<p>Sallyawp is right. This is like nothing anyone has ever seen in the legal community. There have been downturns before, but they largely hit certain practice areas while others continued to thrive or got stronger. That is not the case now. I don’t think many in the legal community ever had a inkling that this could happen to them because they had been spared so many times before. There have been times in the past when offers were rescinded, and summer classes were slashed or canceled, but the deferral of start dates will take years to sort out, and I don’t think the people impacted have any idea what it will mean to them down the road.</p>
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<p>I’m not sure how this contradicts what I’m saying. I’m saying that the legal market, relative to prior years, is absolutely terrible. In absolute terms, compared with the overall economy, I think it’s still pretty good that there are six figure jobs out there to be had (even if they are scarcer), compared to the fact that there are little to no jobs in other sectors.</p>
<p>The rest of your post purports to disagree with me, but really doesn’t, except for the last paragraph, for which I defer to your experience.</p>
<p>I have to confess that the employers who came to OCI have painted much rosier pictures – not rosy, but less depressing than this particular thread. Several of them have stated that the market is already back on an upswing. One junior partner (is that the right term?) told me that they’ll be hosting smaller summer programs but they suspect that will come back to bite them next year.</p>
<p>Additionally, many of the firms I’ve talked to have suggested that while the recession hit some practice areas very hard, it’s left about half to a third of them virtually untouched: litigation, health care, energy, IP, etc.</p>
<p>My friends who are young associates at a few major law firms do seem to line up with the assessment: things were dismally quiet a few months ago and have dramatically picked up since; so much so that their workloads are unusually high even by BIGLAW standards. In other words, law firms laid off enough people that they aren’t in a position to compensate for it right now. Of course, these are all very young associates who are not privy to most of their firms’ business decisions, but their hours have dropped and spiked pretty dramatically – from trying hard to fill forty a week (total, not billable) to falling behind despite working consistent nineties (again total).</p>
<p>Obviously, it may be that the firms are spinning their economic situation; or, more to the point, that only the ones who are doing well are sending people to OCI. Similarly, the young associates who now have work are the ones who <em>weren’t</em> laid off. So perhaps I’m just seeing a sample size bias? Finally, I only interviewed with firms that are especially strong in one particular practice area. So perhaps this area is doing particularly well?</p>
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<p>Some of them may be invited to stay on as something between an associate and a partner, but with the understanding that they will probably never be promoted to partner (at least at that firm). This is somewhat akin to the ‘senior lecturer’ position that universities sometimes offer junior faculty who fail their tenure reviews but who the department would still like to retain, usually to handle teaching loads. </p>
<p>But it is true that most associates will be dismissed from the firm entirely and have to find other employment, whether it be a lateral hire into another, almost always less prestigious, law firm, becoming in-house counsel for a company, taking a government job, or starting their own practice. For example, John Bolton didn’t make partner at Covington & Burling. However, he clearly had a successful government career thereafter, culminating in his becoming US Ambassador to the UN.</p>
<p>Did it occur to anyone that perhaps the market will adjust to the glut? Perhaps the days of $500/hr lawyers are ending and $50/hr is in our future? Or perhaps the term “legal insurance” will become more widely known? I don’t know - just think’n out loud.</p>
<p>osdad—I agree and think the market has already reacted. I am the owner of small-to-medium sized business (where the future growth including jobs will come in the next decade). We are on our 3rd law firm. While the first firm wasn’t BigLaw, it was CRAZY for us to pay $450 for the routine legal work (the majority for us). We get the same utility for $250 and hourly’s/explanations that are reasonable. Personally I think BigLaw and BigLaw’s attorney’s are in for a rude awakening. I think most company’s are coming to the realization that an extra $250 an hour is a high price to pay just to drop BigLaw’s name at a cocktail party. I think the market has already started to adjust…</p>
<p>Also just thinking at loud!</p>
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<p>This assumes that that’s the only utility in hiring a big law firm. If you had any idea how big law firms work, and the kind of partners that–especially cream of the crop–firms have, you’d know that that assumption is incorrect.</p>
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<p>I would give little weight to optimistic talk from someone a) sent by a firm b) to OCI c) at Yale. </p>
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<p>In the recent past, they haven’t been “dismissed” so much as moved on to other things (in-house positions, etc.) because they either weren’t going or didn’t want to make partner and didn’t expect/want a special counsel position. I doubt, for example, that Covington fired John Bolton. But it is true that the vast majority of starting associates at any given biglaw firm will be gone in five years.</p>
<p>Dismissal as not the same as being ‘fired’. It’s rather akin to failing your tenure review in academia, for which you won’t actually be fired - indeed, you’ll usually still be allowed to work there for a period of time during which you’re supposed to transition to another job. </p>
<p>But clearly your time is limited. You can’t just simply ‘decide’ to stay forever after you’ve been told that you’ve failed to make partner. Maybe you can get a special counsel offer, if you want that, just like some junior faculty who fail their tenure reviews will receive offers to stay on as ‘senior lecturers’. But then again, maybe you can’t get such an offer.</p>
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<p>Except that the vast majority of biglaw associates are gone long before they would ever be up for partnership consideration (which typically won’t happen until after at least 7years). Junior associates are rarely told that they’re not going to make partner (unless they’re fired, which I guess is one way of telling them), though it’s often obvious after a few years who does and doesn’t have a realistic shot. Midlevel associates can been extremely profitable for firms (who, in years past, were willing to pay recruiters thousands of dollars to bring them in), so they aren’t generally (again, until recently) told to leave.</p>
<p>From NY times
Excerpt IT LOOKS Bad out there.
