NYTimes: Downturn dims prospects even at top law schools Forum

[coherentowst]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/26/busin ... s.html?hpw

[rayiner]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/26/busin ... s.html?hpw

By dim they mean "eviscerate", right?

[Blindmelon]

Uhhh.... not that I didn't already know this.... but starting school in a day at BU and signing my promissory notes to go into 100k debt over 3 years is starting to give me a brain melt down. Not that I care about biglaw, but I'm starting to think that get a gov. job is going to be impossible.

And now I officially regret not paying 50k to go to WM.

[dk8]

time for everyone to gun their faces off

[elliefont]

feel sooooo bad for the 2011's. hope some of this "reform" comes around in time for 2013s.

[CaptainSnuggleBunny]

unlike LRAP, you can use IBR even if you aren't in a legal related position.

IBR is our parachute.

Also, man am I glad I won't be doing OCI till 2011. 2012 if firms and schools do move it to spring of 2L or fall 3L.

[dk8]

unlike LRAP, you can use IBR even if you aren't in a legal related position.

IBR is our parachute.

Also, man am I glad I won't be doing OCI till 2011. 2012 if firms and schools do move it to spring of 2L or fall 3L.

yeah, i was pissed at first when i decided to put off LS for a year, now i see what a good decision it was

[Erie Doctrine]

unlike LRAP, you can use IBR even if you aren't in a legal related position.

IBR is our parachute.

Also, man am I glad I won't be doing OCI till 2011. 2012 if firms and schools do move it to spring of 2L or fall 3L.

yeah, i was pissed at first when i decided to put off LS for a year, now i see what a good decision it was

Not to be a downer, but is there any evidence things will be better a year from now?

[CaptainSnuggleBunny]

unlike LRAP, you can use IBR even if you aren't in a legal related position.

IBR is our parachute.

Also, man am I glad I won't be doing OCI till 2011. 2012 if firms and schools do move it to spring of 2L or fall 3L.

yeah, i was pissed at first when i decided to put off LS for a year, now i see what a good decision it was

Not to be a downer, but is there any evidence things will be better a year from now?

Nope, could be worse. But hopefully some restructuring will happen between now and 2011 and we'll at least have a better idea of what to expect / what we need to do to be in a good position.

[dk8]

no there is no guarantee. but i have another year to see whats goin down and make a decision

[elliefont]

seems one can read this two ways:

1) I should go to a school that gives me the most money/free ride since I'll probably have a shit job when all is said and done.

2) "New York University, Georgetown, Northwestern and other top universities confirm that interviews are down by a third to a half compared with a year ago, while lower-ranked schools are suffering more." so I should go to the top school possible since other schools are in even worse shape.

I'm guessing I know where most TLSers fall, but is this changing anyone's minds?

[gahthelaw]

realistically though...how many NYU or Harvard kids are going to get no-offered? Everyone is stressing about OCI, and they just happened to get to them at that exact time. I bet if you talked to Derek Fanciullo right now, he'd have his offer.

Am I being overly optimistic?

[elliefont]

realistically though...how many NYU or Harvard kids are going to get no-offered? Everyone is stressing about OCI, and they just happened to get to them at that exact time. I bet if you talked to Derek Fanciullo right now, he'd have his offer.

Am I being overly optimistic?

hmmmm, interesting. perhaps someone should ask him? he's wearing a nice Minnie Mouse princess hat on facebook... too much?

[Anonymous User]

realistically though...how many NYU or Harvard kids are going to get no-offered? Everyone is stressing about OCI, and they just happened to get to them at that exact time. I bet if you talked to Derek Fanciullo right now, he'd have his offer.

Am I being overly optimistic?

yes. I was speaking to a hiring partner from a pretty fancy firm. He was kind of enjoying the kind of begging the Harvard law school dean was doing to get firms to hire their kids last year. People like to see the mighty fall I guess.

I think there will be a lot of top ten kids with no big firm job offers. I think there will be a lot of top five kids with no big firm job offers.

