Top US legal firms are beginning to hire students in their first few months of law school, stepping up a war for talent and sparking criticism from students and some of the profession’s leading executives.
Paul Weiss, Simpson Thacher and Milbank have said they would start application processes before Christmas for first-year students seeking summer associate roles — the entry ticket into Big Law — for 2028. The summer roles would be a stepping stone to permanent jobs in 2029, which currently offer salaries of as much as $235,000.
It is a significantly faster timeline than the traditional system in which law firms interviewed students at the end of their first year of law school.
Several major law firms last year started to hire in autumn for the first time as they rushed to recruit the most promising future lawyers, forcing rivals to follow suit to avoid missing out.
“We are talking sometimes to law students that have not even had a first semester of grades, which is crazy,” Rachel Proffitt, chief executive of law firm Cooley, told the FT.
“Most of them don’t even know what they want to do, and we’re hiring them for two and a half years later,” she said, adding that Cooley is keeping about half of its graduate roles open for third-year law students.
Law firms are calculating that even if AI reduces the number of young lawyers needed, this will put a premium on being able to offer the most talented lawyers whose judgment clients will be willing to pay top rates for, intensifying the race to recruit the best students.
Firms have pressed ahead with starting application processes for first-year students despite a backlash from students and the American Bar Association, which represents US lawyers. In a report this month, the ABA said hiring students so early was “reshaping the law student experience in negative ways”.
It noted higher levels of anxiety and depression among students and said research found that shorter timelines disadvantaged students who were the first generation to attend law school or did not have existing connections in the legal profession.
The FT asked the top 20 largest US firms by profit per equity partner for information about their hiring plans and their response to the ABA report. All of them, except Cleary, either declined to comment or did not respond.
Maureen Linch, a partner at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton who helps recruit the firm’s associates, said the firm now opens its interview process in November, when previously it had waited until June.
Linch said that while she thought it would be better to interview students later, the firm was under pressure to remain competitive.
“Many law students that we met last fall didn’t know the difference between the practice areas available at each firm,” she said.
For years, law firms recruited students for placements through on-campus interviews, which often took place in the summer after students’ first year. This has become less common as firms increasingly ask students to apply directly online, a shift that started during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Several law firms had in recent years moved the deadlines for these direct online applications to spring of students’ first year instead of summer.
Last year, a large group of firms — including Kirkland & Ellis, Latham & Watkins, Davis Polk, Gibson Dunn, Weil and Milbank — opened applications for summer associate roles in the autumn of the first semester of law school. Many firms had made offers to successful candidates by January.
One student told the FT that within their first week of starting law school last year, the career office told them to start preparing to apply to Big Law. They said most firms were apologetic about the short timeline and some of the lawyers they met at networking events were not aware of the application timelines.
The change led to a backlash from students and law schools, with student groups at 18 top institutions writing to the ABA in January asking it to review the situation.
Proffitt said Cooley, which allowed students to apply for summer 2027 roles from November 2025, was looking at how it could make sure students had time “to get into school, figure out what interests them, figure out how they want to be [using] their degree”.
Changing to a slower hiring timeline could give law firms a “chance to watch how the market shifts and decide the numbers” needed, as firms make more use of AI for tasks previously performed by junior lawyers, she said.
“It’s too soon to say we will hire [fewer] people, but it certainly is the case that the way we train them and ask them to engage with the work is changing,” she said.
Boston-founded law firm Goodwin has also set up a working group to review its recruitment timelines and how it chooses associates as AI changes the legal sector.
“We want people to join Goodwin because they’re excited . . . not simply because they’re being asked to commit earlier than their peers,” said the firm’s chair Anthony McCusker.
“As technology changes the way legal work is delivered, firms need to think differently about how they identify and develop talent. We’re increasingly looking beyond grades alone.”
Top firms usually pay the pro-rata equivalent of a first-year associate salary for summer placements, which typically last about 10 weeks.
Cravath, which has historically set market rates for pay, said last year that its 2027 summer associates would receive $4,327 a week, the equivalent of the $225,000 first-year salary at the time they were hired.
The early hiring is just one sign of the new ways in which law firms are navigating intense competition for talent.
Davis Polk said last autumn that it would pay $25,000 to students who agreed to join its 2027 summer associate programme if they spent the summer of 2026 interning at a non-profit, in the government or in academia — reducing the odds of being lured by a rival firm in the first summer.
A report by the National Association for Law Placement this year said 85 per cent of offers for second-year summer associate positions were made before July of students’ first year of law school in 2025, up from 34 per cent the previous year.