How bad is it? Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, the juggernaut of New York, has slashed its hiring by more than half. For the first time in 136 years, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, a respected Philadelphia firm, has canceled its recruiting entirely. Global firms like DLA Piper and Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe have postponed recruiting for several months to see if the market improves.
At Yale, students accustomed to being wooed by Big Laws glittering names like Baker & McKenzie; Milbank, Tweed, Hadley, & McCloy; and White & Case were stunned when those firms elected not to conduct interviews in New Haven this month.
New York University, Georgetown, Northwestern and other top universities confirm that interviews are down by a third to a half compared with a year ago, while lower-ranked schools are suffering more. What is more, when interviews finish in a few weeks, even fewer offers will be extended, said Howard L. Ellin, the chairman of global hiring at Skadden, Arps, because many firms are interviewing students for slots they may not fill.
After he lost his job as a television reporter two years ago, Derek Fanciullo considered law school, thinking it was a historically sure bet. He took out a ferocious amount of debt, he said $210,000, to be exact and enrolled last September in the School of Law at New York University.</p>
<p>And this, excerpt from Leitner</p>
<p>Grads of Non-Elite Law Schools May Not Face the Greatest Difficulties
Professor Peter L. Reich (Whittier) takes issue with our earlier post on the job market:</p>
<p>Re “A Difficult Job Market” (Law School Reports, 8/27), I disagree that the greatest problems for new law graduates are faced by those from non-elite law schools. At Whittier, our grads do not expect to receive $160K to start, although some obtain this. Rather, they have been finding employment recently in a variety of public offices and small-to-medium sized firms; places that do not give any special preference to J.D.s from Harvard, etc…</p>
<p>Any statement by a representative of Whittier Law, which has a total cost of attendance of $57,118 per year for the 2009-2010 school year (including tuition of $37,060, <a href=“http://www.law.whittier.edu/pdfs/cstudents/registrar-registration-guide.pdf[/url]”>http://www.law.whittier.edu/pdfs/cstudents/registrar-registration-guide.pdf</a>), about how its graduates are doing just fine since they don’t expect to make as much money as graduates from Harvard Law, seems less than realistic. How are these Whittier Law grads paying off their massive student loans working for small law firms that pay significantly less than the going BIGLAW rate? Are all Whittier Law grads fortunate enough to have parents or grandparents who financed their law school educations?</p>
<p>If you want to do tax law, is it still necessary to go to a T14 law school to get a good job?</p>
<p>only thing I can add- is that elite law school grads did have the expectation or sense of entitlement that they would get a salary of $160K- upon graduation. The Whittier grad (or any other non elite school) did not have the same expectation. They knew what they were getting into. Maybe they went into law school wanting to work for the DA’s office, or gov’t or non profit, or for a small law firm in their town. Sure- it would take a long time to payback the loan. But they knew that when they decided to go to law school. </p>
<p>Many of the elite grads never gave the large amount of debt a second thought, as they assumed they would get a high paying job directly out of law school. Now they are finding out otherwise.</p>
<p>Whittier Law Grads are dong fine.</p>
<p>[Bill</a> Handel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Handel]Bill”>Bill Handel - Wikipedia)
William Wolf Handel (born 25 August 1951 in Brazil) is the director and founder of the Center for Surrogate Parenting and an AM radio personality in Los Angeles, California.
