Lowlights from the National Association for Law Placement’s May 2010 employment report on 2009 law-school graduates:

• The NALP “report is based on information submitted by 192 ABA-accredited law schools on 96% of the graduates in the Class of 2009″
• 88% were employed
  • This includes graduates whose employment start dates were deferred beyond 1 December 2009
  • This number is inflated by the 25% of 2009 grads in temporary jobs (including judicial clerkships)
    • Sector breakdown of temporary jobs:
      • Public interest–41%
      • Business–30%
      • Academia–69%
        • Law schools apparently created many of these jobs to keep disillusioned gangs of recent grads from roaming the streets
      • Private practice–8%
• The mean salary for 2009 grads is $93,000
  • The salary distribution ain’t a bell curve; very few 2009 grads actually make $93,000
    • 34% of the salaries are bunched in a mini-bell curve around $45-$60,000, with the peak at $50,000
    • 25% of the salaries form a spike–more like a stick in the eye than a curve–around $160,000
      • The data do not include bar stipends, signing bonuses, and bar review reimbursement
      • Including such non-salary compensation would increase the mean
      • Such non-salary compensation is received disproportionately by graduates at the $160,000 end of the distribution
  • Adjusted for unreported income and for the more complete data at the high end of the scale, the adjusted mean salary for 2009 grads is closer to $85,000

Note to JA:  I take no pleasure in reporting this information.  Really.

Another post, courtesy of AmLaw Daily, that doesn’t require reading past the first sentence: Summer Hiring Survey: 44 Percent Down in 2010.

Some of the details:

• Skadden, Arps:  2009 — 223 summer associates; 2010 — 79 summer associates
• Cravath, Swaine & Moore:  2009 — 123 summer associates; 2010 — 23 summer associates
• Ropes & Gray:  2009 — 200 summer associates; 2010 82 summer associates
• Goodwin Procter:  2009 — 66 summer associates; 2010 40 summer associates

The linked article contains the full survey.

Hope drives rise in law school applications Despite grim job statistics in nearly every corner of the legal world, law school applications increased by 7% over last year. National Law Journal, 12 July 2010

Why?

“I’m obviously about to take on a lot of debt. I’m hoping by the time I get out of law school the job climate will be better.” Incoming University of Toledo College of Law One L quoted in the linked article.  From the same article, a fact I cited before in Law:  The Cuddly Profession:  ”In a recent survey of 330 prelaw student by Kaplan Test Prep, 52% felt “very confident” that they would land a legal job after graduation, although only 16% felt confident that most of their fellow graduates would be as successful.”

Quoth Washington University law professor Brian Tamanaha “In 15 years of teaching, I’ve known a lot of students who came here because they didn’t know what they wanted to do.  A lot of this is about cyclical irrational decision-making. It’s based on a very human trait, which is overoptimism. For the people who have always wanted to be a lawyer, they should go to law school. For anyone else, it’s not a good decision.”

Here are two recent articles—or more accurately blurbs–of interest to prospective law students, sent my way by a current law student.  Survey: Most Pre-Law Students Confident re Own Prospects, But Dubious About Others reports on the results of a Kaplan Test Prep study of 330 pre-law students:  “52 percent are ‘very confident’ of finding a legal job after graduating from law school and passing the bar exam. However, only 16 percent are ‘very confident’ that most of their classmates will achieve the same success.”  Someone from Kaplan opines that the results show prospective students’ “optimism in an economic turnaround” and speaks to the respondents’ “self-assurance.”  A less-flattering interpretation is that  84 percent of pre-law students are “very confident” that most of their classmates will be losers? Imagine the survey respondents’ first day in law school.  In her welcoming remarks the Dean says “each of you look around–the two people to your immediate left and the two people to your immediate right–plus 1/5th of that next guy–believe that you will not find a legal job and/or will fail the bar.”  Disdain, arrogance, smug superiority, and self-delusion, all in the name of self-assurance–welcome to law school indeed.

The second blurb, Researcher Says Law Students Need to Learn to Read Like Lawyers, has little substance.  The comments, however, admittedly from a small population, reveal bitterness, disillusionment, cynicism, and frustration with the practice of law.  One reading is that these are the first article’s 84%, still looking down post-graduation on judges, courts, clerks, and other lawyers.  Another is that trial practice stinks.  Another is that there are a lot of unhappy lawyers.  Another is that lawyers like to bitch.  Another is (e) all of the above.

