Trudging up Bascom Hill is a hallmark of the UW Law student experience. All who summit Bascom with a UW Law diploma know the breathtaking climb well. This familiar climb unites generations of UW Law students: every fall, a new class of 1Ls arrives at the base of Bascom, then embarks on the same three-year climb toward graduation.

Although Bascom’s first ascent – 1L year – is known to be a challenging journey for every 1L class, this year’s 1L class confronted an entirely new obstacle during their first semester: the landslide of early recruitment for both 1L and 2L summer positions.

The Eroding Recruitment Timeline

Balancing summer recruitment with the demands of law school has never been easy. Whether you are decades into practice or a more recent UW Law graduate, your experience with summer recruitment at UW Law likely unfolded in two distinct stages:

• 1L-summer recruiting during 1L spring; followed by
• 2L-summer recruiting in early 2L fall.

Critically, 1L fall remained untouched by recruitment and was preserved as an acclimatization period that allowed students to find their footing in law school before the first hiring season.

That structure no longer exists.

This year, for the first time, both 1L and 2L summer recruiting (especially by larger law firms) collapsed into a single semester. Accordingly, numerous 1Ls confronted 1L- and 2L-summer recruiting simultaneously during 1L fall.

“Some firms opened 2L summer positions as early as October,” a UW 1L said.

So rather than spending their first semester finding their footing as law students, 1Ls were immediately thrown into the recruitment storm. Suddenly, the biggest anxiety for 1Ls was no longer law school – it was recruiting, and the overwhelming feeling that falling behind now could haunt them indefinitely.

Recruitment after the Change to the National Association for Law Placement’s Guidelines

For decades, a 1L’s first semester was generally insulated from recruiting pressures. That protection was encouraged by the National Association for Law Placement’s (NALP) Timing Guidelines, which until 2018 helped sway many employers away from engaging 1Ls during their first semester. The guidelines gave students shelter from the recruiting storm and allowed them, for one semester, to be simply law students.

That shelter eroded in 2018 when NALP ratcheted back their guidelines due to antitrust considerations.

Yet, at UW in the years immediately following the change to NALP’s guidelines, the recruitment that did infiltrate a 1L’s first semester was still manageable. It seemed that firms gradually embraced the loosened norms with informal networking events, coffee chats, and late-October 1L application openings, but interviews before January were still rare. As one current UW 2L recalled, devoting time to recruitment during 1L fall “didn’t feel critical.”

Then came the fall of 2025.

In fall 2025, firms opened not only 1L-summer applications in October, but some 2L-summer applications as well. As a result, numerous 1Ls scrambled to secure and prepare for interviews and callbacks that began in November. So, just a few months into law school, 1Ls found themselves applying for 2L-summer roles – the positions many hope will become their post-graduation jobs. As one UW 1L put it, “we didn’t have the chance to just be students after November 1.”

This timeline raises some concerns.

First, students had virtually no time to adjust to law school. As one UW 1L described it, “We just had to hit the road running and hope for the best.”

Second, students and firms alike were asked to project preferences and forecast needs nearly three years in advance – after all, the current class of 1Ls will not enter practice until fall 2028.

“It’s impossible to know what we want as far as practice areas and even geography,” another 1L explained.

Unsurprisingly, firms with rotational programs have become especially attractive, offering the least constraining option on this increasingly compressing timeline.

Looking Ahead

The full impact of this early recruitment process has yet to be realized. Although some students received offers contingent on first-semester grades before even taking their first law school final, most 1L-summer interviews are still ongoing and 1L-summer on-campus interview (OCI) is taking place early this spring.

Whatever the end results, a concern is clear: the new timeline is pulling 1Ls away from the intellectual development and career exploration opportunities that the first semester of law school is designed to offer.

Undeniably, these recruitment-induced obstacles are making the climb through 1L steeper. Landing a job after law school is not the sole purpose of law school, but the recruitment timeline is starting to treat it like it is.

While it is understandable that the job market is competitive and that firms seek to secure talent as early as possible, and that law schools want to prepare students for that earlier engagement, earlier recruitment also adds to the pressures that 1Ls face.

Moving forward, one suggestion for law schools and employers participating in earlier recruitment is to survey students after they complete the recruitment process about their experiences, including any concerns with the current timelines and procedures.

Without intervening to slow the recruitment timeline, each incoming classes arriving at the base of Bascom Hill will continue to be met with an impossibly steep path that benefits neither students nor employers.

This article was originally published on the State Bar of Wisconsin’s Business Law Blog. Visit the State Bar sections or the Business Law Section webpages to learn more about the benefits of section membership.