Fantastic Front Page WSJ Article on Employment Prospects Post-Law School

[sallyawp]

<p>I thought you might like to see another article on the same topic from a recent edition of the Chicago Tribune. I’ve attached exerpts below:</p>

<p>

Two lawyers walk into a bar . . .
One orders a round of drinks for the house. The other one puts on an apron and serves it.
By Greg Burns

</p>

<p>

For a 36-year-old single mother barely seven years out of law school, Wrenn bears a weighty responsibility, and it’s exactly what she had in mind when she borrowed $100,000 to attend the Loyola University School of Law. Of all her friends from those law-school days, she enjoys her job the most, she says.</p>

<p>Except for the paycheck. At $59,000 a year, the assistant Cook County state’s attorney makes $100,000 less than the average first-year associate at big corporate firms, and millions of dollars less than the elite partners at those firms. If she chucked public service and went for the bucks, she probably could make a bit more money. But contrary to what many Americans believe, she’d need to overcome long odds to earn a lot more. Increasingly among the nation’s 761,000 working lawyers, admission to the bar no longer guarantees a gold-plated lifestyle, or even financial security.

</p>

<p>

Jack Heinz, a Northwestern researcher who co-authored a detailed study of the city’s legal community, found that between 1975 and 1995 the bottom three-fourths of the profession lost ground, while the top fourth jetted far ahead, a trend that has only intensified in the years since.</p>

<p>“These lawyers are in two different professions, and while it’s not hard to move from the corporate world down, it’s damn hard to jump over the gap and move up,” he says. “The disparity does not level out as careers proceed. It gets wider.” Inside the legal profession, recognition is dawning about its harsh economics. Kirsten Wolf became a Web celebrity earlier this year when she griped about the high cost of her Boston University Law School education and the $40,000 salary that sustains her six years after graduation: “If I’d blown it all on shoes, at least I’d have shoes,” she said.

</p>

<p>

Certainly this pity party invites cynicism, and not just because lawyers are a group that seemingly everyone loves to hate. At $113,600, the average pay for American lawyers far exceeds the $39,190 average for the entire American labor force. Even Wrenn’s government paycheck of $59,000 puts her above the typical funeral director, postmaster or insurance agent. She makes more than most teachers, for that matter.

</p>

<p>

Wrenn, meantime, has come to terms with her paycheck. Most Fridays, after a long week at the county prosecutor’s office, she’s behind the bar at Lizzie McNeill’s Irish Pub downtown. Clad in a black polo shirt and dark jeans, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, she pours a mean Guinness, handling the pints with the same dexterity she uses to juggle folders and legal pads during her day job.</p>

<p>“Nobody is in public service to become a millionaire,” she says. “You’re more concerned about doing good than doing well.” Besides, it’s never boring. Along with her daily jogs, she says, her courtroom duties are “my most alive moments.”</p>

<p>Still, Wrenn pleads guilty to wondering what life would be like for her and her 10-year-old daughter had she managed to go corporate: “You see how much private attorneys make, and it’s so much more lucrative. You think about it.” The disparities start in law schools, including Loyola, Wrenn’s alma mater, where by this time of year it’s become obvious who will get a realistic shot at one of those high-paying jobs at a corporate law firm. Anyone not in the top 10 or 15 percent of their class can’t even wangle an interview unless they have some unusual personal connections.</p>

<p>In that respect, Loyola has plenty of company among universities ranked below the Yales and Harvards, University of Chicagos and Northwesterns. As with undergraduate education, law programs compete for rank based on the quality of their faculty, facilities and students. Loyola’s program most recently tied for No. 70 in the benchmark U.S. News survey of law schools, and it is aggressively hiring faculty and launching a renovation of its downtown campus.

</p>

<p>

Except for the top schools, nothing matters more than grades in determining opportunities. Most law schools, Loyola included, grade on a mandatory curve, so half the students finish in the bottom half of their class, typically for the first time in their high-achieving lives. The nation’s 195 accredited law programs will graduate more than 44,000 new lawyers this year. About one-fifth of them will make well into six figures at their first job out of school, while most of their peers will make less than half that much. There’s almost no in-between.

</p>

<p>

Plenty of students, of course, don’t want the big-firm job, even if they qualify.

</p>

<p>

“Everybody feels the tension,” she says. “If you do well your first year, you’ll have the best opportunities. It’s a striking disparity.” Her only worry about staying out of corporate law: How will she repay her student loans? “That’s terrifying to me,” she says.

