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In the commerce/business field, especially accounting, is there lots of people who can't get jobs?

How bad is the job market for lawyers (especially with T6 degrees)?

  • Peaking probably 2 or 3 years ago, tales of employment doom for lawyers were everywhere across the internet, with various stories of newly-minted graduates who were $150-200k in debt and either jobless, or working at 40-60k/year jobs where they could never pay back their debt. I remember reading predictions that this wasn't merely a usual and temporary fluctuation, but was a sign of a permanent contraction in the legal job market. I was speaking with an acquaintance who recently graduated from Harvard Law School, who told me that in her opinion, the negativity was overblown, and everyone that she knew in her graduating class had either a job or a fellowship without too much difficulty. This got me wondering whether the situation now is still as bleak as it was a couple of years ago - for lawyers generally, but especially for lawyers from top schools. Are lawyers generally still in such difficult straits in terms of finding a job? Is the problem mostly for those graduates of ballooning bottom-tier law schools? Are those about to graduate from, say, a top 3 or a top 6 law school having trouble finding employment? If so, it is across the board, or in particular fields or types of jobs (BigLaw, etc.)? Is it mostly those lawyers just starting out, or are veteran lawyers affected too? Are begining BigLaw salaries for top grads anywhere near the $150-160k that they were before the crash, or has the oversupply dampened salaries across the board? What (if anything) can someone in law school do to make him/herself competitive on the job market and increase his/her chances of employment? What would a typical job offer look like now for an graduate from a top law school, and how does that differ from a few years ago? Is it better/worse in other English-speaking countries (Canada, the UK)? Is there a general consensus about how the future will trend, in terms of legal jobs? How does this compare to other fields that have become insanely competitive? My reference point is academia, which by now - at least in my field - might as well hand out its tenure-track jobs by lottery. Is law as bad as that? Is law academia as competitive as other fields in academia (my understanding is that other fields of academia that have lots of funding and where people have the option to become more highly paid practitioners [e.g. engineering, medicine, law] are in general less competitive to get jobs in)?

  • Answer:

