What Is Happening to First-Year Law Students?

Large U.S. law firms are rushing to hire future lawyers almost as soon as they set foot on campus for highly paid summer associate positions, and it has sparked a full-blown backlash among law students. According to a new national survey of more than 2,000 students conducted by the Law School Admission Council (LSAC) and the National Association for Law Placement (NALP), 56% of first-year law students said the accelerated recruiting timeline had a negative impact on their first year of school.

If you are searching “why are top US law firms hiring first-year students so early” — here is the short answer: Post-pandemic competition and virtual interviews destroyed the traditional on-campus interview (OCI) calendar. What used to happen in the fall of your 2L year now starts in the first semester of 1L, before students have even taken final exams, for jobs that won’t start until after their 2L year. Just 4% of students reported a positive impact, while the stress is reshaping legal education itself.

What Changed? From Orderly OCI to the Wild West

The Old BigLaw Recruiting Timeline vs. The New Reality

Historically, first-year students were intentionally kept out of career services until Oct. 15 and did not talk to employers until December, based on NALP’s voluntary recommendations. Law schools organized on-campus recruiting in the fall of 2L year.

That broke in two steps. In 2018, NALP dropped its timing guidelines to “support flexibility and encourage innovation.” Then in 2020, the pandemic shifted interviews online, letting firms bypass career services and control their own timing.

Now the consequences are clear:

• Interviews before grades: Firms are interviewing first-semester 1Ls who haven’t taken a single final exam.
• Jumbo offers: Some firms are extending offers for both 1L and 2L summers in one package.
• Paid public-interest placeholders: Firms including Davis Polk and Milbank are hiring 2L summers but will pay them $25,000 to do public-interest work in their 1L summer.

As recruiter Kate Reder Sheikh told Law.com, it’s become “just like a bloodbath of firms running toward the top 10% of law students based on one semester of grades.”

The Data Behind the Backlash: What 2,000+ Students Actually Said

The LSAC/NALP survey released in June 2026 is the first to measure how accelerated hiring is affecting law students. The findings should give the legal profession pause.

Key stats from the survey:

• 55.5% to 56% of 1Ls said the timeline shift negatively affected their first-year experience
• 67% of students aspiring to work at large firms reported a negative impact
• Only 25% of 1Ls even knew about BigLaw’s recruitment timelines before starting law school
• Men, continuing-generation college graduates, and students at the most selective quarter of law schools were more likely to know in advance, while first-generation college graduates, students at the least selective schools, and Pell grant recipients were least aware

Students cited the same pressures repeatedly:

• Inability to prioritize academic work and learn fundamentals like reading cases and cold calls
• Off-the-charts anxiety and inability to balance competing priorities
• Being forced to pick practice areas before doing a clinic, internship, or elective: “Probably the most unfortunate part of this process is that we have to make decisions that shape our early careers based on little information about ourselves and our interests,” one Yale 1L said

One student summed it up bluntly in the survey comments: “Someone stop them from doing this again because it sucks, and nobody can actually focus on learning.”

Winners and Losers in the Early Hiring Arms Race

Not every top US law firm is playing the same game. The market has split into three distinct models, and understanding them is critical if you are navigating corporate finance, B2B software contracts, or even crypto investments compliance work as a future associate.

Securing a summer associate job is often key to landing a full-time position later, with typically 96% to 98% of summer associates receiving offers for post-graduation employment. That is why the stakes feel so high.

The Business Cost: Why Early Hiring Is a Corporate Finance and Insurance Risk

This is not just a student wellness issue. For law firm partners managing profitability, accelerated recruiting is becoming a corporate finance problem.

Associates often don’t become truly profitable for firms until their third or fourth year, but firms are now projecting greater attrition because of poor-fit hires made with limited information. When early mismatches leave, firms lose the investment in salary, training, and client development.

Three high-CPC business lenses show why this matters:

• B2B Software and Legal Tech Spend: Firms are spending heavily on applicant tracking systems, AI-driven B2B software for recruiting analytics, and virtual interview platforms to bypass campus OCI. The ROI is questionable if attrition rises.
• Legal Malpractice and Business Insurance Quotes: Hiring lawyers before they have proven legal reasoning skills raises risk management questions. Firms are revisiting professional liability coverage and searching for competitive business insurance quotes and legal malpractice insurance quotes to protect against errors from under-trained junior teams.
• Corporate Finance and Crypto Investments Practices: The same firms rushing 1L hiring are also staffing high-billing practices like M&A, structured finance, and crypto investments compliance. If a first-year student is forced to commit to a corporate finance group before ever taking Corporations or Securities Regulation, both the firm and the client lose.

