Law schools continue to graduate roughly 40,000 students a year, as they have over the last 20 years. The AmLaw 200 law firms have been steadily hiring an average of 4%+ more associates each year, resulting last year in a typical incoming associate class of 50. That means that AmLaw 200 firms now hire about 10,000 new associates a year, or about 50% of the graduates from the top 100 (hardly the Ivy League elite) of the nation's 200 law schools.
Seen from another perspective, the top 20 law firms in the country need to hire at least 2100 graduates this year, while only 1400 or so students will graduate in the top 20% of the top 20 law schools.
And the number of associates these firms will be trying to hire is likely to continue to climb. Already this year, firms are starting to announce double digit increases in summer hiring--35% at Skadden Arps, 20% at Kirkland & Ellis and 14% at DLA Piper. And the competition from hedge funds and investment banks offering attractive alternatives is increasing.
Given these statistics, unless the law business tanks, not far along the horizon must be a point where nearly every associate in the top half of every law school, whatever the law school, has several high-dollar offers to choose from. Which means many firms will be left ith fewer incoming associates than they want, or certainly fewer of the caliber they are seeking.
On top of that, astronomically high and climbing attrition rates mean that firms are at the same time trying to hire associates to replace those still-young lawyers who are leaving every year, whether to go to other firms, in-house or to entirely different fields. An ABA’s Young Lawyers Study found that 65% of associates said they were considering switching to nonlawyering jobs within the next two years. Even those attorneys that firms are hiring laterally, to replace the departed, are themselves leaving at astonishing rates, faster than the home-grown associates.
Ms. Muir then expands on these point in the rest of the article, touching on some of the looming realities that law firms will be facing as a result. I was struck by how some basic economic principles (like supply and demand) appear to be significantly impacting law firms' bottom line (whether they want to believe it or not). In any case, I found it to be a really interesting article covering issues that do not appear to be going away; you may as well.
Good stuff.