    It's still pretty bad out there for everyone, but obviously, less bad if you're in the T3 anywhere, and T10 or so if you're staying local to your school. I.e., NYU grads have a harder time in SF than a Berkeley grad, and vice versa, despite being excellent schools. Yale is, to many practitioners like myself, reserved for eggheads who would rather think about really interesting intersections between X and Y provided that X is not "them" and Y is "doing real legal work." But the problems in the legal market are somewhat intractable. The BigLaw jobs are, almost exclusively, the province of the T10 schools--maybe more the T5/6 schools, given the preference for H/Y/S/NYU/CLS, since so much of the work is done in NYC. Chicago firms like UC. MoFo likes Stanford and Boalt. Those jobs are harder to come by because the Biglaw firms are getting squeezed by clients on their historic billing practices (high leverage, for one) and are being pressed to take fixed fee arrangements or piece work. A Harvard law grad is not going to be unemployed in Boston, but they may not make the Biglaw salary. The salary remains $160K to start in Biglaw, and the bonuses start (pro rated) at $10-20K, and going up to about $50/60K for an '04 or '05, if I recall. Bonuses used to be about twice as much, but were cut in '07/'08 and have never rebounded. So, HLS grad is not going begging, but he's not making $180K right out of school like all of his friends. So maybe he gets a job at a regional firm and makes less--a lot less, and maybe doesn't work a lot less, and maybe there's less stability. Or maybe not, etc. The other problem is that most schools up and down the rankings charge more or less what the private T10 schools charge, with little or no hope of getting the Biglaw salary. When I worked in NYC there were a couple of kids from Cardozo or Brooklyn or whatever, and here in Boston, I've worked with some great lawyers from Suffolk--but these guys grabbed the brass ring. So, a "lesser firm" may snap up an HLS grad and then not hire the Suffolk candidate, who moves down the scale and displaces someone from New England School of Law or whatever, and it's just a bad show. When I was in private practice, for example, I was in the bathroom next to a "bullpen" where we kept the contract attorneys doing doc review. Someone had scrawled on the bathroom wall (at a fancy firm, mind) "Harvard Law Degrees" with an arrow pointing to the toilet paper. You can imagine all sorts of narratives to explain that graffiti, but the most likely to me is that a newly minted HLS grad was dismayed at making $25 an hour (or whatever) instead of $180K/year. I went to a top ranked school and I saw a lot of grim faces in the halls after the crash, let me tell you. It's different in Canada and in the UK--where law is an undergrad degree and where there are apprenticeships, and where, frankly, the money generally is less than on Wall Street. I know a number of Magill grads in practice in the US who are here for the money. What to do? If someone is going in to a T6 school with the hope of getting a biglaw job, do the following: 1) Go to Harvard or Yale, Columbia, Stanford, NYU, Chicago, or Michigan, in that order (in my opinion, assuming you are looking to work in Biglaw in NYC) 2) Be in the top 25% of the class 3) Be on Law Review, or at least be on the editorial board of another business related journal. If you do that, and are not a total nutjob, you will likely get a biglaw job. Of course, each of those three simple steps is very, very difficult. So would the general consensus be that if one attended Harvard, Stanford, or Yale Law, you'd be virtually assured of a well-paying job upon graduation (i.e. it would be a wise gamble)? If you attended, say, Columbia or Chicago Law on a full-scholarship, would that also be the case? Harvard is the standard. Stanford is the Harvard of the west, and has somewhat less pull in the east. Yale is for eggheads who don't thrive in Biglaw, in my opinion, see above. Columbia grinds out business lawyers and sends them to Biglaw. Its connections to wall street are deep. Chicago is a great school--I'd say the Columbia of the Midwest, and as such has less pull in NYC. NYU is an excellent school but has less of a business reputation than Columbia. Michigan is good, but less good, and far away. Same with UVA. I don't remember the rest of the T10. Parting thoughts: There are two people who do very well in law school. The first group are the "everything comes easy to me geniuses" and "total grinds." The geniuses are real, bona fide geniuses. Not "smarter than the average bear" above average type A people, but real next level kind of personnel. Of the three of these I knew at school, all three became Supreme Court clerks. I was a grind. I got mostly As and A-'s in law school, and did virtually nothing other than study. I think I allowed myself one hour of television a week as a 1L, and that was all the relaxation I got. I think I threw up most days from the stress. And final, truly final thought: I worked at a white shoe firm when I graduated, making the Biglaw salary. I got that job because I worked at that firm in my 2L summer. I got that 2L summer job because I had good 1L grades, was on a journal, and had had a good, paid 1L job at another firm. I got on a journal because of my 1L grades. I got my 1L job because of my 1st semester 1L grades. 1st semester 1L year I worked endlessly and got three As and an A minus. I got those grades because a family friend who was an associate at Wachtell told me his version of the same story. There is no greater investment in one's future as a lawyer than kicking the ass of the grade curve your first year of law school.

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T6 is not a useful categorization. Yale is one bucket, Harvard and Stanford another, and Columbia, Chicago and NYU are a third. Virtually no one at Yale has or ever will want for a job at graduation. Harvard and Stanford grads need as always, at least two of three strikes not to be certain of getting a good job: terrible grades, terrible job search strategy, and terrible interview appeal -- and that applies to few people and is, to a certain extent, voluntary (someone good enough at school to be admitted needs to work at it to get grades that bad or ignore sound job search strategy that badly). The change versus the glory years is maybe half the people who do nothing as 1Ls but smoke pot and road trip to Foxwoods / Tahoe (as the case may be) struggle to find jobs verus a quarter of them. There has been an absolute change at Columbia, Chicago and NYU. The Harvard / Stanford 2 of 3 strikes used to govern, and they absolutely no longer do. You need at least middling grades, solid job search strategy, and nice interview presentation to be a sure thing. Even one strike can put a very serious bar in your way, and two strikes starts to push your odds way down. I'd argue that the time (if you don't have a great career) and tuition is still a solid return-on-investment, but it is not at all the way it was when I was at Chicago in the late 90s with tuition 40% lower than now and maybe the bottom single digits (of people, not percentage) of the class had any kind of trouble getting jobs.

