Study: More students turn to law school in failing economy
Registration for LSATs has increased more than 20 percent during past year
By Alex Zielinski

An April study of prospective law students revealed a leading motive for attending law school: the failing economy.

The study, administrated by Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions, reported that 40 percent of the 1,040 students who took the February 2009 Law School Admission Test were motivated by today’s economic crisis to apply to law school. In addition, the registration for the Kaplan-administered LSATs has increased by more that 20 percent during the past year.

Since 2006, the University’s School of Law has seen the number of applicants rise by 113, with 2008’s enrollment around 531 students. The law school’s LL.M, or Master of Laws, class of 2010 will be the largest since the program’s initiation two years ago. The law school building itself can hold no more than its current students, so increased applications would mean more discretion when reviewing new applicants.

The survey highlighted many economic reasons why students would decide to go to law school now. Sixty-seven percent of survey participants said the high earning power of a law degree substantially affected their decision to pursue an education in the field.

Berkeley Law Expands Loan Program

UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law announced this week that it’s expanding its loan repayment assistance program for alumni who pursue public interest or government work.

UC Berkeley’s Loan Repayment Assistance Program has been helping graduates repay their student loans for the past decade. It will expand in January to offer unlimited help to alumni who earn up to $65,000 a year. Previously the amount had been capped at $100,000 for alumni who make less than $58,000 per year.

“The law school provides the graduates who meet the income and employment requirements with a forgivable loan. Every six months, they’re required to make their student loan payments,” explained Berkeley Law Assistant Dean of Financial Aid Dennis Tominaga. He said those loans are forgiven if the students maintain the income and job requirements and uses the money make student loan payments.

Are Law-School Applicants Like ‘Gatsby’s Revelers?’
By Nathan Koppel

…

Slater laments the fact that, even in the throes of one of the worst industry downturns in history, matriculation rates continue to rise unchecked at law schools, with close to 50,000 enrollees at the 200 ABA-approved law schools.

Worse, to lure students, some law schools offer a deceptive view of the likelihood that their graduated will land top-paying jobs. Slater points a finger at employment statistics posted on the Web sites of three low-ranked law schools in New York City. All three advertise that 45 to 60 percent of their 2008 graduates who reported salary information are making a median salary of $150,000 to $160,000, a statistic that Slater finds somewhat dubious.

Ultimately, however, Slater serves up the sternest language for students themselves:

“But will next year’s round of applicants heed the signals?” he writes, with that characteristic Slater panache. And then this, which deserves its own set-off block-quote:

Or, like Gatsby’s revelers, will they simply push on at an ever greater clip, boats against the current, toward that green light in the ivory tower and the promising future that, quite literally, recedes before them? After all, there will always be the possibility, however faint, of Big Law money and white-shoe prestige — those powerful tonics for every new batch of wandering liberal arts graduates.

It seems that some think that it’s not that there aren’t enough legal jobs, but rather, there are just too many lawyers.  Read more at The New York Times…

Another View: Lock the Law School Doors
by Dan Slater

This summer, in the staid world of legal education, where curriculum is uniform and scholars are trained in the art of like-mindedness, one dean hatched a contrary plan.

In a memo to incoming students, Patricia D. White, the dean of University of Miami School of Law, surmised: “Perhaps many of you are looking to law school as a safe harbor in which you can wait out the current economic storm.” She then urged them to “think hard” about their plans and offered incentives for those willing to defer for one year.

“The nature of the legal profession is in great flux,” Dean White observed. “It is very difficult to predict what the employment landscape for young lawyers will be in May 2012 and thereafter.”

…

The American Bar Association, which continues to approve law schools with impunity and with no end in sight, bears complicity in creating this mess. Yet a spokeswoman, citing antitrust concerns, says the A.B.A. takes no position on the optimal number of lawyers or law schools. So then how about the schools? Can they save future generations of students from themselves?

If it means shrinking classes, don’t count on it. Limiting education is un-American, not to mention anticapitalist, even if many law schools appear to profit from what may charitably be called an inefficient distribution of market information.

