Atlanta/GA Legal Market? (From biglaw to small law...) Forum

[jtabustos]

What's up everyone?

From the state of CA here, but have an SO from GA and also a few very close friends from undergrad working in non-legal positions there.

I'm curious if Atlanta/GA was a possible place I'd like to live/work in for legal work what the market is like (really in all areas, but certainly for biglaw as well)? And, also, are there certain schools that seem to really "dominate" that area more than others?

Thanks very much in advance.

[nmcdgt]

Atlanta is a very, very tough market. There are multiple schools in the state (Emory, UGA, GSU, Mercer, John Marshall) and region (UVA, UNC, Duke, Vanderbilt, Wake Forest, UF, FSU, Alabama), and you get people feeding in from the T-14 as well. I don't think any one school "dominates," but probably Emory, UGA, and UVA are the most represented schools. Duke and Vanderbilt do pretty well as well.

The problem though is even with all these schools feeding in, the Atlanta market isn't huge and even the biggest firms don't take large classes. King & Spalding and Alston + Bird, the two biggest firms in the state, took about 30 students combined. Many of the other big firms took anywhere from 3-10 SAs, and many mid to large firms only took 2-3. Really, these firms have their pick of people with top grades, and ties are very important.

Outside of Atlanta, you're really going to need ties to break in. Going to law school in the state might be enough, but likely if you are trying to work in Savannah, Macon, Athens, etc., they are going to want some pretty good ties (grew up there, family there, etc.). And, of course, outside of Atlanta the firms are even smaller, so finding firms even taking 1-2 SAs isn't easy.

Jobs outside of firms (PI, Gov't, PD, etc.) are not my expertise, but based on anecdotes I've heard that it is just as difficult, if not worse. For example, I heard from one of the PI organizations that they hadn't hired a new attorney in several years.

If you have any other questions let me know.

[AllTheLawz]

The above poster named the schools that are pretty well-represented. Really, the only schools that dominate (meaning that you can get a job in ATL from below median) are HYS and even then you will probably be only choosing from a couple of offers. I believe in 2012 there was a total of something like 50-60 Summer Associate positions in the entire city at major firms (those paying $125k+). Say 5-10 of those pretty much automatically go to HYS students who come back down south. You are left with top students from GSU, Emory, Mercer, UVA, UNC, Duke, Vandy, Bama, etc. all fighting for like 40-50 jobs

[gregfootball2001]

I believe in 2012 there was a total of something like 50-60 Summer Associate positions in the entire city at major firms (those paying $125k+).

It's bad, but it's not quite so bad. From UGA alone there's got to be somewhere around 25-30 kids (if not more) with 2L SAs. Emory's probably a little higher than that. So if I had to make a pretty wild guess, there's probably around 100 2L SA positions.

Which, I agree, isn't good.

Yeah.

...I'm gonna go study some more.

[AllTheLawz]

I believe in 2012 there was a total of something like 50-60 Summer Associate positions in the entire city at major firms (those paying $125k+).

It's bad, but it's not quite so bad. From UGA alone there's got to be somewhere around 25-30 kids (if not more) with 2L SAs. Emory's probably a little higher than that. So if I had to make a pretty wild guess, there's probably around 100 2L SA positions.

Which, I agree, isn't good.

Yeah.

...I'm gonna go study some more.

Yep you are a bit closer to right. My numbers referred to the V100+Sutherland (Basically, the ones who did OCI at my school). In total, the number is about 90-100. Still super bleak considering the number of schools that have a significant number of students targeting Atlanta.