On-Campus Interviews Lose Favor
Gone are the days when on-campus interviews (OCI) reigned supreme in the summer associate recruiting world. According to fresh data from the National Association for Law Placement (NALP), OCI has “firmly tumbled from its place of prominence” in how firms secure their summer talent.
The numbers tell a compelling story. While 93 percent of surveyed law offices used OCI for their summer 2024 programs, direct application has now claimed the top spot, with 91% of offices embracing this approach.
Even more telling are the firgures from 2024, where 56 percnt of offers for summer 2025 programs came from outside traditional law school interview programs, with OCI accounting for just 24 percent.
NALP Executive Director Nikia Gray didn’t mince words about this seismic shift: “The market is coalescing around direct recruiting and other non-law-school-based recruiting practices as being the preferred methods—or at least the most necessary—to compete for talent.”
OCI, she noted, has been relegated to “a secondary or even tertiary role, used only to top off or round out summer associate classes as needed.”
The Timeline Acceleration
The calendar itself reflects this new reality. The traditional August offer bonanza has given way to earlier timeframes. While August claimed 52 percent of offers in the 2023 recruiting cycle, July now leads the pack with 45 percent of offers in 2024, followed by June with 30%. August has fallen to third place with just 20 percent.
This acceleration isn’t happening in a vacuum—it’s the result of “competing firms jockeying for positions in an increasingly tight hiring market,” according to NALP’s report.
Despite these shifts, one thing remains consistent: summer associate programs continue to be a reliable pathway to permanent employment.
The report found that 97 percent of 2024 second-year summer associates received offers to become associates after graduation, with acceptance rates hitting an all-time high of 90 percent.
These findings, based on data from 549 law offices, paint a picture of a recruiting landscape that is changing rapidly, leaving firms needing to adapt to the new recruitment realities.
