<p>So many people post on CC that the job market for attorneys is no longer good, that it is even bad. I spoke with a successful attorney at a successful firm in a pricey area, he told me that he can hire experienced attorneys for very cheap salaries now, there is no reason to even try the new grads.</p>
<p>What happened to make this change, why are we all of a sudden inundated with attorneys? Did the number of schools & students change dramatically in the past few years?</p>
<p>I have heard talk of nursing shortages and then seen new grads struggle to find a job. There is always another article about shortages of doctors, are those wrong, too?</p>
<p>When there is a shortage of good people in a field, more students may pursue that training because they think it will be easier to find a job, even if that isn’t where their interest or talents lie. Schools may also quickly implement programs that aren’t well supported to take advantage of the numbers of interested students.</p>
<p>I think if you are truly interested in the law, to go ahead and study it, because that background can prepare you for a number of fields, even if you never step inside a courtroom.</p>
<p>I think many students were initially attracted by the retainers that good attorneys can garner, but many students don’t understand that these attorneys have clients who have been with their practices for years. New attorneys who don’t or can’t clerk for those well-established practices are stuck. </p>
<p>Many attorneys are also MBA graduates because their law practices have and involve: business managers, HR personnel, IT departments, property managers/developers, etc. My sister’s law office is a huge corporate business with offices in LA, San Diego, and San Francisco. They’ve hired former clerks who, at one time worked hard but once hired don’t get it. </p>
<p>These junior lawyers don’t have their own client base, so their idea of work is severely hindered by their incorrect perspective of what attorneys do and don’t do; they don’t understand that they shouldn’t be out on the golf course with the senior partners, when they should be researching cases. They don’t last long because the partners, while working long hours on the weekends, hear about the junior hijinx and fire them. The senior partners can do this because they can easily hire 10 more to replace the one just fired.</p>
<p>In larger firms, the dearth of bank related work has been a big problem. Lawyers do the loans, the bond issuance, etc. Not much of that for years now. And not much in the way of deal making either. Transaction volume drop translates into much less demand for legal work. Commercial bankruptcy has done well, but not like people believe; there has not been a huge wave of commercial bankruptcy, just of personal bankruptcy, and the commercial bankruptcies have been concentrated in areas where the economy has been really over-built and thus really over-lawyered. </p>
<p>We’ve produced a lot of lawyers. It’s still a good profession but people took on a lot of debt without understanding how few legal jobs pay well into 6 figures and what is required to get those.</p>
<p>Too many law schools. Too many applicants who are not competitive at the good schools. Too many schools enrolling far too many students. A general downturn in business as a result of the economy and the financial crisis for the past several years resulting in large numbers of layoffs and lower numbers being hired. All of these things have resulted in a glut of lawyers, many of whom are underemployed or unemployed in the field. And, did I mention too many law schools?</p>
I’m a retired attorney, graduate of a top 5 law school, and with all due respect, I think this advice, which has been floating around since my law school days, is and always has been a crock. Law school prepares you to practice law, period (and even with that degree, few are actually ready to practice law without some sort of apprenticeship or training program at their first employer). It’s pointless to spend a fortune and three years of your life in the hope that legal training will somehow be generally beneficial to a career. Law school to a large degree narrows you intellectually and molds your writing style in such a specific way that you may have to completely retrain yourself to be able to write appropriately for any other job. No one hiring for another field is going to be impressed with an unused legal degree–it makes you look unfocused and dilettante-ish. A friend who finished well down in the bottom half of our law school class ended up as an insurance adjuster, a job he could have gotten right out of college. He found it hard to get any non-legal job, because it was assumed that he would bail as soon as a legal position presented itself. </p>
<p>If you are absolutely committed to the practice of law–not merely “truly interested”–despite the weak job prospects, and will be happy with nothing else, fine, go to law school. Otherwise, don’t bother.</p>
<p>It’s a direct result of the debacle of 2008. By the end of 2009, large law firms were shedding lawyers like crazy, if not completely shutting their doors; the only ones that did okay were the ones hired to sort out the Bear Stearns and Lehmann Bros fiascos. Meanwhile, new college graduates (and many newly unemployed people of various ages), unable to find jobs, went to law school. We now have way more lawyers than the economy can support.</p>
<p>The entire legal market has compressed from the top down. I do hiring for a top law firm. We had a conversation last week in which we all expressed surprise that we only accept people for interviews from the very top schools who are both interesting and have almost perfect transcripts. We used to interview people with a mix of As and Bs, but no more. People with more than one or two Bs generally aren’t invited to interview.</p>
<p>I have hired, supervisd dozens of temp attorneys over the last few years. People from respectable law schools who have $200,000 in debt and are working as temps in basements reviewing thousands of documents for little money and no respect.</p>
<p>I always say that if someone has to borrow for law school, isn’t independently wealthy or doesn’t have a guaranteed job at graduation, he should run as far from law school as he can.</p>
<p>I should have been more specific, when I said to study it, I was thinking students decidng on a major for their bachelors, even if not a pre law program- rather than entering professional school.
I agree that if you didn’t fully intend to practice law, that attending law school would be ridiculous.</p>
<p>I am a practicing attorney (top 5 law school grad). We get letters every week from top ranked law schools begging for help with finding employment for their grads. It is just not a safe bet at all right now. Besides that, so. Any lawyers are. User able at the large firms they had to go to in order to make enough to pay back student loans. It’s sad.</p>
<p>The one law attorneys, courts, and legislators cannot change is the law of supply and demand. Large class sizes mean law schools make a lot of money and every university wants a money maker. The result is too many lawyers for the amount of legal demand out there.</p>
<p>Zoosermom- As you say "I always say that if someone has to borrow for law school, isn’t independently wealthy or doesn’t have a guaranteed job at graduation, he should run as far from law school as he can. "</p>
<p>I agree. Other than the top 14 schools, it is not worth borrowing AT ALL. The schools push, oh you can repay federal loans with income adjusted plans. News flash – the income adjusted features are not COLA adjusted, and do not work well in NY, Boston, DC, SF or Silicon Valley. They work fine in lower cost areas.</p>
<p>kayf, even from the top law schools, hiring has been incredbly squeezed in the last two years. The entire hiring metric has changed. I have a temp attorney with huge debt whose assignment is ending next month. Went to a very good school and somehow thought that the temp assignment would be a foot in the door for a permanent job. It’s not. It is a scarlet letter and he will never be hired in a larger law firm. these people will never get out from under this debt.</p>
<p>Then she will be in totally great shape! I have known some people who went to school in regional markets and made great connections that landed them jobs in smaller cities and towns and had great lives. It does happen. Just not as often as it used to.</p>
<p>Are you guys that are still seeing these issues in large markets? I am also a practicing attorney (not top 5 law grad ). I’m in the midwest in a mid-sized city and it seems to me that the market is loosening up considerably, at least as compared to the last several years. There seems to be a decent amount of activity, mostly for experienced attorneys, but I also know of a recent opening (in-house) where they were specifically seeking new grads.</p>
). I’m in the midwest in a mid-sized city and it seems to me that the market is loosening up considerably, at least as compared to the last several years. There seems to be a decent amount of activity, mostly for experienced attorneys, but I also know of a recent opening (in-house) where they were specifically seeking new grads.</p>