Are we passing an eye of the storm in legal hiring? Forum

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Mozart Lacrimosa

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Are we passing an eye of the storm in legal hiring?

Post by Mozart Lacrimosa » Thu Apr 30, 2015 7:50 pm

The past aba statistics seemed to be pretty strong for the top20-30 schools. Can anyone working offer their opinion on whether this will keep up? Given that the economy as a whole is experiencing one of the slowest recoveries in history, could this just be a temporary blip on the radar?

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Re: Are we passing an eye of the storm in legal hiring?

Post by Traynor Brah » Thu Apr 30, 2015 8:10 pm

Top 20-30 schools? What does that even mean? Any kind of ranking system that is not holistic and based entirely on the specific individual's situation is entirely irrelevant.

So, respectfully, this question is stupid as shit.

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Mozart Lacrimosa

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Re: Are we passing an eye of the storm in legal hiring?

Post by Mozart Lacrimosa » Thu Apr 30, 2015 8:24 pm

There exists an ordinal ranking of BL+FC getting schools in the recent employment thread. It's been criticized ad nauseum but nonetheless, there are about 20-30 schools that give a sporting or better shot at a big firm gig. My question is given the general slugishness of the recent economic recovery, what do people think the near term hiring patterns will be.

If consensus is this is a dumb question that's fair enough ha.

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Calbears123

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Re: Are we passing an eye of the storm in legal hiring?

Post by Calbears123 » Thu Apr 30, 2015 8:42 pm

Traynor Brah wrote:Top 20-30 schools? What does that even mean? Any kind of ranking system that is not holistic and based entirely on the specific individual's situation is entirely irrelevant.

So, respectfully, this question is stupid as shit.
Calm down bro a lot of these schools saw an increase in their employment score by LST, it's a legit question.

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starry eyed

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Re: Are we passing an eye of the storm in legal hiring?

Post by starry eyed » Thu Apr 30, 2015 8:50 pm

Calbears123 wrote:
Traynor Brah wrote:Top 20-30 schools? What does that even mean? Any kind of ranking system that is not holistic and based entirely on the specific individual's situation is entirely irrelevant.

So, respectfully, this question is stupid as shit.
Calm down bro a lot of these schools saw an increase in their employment score by LST, it's a legit question.
Traynor rubbing off his bitterness PER USUAL

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Mozart Lacrimosa

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Re: Are we passing an eye of the storm in legal hiring?

Post by Mozart Lacrimosa » Thu Apr 30, 2015 8:59 pm

Traynor with the knee jerk reaction against any ranking whatsoever. I don't know if he's an 0L but this question is directed towards folks working at the moment.

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Re: Are we passing an eye of the storm in legal hiring?

Post by Traynor Brah » Thu Apr 30, 2015 9:42 pm

Derp suck my balls 0ls.

ITT: kid stealthily asks for justification to move 2k miles to take a "generous" scholarship at "respectably ranked" Alabama.

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Re: Are we passing an eye of the storm in legal hiring?

Post by Johann » Thu Apr 30, 2015 9:56 pm

i think law hiring has been modestly conservative. it prolly wont get much better but i think it should remain steady.

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Re: Are we passing an eye of the storm in legal hiring?

Post by Nebby » Sat May 02, 2015 12:33 am

Traynor Brah wrote:Derp suck my balls 0ls.

ITT: kid stealthily asks for justification to move 2k miles to take a "generous" scholarship at "respectably ranked" Alabama.
Probably not, idiot.

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Re: Are we passing an eye of the storm in legal hiring?

Post by shock259 » Sat May 02, 2015 6:47 am

Traynor Brah wrote:Top 20-30 schools? What does that even mean? Any kind of ranking system that is not holistic and based entirely on the specific individual's situation is entirely irrelevant.

So, respectfully, this question is stupid as shit.
I bet you make lots of friends at parties.

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Re: Are we passing an eye of the storm in legal hiring?

Post by TLSModBot » Sat May 02, 2015 8:11 am

JohannDeMann wrote:i think law hiring has been modestly conservative. it prolly wont get much better but i think it should remain steady.
This. For the foreseeable future.

Disclaimer: I'm a bit of a pessimist on the long-term. Corporate counsel are bringing more work in-house, non-lawyers are worming their way into traditionally legal work, and with technology smaller firms with lean margins are increasingly able to do bigger cases traditionally reserved for the big boys. All this means a smaller pie for existing firms to compete over, which means less money to pay its people.

There will always be a top tier of law firms paying market rates and charging clients a premium, but I think a lot of firms aren't going to be able to keep that up long-term. So given current trends, in the next 10-20 years I'd say we're gonna have increased mergers and dissolutions, and there will be fewer legal jobs paying same or less than they used to.

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Re: Are we passing an eye of the storm in legal hiring?

Post by Br3v » Sat May 02, 2015 8:55 am

As long as law school attendance stays at current levels, hiring will remain pretty good. But I suspect that as people get jobs, there will be a slight increase in demand for law school resulting in a slight worsening of the market, but I wouldn't expect that for a couple years (5?) and maybe by then NYC = 190 lol

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Re: Are we passing an eye of the storm in legal hiring?