Welcome to the new world.

[gahthelaw]

realistically though...how many NYU or Harvard kids are going to get no-offered? Everyone is stressing about OCI, and they just happened to get to them at that exact time. I bet if you talked to Derek Fanciullo right now, he'd have his offer.

Am I being overly optimistic?

hmmmm, interesting. perhaps someone should ask him? he's wearing a nice Minnie Mouse princess hat on facebook... too much?

haha - may as well do it before ATL beats you to it!

[gahthelaw]

from ATL:

Several of my friends spoke to this reporter and said he was really digging for stories of desperation.

Listen, even with the cuts in the summer classes, it's not like we are facing some unknown pit of the apocalypse. The fact is that over the last 6 years or so, summer classes have ballooned together with the other bubbles we had going on. I interviewed as a T3 2L in the late 90s, right when the tech boom was just starting. I was in the top 1/3 of the class but did not get call backs from everywhere, nor did I get offers from all call-backs, and that was not unusual. I summered at a V10 firm, which had their "largest summer class ever" - 75 summer associates altogether in all of their offices. Basically everyone was from T5 schools, with a smattering of T14 and a couple of stars from lower-ranked schools. Two or three years ago, the same firm's summer class was close to 170! One of the partners there I'm friends with said then that it was almost impossible to find qualified law students, and that they were dipping lower into classes and schools than they ever had (and didn't like the results). Yes, we had a bubble, now it's burst and we won't see 170-associate summer classes again for the foreseeable future, but this doesn't mean all new law school grads (especially top grads) will be jobless, or even will have trouble finding jobs.

i'm not saying this article doesn't describe a trend, but (and this could just be me unable to swallow a bitter pill) given the small pool of people from T10 or T5 schools to choose from, I find it hard to believe that we are all going to be as screwed as some people say.

[coherentowst]

realistically though...how many NYU or Harvard kids are going to get no-offered? Everyone is stressing about OCI, and they just happened to get to them at that exact time. I bet if you talked to Derek Fanciullo right now, he'd have his offer.

Am I being overly optimistic?

Not that this is a novel thing to say, but it seems to me that there has been a massive debt-fueled bubble in legal education and employment that is now bursting with a vengeance. And like the housing bubble, it won't be brought back even if the economy does turn around. Paying full price to go to law school now is like buying a house at the top of the bubble. Going to a top law school is just buying a house in a high-end neighborhood where prices are never supposed to go down and nobody is ever supposed to be foreclosed on. Guess how that worked out for people who bought houses like that.

[OperaSoprano]

I don't know. When the dean of career services at Harvard Law tells people not to panic, that's about when I start panicking.

In a way, it's less painful for our class, and for Blindmelon's. We're not T14ers. We never thought $160k was a guarantee, and many of us never even wanted it. We do need jobs, though. I don't believe IBR does anything for the chronically unemployed.

Maybe I'll stay PT. It's an extra year's COL, but by 2013 I should be able to find a day job doing something. I always thought I'd have a $50k government job as an option, if I did decently. It's not like any of this is news, but reading about it again and again is like ripping a bandage off a wound that's only beginning to heal.

[Alexandria]

My guess is that the 2011 group got the very worst of it (with class of 2010 in second place). Since firms had already made commitments/established relationships with a lot of 2010 people before the economic crisis really hit in the middle of last recruiting season, a lot of firms went ahead with sizable summer classes. While there are obviously a lot of 2010 no-offers right now, there are also lots of firms that are giving offers but deferring start dates. Since they've got the 2010 people starting in 2011, they don't want nearly as many 2011 people as they normally would.

I'm not saying I don't think things will be hard for 2012, but I think that's the class that will start to see things normalize a bit.

[Helmholtz]

seems one can read this two ways:

1) I should go to a school that gives me the most money/free ride since I'll probably have a shit job when all is said and done.

