<p>I've been going in and out of different options for my career (technical, mathematical ones lately), but I think I've always wanted to do law (I LOVE writing). I know a lot of people say around here that unless it's a T14 law school, don't bother, but is this an exaggeration? Could a Top 30 still find reasonable employment?</p>
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<p>I think you probably could in the right market. The problem is that you want to avoid a situation where you have $200k in debt and a 50k a year job. Which could easily happen if you go to a Top 30 but not T-14 school.</p>
<p>The reality is many top 14 are not finding employment even ones with experience, that girl from the apprentice named Brandy is a corporate lawyer with about 7 years experience from Chicago Booth. The fact that someone like that could not find any employment beyond trumps apprentice tells you alot because just to get into m&A like her you need to be top of your class. So yeah it is a highly uncertain market. Also t-14 only works out if your in the top half of your class otherwise you end up unemplyed or with the same crappy jobs. Even at the best school like Harvard Yale etc the top 51% of class brings down the big salaries, the other 15% get clerkships, 1-3% unemployed 14% report “no data”=unemployed but too embarass to report and the other 15-17% are making crappy money. As you go down the list it just gets worst.</p>
<p>By georgetown and cornell its same stats for the good half of class but 24% unemployed and 17% crappy jobs, so bottom 41% of class = waste of money/ screwed with high debt and low pay.</p>
<p>Now a t-30 could still find reasonable employment but only if they finish in the higher part of their class. The further you go down, the more you need to finish high to get the same job.
If you choose t-30 I would so aim for texas, as you will have little competition in comparison to a similar size state but still good jobs. Fordham is also a good choice. It also depends what you want, for long term, Florida or Texas might be better for a sole practioner in the long run and oyur more likely to actually get rich big than in new york where your limited.</p>
<p>^^^ I want to point out the above is a little bit hyperbolic, but not terribly. Also, Brandy from the apprentice purposely left biglaw to become and entreprenour and didn’t do so hot. She could have easily found another legal job had she wanted it before she made the switch. It’s just once that you leave legal work it’s much harder to break back in.</p>
<p>Then again, the truly intelligent find or make a niche.</p>
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<p>Unfortunately, that is not always true. Many skilled and experienced attorneys have found themselves without a job in this economy either because their practice area has been eliminated or reduced dramatically or because their businesses/business units have failed or been sold. While an attorney can certainly learn new skills or develop a new practice area, no one wants to hire an experienced attorney who knows nothing about a given area. One could certainly hang out their own shingle and practice solo, but that has its own challenges and risks involved.</p>
<p>Of course, these same trends make it difficult for newly minted JDs to find jobs working as attorneys.</p>
<p>My economics professor was telling my class the other day that the economy is bad as of right now obviously however 2-3 years from now it won’t be such a bad economy anymore and jobs will be much easier to get. I think by the time you get out of law school and start seeking a job you’ll be ok.</p>
<p>UMMM…my kid is looking for a 2L summer job and a lead to a position upon graduation…please PM any leads? Very good grades from leading regional law school, impressive resume, great work ethic and networks/interviews well…not expecting six figures, and willing to relocate. People are telling him not to worry since many mid-size and small law firms won’t start looking for summer help until the Spring semester, but he is VERY worried. He has a friend in a TX law school with international experience who is going through the same hunt.</p>
<p>Both of them have a network of contacts in companies where they’ve done internships or have met executives in other settings, but are hearing that most corporations eliminated their legal internships and entry level positions in the economic downturn. My kid is getting a lot of lunch offers, but no job offers LOL.</p>
<p>His law school gets job postings and leads, but there are 10+ applicants for each position from his school alone (and the employers are casting their nets across several law schools.) Job placement seems to be heavily related to networking and connections, and everyone knows someone with a relative in law school. </p>
<p>Yes, I think the economic outlook for legal graduates is still not good. It reminds me of the economic outlook for new teachers and other professions that have been oversaturated for years.</p>
<p>I feel for your son. I know many, many practicing attorneys who have children in law school who have been unable to find summer clerkships, summer internships, summer associate positions or permanent jobs. Yup, you would have thought that those kids would have had connections, but those kids have not benefitted as you may have thought they would.</p>
<p>While it is true that many small and mid-sized law firms typically do not do their hiring until early in the spring semester, there will be many applicants for very few available positions. What to do?</p>
<p>First, please tell your son to keep applying. It only takes one yes from an employer for that all-too-often mythical summer position. He just has to keep plugging away. Second, I would not rely simply on the jobs that come through career services. It is easy enough to find out the names of all law firms in a given city/area. Call the hiring managers. Send resumes and follow up with phone calls, e-mails and letters. Yes, your son may annoy a couple of people this way, but he may also find opportunities that he would not have found otherwise. Perhaps by starting now, he can find a willing employer who would have gone through career services in a couple of months but would be happy to hire your son now. </p>
<p>Finally, please tell your son to think out of the box. There may be legal or legally-related employment available during the summer at a public interest organization (particularly one in your community), at a law library (try the local bar association or any local law school), working for/with a professor or working at a continuing legal education organization (like Practicing Law Institute, but there are also many, many others). I’m sure that others may think of additional possibilities. </p>
<p>If all else fails, taking a job for the summer is very, very important. If your son needs/wants to interview again next autumn for post-graduation jobs, he will need some recent work experience to discuss. All work experience provides valuable skills like time management, money management, working with a variety of personalities and can prove that one is reliable and hardworking. </p>
