CHICAGO — Arnstein & Lehr is the latest Chicago law firm to say it will abandon its summer associate program next year, explaining that the difficulty of estimating its hiring needs two years in advance so it can extend some of those associates job offers is more trouble than the program is worth.

“For a firm our size, the crystal ball just isn’t good enough to tell us,” said Raymond Werner, chairman of the firm. “It’s really a predictability of needs issue.”