A headline that hardly needs a story attached:  US News Warns of Tough Times for Law Grads; Expert Says ‘It’s Just Like the Lottery.’ This ain’t news but since it comes from Rankings Mania Central it will have legs.  Jobs are down, tuition is up, loans are harder to repay.  Among the grim tidbits:

According to a separate “Tips and Stats” article, first-year associates at large law firms can expect to make $106,500 to $131,250, down 5.1 percent from last year. At midsize firms, associates can make between $71,500 and $100,750, and at small firms they make make $49,750 to $73,000.

The Supreme Court Bobblehead collection doubled this week when Justices Souter, Kennedy, and Scalia moved north after a long, pleasant stay in rural Maryland.  The new arrivals join Justices Rehnquist, Stevens, and O’Connor in my office.  Also joining is a mystery Bobblehead rumored to be on the short list to replace Justice Stevens–a selection that would quiet critics of the Court’s lack of species diversity.

Sphere: Related Content

]]> http://trudalane.net/2010/04/14/nod-once-for-yes/feed/ 1 http://trudalane.net/2010/03/31/do-due-diligence/ http://trudalane.net/2010/03/31/do-due-diligence/#comments Thu, 01 Apr 2010 00:36:01 +0000 David Randall http://trudalane.net/?p=2472

A few readers have said that I am too negative about pursuing legal careers.  I don’t think I am–I urge wannabe law students to do due diligence and assess their job prospects with brutal honesty–but for the sake of argument let’s say I consistently discourage law school attendance.  I still have nothing on these blogs:

• Big Debt, Small Law (Dirt poor lawyers in a filthy rich town) Sample:  Legal practice has “degenerated into a money-grubbing, paper-churning farce, where the “winners” walk away with millions and the “losers” are packed elbow-to-elbow in sunless boiler rooms and forced to work sweatshop hours for slave wages, under conditions that often shock the conscience.”
• Exposing the Law School Scam Sample:  “This blog is written by a coalition of lawyers . . . interested in exposing the dramatic oversupply of lawyers, and how that oversupply has been caused by bogus employment and income/salary statistics used by most law schools to induce applicants to apply to law school.  Also, we are concerned with how the legal establishment is complicit in this ‘law school scam.’”
• JD Underdog Sample:  JD Underdog “worked the doc review circuit before finally landing a permanent job that he could have gotten with a college degree. His mission is to humor you, but warn you of the dangers of going to law school with the deck so heavily stacked.”
• Third tier reality Sample: “My goal is to inform potential law school students and applicants of the ugly realities of attending law school. DO NOT ATTEND UNLESS: (1) YOU GET INTO A TOP 8 LAW SCHOOL; (2) YOU GET A FULL-TUITION SCHOLARSHIP TO ATTEND; (3) YOU HAVE EMPLOYMENT AS AN ATTORNEY SECURED THROUGH A RELATIVE OR CLOSE FRIEND; OR (4) YOU ARE FULLY AWARE BEFOREHAND THAT YOUR HUGE INVESTMENT IN TIME, ENERGY, AND MONEY DOES NOT, IN ANY WAY, GUARANTEE A JOB AS AN ATTORNEY OR IN THE LEGAL INDUSTRY.” (Caps Original)

If that’s not enough some of these blogs contain links to blogs with similar themes.

And who says attorneys aren’t helpful?

Illinois lawyer Loren Friedman changed the Bs and Cs on his law-school transcript to As and Bs and landed a summer associate job at Sidley Austin, the large corporate Chicago law firm.  Years later, when Friedman was working as an associate in a firm in New York, Sidley Austin discovered the lie.  Friedman admitted his fraud to the Illinois bar, which may have remembered that Friedman previously admitted failing to disclose flunking out of medical school on his law school applications.  In deciding the fate of his license to practice the Illinois bar knew Friedman to be a serial liar.  The board hearing Friedman’s case decided to suspend his license for three years.  The attorney-discipline agency appealed, seeking permanent suspension.  The Illinois Ethics (there’s an oxymoron) Review Board just decided Friedman’s appeal.  The result?   Read the comments below or this article to find out.