MattD

you'd be virtually assured of a well-paying job upon graduation (i.e. it would be a wise gamble)? Edit to add: Definitely not. If you do well, you'll likely have a job, which is more than many can say. If you follow my 1/2/3 above you'll most likely have a high paying job, but just the sheepskin doesn't cut it. Ironically, T10 schools are often at a disadvantage in non-Biglaw because the education is much less practical than in "lesser" schools--which tend to have a strong local alumni presence compared to the much more mobile T10. If one were desperate to go to law school and could do nothing else, and were not certain that they were an actual genius destined for the federal bar and were admitted to a T10, I'd see if I could get in at a regional school with a full ride instead. I personally wouldn't play the lottery with $200K.

Admiral Haddock

Biglaw has been hit the hardest, and there continue to be rumblings that the biglaw business model as a whole is in trouble. I believe this wholeheartedly. BigLaw is already much different than it was when I was there 10 years ago, and I bet it will continue that way for the foreseeable future. I am GC at a company that before me had routinely used BigLaw firms for nearly everything, and I think we are down to only a handful of matters now. We just can't afford the rates, and we find that BigLaw firms bill more time as well. I still have a number of friends at my old firm, and they say that once you get outside of the published, lockstep salary ranges (say, years 1-6), there are significant drops in salary. Even within those ranges, there is fierce competition for hours and those that don't hit their targets may keep their job but they are veered away from the published salary schedule too. Back when I was there, the feeling was that an enterprising young lawyer could fill his or her plate, and if they could not it was the firm's failure. Now, it seems that there's less work to go around and the firm is quietly taking that out on the younger lawyers to maintain a rich profits per partner number. TL;DR: BigLaw is changing. Even if you get the $160K job it's not necessarily up from there.

AgentRocket

I'm about to graduate from a pretty mehh school (T-60ish) in NYC. My first year GPA was 3.55 which was not good enough to land me more than one big-law interviews. I picked up my grades my 2nd year and was lucky enough to get a summer associateship with a mid-sized firm, but that is certainly not the norm. When I graduate, I'll start in the $70k range, and I think they expect about 2100 hours in billables per year. Not great, but not terrible either. I'm also lucky that between my parents and my scholarships, I only have a minor amount of debt to worry about. Of the people that I know in my class, maybe ~5-10% got biglaw jobs (which works out to be about 15-30 people in my whole class), and the vast majority of my friends (2nd semester 3L) are still in the job hunt, with prospects narrowing every day for people. A good number of these people also worked invaluable connections, either friends or family or other. It goes without saying that connections in biglaw are worth their weight in gold. Realistically, if you get into a T-6 school, i.e. Harvard, Yale, etc., then your job prospects are certainly better than those in lower ranked schools, but it's not as much of a slam dunk as it used to be. But, if you miss the biglaw boat, you're stuck competing with the top students of lower ranked schools, and your competitive advantage is greatly diminished. As far as legal academia, only one of my professors have never actively practiced law in some nationally recognized firm, and this prof had a PhD in Law from Yale. I imagine like any other cushy legal job, it's extremely competitive to get into even a middling school like mine. Through pure speculation and anecdotes, it does seem that the job market is picking up, though at a much much slower rate than after previous recessions. There seems to be some consensus that the law field is in a transition phase, but law is dominated by old people with old ideas so I don't expect much to change. Firms are utilizing contract attorneys at a much higher rate than they used to be. My advice? Don't go to law school. Law school is less a meritocracy as it's a game, where the best players aren't always the smartest, and the smartest often are not good at the game. You'll find very very few lawyers who actively enjoy their jobs, and not just the money the jobs bring. And a good chunk of them are still carrying around tons of debt.