Take, for instance, the employment statistics posted on the Web sites of three low-ranked law schools in New York City, the country’s biggest market for legal employment. All three advertise that 45 to 60 percent of their 2008 graduates who reported salary information are making a median salary of $150,000 to $160,000.

Now, of course there must be some way of slicing and dicing the numbers to yield that magic result. But what happens, in practice, is that prospective degree-purchasers enroll in these $43,000-a-year programs believing their chances of landing that Big Law job are about one in two. Tempting odds.

Other schools market their degrees without six-figure promises. “If you counted on starting at $160,000 per year, then you’re in for a huge disappointment,” said Bryant Garth, the dean at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles, where enrollment is up 11 percent. He disagrees with Miami’s approach and believes that trying to shrink class size amounts to panicking. “I insist law is still a good career,” he said. “Students may just have to make it in a more entrepreneurial fashion.”

Be sure and read this article and the advice within at Law.com…

No Job Offer in Hand?  Then You Need a Plan
by Suzanne Dupree Howe

In the past, most summer associates working at large firms felt that if they showed up at a decent hour, acted respectably and did a reasonably good job on their assignments, they were all but guaranteed an offer of permanent employment. Barring any major gaffes, summer associates were likely to snag an offer or two by the end of their second summer in law school.

That probably won’t be the case as this summer winds to a close. Summer associates likely have been walking on eggshells, trying to provide the best possible work product and to make themselves indispensable. The days of almost automatic entitlement to a permanent offer surely are over.

Given the economy and state of the legal market, many third-year law students may find themselves without an offer at the end of this summer. Firms have fewer positions to offer, and they will have to be more discriminating in their choices than in years past.

Unfortunately, 3Ls left without an offer at the end of the summer may find that additional job prospects are bleak in this down economy in which firms are laying off attorneys. If a summer associate does not receive an offer, one can only assume he will have a steep uphill battle ahead of him this coming school year. Without a significant upturn in the economy, 3Ls without offers will compete with a large mass of laid-off junior and midlevel associates, and they will find themselves at a distinct disadvantage, since new graduates will lack the practical skills that these associates have had time to cultivate.

So, what is a 3L without an offer to do?

• Participate in OCIs: Third-year law students should participate in on-campus interviews this fall through their law school career services office; there always are a few firms looking to hire 3L students for permanent positions through the fall interview program.

• Consider small and midsized firms: Law students who had their hearts set on big-firm jobs after graduation but failed to net an offer would be well-served to consider alternative firms, namely smaller or midsize law firms. Due to competitive billing rates, many of these firms are seeing an increase in business and need warm bodies to do the work. And an associate could lateral to a large firm later once she gained practical experience.

• Look into different practice areas: Reflecting current trends, students should consider applying for positions in practice areas that are countercyclical and in higher demand. These practices include litigation, bankruptcy, white-collar crime, and labor and employment.

• Clerk for a judge: In this economy, 3Ls without offers should put a lot of time and effort into trying to secure a judicial clerkship after graduation. Not only will it give a new graduate time to ride out the storm and gain another year to find a job (hopefully in an improved legal job market), but a clerkship is an optimal way for new lawyers to enhance their resumes, regardless of their intended practice areas.

• Apply for a government job: Law students should consider applying for federal and state government positions in practice areas expected to be in demand in the coming years under the new administration, such as securities litigation, environmental law, and labor and employment. Consider seeking environmental attorney positions at the state and local level, positions at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and positions at the U.S. Department of Labor, among others. Firms often cherry-pick lawyers out of these agencies for associate positions due to the expertise they gain inside.

Read more at Law.com.

From what I hear from my highly paced secret sources in some of the more elite firms out there, it’s going to get worse.

Read more at The Chicago Tribune…

Big firms cut back on law school recruiting
By Ameet Sachdev

The recession has made big law firms in Chicago even pickier when it comes to recruiting at law schools.

