The 2010 Summer Job Watch numbers are in for Toronto’s major law firms, and the outlook is…well…not great, but it could be worse.

This coming summer, 304 law students will work at the city’s 17 biggest firms. That’s up five hires from this past summer, but still way off the pace of 2008, when the firms hired 340 students.

So it appears that the summer job market is essentially stalled. We were optimistic when the first wave of numbers started to roll in, but as more firms reported, the uptick between 2010 and 2009 began to be eroded away.

One major contributor to this flatlining is the U.S. market, and its effect on the summer hiring practices at Blakes, which offers an option where summer students spend half their time in New York. “This year we saw a decrease in the number of students who wanted to work for part of their summer with a U.S. firm,” says Mary Jackson, Blakes’ chief officer of legal personnel and professional development. “In 2008, seven of our 38 students spent the summer with a U.S. law firm. In 2009, 12 of our 37 students spent the summer with a U.S. law firm. This year, we expect that only three students out of 24 will be spending part of the summer with a U.S. firm. As well, we have heard that many U.S. firms have reduced the length of their summer student law programs.”