Jobs for new lawyers are hard to come by

It’s no secret that the job mar­ket is in sham­bles, and the legal job mar­ket is really no excep­tion. It should come as no sur­prise that the mar­ket is par­tic­u­larly tough for new grad­u­ates, peo­ple who a year or two ago could often expect — or were led to expect — to earn over $100K at grad­u­a­tion. So what does this mean?

At PrawfsBlawg, Nadine Farid writes:

So, what does this mean for recent law grad­u­ates and those who will soon join them? To state the obvi­ous, they’re exist­ing in/entering an uncer­tain world, one which might require them to con­sider, rather quickly, alter­na­tives to planned career paths. More mea­sured cost-cutting approaches by Biglaw and other employ­ers could serve to aid the needs of those ven­tures in this econ­omy while still bring­ing in (and per­haps more impor­tantly, train­ing) tal­ented, eager asso­ciates and help­ing to avoid the glut that they would cre­ate in the market.

Part of the prob­lem emerges, of course, from the debt asso­ci­ated with law school, which can eas­ily exceed $50L-$100K for the three years required. While it’s hard to have sym­pa­thy for grad­u­ates not earn­ing six fig­ures, it can be espe­cially dif­fi­cult to switch careers or adjust to chang­ing eco­nomic con­di­tions with such a high level of debt.

Some options might include debt for­give­ness for pub­lic inter­est work, although work in the pub­lic inter­est, even with low salaries, can be tough to get at the best of times. Many lenders will grant defer­ments for lack of work or other hard­ships, but the inter­est will still accrue. Still, this may be a good option for some.

The idea of using the time between grad­u­a­tion and a job to do vol­un­teer, pro bono work might be another good option for many young lawyers. At the very least, pro bono work will keep one’s legal skills sharp while build­ing the kind of net­work crit­i­cal for future success.

Some may even choose to go solo, but with loans harder to come by, that may be a dif­fi­cult course to get started on with­out some begin­ning capital.

Despite all of this, I think the law is still a good, prac­ti­cal career choice. Despite some attempts to off­shore legal work, the highly jurisdiction-specific nature of legal work (espe­cially in the United States) will always make this a niche idea, I believe.

Personally, I’m tak­ing another track: I’m going to grad school after I fin­ish law school in June.