Firms have slashed the number of on-campus visits this year, as recruiting and hiring budgets have been cut. Seyfarth Shaw canceled its 2010 summer program. Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom, which has a large Chicago presence, has said it expects to hire nationally about 100 interns — also known as summer associates — next year, down from 225 in this year’s summer class.Other law firms also have downsized their summer programs but are not publicly talking about their plans. Mayer Brown and Winston & Strawn declined to comment Monday and Jenner & Block did not return a request for comment.

Law schools of every ilk are feeling the effects, from elite private institutions such as Northwestern to state schools such as the University of Illinois.

“Many law firms still are finalizing their overall hiring needs,” Don Rebstock, Northwestern’s associate dean of enrollment, career strategy, and marketing, said in an e-mail response. “Because of this, we may offer a second on-campus interviewing program sometime in the spring.”

Northwestern students have somewhat brighter job prospects than their peers at lower-ranked schools because big law firms remain prestige-conscious.

“We’ve had large national firms tell us they can only go to three or four law schools,” said Tony Waller, assistant dean for career planning and professional development at the University of Illinois College of Law. “For Chicago firms, that means [University of] Chicago, Northwestern and Michigan.”

Tough Job Market for Law School Students
by Jessica Calefati

The recession might be easing, but that doesn’t mean law students will have an easier time finding jobs at top firms this fall, the New York Times reports.

Law students are competing for about half as many openings at the country’s most prominent firms as their classmates were last year. For the first time in decades, the promise of a lucrative corporate law career for top students is uncertain, and in response, growing numbers of students are considering firms in smaller markets, opportunities in government, and jobs with public interest groups.

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 Law’s glittering names—like Baker & McKenzie; Milbank, Tweed, Hadley, & McCloy; and White & Case—were stunned when those firms canceled interviews in New Haven this month.

New York, Georgetown, and Northwestern universities all confirm that the number of interviews they are hosting on campus has dropped by one third to one half compared with a year ago, and less prestigious law schools are suffering even more.

Fulfilling Jobs for Lawyers

To the Editor:

Re “Downturn Dims Prospects Even at Top Law Schools” (Business Day, Aug. 26):

By taking away the possibility of easy employment in high-paying jobs, the economic downturn may end up helping the current crop of law students.

Very few law students at elite schools make meaningful explorations of the broad array of career choices available to law school graduates. Instead, lured by prestige and a high salary, they march through on-campus interviews to large urban law firms, where a great many end up leading unfulfilled lives.

As the jobs with large salaries disappear, law students will draw on the thoughtfulness, intelligence and perseverance that got them into law school in the first place in order to find employment that they actually find rewarding. They will also find creative ways to pay their loans and other expenses.

Most law graduates already do not expect a starting salary of $160,000 and yet are able to make ends meet. Graduates of elite schools will adjust to the new financial realities and come out better for it.

Michael F. Melcher
New York, Aug. 26, 2009

The writer, a graduate of Stanford Law School, is the author of “The Creative Lawyer: A Practical Guide to Authentic Professional Satisfaction.”

Law School Graduates Facing Grueling Job Market

Law students are being forced to shelve their plans of joining large law firms and are instead seeking opportunities in government or public interest groups.

The New York Times reports that some of the nation’s top firms have cut back significantly on hiring, including the Philadelphia-based Morgan, Lewis & Bockius–which cancelled recruiting entirely for the first time in 136 years. Similarly, Bloomberg reports that Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, the top-grossing U.S. law firm, trimmed the number of law students it plans to hire next summer by about half.

“Our expectation, and we have been upfront and honest about this, is that our summer program will be less than half of what it was this year,” said Skadden recruiting partner Howard Ellin in an interview with Bloomberg. “It reflects lower demand in the industry.”

The Times notes that top universities such as New York University, Georgetown and Northwestern have all confirmed that interviews have decreased by about a third to a half of what it was a year ago.

Which Law School Grads Have It the Worst?

