By Rachel Rippetoe

Law360 (December 16, 2020, 5:20 PM EST ) While the pandemic led to shorter, virtual associateships this summer and slightly smaller class sizes, law firm job offers stayed at the same rate as 2019, and the economic uncertainty of COVID-19 may have pushed even more interns to accept those positions, a survey shows.

Summer associateships at law firms looked a little different in 2020, with over 86% of employers offering their programs virtually and with most firms truncating their usually 10-week-long programs to just six weeks, according to a survey published Wednesday by the National Association for Law Placement. Still, 96.7% of students who did a summer internship were offered a job, and a historic high of 87.8% of those accepted the job.

These percentages are on par with the numbers from last year's in-person associateships.

The rate of offers went down slightly from 2019's historic high of 98%, but the report said the drop could be because the 510 law firms surveyed had to submit their information in October instead of December. Despite that dip, the acceptance rate still edged up 0.2 percentage points from last year and was dramatically higher than the pre-Great Recession norms of around 77%.

There are two takeaways from these numbers, says Allison Wruble, Notre Dame Law School's recruiting program manager. One is that law firms are weathering the storm of COVID-19 much better than the last economic recession. And the other is that law students are even more risk-averse in the pandemic than they were before.

"They don't want to say no to an offer if they don't have another offer lined up," she said. "Uncertainty in the economy makes everybody nervous, especially these law students who are counting on high-paying jobs to offset their student loan debt."

Wruble said she expects the ultimate percentages of offers and acceptances to be even higher than what the survey reported because COVID-19 has put the hiring process on a more drawn-out timeline than in previous years.

Many firms, she says, are waiting as late as January to offer positions to summer associates, as they wait to calculate how many hires they can make in the future economy. Firms said they were still deciding on 1.8% of job candidates, which is double the number from 2019, the survey showed.

The economic uncertainty of COVID-19 can account for class sizes of 2020 associates dropping from an average of 13 in 2019 to 11, Wruble said, as firms were hedging their bets in fear of the economy tanking. The report also showed that almost half of the law firms are pushing the start dates of their class of 2019 hires to January 2021.

Michelle Fivel, a partner at legal search firm Major, Lindsey and Africa, said that an economic downturn hasn't rattled firms much in their hiring. Even the smaller class sizes could be because firms, at least in BigLaw, have become more selective in recent years.

"They really are looking for the créme-de-la-créme" she said.

As these class sizes got smaller, the number of students who spent their summer working at a firm stayed mostly the same. This could mean that smaller firms were more willing to take on some associates this year. Also, while some firms might have been shaken by the economic downturn of the pandemic, other sectors are doing quite well, Wruble pointed out.

"Anything health care-related right now is booming," Wruble said. "Litigation work is slowing down, but corporate transactional work is booming right now."

Just over 10% of firms that held a summer program in 2018 and 2019 had to cancel their 2020 program. But those firms still hired 85.6% of their associates, a slightly lower offer rate than the 88% rate of firms who did hold a program.

"No one wants to be the firm that cancelled and doesn't extend offers, that's a PR nightmare," Wruble said. "It upsets their recruiting opportunities in future years because students talk to each other and say, 'Hey those guys completely screwed me over last year.'"

The reason law firms had to cancel wasn't for lack of trying, said Wruble, who added she spoke back and forth with a number of firms scrambling to set up their virtual programs in the spring.

At the last minute, she said, firms were tasked with putting together a program that would be meaningful to students looking for a taste of what it would be like to work at the firm. Some just couldn't do it in time.

"That's the reason the programs that did happen were much shorter, because putting together a bunch of virtual programming is really hard and the firms took it really seriously," she said.

Wruble said some summer associates actually preferred the virtual program and may have produced even more work in a more comfortable home environment. COVID-19 has also made the employee-employer relationship a bit more empathetic, she said.

"There's a lot going on and I think people understand the non-work side of life better now," she said. "You see your boss struggling with their 3-year-old and the dog is barking and you think 'OK, I get it, now.' I think in general people are more forgiving of each other."

--Editing by Amy Rowe.

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