JD Journal » law school graduates

April is a Good Month for the Legal Industry with 1,500 New Jobs Added

aostler — Mon, 09 May 2011 22:55:41 +0000

Following two months of legal job loss in February and March, April is giving many in the legal field more optimism since 1,500 new legal jobs were added in the US last month, according to the official monthly report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

There was also good news in general for employment in the US, which increased by 244,000 jobs in April. Yet even with more people getting employed, the rate of unemployment went from 8.8 percent to 9 percent in April, because of more unemployed people that were beginning to look for work again.

This is especially good news for everyone in the legal industry, since the losses mentioned above include 300 in March and 2,000 in February.

There are thousands of law students that are ready to graduate this month, and hopefully there will be enough jobs to go around in the current depressed market.

Proposed Law School Accreditation Standards to Change Reporting of Graduate Employment

aostler — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 20:20:01 +0000

The American Bar Association has made new drafts to its law school accreditation standards. These proposed changes would change the way that law schools report employment information for their graduates, as well as making the requirements for passing the bar stricter, and allowing distance education students to take more credit hours. Several other major changes have also been proposed.

According to a letter from the consumer information subcommittee of the Standards Review Committee of the ABA, the requirement that exists for law schools to publish “placement rates” and “basic consumer information” leaves a lot open to interpretation.

The subcommittee also wrote the following: “Not surprisingly, with such a vague standard, schools’ practices vary widely. Some schools provide detailed information; others provide a bare minimum.”

According to the new proposal, the employment status of students after nine months would be disclosed by law schools, in addition to the percentage of the students in law school-funded jobs. They would also be required to give information about the percentage of graduates with employment that requires bar passage and those who hold non-legal jobs. Schools will also be required to specify how many students they have in part-time and full-time jobs.

These proposals will be discussed in Chicago by the Standards Review Committee on April 2 and 3. It will have an open forum as part of the meeting so that other parties can give their own comments about the proposals.

Morning Roundup

joshua — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 10:36:42 +0000

Good morning everyone! Today is Monday, July 26th. Here’s a look back at Friday’s stories.

New Jersey-based firm Archer & Greiner named a new president…

According to NALP’s Jobs & JD’s report released this week, employment is down but salaries are holding steady for law graduates…

A partner in the Dallas firm of Gruber Hurst Johansen Hail was selected as one of the nation’s “Most Powerful Employment Attorneys…

Dinsmore & Shohl added three new associates to its IP practice…

Employment Down, Salaries Hold for Law Grads

joshua — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 22:01:14 +0000

The employment rate for law school graduates of 2009 was 88.3 percent as of February of this year, a 3.6 percent drop from 2007’s historical high, and the national median salary of $72,000 was unchanged from the Class of 2008, according to NALP’s Jobs & JD’s report released this week.

For those working at law firms, the national median salary was $130,000 as compared with $125,000 the prior year. The national mean was $115,254.

However, NALP offered for the first time an “adjusted mean” that drove the national mean downward. The new measure is designed to account for the fact that fewer than half the salaries for jobs at small law firms are reported while salaries at large law firms are often a matter of public record. With the additional weight given to reported small-firm salaries, the adjusted mean salary for full-time law firm jobs was $102,959.

James Leipold, NALP’s executive director, explained the system in a press release.

“As a matter of consumer information, especially for students who are considering applying to law school, the adjusted mean provides a better benchmark than the unadjusted mean, because it accounts for the larger number of lower salaries that are not reported,” Leipold said. “Nevertheless, the overall mean for starting salaries, whether adjusted or unadjusted, is best used to measure the rise and fall of aggregate salaries over time, and not the likelihood of earning a particular salary when graduating from law school. As the distribution of starting lawyer salaries makes clear, very few new law school graduates earn anything close to the mean. Instead, many graduates will earn much more than the mean salary, and many more will earn much less.”

NALP found the most common employment setting was that of private practice at law firms, which was reported by 55.9% of the members of the Class of 2009 who provided employment information. This figure has fluctuated only between 55% and 58% since 1993.

Over one-quarter (25.8 percent) of Class of 2009 graduates who reported being employed on February 15, 2010, were working in public service positions, including government jobs, the military, judicial clerkships, and public interest positions. This percentage has also remained relatively stable for almost three decades. Employment in business was 13.5 percent, essentially unchanged from 2008, and still within the 13-14% range reported for the last six years.

At 3.5%, the percentage of jobs in academia was the highest ever recorded by NALP, with the number of jobs up by over 400 compared with the Class of 2008. The report speculates that could be the result of schools providing post-graduate job opportunities given the tight job market.

NALP’s Class of 2009 Jobs & JDs report is based on information submitted by 192 ABA-accredited law schools on 96% of the graduates in the Class of 2009.