How bad is the job market for graduates of top law schools? Worst in 50 years, reports the New York Times. Job fairs at top schools like Yale and Harvard are getting stood up by cash-strapped firms. The story at top East Coast law names is a slew of slashed hirings, delayed starts, and canceled recruiting. The twilight of the recession still means dark days for even the nation’s most illustrious firms and it all boils down to thousands of law school grads getting crushed with nowhere to start chipping away at six-figure debt. But what really surprised me about this article was who has it the worst…

It’s not the 2009 grads, or even the 2010 grads — it’s the current second-years, says the author. Here’s the reasoning:

The timing is worst for the class of 2011, the second-years now looking to get into firms, because of a unique logjam created last year. After the September financial crisis, firms chose to defer their new hires at the price of steeply cutting recruiting this year.

Economic Woes Hitting Recent Law School Grads Hard
by Ian Bush

These are tough times for a lot of folks looking for work — even for those who want to be lawyers. Law schools across the country say fewer firms are recruiting, and that’s leaving students worried — and in piles of debt.

It’s supposed to be a nice payoff — after amassing hundreds of thousands of dollars in tuition, the salary law grads get should make most of those zeroes vanish.

But as big firms buckle under economic pressure, they’re taking on fewer hires:

“There’s a bit of malaise settling in among the student body.”

Amy Montemarano, the assistant dean of career and professional development at Drexel’s Earle Mack School of Law, says there’s a deafening silence from a third of the firms that used to recruit.

Students Fret as Big Law Jobs Vanish

This fall, law students are competing for half as many openings at big firms as they were last year in what is shaping up to be the most wrenching job search season in over 50 years, The New York Times’s Gerry Shih reports.

For students now, the promise of the big law firm career — and its paychecks — is slipping through their fingers, forcing them to look at lesser firms in smaller markets as well as opportunities in government or with public interest groups, law school faculty and students say.

The frenzy has even pushed the nation’s top firms, a tradition-bound coterie, into discussing how to reform the recruitment process with an earnestness that would have been unthinkable just years ago.

Even if the economy is beginning to pick up, the legal profession has been pummeled over the last year, with some firms closing and survivors often asking associates to take leaves of absence.

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 Law’s glittering names — like Baker & McKenzie; Milbank, Tweed, Hadley, & McCloy; and White & Case — were stunned when those firms canceled 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.

Some other avice he offers may be less helpful – like ‘accept your offer quickly.’  I frankly think it’s wisest to not accept job offers quickly and be in a position to evaluate numerous offers.  Think things through, don’t ‘accept your offer quickly.’

Be sure to read the entire article at Law.com…

Commentary: Law Students Should Take Long View

by William A. Chamberlain

This is indeed a tough time to be a 2L. One has to keep reminding one’s self that this down economy, like all others, will pass. Despite all of the uncertainty, today’s law students can be certain that in the long run, they can have long and happy legal careers.

In the meanwhile, this on-campus interview (OCI) season has been far different than any other in recent memory. The current OCI season now seems like the culmination of a process that began with layoffs in late 2008 and early 2009, deferrals for the Class of 2009 until sometime in 2010, and greater competition among summer associates this summer for permanent offers.

The students in the Class of 2011 were able to have a relatively relaxed and educational, if not particularly remunerative, summer, gaining legal experience with judges, professors, public interest agencies and small firms. Meanwhile, we in career offices watched with increasing unease as several firms cancelled their OCI visits, their visits for 3L students, and, in some cases, their 2010 summer programs altogether. Other firms decided to postpone hiring decisions for next summer until later in the fall or the spring.

While we at Northwestern are firm believers in the free market, we also reached out to each firm that cancelled to try to persuade them to attend or to at least do a request for resumes. We hope that an upturn in the economy by the end of the year will encourage some firms to explore Spring hiring for second-years.

Still, this initial phase of the hiring season brings a hopefulness, not unlike the first semester of law school before grades come out. But as word of callbacks spreads, student unease is likely to grow — as will the uncertainty. While we all know that summer associate classes for 2010 will be much smaller, by and large, than this past summer, we do not know how small nor do we know when firms will start limiting the process — with the number of callback offers or with the number of summer offers.

