Washington, D.C.-area law offices posted a nearly 4 percent increase in head count this year, according to the 2008 Legal Times 150 survey, which ranks the offices by number of lawyers. It's just the latest in a series of healthy growth spurts -- in 2007, head count was up by 3.6 percent, and associate hiring reached a record high.
"I think you're going to start to see [growth] flatten out, at least for the next year," says Marc Fleischaker, chairman of Arent Fox. His firm expects 15 new associates in Washington this year, compared with last year's 25.
Collectively, though, the firms that provided figures for expected new associate hires say that the number will drop by more than 5 percent, or 79 lawyers, to 1,472 new associates in 2008.
A number of factors can be blamed for the gloomier forecast. As the economy has faltered, so has the workload, particularly on the transactional side. Firms say attrition is down, since many lawyers are afraid to risk a job move in a volatile market, and that reduces the need for new hires. And firms say they are hiring with caution until the depth of the economic downturn becomes clear.
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