He hosts a morning program on KFI in Los Angeles, California weekdays in which he comments on current events. The program is the top rated morning program in the Los Angeles market, with over 1 million listeners. [1] He also hosts a legal advice show on weekends called Handel on the Law, syndicated by Premiere Radio Networks.[2] It is also played across the United States on America’s Talk channel 158 on XM Radio, currently on Saturday mornings and Sunday evenings.</p>
<p>He attended Cal State Northridge, where he obtained his bachelor’s degree. He then earned his J.D. degree from Whittier Law School.</p>
<p>Keihanna, while the Whittier Law School grad cited in the article exerpt you posted seems to be doing just fine (we can assume), not only is he only one person but he has likely been practicing for at least thirty years (his brith date is specified as 1951). You can hardly assume that all Whittier Law graduates are “doing fine” based upon this one instance of a graduate who is not practicing law, and who likely has little in common with someone graduating from Whittier Law today.</p>
<p>This part is the reality check:</p>
<p>Law school is expensive. Many third tier and fourth tier law schools charge just as much tuition as do T14 law schools. Undoubtedly, when compared to the average graduate of Whittier Law School, the job opportunities available generally to graduates of T14 law schools are more plentiful, reach deeper into the graduating class, provide opportunities for much higher pay (though one could choose to take jobs that pay less), include opportunities at small, medium and large law firms, as well as public interest, government and other similar positions, and exist in many different geographies.</p>
<p>While the professor from Whittier Law School that you quoted in an earlier post maintains that Whittier Law graduates are somehow not facing employment problems because they are willing to settle for lower salaries, my point is that if a law school graduate amasses student loans of over $150,000 over three years (less what it would cost to attend Whittier Law as per my earlier post), settling for a lower salary may just not be an option. It would be naive to assume otherwise.</p>
<p>Just to elaborate on my point, let’s do some approximate math here – on a monthly basis, a law school graduate with $150,000 in student loan debt (from ANY law school) would have to lay out the following amounts just to break even:</p>
<p>Student Loan Payment – $1,726.20 (assumes that all loans are Stafford Loans at 6.8% interest (unlikely, since some will likely be private loans at higher, and variable, interest rates) per month for 10 years. If the graduate instead pays the student loans over 25 years, again assuming a fixed 6.8% interest rate, the monthly payment would be $1.041.11 (please see [Direct</a> Loans—Standard, Extended, and Graduated Repayment Calculator](<a href=“http://www.ed.gov/offices/OSFAP/DirectLoan/RepayCalc/dlentry1.html]Direct”>http://www.ed.gov/offices/OSFAP/DirectLoan/RepayCalc/dlentry1.html) as a reference).</p>
<p>Then add in amounts necessary for rent, insurance (renters, life, health, car, etc.), phone, internet access, food, sundries (shampoo, soap, etc.), commutation, car payment, gas, car maintenance (oil changes, new tires every so often, etc.), electricity, heat, hot water, dry cleaning, occasional new clothing, cable TV, other entertainment (a movie perhaps? ordering in pizza?), etc. to come up with how much money you have to make after paying federal (let’s say 28-33% tax rate), state and local income taxes, FICA, Medicare/Medicaid taxes and less any contribution one might wish to make to a 401k. </p>
<p>If you throw in the idea that within 10-25 years after graduating from law school you may want to buy a home, get married or start a family, you can expect all of your “cost of living” expenses to change radically. </p>
<p>Moreover, let’s just say that making $50,000 - 60,000 per year is just not going to cut it if you are supporting a significant student loan payment. Even $80,000 - 90,000 per year would be a challenge. Unless Whittier Law grads somehow carry significant less student loan debt than that school’s huge price tag would indicate, many of its graduates with student loans must be struggling just to make ends meet at lower paying jobs.</p>
<p>All we’re really saying here is that the market is saturated with B-level and C-level lawyers looking to occupy space at already bloated firms. This market, like any other, is correcting itself. We all know that such a process is usually painful and, thankfully for the rest of us, temporary.</p>
<p>I don’t know if this has already been said, but I couldn’t agree with the OP LESS!!!Ok, firstly my dad is a major partner at one of the worlds largest firms, secondly he LOVES, LOVES, LOVES his job, thirdly the real works is when you’re an associate, you work 15 hours a day just to make partner for 10 years, then you still work you butt off, but you have time for family and vacation, he probably works 8-5 every day. He also interviews candidates for associates for the firm out of law school. And its weird because this conversation just came up this morning as we were talking about Ivy’s vs smaller colleges. And I asked him about his interviewing and what he looks for in a good potential associate. And he said that it doesn’t even really matter where they went to LS, but rather what they made of the opportunities they had there. He said that his firm(idk one of the top 15 biggest in the world) rejects tons of HYPS law students who graduated middle of the road for local kids and smaller LS students who graduated top of their class. He also looks for great inter-personal skills, confidence, etc…these, he says, are much more important to him, and to the firm, than if you graduated from a t14…hope my input was valuable. I would say you shouldn’t worry about where you go to LS, if you love doing that kind of stuff do it! Your passion and determination will shine through and you’ll get tons of job offers from the top firms - this is all the more important now that top firms are cutting back!</p>
<p>*Note I only read the first page so forgive me if this was already addressed.</p>
<p>The unemployment rate for attorneys is LOWER then for a CPA right now, and the CPA unemployment rate is at 1.4%. The national average is like 9.7%. How could you possibly say its not worth going to law school if you don’t get into a T14 school?</p>