Our message to students about how to handle offers has been straightforward — accept your offer quickly. The key is to get a job for next summer. Smart students will not rely on NALP’s 45-day guideline but rather accept their offers as soon as humanly possible. From the school side, we have dealt with all sorts of reactions by firms to the economy and are urging our students to be risk-averse. Any sense of entitlement will be fatal this fall.

Read more at Bloomberg…

Skadden Arps Slashes Law School Hires for Summer of 2010
By Cynthia Cotts and Carlyn Kolker

Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, the top-grossing U.S. law firm, cut the number of law school students it plans to hire next summer by about half.

The firm hired 225 law school students this summer and expects to hire less than half of that for summer 2010, Skadden recruiting partner Howard Ellin said yesterday in an interview.

“Our expectation, and we have been upfront and honest about this, is that our summer program will be less than half of what it was this year,” Ellin said in a telephone interview from Harvard Law School, where he was conducting on-campus interviews. “It reflects lower demand in the industry.”

Early this year, the largest U.S. law firms began firing junior lawyers, delaying the start dates of first-year associates and revamping compensation models. Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP and Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP have said they won’t hire students for summer jobs in 2010.

Read more at Philly.com…

Law grads headed for public-interest work
By Chris Mondics

Legal-services groups that represent Philadelphia’s poorest citizens are readying themselves for an unexpected windfall – the arrival of newly minted law school graduates whose start dates at big law firms have been pushed back and who will spend a year practicing public-interest law.

Leaders of these organizations say the arrival of the new lawyers could not have come at a better time. Foundations have reduced their grants, as have other supporters, in response to the nation’s economic downturn, so legal groups have been scrambling to staff cases.

During the next several weeks, a half-dozen or more new law-school graduates will be joining their staffs.

Effectively, they will be compensated by the law firms that hired them and then pushed back their starting dates. But their paychecks will be far less than what they would have earned had they started on schedule at the firms.

The firms are seeking to trim their costs in response to a decline in revenue after last fall’s economic collapse, and that has been a boon to public-interest legal groups.

Study: More students turn to law school in failing economy
Registration for LSATs has increased more than 20 percent during past year
By Alex Zielinski

An April study of prospective law students revealed a leading motive for attending law school: the failing economy.

The study, administrated by Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions, reported that 40 percent of the 1,040 students who took the February 2009 Law School Admission Test were motivated by today’s economic crisis to apply to law school. In addition, the registration for the Kaplan-administered LSATs has increased by more that 20 percent during the past year.

Since 2006, the University’s School of Law has seen the number of applicants rise by 113, with 2008’s enrollment around 531 students. The law school’s LL.M, or Master of Laws, class of 2010 will be the largest since the program’s initiation two years ago. The law school building itself can hold no more than its current students, so increased applications would mean more discretion when reviewing new applicants.

The survey highlighted many economic reasons why students would decide to go to law school now. Sixty-seven percent of survey participants said the high earning power of a law degree substantially affected their decision to pursue an education in the field.

Proceed with caution!

The Top Eight Reasons to NOT go to Law School

1. FINANCIAL SUICIDE -

Law school is unjustifiably expensive!! If you have a house – sell it; if you have children – sell them (but try to buy them back later – you’re not going to have time for them anyway so let someone else raise them – but do sell them. The money spent on law school loans is ridiculous, so sell something (or some kids) first, and then get a loan for the rest. F*ck what you heard about how much money you’re going to make when you pass the bar in 3 to 4 years – you’re going to need at least 12 years of paying off that loan.

2. IF YOU’RE A CREATIVE PERSON, FORGET IT -

Law School will suck the creativity out of you. Law school is designed to make you a logical, stringent person who can quickly analyze any situation. There’s no room for creativity. Imagination? Imagination is for artists, chefs, bloggers, children, writers, Entrepreneurs, happy people – not lawyers. (Maybe I should rethink all this, huh?)