Morning Roundup

joshua — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 10:29:05 +0000

Good morning everyone! Today is Thursday, June 3rd. Here’s a quick look back at yesterday’s stories.

Dugan, Babij & Tolley, LLC received Trial Lawyer of the Year Award…

McKool Smith client Marcel Fashion was awarded $300K in a hotly-contested trademark infringement dispute…

Kramer Levin elected new partners…

A two-year study of jury selections in eight Southern states found the exclusion of blacks and other minorities remains a widespread practice in the region…

Perkins Coie opened an office in San Diego…

Kramer Levin Elects New Partners

eric — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 18:02:19 +0000

Kudos. Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP has elected Matthew S. Dunn, Dani R. James, Erica D. Klein, Douglas H. Mannal and Robin M. Wilcox as partners. The newly elected Kramer partners come from a diverse pool of practice areas at the firm, including Litigation, Bankruptcy, Immigration, Intellectual Property and White Collar Defense. And aside from being leaders and innovators in their respective fields, the electees also represent a top flight selection of law schools: Yale, NYU, Michigan, and Brooklyn.

Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP is full-service law firm with offices in New York and Paris. The firm represents Global 1000 and emerging growth companies, institutions and individuals, across a broad range of industries.

Katten Deferrals Split Into Three

joshua — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 20:37:59 +0000

Katten has split its deferred class of incoming associates into three groups. The lucky group will start in February, as re-scheduled. The second group is being pushed back to October of next year, a full 16 months after they graduated from law school, and the third group gets $50k and the door.

Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP has offices in Chicago; New York; Los Angeles; Washington, DC; Charlotte, North Carolina; Palo Alto, California; and Irving, Texas; with an affiliated entity, Katten Muchin Rosenman Cornish LLP, in London, England. The firm has over 650 attorneys practicing in more than 40 areas.

LexisNexis Announces Program for Deferred Associates

Erik Even — Thu, 07 May 2009 16:19:57 +0000

LexisNexis has announced a program of free access for new associates whose law firm positions have been deferred.

The Associates Serving Public Interests Research program, or ASPIRE, gives graduates complimentary access to federal and state case law, codes, regulations and law reviews. The idea is to give law school grads resources to effectively support their non-profit and public interest work.

Online training and other training materials will also be provided.

Any graduate accepted as an associate at a professional law firm whose start date has been deferred, and who has elected to pursue non-profit work during their deferral period, is eligible to participate in the program.

LexisNexis is a popular searchable archive of content from newspapers, magazines, legal documents and other printed sources. It serves customers in more than 100 countries, with 18,000 employees worldwide.

Loyola Chicago Offers 2 Programs for Graduates

Erik Even — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 21:58:28 +0000

The Loyola University Chicago School of Law is offering two programs for graduates who have been deferred by their law firms or are unable to secure a job offer.

First, the School of Law will offer its 2009 graduates a deeply discounted tuition of $9,500.00 for its traditional LL.M. degrees in Child and Family Law, Health Law, Business and Corporate Governance Law and Tax Law… We have extended the application deadline to August 1, 2009.

Second, the School of Law also is planning to establish a new Graduate Fellowship for 2009 graduates. Graduate Fellows would be entitled to enroll in law school classes particularly suited to their professional objectives at a significantly reduced flat tuition rate of $4,000 per semester. A Graduate Fellow may enroll in law school classes during the fall semester of 2009, the spring semester of 2010, or both.

The graduate fellowships are intended to provide students with hands-on experience, such as externships, research projects, and professional skills classes.

Loyola University Chicago School of Law is the law school of the Loyola University Chicago, in Illinois. Established in 1909 by the Society of Jesus, the School of Law is located in downtown Chicago. The school offers degrees and combined degree programs, including the SJD, the equivalent of the Doctorate Degree in Law.

Orrick Hiring Law Grads for Ops Center

Erik Even — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 18:10:17 +0000

Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe is recruiting recent law school graduates for its Global Operations Center in Wheeling, West Virginia.

The positions are entry level Career Attorneys in the Emerging Companies Group.

In the beginning of March, Orrick laid off 100 associates and 200 staff.

The San Francisco-based firm, founded in 1863, has over 1,100 lawyers worldwide in 21 offices. The firm’s day-to-day administrative operations are centralized at the Global Operations Center.

NLJ: Firms Hired Too Many Law School Grads in 2008

Erik Even — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 17:37:17 +0000

The National Law Journal reports that major firms brought on as many new associates in 2008 as they did in 2007, leaving them with many new hires despite the current industry-wide layoffs.

Despite the economic nosedive that began gaining momentum in 2008, the nation’s biggest law firms hired just about the same percentage of graduates from top schools last year as they did the year before.

