Biglaw firms have pulled back in on-campus interviewing and early interview programs for summer associates in a major way. In fact, according to the National Association for Law Placement (NALP), this was the first time in decades that law firms have made the majority of their offers outside of traditional placement plans.
According to the latest recruiting figures from NALP, in terms of 2025 recruiting, total offer volume was flat, while 49% of callback interviews resulted in offers, up three percentage points from last year (although as NALP notes, this is below the offer rate range of 50-58% from 2014-2022). With fewer offers on the table, desperation was once again thick in the air, and it translated to an acceptance rate to those offers of 49% (up two percentage points from last year) — the highest acceptance rate NALP has ever recorded.
The biggest news from this recruitment cycle, though, has been the fact that Biglaw is largely stepping away OCI in favor of alternative hiring plans. NALP Executive Director Nikia Gray has the details:
“In total, law school interview programs (OCI and EIP) drove only 44% of offers. The majority of offers (56%) resulted from employers recruiting outside of law school interview programs, such as via direct application, resume collects, and referrals. It marks a change in how law firms are viewing OCI in their overall recruiting strategy. The pandemic-era shifts in technology and hiring practices facilitated direct engagement between employers and law students, without law schools being required as intermediaries, and gave law firms greater flexibility in crafting their recruiting strategies. We now know from the data that the market is coalescing around direct recruiting and other non-law school-based recruiting practices as being the preferred methods – or at least the most necessary – to compete for talent and OCI is taking a secondary or even tertiary role, used only to top off or round out summer associate classes as needed.”
Let’s talk about what happened with 2024’s summer associates. Class sizes in 2024 were even smaller than they were in 2023, which was the most underwhelming recruiting cycle since the Great Recession. In the summer of 2024, the average class size for 2Ls was down to just 12 students. This is the lowest average 2L class size since 2021, when the pandemic severely impacted Biglaw summer programs. On a positive note, however, the offer rate for 2Ls rose to 97%, and the 2L offer acceptance rate rose as well, to an all-time high of 90%.
Will these alternative recruiting methods be the way of the future for Biglaw firms? “Time will tell where the recruiting cycle ultimately settles, but OCI’s role in it will clearly be limited,” Gray said in NALP’s report.
Congratulations to all law students who went through the entry-level recruitment cycle in 2024. We hope that everything works out.
Summer Associate Hiring Held Steady in 2024 as Law Firms Recruited Earlier; Report Confirms Significant Changes in Recruiting Practices [NALP]
OCI, Early Interviews Plummeted in 2024 as Law Firms Turned to New Recruiting Methods [American Lawyer]
Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Bluesky, X/Twitter, and Threads, or connect with her on LinkedIn.