3. THE “BREAKUP” RATE IS NEARLY 80% -

If you are married, have a partner, or a live-in relationship – it’s over! (Only 19% of Law Students retain their relationships during Law School.) There’s no time for being social – no time for family, making love, burping a small child, there’s not even time for dinner! Plus, you won’t meet anyone new at school – your new friends and classmates will live in the library and will not find much time away from their books to even remember you by the fourth class of the day.

4. THE BAR EXAM IS BRUTAL -

This exam is 2 to 3 days long, and you are asked “Analytical Reasoning Questions” which is a fancy way of saying “You will never be asked these nonsensical nonsense questions again for the rest of your life” questions. They ask you a bunch of other crap, but the question on your mind will be, “Why did I decide to do this bullsh*t?” You will study like an animal for three months, only surfacing from your dungeon to eat and feel some sunlight on your face for one insane exam. Plus, if you fail (nearly 50% of us will – well, actually around 43% overall will fail, but that’s a lot!!) you have the option of torturing yourself for the next 6 months to take the exam again. In New York, they actually setup triage medical stations and have squads of ambulance (motors running) ready to separate the strong from the weak.

5. TOP JOBS ARE HARD TO COME BY-

Working at the top law firms is one of the most competitive jobs in the entire country – especially New York (damn, do I need to move…again?) Don’t forget, you need to be in the top 20 LAW SCHOOLS and score in the top 5% for these big-wig top law firms to even look at you.

6. INSANE HOURS -

Practicing law is usually a 70 hour work week for budding lawyers fresh out of school. Prepare to spend all your nights in the office – weekends and holidays as well. Primarily, you’ll be doing EVERYTHING and handing off huge case files for the “real” lawyers at the firm (that’s right, all the work – none of the glory.) Average time spent before becoming managing partner? Approximately 22 years from your start date. OUCH!!

7. LAW PROFESSORS ARE A-HOLES -

Law school professors are some of the most pretentious and arrogant people on this earth. They know everything about everything. In office hours you will find yourself thinking that God is talking to you and then you will realize it is your criminal law professor engaged in some diatribe about Moses. What does this have to do with Law? Nothing! But can you stop him from speaking…NO! Your grade depends on it!

8. HARASSMENT -

Just because you are attending Law School, your entire family and friends (some neighbors too) will ask you for all kinds of legal advice. When you tell them you can’t dispense any advice, because you are NOT a lawyer, they’ll look at you and say, “Then the advice should be free!” Uhm…What???

Think before you “think” that you want to become a lawyer – it’s gruelling. Do not get caught-up with these pretty perfect size 6 lawyers or expensive fitted suit on gym-bodies you see on television. The reality is; it’s a difficult path during the process of attending law school and an even more difficult process “staying on” the path once started.

THINK TWICE, then THINK again.

Then again, with a law degree, you can do ‘anything,’ or so I have been told.  The ABA Journal reports…

New Lawyer Says Waitress Job Pays More than Small Law Firms
By Debra Cassens Weiss

Recent law school graduate Bobbi-Sue Doyle-Hazard has discovered a sad reality as she works as a waitress at a Boston steak restaurant and goes on interviews for jobs at small law firms—her pay will likely drop when she finds legal work.

She told the Boston Business Journal about one recent job interview. “When asked what I’d like for a salary I said $50,000, and I was told that was high,” Doyle-Hazard said. Still, she is thrilled about the interviews and eager to find work in civil litigation.

Read more at Bloomberg…

Fordham Law School Bans Reed Smith From Recruiting on Campus
By Cynthia Cotts

Fordham Law School, one of the 15 most-selective U.S. law schools, banned international law firm Reed Smith LLP from recruiting on the New York campus for five years.

Reed Smith canceled fall interviews at Fordham at the last minute, after announcing its intention to conduct the interviews and receiving an interview schedule, Fordham Dean William Treanor wrote in an e-mail yesterday to students.

