Recently in Job Market Category

It’s summertime! Unlike your younger years as a carefree college kid delivering pizza, this summer you’ll be doin’ time in an office. You’ll spend your days researching law, handling client intake, or if you have a really unique boss, writing movie scripts!

In the old days, most law students would spend their summers working for a judge, a BigLaw firm, or in a public service internship. Today’s reality is a bit different, and you could be working anywhere from BigLaw to a craigslist-sourced crapternship™. No matter where you work, however, keep these tips in mind:

Got a couch?

If you weren't one of the lucky few to land a gig before graduation, well, that's probably not going to change any time soon. Over the next year, much like a groundhog headed for hibernation, you'll need to burrow in for the cold winter summer of post-graduation bar review and unemployment.

I learned something interesting yesterday. I had always assumed that my hiring at FindLaw was the product of my appropriate pedigree (English minor, law degree from Dubyanel, and background in blogging, web design, and HTML coding) seasoned with the helpful praise of a dear friend’s mother, who has worked at FindLaw for quite some time.

I was wrong. It turns out my “sparkly” cover letter was to blame. I dug up that cover letter, and decided to share with you, the dear recent grads seeking jobs, what seems to have worked. Here’s the best line from an overly-casual cover letter:

Without even perusing Above the Law’s 2013 Top 50 Law School Rankings, we were certain of one thing: they beat the heck out of Thomas M. Cooley’s Judging the Law Schools Rankings (which emphasize the number of chairs in the library — Thomas M. Cooley is #2, right behind Harvard!).

No ma’am, ATL’s rankings emphasize something far more important to grads and pre-L’s everywhere: actual legal employment. As the glorious blog quipped, “Most people attend law school to become lawyers. Not butchers, bakers, or candlestick makers.” Bonus points are awarded for BigLaw and clerkships.

This year, we've seen a lot of bad news about the legal job market. The most recent statistics were devastating for everyone except lateral candidates who have been practicing for more than five years. Half of the class of 2011 was making less than $60k, which means student loans are sitting pretty in default status. The depressing statistics would have been unfathomably low just a few years ago. Today, it matches with many of our experiences, as well as those of our classmates.

One man, however, contends that the glass is half-full. Professor D. Benjamin Barros of Widener tracked down law grads from the class of 2010 and 2011 to see how they were faring today, rather than at the nine month mark. The results were better, though they were better in a "getting shot in the leg is better than being run over slowly by a steamroller" sort of way.

It’s not easy living in the age of social media. Everything we do is documented. Everything we say is easily reproduced and published for mass consumption.

Everyone is a spy, and our peers are prone to ratting us out for our indiscretions.

It’s even worse for college students and law students. Can you imagine being the idiot that you were in your younger years now?

Doom. Gloom. The bubble went boom, leaving an economy, and a legal industry, with no room.

We'd hoped, prayed, and lit candles for the soul of the legal industry, but alas, if the prognostications of Jim Leipold, the executive director of the National Association for Law Placement (NALP) are true, then there truly is no hope. Recent grads, and those to come, expect a career path as desolate and decayed as this molding bread city.

Practicality? Puh-leez. If that was the only consideration, philosophy majors wouldn’t exist.

With the collapse of the entry-level legal job market, and the unfathomable employment statistics that go along with it, one would expect that the pool of potential law students would shrink. Indeed, that has been the case. One foolish blogger has even suggested that this is the perfect “buy low” time to go to law school.

That foolish blogger (who coincidentally holds a liberal arts degree with two liberal arts minors) apparently has company. A survey conducted by Kaplan Test Prep finds a whole lot of pre-law students who are headed to law school knowing that there are no law jobs. A few of the hilariously naive results from the survey include:

Do you have any idea how many lawyers are hanging around D.C., not practicing at law firms? It's a lot.

In 2011, the ABA reported that 1 in 12 D.C. residents are lawyers. The national average is 1 in 260, according to the Huffington Post.

What makes D.C. a legal mecca? Is an employment pilgrimage in your future? Here are five reasons to head to D.C.

Horace Greeley reportedly said, "Go West, young man, go West. There is health in the country, and room away from our crowds of idlers and imbeciles." That was 1883.

In 2013, recent law graduates would be wise to heed his advice, although it should be noted that "West," in 1883, was the Midwest. It's also still the place to look, as there is still opportunity in the "flyover" states.