<p>Anecdotally, I will share that during my 1L summer, I worked as a summer associate at a large law firm and I tended bar on Saturday evenings and Sunday afternoons to pick up a few extra bucks (putting myself through law school). Interestingly, when I interviewed for summer associate jobs as a 2L, it was the bartending work that everyone wanted to know about, not the summer associate job. Looking back, I think the interest in my bartending was because it was different, it showed dedication and it showed a willingness to get my hands dirty. My point is simply that work experience is important and can come in many forms. </p>
<p>Please let us know what happens with your son.</p>
<p>Thanks for the very valuable advice! He appreciated the suggestions and will be taking them to heart</p>
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<p>You are both incorrect. She was a corporate lawyer. She was laid off from her firm. She did not purposefully leave.</p>
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<p>Make no mistake, the portion of the class at YLS that opts for clerkships could have easily attained a job in the private sector if they so pleased, and probably the same for the clerks from HLS. Clerkships, especially the ones that YLS and HLS students compete for, are often more competitive to get than big firm jobs. Your post makes it sound like clerkships were their back-up. Not at all.</p>
<p>The US legal profession is undergoing some major changes at the moment and that is having a negative impact on the career prospects for lawyers as a whole, no question about it. The best-of-the-best and/or those able to find niche markets will always do OK, but the simple fact is that there are far too many lawyers in this country and that’s starting to show in the form of many with legal degrees getting squeezed out. </p>
<p>Primetime TV would have most people believe that being a lawyer is all about being some hot shot one-of-a-kind superstar that saves companies, puts criminals behind bars, etc. but the fact is that the vast majority of legal work is essentially glorified paperwork–proofing forms, filing regulatory documents, drafting endless contracts that nobody other than other lawyers will ever read or care about. </p>
<p>Most of these things are viewed by companies as pure cost and something that, within reason, should be given to the lowest qualified bidder. The 2008 downturn has only amplified this effect as legal spending quickly came under fire within most companies. </p>
<p>Think about it… people just didn’t stop suing each other or needing to proof contracts or file paperwork, they’ve just found more efficient ways of doing it that gets the same result but costs less. That’s not going to change even now as the economy is slowly starting to pick back up again. …however, law schools keep pumping out lawyers like there’s an endless need for them. </p>
<p>So long as everyone keeps needing fewer and fewer lawyers and law school keep pumping more and more out then yeah there’s going to be a problem. Again, some people will still do just fine but for the US legal industry as a whole the outlook is a bit dark.</p>
<p>Rocketman08, I couldn’t have said it better. Not only are the law schools pumping out more and more lawyers,but new law schools are constantly being accredited. There are two reasons for this:</p>
<p>First, it is relativily cheap to educatate a law student over that of a doctor or engineer. Thus, law is a big cash cow. Secondly, The American Bar wants to give everyone, regardless of their LSAT score, an opportunity to become a lawyer. The ABa couldn’t care if there is a glut of lawyers.</p>
<p>@flowerhead, yes she was laid off, she did not voluntearily leave. If you have watched the last few apprentices you will notice a dispropotionate rise in the number of attorneys from season 1 until now where a signifcant number of the cast members were lawyers, off the top of my head brandy, clint, masha, james and nicole which is at least 5/16. Mind you this is a show for real estate developers not lawyers so yeah can the legal market really be that good when 30-40 y/o lawyers who should have made partner or at least have 250k annual salaries after 6-16 years of practice are quitting their job for the exact same or less pay? Even if you come from a crap school which I dont consider ucla georgetown or booth to be you should as a lawyer in self practice be able to pull down 250k minimum after 6 years of practice or much more as a practicing corporate lawyer or whatever.</p>
<p>I do believe the legal market is satured, 150 schools making 300 grads a year =45000 new lawyer whehter good or bad market.</p>
<p>Further I did not intend to make clerkships sound as a bad hting actually they are more competitive to get into and those with judicial clerkships are more sought after after they clerk even though the pay ain’t so hot. The point is even from a top school the bottom 34% of a class is not making great money to justify their tuition, with a clerkship the salary will go up after they transfer into a real legal career which of course is very easy</p>
<p>I think the law market is being exaggerated. It is true that the market is bad and that it’s really saturated. But, that doesn’t mean you definitely won’t get a job, it will just be really hard and probably not a good idea. It all comes down to how much you actually love law and want to risk $200k. </p>
<p>I also had economics classes with Christina Romer (one of the economist in charge of the stimulus package) and she said conditions were much worse than anticipated and the economy might not fully pick up until 2015~.</p>
<p>I think Masha still works for the Bklyn DA’s office. She said in her post apprentice interview that she was looking to break into television as a legal analyst. </p>
<p>Clint, while trained as a lawyer, came to the apprentice as real estate developer whose business fell on hard times. He does not say how long it has been since he practiced law but I am sure his training as a lawyer and a CPA were both beneficial to his work as a developer.</p>
<p>James got a job with the US attorney’s office (so he is now working as a lawyer).</p>
<p>Clint was working in real estate law and real estate developing which is why he was able to make millions he was making money as a realtor, lawyer, developer on every contract he did as opposed to just one.</p>
<p>Yes James only has a job because he was on the apprentice but for the other million lawyers with no job who applied its tough luck</p>
<p>To be utterly candid, with the state of the legal profession these days and given the cost of law school, I would counsel any law student that if they are not in the top 20-25% of their class by the end of their first year, they should consider Plan B.</p>
<p>^^^ that is certainly contingent on where you go to law school.</p>