“In my seven years as dean, no other firm has canceled its interviews after the schedule was released,” Treanor wrote. “At Fordham Law, we require our students to conduct themselves with the utmost professionalism, and we expect employers to demonstrate the same high standards.”

Early this year, the largest U.S. law firms began firing junior lawyers, delaying the start dates of first-year associates and revamping compensation models. Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP and Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP have said they won’t hire students for summer jobs in 2010.

Develop a Specialty Now, Alum Urges Law Students
By Martha Neil

Dennis Brown, the managing partner of the Littler Mendelson office in San Jose, notes:

“When I graduated from law school, hiring decisions were primarily based on GPA and getting a broad survey of general law courses so you could run, ride, rope and shoot—like a cowboy,” says Brown. “What we have seen, especially with a dwindling job market, is the firms no longer have the capacity or inclination to take the raw clay and to shape it completely into something they would like the associate to be.”

Law school applications rise despite costs, market
by Elizabeth Crisp

For Lindsey Tew Simmons, the decision to start law school at Mississippi College three years ago was an easy one – she just couldn’t predict the effect the economy could have on her job prospects as she finished.

Like many who graduated law school in May, Simmons is taking the bar exam this week. In addition to the hours she devoted to studying for the rigorous test, Simmons said she has looked “practically every single day” for several months for job leads.

“It’s been really frustrating,” she said. “You go into law school expecting to come out with this really good, high-paying job and they’re just not there.”

The complaint is common, but mounting student costs, shrinking job prospects and receding salaries in many legal professions are barely causing a dent in the steady stream of students deciding to enroll in law school this year.

Nationally, law school applications are up 4.3 percent over last year, according to the American Bar Association. At Mississippi College’s School of Law, applications have gone up 14 percent.

The University of Mississippi’s School of Law saw a slight decrease, said director of admissions Barbara Vinson.

…

As the second quarter of 2009 came to a close, the Center for Career Strategy & Advancement at Northwestern University’s School of Law reported the country as a whole is “amidst a decline in law firm revenue and the demand for legal services.”

In addition to being harder to find, the jobs that are out there often aren’t paying the high salaries students had counted on to whittle down their debts.

Internship Is Secured, but a Seat? That’s Tricky
By SIMON AKAM

Susan Cho’s internship at the Kings County district attorney’s office this summer has presented some different challenges than her previous stint working alongside prosecutors in Rochester. “There’s sometimes trouble finding a seat,” Ms. Cho, 26, who is soon to be a second-year student at Villanova University School of Law, said of her spell at 350 Jay Street in Downtown Brooklyn.

Last summer, 135 law students toiled as unpaid interns with the Brooklyn district attorney. This year there are 195 — a number that Carol L. Moran, the director of legal hiring, believes is a record.

The bumper crop of interns, whose placements end July 31, is the result of an increase in both applications and the percentage of students who accepted offers, most likely a fallout of the recession, as many corporate law firms have cut back on their summer programs. In addition to the intensified competition to score a full-time — and paid — job after graduation, the intern glut has put a premium on office chairs, desk space and meaty assignments.

“It’s much harder for them to find stuff for us to do,” said one intern who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of alienating his bosses. “Definitely some people feel they haven’t done anything.”

Read the whole article at Philly.com…

Young lawyer navigates tough economy with grace
By Chris Mondics

On the day she graduated from law school in the spring of 2008, as the great ship of the global economy began to list and take on water, it would have been easy for Lindi von Mutius to throw up her hands in despair.

True, she soon managed to land a job in Philadelphia with a small real estate law firm. But the firm’s finances quickly went south, lawyers began to jump ship, and paychecks started to bounce.

Recruiters, as recruiters often are, were cheery and buoyant and promised the moon, but time after time the jobs and engagements they promised evaporated as the big law firms cut back.

Von Mutius, a 27-year-old graduate of Vermont Law School, with a master’s in environmental management from Harvard, an undergraduate degree from Williams College, and fluency in both Arabic and German, was determined to strike out on her own.