2) "New York University, Georgetown, Northwestern and other top universities confirm that interviews are down by a third to a half compared with a year ago, while lower-ranked schools are suffering more." so I should go to the top school possible since other schools are in even worse shape.

I'm guessing I know where most TLSers fall, but is this changing anyone's minds?

It definitely gave me a little pause over my willingness to potentially pay full-ticket to a T6. But just a little.

[awesomepossum]

realistically though...how many NYU or Harvard kids are going to get no-offered? Everyone is stressing about OCI, and they just happened to get to them at that exact time. I bet if you talked to Derek Fanciullo right now, he'd have his offer.

Am I being overly optimistic?

Not that this is a novel thing to say, but it seems to me that there has been a massive debt-fueled bubble in legal education and employment that is now bursting with a vengeance. And like the housing bubble, it won't be brought back even if the economy does turn around. Paying full price to go to law school now is like buying a house at the top of the bubble. Going to a top law school is just buying a house in a high-end neighborhood where prices are never supposed to go down and nobody is ever supposed to be foreclosed on. Guess how that worked out for people who bought houses like that.

it depends. if you go to a top 10 school and do very well, life is still good. it's really feast or famine right now.

[OperaSoprano]

seems one can read this two ways:

1) I should go to a school that gives me the most money/free ride since I'll probably have a shit job when all is said and done.

2) "New York University, Georgetown, Northwestern and other top universities confirm that interviews are down by a third to a half compared with a year ago, while lower-ranked schools are suffering more." so I should go to the top school possible since other schools are in even worse shape.

I'm guessing I know where most TLSers fall, but is this changing anyone's minds?

It definitely gave me a little pause over my willingness to potentially pay full-ticket to a T6. But just a little.

The degree is for life. Hopefully, the recession isn't. I'm not saying I don't understand, though. I was horrified when a good friend at an excellent school (not CLS, though) got no-offered. It's almost like cancer; it seems so abstract, until it happens to someone you care about. I just didn't know what to say, and I did a poor job of concealing my shock.

[gahthelaw]

realistically though...how many NYU or Harvard kids are going to get no-offered? Everyone is stressing about OCI, and they just happened to get to them at that exact time. I bet if you talked to Derek Fanciullo right now, he'd have his offer.

Am I being overly optimistic?

Not that this is a novel thing to say, but it seems to me that there has been a massive debt-fueled bubble in legal education and employment that is now bursting with a vengeance. And like the housing bubble, it won't be brought back even if the economy does turn around. Paying full price to go to law school now is like buying a house at the top of the bubble. Going to a top law school is just buying a house in a high-end neighborhood where prices are never supposed to go down and nobody is ever supposed to be foreclosed on. Guess how that worked out for people who bought houses like that.

it depends. if you go to a top 10 school and do very well, life is still good. it's really feast or famine right now.

oof. i feel like this is just inciting everyone to strap on their gunner boots and make law school an even harder three years than it traditionally is.

[awesomepossum]

I did a poor job of concealing my shock.

what a shocker. I would never have predicted that.

[awesomepossum]

realistically though...how many NYU or Harvard kids are going to get no-offered? Everyone is stressing about OCI, and they just happened to get to them at that exact time. I bet if you talked to Derek Fanciullo right now, he'd have his offer.

Am I being overly optimistic?

Not that this is a novel thing to say, but it seems to me that there has been a massive debt-fueled bubble in legal education and employment that is now bursting with a vengeance. And like the housing bubble, it won't be brought back even if the economy does turn around. Paying full price to go to law school now is like buying a house at the top of the bubble. Going to a top law school is just buying a house in a high-end neighborhood where prices are never supposed to go down and nobody is ever supposed to be foreclosed on. Guess how that worked out for people who bought houses like that.

it depends. if you go to a top 10 school and do very well, life is still good. it's really feast or famine right now.

oof. i feel like this is just inciting everyone to strap on their gunner boots and make law school an even harder three years than it traditionally is.

the bad news is that it's true. I think people are going to gun like never before.

the good news is that people really only need to gun like crazy for one year.