Reason 29

Reason 29.  New attorneys vastly outnumber dwindling law jobs; desperation is on the rise.

After graduating, racking up $50-100k in debt, and passing the bar, you’ll have a 55% chance of landing a permanent, full-time legal job within a year of graduation.[i]

Yes, I wrote that right, and yes, you read it right.  Unless your mom is an attorney and wants to hire you, your odds of becoming a full-time, permanently situated lawyer will be about the same as that of a coin toss. 

Many students give up on becoming an attorney after several months and settle for any decent job that pays.  And for those who choose to hang tight, stay strong, and strive tirelessly to become a working attorney after graduation, it’s not uncommon to pound pavement for over a year (and quite possibly more) before landing any permanent job in the legal profession.  Even temporary contract gigs have become quite desirable for paying the rent – and thus are increasingly hard to get – and it’s also not unusual for newly licensed attorneys to log hundreds or thousands of volunteer hours in the fight to find a job.  New attorneys’ applications for non-profit volunteer opportunities stack into the hundreds. 

And, in case you like horror flicks and rollercoasters, here are a few more terrifying figures to make your stomach drop: 

·         Nine months after graduation, only 86% of 2011 law school graduates had found work.  Not legal work, mind you – just plain work.[ii]  This will hopefully improve in step with the general economy.

o   It gets worse, though:  If you exclude graduates who have taken “bridge fellowships” funded by their own schools (thus conveniently inflating graduate employment stats), that number is actually 81%.[iii]   (Note that the vast majority of those “bridge” jobs are part-time and temporary.) 

o   On top of that, another 3% of the reported jobs were actually solo practitioner positions, in which the grad started a business and hired herself. 

o   Another 2% were working for legal temp agencies.[iv]

·         Among those who had jobs, only 65.4% held jobs that required passage of the bar. 

o   Of those, 12% were part-time, and 7% were both temporary and part-time.   

The scary thing about a really difficult job market is that it’s not personal.  You can’t sweet-talk it or have it look the other way for you.  No amount of beauty, determination, hard work, or intelligence can guarantee you immunity or speed up the job hunt. 

Plain and simple, the number of new students graduating each year far outstrips the number of available attorney jobs.  In 2009, twice as many people in the U.S. passed the bar exam (54,000) as there were openings for lawyers (26,000).[v]   

For this, you’ll pay a hundred thousand dollars, live on bad delivery pizza, and give up every waking hour of three years of your life?

(Hungry for more cheap thrills and stomach-plunging statistics?  Feel free to check out the  "Don't Go to Law School: 50 Reasons" ebook.)

 

---

[i] Weiss, Debra Cassens.  “Only 55 Percent of 2011 Law Grads Had Full-Time, Long-Term Legal Jobs, Analysis Shows.”  June 19, 2012. ABA Journal. http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/only_55_percent_of_2011_law_grads_had_full-time_long-term_legal_jobs_analys/  Accessed 26 Nov 2012.

[ii] “Law School Grads Face Worst Job Market Yet - Less Than Half Find Jobs in Private Practice.”  June 7, 2012.  National Association of Law Placement. http://www.nalp.org/2011selectedfindingsrelease  Accessed 26 Nov 2012.

[iii] “New Research on Law School Funded Positions for Law School Graduates.” September 2012.  National Association of Law Placement.  http://www.nalp.org/sept12research_lsfunded  Accessed 26 Nov 2012.

[iv] “Median Private Practice Starting Salaries for the Class of 2011 Plunge as Private Practice Jobs Continue to Erode.”  July 12, 2012.  National Association of Law Placement.  http://www.nalp.org/classof2011_salpressrel  Accessed 26 Nov 2012.

[v] The worst ratios belong to New York, California, and New Jersey.  Rampell, Catherine.  “The Lawyer Surplus, State by State.”  June 27, 2011.  The New York Times.  http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/27/the-lawyer-surplus-state-by-state/  Accessed 26 Nov 2012.