Even commercial real estate signals confidence despite the chaos — U.S. law firms leased 4.6 million square feet in Q1 2026, the second-strongest first quarter on record, showing they are not treating AI and the office as competing priorities.

How Top Firms Are Responding to the Backlash

Some firms have backed away from the aggressive approach, noting it wasn’t ideal for their future hires. The playbook for a more sustainable model is emerging:

• Reintroduce structured timelines: Munger Tolles & Olson reduced the rigidity of the summer-associate-to-full-time path, focusing on lean teams and client readiness rather than hiring in January of 1L year.
• Invest in transparency: Publish clear hiring criteria that de-emphasize first-semester grades and weight undergraduate GPA, work experience, and law school prestige less heavily.
• Support first-gen pipelines: NALP found early recruiting hurts first-generation lawyers who were unaware of timelines. Targeted outreach and B2B software mentorship platforms can level the playing field.
• Rethink compensation as a retention tool: Summer associates earn the same monthly pay as first-year associates — $225,000 annually at most large U.S. firms, with Milbank’s 2026 scale reaching $235,000 to $455,000 depending on seniority. Pay alone won’t fix mismatch.

2026 Survival Guide: What 1L Students Should Do Now

If you are a current 1L caught in this cycle, don’t panic-hire.

• Protect your GPA first: Academic disruption is real. “We should be letting first-year law students get their feet under them,” said Chicago’s career services dean. “We need law students to become law students first.”
• Track timelines before you arrive: Join NALP webinars, pre-law groups, and your school’s career services portal the summer before 1L. Knowledge asymmetry is now a competitive disadvantage.
• Ask about jumbo vs. bridge offers: Understand if you are locked into one firm for two summers or if you can still explore public-interest, in-house, or personal injury law, insurance defense, or crypto startup work in your 1L summer.
• Evaluate firm culture over salary: High BigLaw summer associate salary 2026 numbers are attractive, but a poor cultural fit drives the attrition firms are now worried about.

For law firms, the lesson is simple: You may need to be “in the game” because other firms are hiring early, but winning the race to the bottom of the 1L class doesn’t guarantee you keep top talent.

Conclusion: Can BigLaw Fix Its Own Recruiting Mess?

The accelerated BigLaw recruiting timeline started as pandemic-era flexibility and has become a lose-lose-lose: students lose focus and well-being, schools lose control of the first-year educational experience, and firms gain limited information and higher attrition risk. With 18 top law schools now drafting an open letter to the American Bar Association asking it to evaluate whether accreditation standards might better support the educational focus of the first year, regulatory pressure may finally force a reset.

Until then, expect the bloodbath to continue — but also expect more firms to follow the Cooley and Munger Tolles model and step back.

What do you think?

If you are a 1L, 2L, or associate who went through early recruiting, did the rushed timeline help you land your dream firm or force you into the wrong practice area? Should the ABA, NALP, or leading firms like Cravath set a hard no-recruiting-before-January rule — even if it raises antitrust concerns? Leave your experience in the comments below.

Major U.S. retailers are closing over 1,100 stores in 2026, with 7-Eleven, GameStop, and Grocery Outlet leading the restructuring charge—here’s what it means for commercial real estate investors.

The U.S. retail landscape is undergoing a dramatic contraction in 2026 as major chains shutter underperforming locations to stabilize balance sheets and improve cash flow. 7-Eleven plans to close 645 convenience stores across North America during fiscal year 2026, while GameStop has confirmed 470 store closures, and Grocery Outlet is shutting approximately 36 locations as part of a broader “Optimization Plan.”

Combined with closures from Advance Auto Parts, Foot Locker, Dollar Tree, and Denny’s, the total number of confirmed U.S. retail shutdowns in 2026 now exceeds 2,000 locations, signaling a profound shift in brick-and-mortar strategy.

Why Are These Retailers Closing Stores?

