Job prospects after school Forum

[270910]

And c/o 2012 seems to be worse than that.

I'll have no idea what c/o 2013 looks like until I've paid for a year of law school. That's the scary part. I could just take in-state tuition at Wisconsin ($17k) and withdraw from my waitlists, but their placement is likely to be even worse.

nothing has happened for c/o 2012 yet. Conventional wisdom is they'll do better than 2011, but hardly 'good'.

I was basing that on the "expected" hires from the data on the NALP directory that you posted, but on second review, I think I misread that site. "Expected" seems to mean people starting work in 2010 rather than people interviewing in 2010.

Yep.

A lot of schools already have more firms coming to OCI, and there are annecdotes that fresh hiring is ready to pick up slightly. I mean, we're talking firms going from "FUCK FUCK FUCK NO SUMMER ASSOCIATES MAN THE HARPOONS" to "Fine, we'll talk a couple" - but that should still be enough to soften the body blow compared to the hit 2011 took.

[JCougar]

And c/o 2012 seems to be worse than that.

I'll have no idea what c/o 2013 looks like until I've paid for a year of law school. That's the scary part. I could just take in-state tuition at Wisconsin ($17k) and withdraw from my waitlists, but their placement is likely to be even worse.

nothing has happened for c/o 2012 yet. Conventional wisdom is they'll do better than 2011, but hardly 'good'.

I was basing that on the "expected" hires from the data on the NALP directory that you posted, but on second review, I think I misread that site. "Expected" seems to mean people starting work in 2010 rather than people interviewing in 2010.

Yep.

A lot of schools already have more firms coming to OCI, and there are annecdotes that fresh hiring is ready to pick up slightly. I mean, we're talking firms going from "FUCK FUCK FUCK NO SUMMER ASSOCIATES MAN THE HARPOONS" to "Fine, we'll talk a couple" - but that should still be enough to soften the body blow compared to the hit 2011 took.

Raynier made a post a while ago on here about the status of legal hiring being a derivative of the overall demand for lawyers that I thought was very cogent. Since big firms seem to hire straight from schools (and not from the jobless law graduate pool), demand doesn't have to return to normal for hiring to return to normal -- it just has to start going up. The same phenomenon that caused OCI hiring to grind to a screeching halt may cause it to recover quicker than the total demand for lawyers recovers.

Maybe it's wishful thinking on my part, but that post made a lot of sense.

[Bert]

Raynier made a post a while ago on here about the status of legal hiring being a derivative of the overall demand for lawyers that I thought was very cogent. Since big firms seem to hire straight from schools (and not from the jobless law graduate pool), demand doesn't have to return to normal for hiring to return to normal -- it just has to start going up. The same phenomenon that caused OCI hiring to grind to a screeching halt may cause it to recover quicker than the total demand for lawyers recovers.

Maybe it's wishful thinking on my part, but that post made a lot of sense.

I've talked with partners at the firm I am leaving who are involved in hiring, and they have pretty much confirmed this. While it sucks to be an out of work attorney, at least many of us still have some hope.

[observationalist]

Well...I don't know how to argue with that. Something's amiss. It's still better than WUSTL telling me their c/o 2009 median salary was $145K, I guess. Or Hofstra reporting that their median private practice salary is $160,000. LOL.

Look, I'm not arguing that salary/placement information should be collected by schools. I just wanted to bring up what they've been reporting. 95% reporting seemed better than anything else I've seen from the schools I'm looking at.

Interesting. I think we should contact Dean Pless and get a confirmation on that (and ask if they'll provide the full employment list for the Class of '09). I second what disco said though about the '09 data being pre-ITE... even in that thread you can see the very first response making the mistake of thinking the Class of '09 indicates hiring after the financial meltdown. Nobody on that thread seems to have corrected them (though I didn't keep looking because at this point I am about 14 hours away from my last final and should really think about studying).

Carry on.