</p>

<p>

The loans are even more daunting, critics say, for the students of low-rated private schools that charge about the same as those at the top. In Chicago’s South Loop, John Marshall Law School ranks in the fourth-tier on the U.S. News list and bills $33,600 in annual tuition. Yet it still turns away hundreds of applicants, reports Dean John Corkery, and not because it fools anybody about the economics of the program. "We make sure they are told about those issues.</p>

<p>When they get their loans, there are tons of disclosure," he says. “Even if right out of school you don’t get the brass ring, a law degree is a good degree. There’s very strong demand.”</p>

<p>A lot of Marshall students are career-changers, from police and office workers to Dillon Beardsley, 34, a third-year student who holds a master’s degree in molecular biology. By the time he graduates from Marshall this spring, his loans will approach $200,000. Still, his background as a scientist already has led to a job offer from a Florida patent-law firm at a $100,000 yearly salary, Beardsley says. While his new post probably lacks the upward mobility of an associate job at a top corporate firm, Beardsley believes Marshall paid off: “For me, I think it’s a good deal.”

</p>

<p>

Not everyone feels the same. At Gonzaga University law school, first-year student Zack White turned to a national law blog for advice about what to do if he lost a scholarship requiring grades in the top half of his class. Should he drop out after his first year, or take on the full $45,000 in annual debt to finish his three-year program? About 7,000 law students quit each year.

</p>

<p>

When Kirsten Wolf graduated from Boston University Law School in 2002 with $115,000 in debt, she hoped for a starting salary in the $80,000 range or at least $50,000 or $60,000 a year with the prospect of substantially more later.</p>

<p>No such job materialized, and earlier this year she was pulling in $40,000 as a book agent in Manhattan, paying $475 a month on a 30-year loan repayment plan.</p>

<p>For a long time, she slept on a couch because she couldn’t afford a bed. Students who study law “by default,” viewing it as a certain path to a respectable living, need to wake up, Wolf says. “They do it because they don’t know what else to do. Don’t think of it as a golden ticket.”

</p>

<p>

Despite the lofty paychecks, however, roughly 80 percent of associates at top firms leave their first jobs within five years, for well-recognized reasons: Typically, they put in 60- or 70-hour workweeks, often taking on the dullest duties. Plus, they rarely get the training and career guidance they expect.

</p>

<p>

Victor Henderson, president of the Chicago Bar Association and a partner at Holland & Knight, believes rising associate pay forces a reckoning. Billable-hour requirements inevitably rise with salaries, he says, and the pressure to bring in business limits mentoring time by senior lawyers. That makes life particularly difficult for women and minorities, who have no natural entree in a business still dominated by white-male social networks, he says.

</p>

<p>

A recent University of Chicago study found that at the top 50 U.S. law firms, profits per partner have soared by a factor of four, from $310,000 in 1983 to $1.26 million as of 2004. That far exceeds wage growth in the economy at large.</p>

<p>Meantime, the number of partners at those firms has more than doubled, growing much faster than the number of graduates of top-ranked law schools.</p>

<p>As of 2006, the average partner made almost $4 million at Wachtell, more than $3 million at Cravath and $2.9 million at Cadwalader, three prestigious New York firms. Kirkland & Ellis, the richest of Chicago’s big corporate firms, ranked 10th in the nation at $2.3 million per partner. Webb’s firm, Winston & Strawn, clocked in at $1.2 million. The averages tend to mislead, since pay from partner to partner varies as much as 20-fold from lowest to highest.

</p>

<p>

. . . the “rainmaker” who brings in business has become ever more valuable than mere technicians. These days, partners who fail to justify their draw routinely get the boot, a big change from the past that has led to dozens of demotions and dismissals at esteemed Chicago firms, among them Sidley & Austin, Mayer Brown and Winston & Strawn.</p>

<p>At the same time, partners with attractive clients routinely hear from headhunters, also a break with the past. “If you’re earning $300,000 on $1 million in billings, and I call you with a law firm paying $400,000 on that, you’d be hard-pressed not to listen,” says Alan Rubenstein, a Chicago legal recruiter.

</p>

<p>

Of course, some solo practitioners and small-firm specialists do just as well or better than lawyers in large firms. Everyone in the law has heard stories about the working stiff making a cool half-million defending drunk drivers in traffic court, or the personal-injury lawyer raking in multimillion-dollar contingency fees, or the divorce attorney catering to the rich and famous. Yet for every class-action kingpin flying a private jet, tens of thousands of lawyers hustle for a living.

</p>