As if law students needed another reminder of the dim job market for young lawyers, a career counseling association has published numbers provided by law firms and other employers regarding 2009 summer associate offers and expectations for 2010 summer programs. And not surprisingly, the picture isn’t pretty.
When looking at all offices of Pennsylvania firms and those firms with an office in the state, 54 percent of 2009 summer associates were given offers for full-time employment, according to a review by The Legal Intelligencer of numbers those firms provided to the National Association for Law Placement, or NALP. There will be even fewer summer associates in 2010 to vie for a chance at those increasingly hard-to-attain job offers. The state’s firms said they anticipate having 194 summer associates in 2010, compared to 465 in 2009. That is a difference of 58 percent.