At the same time, firms among The National Law Journal’s 2008 survey of the nation’s 250 largest law firms brought aboard more graduates from the 20 schools that they relied on the most, which themselves had larger classes.

The development suggests that law firms were not well positioned for the recession they now face.

The fact that law firms ended up hiring the same percentage of graduates in 2008 — and hired 5.3% more graduates than in 2007 — despite the impending economic turmoil demonstrates the challenges that law firms face in predicting their work force needs under the existing hiring system…

Via NLJ.

AmLaw: The Coming Law Firm Hiring Crisis

Erik Even — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 17:58:45 +0000

The American Lawyer expects a “a paradigm-shifting, blood-in-the-suites, terror-on-the-campus hiring and retention crisis” in 2009.

If nothing changes, this fall the same law firms that recently laid off lawyers will start welcoming large groups of new lawyers, whom they will pay too well and for whom they will have too little work. If the layoffs were about saving money in a downturn, the new hires will overwhelm any savings and will signal that the firms regard the economic crisis as little more than a mild detour on the golden brick road.

I wish it were otherwise. But consider the current Conventional Wisdom: At law firms work (and profits) are down, attrition is far below average, law school graduates hired in an optimistic time are about to join firms awash in anxiety, and the conveyor belt that will bring still more eager and talented young lawyers aboard is about to start up again.

This does not seem to be a sustainable situation. If it’s not, it will, at a minimum, force law firms to make a harsh choice between the lawyers they already have on staff and the ones they’re about to welcome.

Via AmLaw.

Recent Law School Grads Found Law Firm

Erik Even — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 19:19:25 +0000

The Kansas City Star has a story about two recent law school grads who, unable to find a law firm to hire them, decided to take the risky step of hanging out their own shingle.

Sarah Buckley and Alexandra Hutchings took a leap that few new lawyers would consider.

After graduating from the University of Missouri-Kansas City law school and passing the Missouri Bar exam last year, they rented office space and hung out a shingle.

“It’s scary,” said Buckley, sitting behind a tidy desk in her firm’s Northland office. “We don’t know if we’ll have a paycheck every month.”

When they couldn’t find work with someone else, Buckley and Hutchings decided working for themselves would be better than not working.

The question remains, though, whether they are an exception or — as more law school grads find a serious shortage of law firm jobs — the start of a trend.

Read the whole story at KCS.

Legal Aid Programs Hurt; So Do Third-Year Law Students

todd — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 18:56:50 +0000

Legal aid programs are hurting from a reduction in funding from Interest on Lawyer Trust Account Programs and state budget cuts, forcing layoffs and cuts in services.

Legal aid groups across the country are expected to cut their staffs by 20% or more. This comes in lieu of the fact that demand for legal services is up by 30% or more, according to the New York Times.

Connecticut Legal Services might have to cut one third of their 150 legal positions. The $16 million budget for legal services in East Texas is expected to drop to $4 million. And New York Governor David Paterson is proposing a budget that would terminate the state’s $8 million appropriation for legal aid.

The situation will negatively impact third-year law students who are hoping to find jobs in legal aid when they graduate. Nonprofit legal groups often don’t make decisions about hiring until the spring or, earliest, late winter. This forces many students to find public interest jobs until they find out about hiring decisions, according to National Law Journal.

A story in The New York Times describes the lawyer trust account funding as fading due to Federal Reserve interest-rate reductions.

ABA President H. Thomas Wells Jr. said in a statement, “This is an opportune time to seek out [ABA] resources, get involved and make a difference for our practices, our profession and our communities.”

Skadden Selects 28 Fellows

Erik Even — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 23:54:51 +0000

The law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom has announced the selection of 28 Skadden Fellows for the class of 2009, bringing to 564 the number of law school graduates and judicial clerks the firm has funded to work full-time for legal and advocacy organizations.

Called “a legal Peace Corps” by the Los Angeles Times, the Skadden Fellowship Program was established in 1988 to commemorate the firm’s 40th anniversary. The program supports graduating law students and judicial clerks who choose to devote their professional careers to providing legal services to underserved members of society, including the poor, the working poor, the elderly, the disabled and those deprived of their civil or human rights.

The initiative has had a lasting impact on public interest law, as more than 90 percent of all Fellows have remained in the public sector since their selection.

This year’s class of 28 Fellows will work in 12 states, the District of Columbia and Mexico. Their projects include an effort to end payday lending in the Mississippi Delta, and advocacy to stabilize and strengthen foreclosure-stricken communities.

Fellows will also assist South Asian, Arab and Muslim residents of New York who are affected by abuses of post-9/11 security measures; counsel trafficked Chinese youth on matters of workers’ rights and education; and aid Alaska natives in their effort to relocate threatened coastal villages.