Firms know canceling their summer programs makes sense and are ready to do it. The holdup? Finding a way to proceed that doesn't incur reputational damage. The natural way to think of the logjam breaking is for one of the elite New York firms to make the first move, just as they do on salary increases. The announcement would be twofold: we're canceling the summer program and we're giving you a full-time offer for next year.

This latter part is zero cost for firms to include and yet will be irrationally well received by the would-be summers. I know of one consulting firm that last week canceled its program for college juniors and simultaneously made them offers for full time. To my surprise, it was taken as a net positive; the students seemed to discount the fact that they would probably have gotten full-time offers anyway. For firms, its inclusion is cost-free as they will want an incoming class of 2021.

The flow of the announcement need not reference economic weakness and low activity levels, but rather could focus solely on the pandemic, for example:

• As you may know, due to the coronavirus, our lawyers are working from home. We expect this situation will continue into May with the distinct possibility of continuing into the period of our summer program. We note that, as you are probably aware, the July 2020 New York Bar exam has been postponed to the fall, and August 2020 on-campus recruiting has been moved to early 2021 at many top law schools.
• With our lawyers working from home it becomes challenging for us to give you the kind of professional experience and opportunity for personal connection to which we aspire.
• Accordingly, and with regret, we have decided to cancel our program for this summer. However, we believe in the strength of your potential to be great lawyers at the firm. And we know the present crisis will eventually ease and that, thanks to the tireless efforts of our attorneys assisting clients through this difficult time, our firm will emerge strengthened by it.
• Thus, we are excited to extend you an offer to join us full time after you graduate. (Obviously, firms should be careful with the wording here, as they may want to push the start date beyond the fall of 2021.)

The reticence of firms to move on cancellations is befuddling. Clients won't care; if anything, they'd be relieved to know their outside counsel aren't wining and dining the ingénues of the legal world while they themselves combat the ravages of recession on their business. Internally, with the prospect of many firms shedding lawyers and staff in the early summer, it's hard to imagine how summer associates would either help, or be helped by, the prevailing mood. Further, for the summer associates themselves, or at least the ones with some business sense, it's not going to be a surprise. I suspect the reticence stems from lawyers' overdeveloped, and in this instance misplaced, respect for precedent.

So which firm will get the ball rolling? The natural firms to look to are Cravath, the historical bellwether on salary and bonuses, or another Wall Street elite. Given the moribund state of the capital markets and M&A, these institutions must be as underutilized as any in Big Law. However, if past rounds of associate salary increases are a guide, these firms will not be the first movers. It was Milbank; Proskauer Rose; Winston & Strawn; and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett who led the move to a $190,000 salary for new associates in June 2018; Cravath moved a week later, adding a midyear bonus, and were copied over the next three days by a host of big names.

Somehow though, the PR and attention from Above the Law for canceling a summer program doesn't arouse the animal spirits in the same way as being first with a (needless) increase to fixed costs in the form of a salary increase. So, the wave on summer program cancellations may have to flow the other way: from the firms that manage themselves with more rigor and discipline as businesses. Among the contenders for first moves then might be the firms who didn't just follow the herd in 2018. On this basis, we'd look for leadership from firms such as Cooley, Greenberg Traurig, Haynes and Boone, Hogan Lovells, McGuireWoods, Orrick and Pillsbury. The big difference though is that these players, who waited until others had moved in June 2018, now need to be initiators.

But what if no firm gets the ball rolling and you don't want to be a first mover? Consider this: communicate to your would-be summer associates that you don't know yet how the pandemic will affect the summer program, but that you do respect their desire for clarity so they can make definitive summer plans. Hence, you're giving them an option: they may choose not to come for the summer and have their summer offer translated into an offer for full time. You can add that you'll be back to them as soon as you can with a definitive update on the summer program. This approach has a number of positives: it shows you are sensitive to their concerns; it will garner you feedback on what students are thinking; and it signals that a change may be coming. Who knows, it may even get misrepresented in the press as a definitive cancellation of the summer program and set the ball rolling on firms canceling them.

So what should leaders do? First, have three emails ready to go: one to partners alerting them to what you're going to do; the second to would-be summer associates announcing what you're doing; and a third to all personnel telling them what you've done. Second, be ready to hit send when your true peer firms, not the aspirational ones above you in prestige and profitability, move. Third, if the emails are still in your drafts on Thursday, April 9, send them anyway—that gives you Friday to assuage any anxieties raised internally and gives people the weekend to get over it and be ready for business as usual on Monday morning.

Hugh A. Simons is formerly a senior partner and executive committee member at The Boston Consulting Group and chief operating officer and policy committee member at Ropes & Gray. He welcomes reader reactions at [email protected].