Each chain faces distinct operational pressures, but the underlying theme is identical: cutting losses to protect enterprise value.

• 7-Eleven is pruning underperforming company-owned sites ahead of a delayed 2027 IPO, converting some locations to wholesale fuel operations to reduce overhead while retaining fuel revenue.
• GameStop continues its years-long digital pivot, shedding physical retail footprint as it reallocates capital toward e-commerce and collectibles logistics.
• Grocery Outlet CEO Jason Potter acknowledged the chain “expanded too quickly,” particularly in Eastern states where 24 of the 36 closures are concentrated. The move follows a nearly $235 million operating loss in Q4.

The Business Logic Behind Retail Consolidation

Mass store closures are not merely a reaction to weak consumer demand—they represent strategic portfolio optimization. By exiting low-margin markets and reinvesting in high-performing locations or digital infrastructure, retailers aim to:

• Improve same-store sales metrics by eliminating drag from underperforming units
• Reduce lease liabilities and renegotiate favorable terms with commercial landlords
• Unlock working capital for technology upgrades, supply chain automation, and AI-driven inventory management
• Streamline operational complexity across smaller, more profitable geographic footprints

Impact on Commercial Real Estate and Retail Investing

The 2026 closure wave carries significant implications for commercial real estate investment trusts (REITs), private equity firms, and institutional investors holding retail property debt.

• Vacancy rates in secondary markets are expected to rise, particularly for Class B and C strip mall anchors, putting downward pressure on net operating income (NOI).
• Tenant mix diversification is becoming critical. Landlords dependent on single-tenant convenience or discount grocery concepts face heightened rollover risk.
• Opportunistic acquisitions may emerge. Distressed retail assets in prime locations could trade at cap rate premiums, attracting value-add investors willing to execute repositioning strategies—converting vacant big-box spaces into last-mile distribution hubs, medical offices, or mixed-use developments.
• Credit risk in commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) pools with high retail exposure warrants renewed scrutiny as cash flow coverage ratios tighten.

For retail sector investors, the contraction validates a barbell strategy: overweight exposure to dominant omnichannel players with fortress balance sheets, while selectively targeting experiential retail and essential service tenants (healthcare, grocery, logistics) that are insulated from e-commerce displacement.

People Also Ask: 2026 Retail Store Closures

How many 7-Eleven stores are closing in 2026? 7-Eleven plans to close approximately 645 stores in North America during fiscal year 2026, which runs from March 1, 2026, to February 28, 2027.

Is GameStop going out of business? No. While GameStop is closing 470 stores in 2026, the company is restructuring to focus on digital sales and profitability, not liquidating entirely.

Why is Grocery Outlet closing stores? Grocery Outlet is closing approximately 36 underperforming locations—about 30% of its Eastern U.S. footprint—after acknowledging overly rapid expansion in markets that failed to achieve sustained profitability.

Dubai real estate hit AED286bn in H1 2026 sales, its second-best half ever, even as hotel occupancy collapsed on war-related tourism disruption. Here’s the divergence explained.

Dubai’s economy is telling two very different stories at once, and both are true. Per Khaleej Times, the emirate recorded AED286.43 billion in property sales across 79,229-plus transactions between January and June 2026, reinforcing its position as one of the world’s most active real estate markets. Separately, per Skift’s reporting on a CBRE study, UAE-wide hotel occupancy fell nearly 28 percentage points year-on-year through June, with Dubai recording the sharpest declines of any emirate.

Key Takeaways

• Dubai property sales reached AED286.43 billion ($78 billion) across more than 86,000 transactions in H1 2026 — the second-highest first-half total on record.
• Commercial property sales hit an all-time high of AED19.5 billion, a 183% year-on-year jump, already exceeding all of 2025.
• UAE-wide hotel occupancy fell nearly 28 percentage points year-on-year through June, with Dubai’s decline nearly double Abu Dhabi’s.
• Dubai’s citywide hotel occupancy averaged 56% in H1 2026, down from roughly 80% the prior year, with luxury and upper-upscale hotels hit hardest.
• Full-year hotel occupancy is forecast to recover to 60.4-66.2%, still below 2025’s record levels.

