

So firms resort to using techniques like those in professional sports, he says.

“When you see professional sports teams reach down into high school, they’re trying to get a jump on the competition,” he notes. “There’s only so much of talent to go around, right?”

While firms feel it is an advantage to be the first contact, Georgetown Law’s Treanor disagrees. “It’s really a race to the bottom.”

Deadlines for accepting a 2L summer offer over the past few years have shifted too. Twenty years ago, students had several months to decide on an offer and could entertain other options. Now decisions must be made within 21, 14 or sometimes seven days, according to people interviewed by the ABA Journal. The quicker time frame helps a law firm get a firm grip on their class size at an earlier date, says Menes, who adds she is “liberal with extensions” if students have other interviews lined up.

But an early commitment to a summer position might get a student stuck in a track before they’ve explored what type of law they want to practice, law school administrators say. And if they have a job in hand, some forgo activities that could help them explore career interests.

Georgetown’s Mattock says law school has seen a precipitous drop in its journal, barristers’ council and moot court programs in the past few years. “That resumé enhancement value is gone,” she adds.

On the job

While students are performing at their 2L summer post “just fine,” Mattock says, some realize quickly that it’s not a good fit.

“We had this year a record number of students who were 2L summer associates who reached out to let us know that they were thinking about not returning to their firm or wanting to go to a different firm,” she adds. “They found out very early on in the summer that it wasn’t the right fit for them.”

Georgetown Law’s Treanor says he worries the implications of people landing early at the wrong firms will last several years.

“They’ll be there for a year or two years but will leave in the third year, leaving just as they become profitable for the firms,” he adds.

Instead, Treanor would like to see more 3L hiring. “At that point, you’ve got students who’ve taken not just 1L basic courses but at least one year to take courses that they’re actually interested in to develop an expertise and two summers’ worth of experiences to have a better sense of what they’re looking for and why.”

He worries too that markets can change quickly, and firms might overhire summer associates if the economy later takes a turn. “Do they lay them off? Do they give them money to go away? Do they bring them to the office and just have them sit there?” he asks. “It’s a hiring model that doesn’t make any sense.”

Mattock argues that it’s only a matter of time until firms realize the early recruiting practice isn’t ideal and recruiting again starts later.

“At some point, things are going to get so out of control that the firms realize it cannot go on this way,” Mattock says. “Nobody thinks this is a great model. Nobody thinks this is working well.”

This story was originally published in the June-July 2025 issue of the ABA Journal under the headline: “Need for Speed: Firms are moving faster and sooner as the search for summer talent heats up.”