Post by starry eyed » Sat May 02, 2015 1:31 pm

zacharus85 wrote:
JohannDeMann wrote:i think law hiring has been modestly conservative. it prolly wont get much better but i think it should remain steady.
This. For the foreseeable future.

Disclaimer: I'm a bit of a pessimist on the long-term. Corporate counsel are bringing more work in-house, non-lawyers are worming their way into traditionally legal work, and with technology smaller firms with lean margins are increasingly able to do bigger cases traditionally reserved for the big boys. All this means a smaller pie for existing firms to compete over, which means less money to pay its people.

There will always be a top tier of law firms paying market rates and charging clients a premium, but I think a lot of firms aren't going to be able to keep that up long-term. So given current trends, in the next 10-20 years I'd say we're gonna have increased mergers and dissolutions, and there will be fewer legal jobs paying same or less than they used to.
Zach, this was a 180 post IMO.

I wonder if mid law will see an increase in order to pick up some of the slack. (also should be see less NYC centricity w/r/t to legal hub)

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Mozart Lacrimosa

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Re: Are we passing an eye of the storm in legal hiring?

Post by Mozart Lacrimosa » Sat May 02, 2015 2:36 pm

zacharus85 wrote:
JohannDeMann wrote:i think law hiring has been modestly conservative. it prolly wont get much better but i think it should remain steady.
This. For the foreseeable future.

Disclaimer: I'm a bit of a pessimist on the long-term. Corporate counsel are bringing more work in-house, non-lawyers are worming their way into traditionally legal work, and with technology smaller firms with lean margins are increasingly able to do bigger cases traditionally reserved for the big boys. All this means a smaller pie for existing firms to compete over, which means less money to pay its people.

There will always be a top tier of law firms paying market rates and charging clients a premium, but I think a lot of firms aren't going to be able to keep that up long-term. So given current trends, in the next 10-20 years I'd say we're gonna have increased mergers and dissolutions, and there will be fewer legal jobs paying same or less than they used to.
Do you think this will work against the bimodal distribution of legal service jobs and make those middle tier gigs more livable/lucrative?

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Re: Are we passing an eye of the storm in legal hiring?

Post by run26.2 » Sat May 02, 2015 2:55 pm

The salary distribution has been moving away from a bimodal distribution for some time. Whether that continues depends on a lot of factors. Lots of smaller firms are breaking away from biglaw, which suggests movement away from that distribution as these firms tend to pay less. However, there aren't that many of these jobs available, and they often hire laterals or clerks as opposed to entry level associates. The Philadelphia firms that moved to 160 is not enough to counteract the smoothing of the distribution. I would guess it continues to smooth.

Also, that distribution referred to entry level positions. For salaries in later years, there is probably less of a bimodal distribution.

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Re: Are we passing an eye of the storm in legal hiring?

Post by Tiago Splitter » Sat May 02, 2015 7:21 pm

Image

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2007 vs. 2013. Seems like the entry level distribution is as bimodal as ever.

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Re: Are we passing an eye of the storm in legal hiring?

Post by PeanutsNJam » Sun May 03, 2015 1:12 am

Do those salary distribution charts include data for schools that don't release a NALP report? If they don't, that data is the literal opposite of comprehensive.

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Re: Are we passing an eye of the storm in legal hiring?

Post by Nebby » Sun May 03, 2015 10:01 am

PeanutsNJam wrote:Do those salary distribution charts include data for schools that don't release a NALP report? If they don't, that data is the literal opposite of comprehensive.
You need an avatar before people will reply.

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Re: Are we passing an eye of the storm in legal hiring?

Post by Tiago Splitter » Sun May 03, 2015 10:07 am

PeanutsNJam wrote:Do those salary distribution charts include data for schools that don't release a NALP report? If they don't, that data is the literal opposite of comprehensive.
NALP just leaves it up to the school to release the report if they want, but NALP has all the data. The 2013 chart is for 21,545 long term full time jobs, out of a total of about 33,300 grads in these positions. The ones not on there are the salaries schools couldn't manage to track down, so I don't think it's too hard to figure out where the rest of the salaries would fall.

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Re: Are we passing an eye of the storm in legal hiring?

Post by TLSModBot » Sun May 03, 2015 10:11 am

Mozart Lacrimosa wrote:Do you think this will work against the bimodal distribution of legal service jobs and make those middle tier gigs more livable/lucrative?
If anything, I think mid tier gigs would remain stagnant at best while biglaw salaries bifurcate: the top tier can remain at market while the vast majority of BigLaw firms would pay a lower rate.

The money is flowing out of the legal sector - meaning that it will instead go to savings for corporations and for non-lawyer outfits providing legal services (like 'legal consulting). But even those groups are putting themselves out of business with rapidly evolving efficient technology (see, e.g. the Discovery vendor submarket).

Also this is all long-term - large law firms have been very good at keeping their slice of the pie and partner profits up for a while, and there are still plenty of short-term tricks in the bag to keep that artificially boosted for a while longer. We'll see in the meanwhile slow dropoffs in big firms (Howrey, Dewey, Bingham), large scale mergers and firms shedding inefficient practice groups, and ever yet more stress put on associates to produce dem billable hours.

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