The property numbers, on closer inspection, represent genuine strength rather than a headline exaggeration. A detailed breakdown from Arabian Business shows Dubai real estate generated more than $78 billion in H1 2026, the second-highest first-half performance in the emirate’s history — trailing only H1 2025’s record AED326.6 billion — with total real estate transactions including mortgages reaching AED419.9 billion, per Emirates 24|7. Commercial real estate posted an outright record: per Economy Middle East, commercial transactions hit AED19.5 billion, a 183% year-on-year jump that already exceeded the entirety of 2025’s commercial sales, with W Capital’s chairman describing it as reflecting “real business activity, increasing corporate presence” rather than speculation.

The hospitality picture is the mirror opposite. Per ZAWYA’s coverage of the same CBRE report, Dubai’s occupancy fell to 56.4% in H1 2026 from 81% in H1 2025, while RevPAR across the UAE tumbled 31.8%. A CBRE Mena research head attributed the shift directly to “regional geopolitical developments” weighing on business activity and tourism flows since the conflict escalated in late February. Segment-level data from Breaking Travel News shows luxury and upper-upscale hotels were hit hardest, averaging just 51-52% occupancy, while budget-friendly upper-midscale properties held up best at nearly 66% — a sign that whatever travel demand remained skewed toward value-conscious, likely regional and domestic travelers rather than the high-spending international visitors Dubai’s luxury sector depends on.

The scale of the initial shock is worth putting in context. Earlier in the year, per Skift’s May reporting citing Moody’s Analytics, Dubai hotel occupancy was projected to fall as low as 10% in Q2, down from around 80% in February — described by Moody’s as “an effective shutdown of large parts of the hospitality sector.” That represented a sector contributing about $72 billion, or nearly 13% of UAE GDP, and supporting roughly 925,000 jobs in 2025, per AGBI’s reporting.

Recovery is underway but incomplete. Khaleej Times reports Dubai’s hospitality market is expected to gradually recover in H2 2026, with full-year occupancy forecast at 60.4-66.2%, average daily rates around Dh600-675, and annual passenger traffic of 67.6-79.3 million — still below 2025’s record levels, with Cavendish Maxwell noting momentum should pick up from Q4 as air connectivity improves and winter tourism arrives.

Why It Matters

The divergence is a genuine case study in how a diversified Gulf economy absorbs a regional shock unevenly: capital-intensive, longer-horizon investment (real estate, corporate relocation) has proven far more resilient than short-cycle, confidence-sensitive activity (tourism, hospitality) — a distinction with implications for how other Gulf economies might structure their own diversification bets.

Data and Evidence

• Dubai H1 2026 property sales: AED286.43bn ($78bn), second-highest H1 ever
• Commercial property sales: AED19.5bn, +183% YoY, an all-time high
• UAE-wide hotel occupancy: -27.7 to -28 percentage points YoY through June
• Dubai hotel occupancy: 56.4% (H1 2026) vs. 81% (H1 2025)
• Hospitality sector’s 2025 UAE GDP contribution: ~$72bn (~13%), ~925,000 jobs

Global Impact

Dubai’s resilience in capital markets even amid a regional war offers a data point for global investors assessing Gulf political-risk premiums broadly, while the tourism collapse is a live case study for other regional destinations (including parts of the Levant and broader GCC) on how quickly conflict-adjacent geography can dent visitor confidence independent of a country’s own security situation.

What Happens Next

Watch Q4 2026 occupancy data against the 60.4-66.2% full-year forecast, and whether Strait of Hormuz de-escalation (Article 5) translates into faster airline capacity restoration into Dubai International.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Dubai’s property market in trouble?

No — H1 2026 was its second-best first half on record, with commercial real estate hitting an all-time high.

Why did Dubai hotel occupancy collapse?

Regional war-related travel disruption and reduced international airline capacity beginning in late February 2026.

Which hotel segment was hit hardest?

Luxury and upper-upscale properties, while budget-friendly upper-midscale hotels held up comparatively well.

When will Dubai tourism fully recover?

Full-year 2026 occupancy is forecast at 60.4-66.2%, still below 2025’s record, with recovery accelerating in Q4.

Why are real estate and tourism diverging so sharply?

Real estate reflects longer-horizon capital and corporate investment decisions; tourism is highly sensitive to short-term traveler confidence and airline capacity.