She took on a handful of private probate and foreclosure clients.

And, in a decision that surprised some of her peers, she started working as a waitress in Ardmore two nights a week.

This might seem an unusual course for a lawyer whose father is the chief financial officer for a German multinational energy company and traces his lineage to Prussian nobility, and whose mother, a native of Guyana of black and Indian heritage, is an assistant dean at Harvard. Nor is it the usual course in the at-times snooty, acutely status-conscious world of law.

But von Mutius is not one to put on airs.

“My family was like ‘Oh’,” she said of the reaction when she took the waitressing job. “I said ‘whatever, you guys, I am not asking you for money to pay my bills so you should be happy.’ My family said if you need some money call us. I said no, ‘I will deal with this on my own.’”

In the end, it appears to have worked out smashingly for von Mutius. She landed what she calls her dream job with Flaster Greenberg, a smallish, 75-lawyer firm in Philadelphia and South Jersey that finds itself in what has become a legal market sweet spot.

It is large enough to handle complex, difficult cases for big corporate clients but small enough that its rates remain well below those of bigger law firms, and thus attractive to companies looking to cut costs.

Law School Career Centers Adjust in Bad Market
by Petra Pasternak

Law school career services offices are responding to the anemic job market by adding a hire or two, paying more attention to markets outside their home turf, and serving up more tailored advice. The efforts are driven by growing demand from students as well as alumni, career professionals say.

UCLA School of Law, for instance, is reviewing applications for a new alumni counselor position. “We have always counseled alumni in our office, but with the market, we are seeing an increase in demand from alumni as well as students,” said Beth Moeller, assistant dean for career services, in an e-mail. At the moment, it is a one-year contract position focusing on one-on-one counseling for everyone from recent graduates to mid-career alumni, plus outreach to potential employers.

UC-Berkeley School of Law is looking to add two career counselors despite a campus hiring freeze, according to a spokeswoman. In a May letter to students and alumni, Dean Christopher Edley Jr. said the school is determined to “assure 100 percent employment of our graduating students, despite the difficult market,” and help alumni through “difficult transitions.”

Two months ago, University of the Pacific’s McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento promoted Colleen Truden to the new position of assistant director for employer outreach, said Dave James, assistant dean for career development. Truden, who has been with the career center about two years, is now driving to cities like Modesto and Fresno for visits with law firm recruiting partners and administrators and well-placed alumni.

Read the whole article at MinnLawyer.com…

Bad economy can make taking the bar exam even more stressful
by Michelle Lore

The lack of sleep, quick meals, missed social events and late-night studying will soon be over. This week more than 830 would-be lawyers will flock to the RiverCentre in St. Paul for two days to sit for the Minnesota bar examination.

Test takers say that preparing for the exam has been stressful, in part because of the vast amount of information they must digest and to a lesser extent, the uncertain economic times. But for most, thoughts of anything but the exam have been put aside for the past eight weeks.

“All of the issues with the economy and employment have to be put in the back of my mind and all of my focus has to be on the law that I need to know for the bar,” said University of St. Thomas School of Law grad Rasheen Tillman, who has not yet found employment. “If in the end I don’t pass the bar I wouldn’t have a job anyway, so it all comes down to passing.”

Scott Swanson, director of academic achievement at the University of St. Thomas Law School, runs a dedicated bar review course that meets twice a week in the two months leading up to the exam. He said that despite the downturn in the economy, he doesn’t think that the stress level of test takers is higher than usual.

“Bar exam stress is its own separate thing,” he said.

…

Living the law

Whatever study methods the law grads employ, it’s a stressful time for them.

“Everything in my life came to a halt,” said Tillman. “I live, breath, and sleep the law. I am trying not to burn out, but it is tiring studying day after day for such long hours.”

While the stress is real for all test takers, those law grads who don’t have a job lined up may feel it more keenly.

“There’s this fear that you really do have to pass it or people aren’t going to hire you,” Swann explained.