Top Law Schools

As a 0L who needs confirmation that job openings do still exist out there, please share your story. What kind of firm is the job with? What do you expect to make the first year? How did you even get an interview with the firm? In short, how do people find work???

Every year 50,000 start law school, 45,000 or so graduate, and 30,000 or so entry level legal jobs exist each year. Of those 30,000 jobs, roughly 5,000 start in the low to mid 6-figure and go to students who spend the summer between 2L and 3L working for the firms. Most (little over half) go to students at the top 14 law schools. The other half go to the other 180+ law schools in the country. A few hundred federal clerskships with judges exist, as do some jobs with public interest organizations, government agencies, and mid level firms.

Substantial numbers of legal jobs are poor paying, and many are even temporary work with no benefits. And NB that those are for the 2/3 of law grads who even find work as lawyers.

The job outlook is (a) unimaginably grim and (b) unimaginably skewed in favor of the very top schools. But note that even from the top schools many are graduating unemployed with non-deferable debt these days.

I "landed on my feet" with respect to the job hunt, as did many neurotic enough to continue to post here, but I'd still recommend law school to almost nobody who hasn't gotten lots of scholarship money, admittance to a truly top (T14+) school, or both.

I work at one of the smaller v100 firms making NYC Market (160k). I got my job the traditional way: 2L OCI --> Summer Associate --> Offer. No prescreening at my school's OCI, so I just signed up to interview with them.

Keep in mind that I interviewed in 2008 prior to the big crash. People still get jobs this way, but you should not expect it unless you are going to an elite school.


OCI aside, the best way to a legal job is networking. Keep in mind that networking does not consist of going to "networking events"- it involves getting involved in professional associations and getting to know as many people in the profession you can. Nothing is a guarantee, however. There are far more law school graduates than there are legal jobs for them.