The WSJ Law Blog recently ran a post that’s worth linking to just for its title:  “Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Lawyers.” Its substance–or the substance to which it links*–is less cheery, being an academic paper that addresses whether “a law degree is a good investment.”  The paper examines the investment of law school for three hypothetical students:

• “Also Ran [who] achieves above average grades in a relatively nonmarketable major from a middle-of-the-pack undergraduate institution; he could have earned a mere $40,000 in a non-legal job. Also Ran manages to claw his way into a second or third rate law school and has at best a remote prospect of landing a “Biglaw” job[;]“
• “Solid Performer [who] achieves relatively good grades in a relatively marketable major from a better institution; he could have earned $60,000 in a non-legal job. Solid Performer makes his way into a low-first or high-second rate law school and has a prospect (if all goes well and the stars are aligned), but far less than a certain prospect (since all does not always go well and the stars do not always align), of landing a “Biglaw” job[;]” and
• “Hot Prospect [who] earns stellar grades in a very marketable major from a top notch institution; she could have earned $80,000 in a non-legal job. Hot Prospect attends a first rate law school and has a strong chance of landing a “Biglaw” job.”

The paper examines each hypothetical student’s opportunity costs, tuition and fees, and net summer wages to determine their respective total cost of law school.  It then looks at the direct benefits of a law degree, discounts them, and concludes

that even at a very modest 10% discount rate, much less a more realistic higher discount rate, Also Ran, who will with great likelihood fall into the $40,000 to $65,000 starting salary range, has no business investing in a private law school degree. Similarly, Solid Performer should question his decision to attend a private law school, in spite of the fact that his expected starting salary may be around $105,000.  The reason is that he faces a substantial likelihood of falling far short of that figure . . . Finally, for Hot Prospect, who will in all likelihood land a Biglaw job starting at $160,000 per year, the law degree appears to be an acceptable investment at a 10% discount rate, albeit hardly a no-brainer. However, if a discount rate higher that 10% is deemed appropriate, even that conclusion is open to revision.

To round out this grim tale

[t]here is no reason to believe that the currently-experienced changes in the legal market for freshly-minted law school graduates are temporary; indeed, some legal scholars think they may well be permanent.  If so, then it is not just the current crop of Hot Prospects, but all future crops as well, who will need to ratchet down their expectations not only with respect to first-year compensation, but also with respect to job security and chances for partnership.

The paper notes that each student’s calculations involve different factors; the three hypothetical categories of student are painted with broad strokes.  The paper is only twelve pages long and more readable than the WSJ Law Blog post suggests.  It does not sing a different tune than readers have heard from but it does provide a structured approach to analyzing the costs and benefits of attending law school.

*Yes, this a post about a post about a post.

Having recently dissed Yahoo!’s event planners, fairness requires mention of a story I read in the Wall Street Journal Law Blog, which picked it up from the Legal Profession Blog.  This past spring Illinois solo attorney Samir Chowhan advertised for secretarial help for himself and another solo on Craigslist–in the Adult Gigs section:

Duties will include general secretarial work, some paralegal work and additional duties for two lawyers in the firm.  No experience required, training will be provided.  Generous annual salary and benefits will be provided, including medical, dental, life, disability, 401(k) etc. If interested, please send current resume and a few pictures along with a description of your physical features, including measurements.

A woman responding to the ad received an email from Chowhan that spelled out those “additional duties:”

As this is posted in the “adult gigs” section, in addition to the legal work, you would be required to have sexual interaction with me and my partner, sometimes together sometimes separate. This part of the job would require sexy dressing and flirtatious interaction with me and my partner, as well as sexual interaction. You will have to be comfortable doing this with us.

He goes on to explain the interview process:

Lastly, we’ve actually hired a couple of girls in the past for this position. But they have not been able to handle the sexual aspect of the job later. We have to be sure you’re comfortable with that aspect, because I don’t want you to do anything that you’re not comfortable with. So since that time, we’ve decided that as part of the interview process you’ll be required to perform for us sexually (i didn’t do this before with the other girls i hired, now i think i have to because they couldn’t handle it). Because that aspect is an integral part of the job, I think it’s necessary to see if you can do that, because it’ll predict future behavior of you being able to handle it when you have the job.

Illinois’s attorney disciplinary authority is investigating.  After first denying responsibility Chowhan admitted he posted the ad and sent the email, claiming  he “was just screwing around, just curious to know if anyone would respond. Unfortunately, someone did.”  He no longer practices law, a decision he says was not related to this exercise in curiosity.  That’s good, because I expect he’ll lose his license to practice.