Geppp

As someone who works for a non-profit (and has lots of friends that do), I have to say there are loads of jobs for lawyers who've graduated from Columbia/Chicago/NYU who are looking to Do Good and can afford to make 60-80k a year because they didn't go in debt to finance their education.

Oktober

The school you go to and how much you pay to go there are not the only variables. You need to be the right sort of person. My grades at my third-tier school should have landed me at least a very decent local position during OCI; they didn't. The people who were gender-conforming and upper/upper-middle class did noticeably better. (And this was after mock-interviews where nobody could give me any constructive places I needed to improve.) Now, at a top-tier school, you are probably looking at something along the lines of where you're still probably going to get a job, but it's not going to be as likely to be BigLaw. And then it trickles down to where I was, where if you didn't have everything they wanted they were not giving anybody the benefit of the doubt because if they wanted a weirdo they could at least get a weirdo from a better school. But that's iffy; it seems easier overall to get by on mediocre grades but good presentation than on great grades but poor presentation.

Sequence

Canada is a bit different because you can't get a licence without articling (i.e. apprenticing) first. Many people can't get those positions, especially in Ontario, with the result that they've accumulated debt on the assumption of earning a high salary, but now have no way to pay it off. Our job market is also different because we don't have bad schools as such--the most "prestigious" schools just so happen to be in and around the two largest cities, with the biggest job markets. The UK is different because you, again, have to apprentice. So people get their law degree, take a professional course for a year or so (either barrister or solicitor) and then try to obtain (if they haven't already) the relevant apprenticeship position. What happens is many people want to be barristers, pay $20k for the course, can't find a job, and then have to retrain as solicitors. What's more, the market for junior barristers is affected by legal aid, which is currently being cut. I don't know as much about working as a solicitor there. The U.S. has a very different system. At the very least you could graduate and become a sole-practicioner. I suppose you have similar trends with large firms, client expectations, etc, as compared against Canada/UK, but you have to be careful with the scope of your comparison. As Rustcellar says, one problem is that people who were caught during the crisis are having trouble getting back on track, whereas people who are graduating now are a bit better off. That's my own sense up in Canada (I entered law school in 2007). Of course "better off" doesn't necessarily mean pre-crash levels of student intake.

maledictory

Just one small point about one of your follow-ups: I don't think it's really analogous to PhDs in academia. For one thing, it is pretty rare to go into huge debt while getting a PhD -- you should be getting your tuition paid and a stipend on top of that. The stipend may not be big, but it's certainly altogether different for law school tuition. Then, once you finish a PhD, if you don't get that "dream" academia job, you are likely to get a job in industry, which by the way, probably pays better than the academia job. I'm talking sciences (and social sciences) here; maybe the humanities are more like you implied. Not that anyone's asking me, but I would never advise paying tuition to get a PhD (in the US).

freezer cake

So you're just asking out of general curiosity, but if I had to distill your questions, I'd phrase it as: "are my friends making a bad decision jumping from academia to law school?" I think J. Wilson gives you the answer to that question--if your friends are getting full rides to Columbia/NYU, it's not always the wrong decision, but it still could be wrong for any one individual:So, is it worth the gamble, if you go to Stanford, or you go to NYU with a big scholarship? Maybe. Financially, it's not stupid. But you really have to want to practice law. And that part of the equation is notably absent from your question and follow-up comments.If your friends are thinking, "based on my experiences, I really believe I'd enjoy a career being a biglaw lawyer," then they are taking a path which, while not riskless, makes a lot of sense to me. If your friends are thinking, "lawyers make a lot of money, and law school could be fun, so maybe I'd enjoy being a lawyer, and after all lawyers do make money," then they are not making a smart decision. Law schools have both types of people these days, but I don't think that's new.

_Silky_

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