Booming? Hardly. Big firms were already tightening their pants laying off paralegals and cancelling or offering fewer summer clerkships. Several big firms failed.
Most of the lawyers I know who were in that market were already telling friends and family members to cut and run. IMHO the boom ended sometime in 2003 and began to level off. Yes, there may be some specialty lawyers that had a longer boom, but I am talking about the industry as a whole.
That might be true in your local market, but is not true of the top 100 or so firms nationally. My perspective might be NYC biased, but I don’t think so. Lock-step pay–the schedule that the top 60 or so firms across the country follow–kept increasing all the way until 2007. The associate classes in these firms also remained steady or increased over that period.
I feel for you. As a “displaced executive” I’ve had to take on work I never thought I would have to do, work that half the world is qualified to do. I’m better than that, right? I’ve earned my rung on the ladder, right? I should be shot back to the top. But they keep saying “You can’t become top stable boy until the previous one dies.”
I’m thinking about the many threads over the past few years in which I consistently advised against law school . . .
Yeah, the law job market is horrendous now. Many/most firms are not doing any hiring, have rescinded offers to recent grads, and have let go their last couple of years’ worth of hires.
The fed gov’t is one place that is still hiring. We’ve brought on probably 7-10 new attorneys over the past few months. The kicker is that the folk being hired have these pedigrees from Harvard, U of C, etc., and clerking/work experience at large private firms. The kinda folk who would never have deigned to apply to our shop previously. If that level of applicant is accepting work with us, I can’t imagine how bad it must be for someone with less than stellar credentials, who attended a second tier school and was not at the top of his class.
Actually, I can imagine how bad it is, because my wife is trying to obtain a full-time legal job after 15 years part-time. Right now we are waiting for a response after a favorable interview. But if that doesn’t pan out, she has ZERO leads.
As much as it may suck to hear this, I’d suggest you use your time somewhat more profitably than simply job seeking. Try to figure some activity - whether it be more schooling, work in a non-legal field, or volunteering - that you can do for a year or more to give you something marketable when/if the market ever picks up again.
Unfortunately, I’m not sure the legal job market is necessarily cyclical. It has seemed to me for some time that lawyers as an industry charged too much for too little in the way of services. No reason we should need as many lawyers as we have, earning as much as they do.
A few of the JDs I knew had jobs as landmen in oil companies. These are the people who handle the ins and out of property leases, drilling rights, etc. I don’t know how the market for the field is these days, but I do know that (relatively speaking) Houston isn’t hurting like the rest of the country. Just a thought.
Before the recession wasn’t the government hiring a bunch of grads from Regent and Liberty Universities?
Not only that…but according to a couple lawyer friends of mine…entry level lawyering is seeing a huge outsourcing.
I had heard that was a big thing under the previous admin in DOJ and perhaps a few other components “inside the beltway.” No idea how prevalent it really was. Personally never experienced that out here in the boonies.
Yeah, I’ve long wondered why so many lawyers thought they provided some uniquely valuable service for so many pedestrian matters.
Don’t expect to make a living from non-profit work. Expect long line-ups for government jobs.
If you have been called already, just hang out your shingle. Knock on the doors of every lawyer in your community and ask them for referrals. Spend your Saturdays running a free advice clinic. Hold free seminars for workers at shelters and social service organizations. Offer your services for free to non-for-profits and get placed on some boards. Hang out at bail court. Hang out at family court intake day. You’ll get truly crap work, but work is work, and as people get to know you, the volume of work and the rate that you charge will increase. It’s called starting at the bottom and working your way up. Good luck, and hang in there.
That was at the DOJ. But like Dinsdale, we’re seeing a ton of associates from Harvard etc…
But dude, I’ll be honest, I’m kind of suspicious of the type of associates who lateral out right before they’re about to be axed, or graduates of Harvard Law who have been at 4 different firms in 4 different years and have zero experience in anything our agency does. We’ve already had 2 of the ones hired in my region quit and go back into the private sector within a year-they got hired back at boutique law firms.
Our “homegrown reject” hires, as in the Honors Fellows, have always been within a certain GPA range because it’s a prerequisite to have a certain GPA to apply to the Fellowships (or most of them). Their schools range the gamut but in my class we had everything from places like Duke/Cornell/Georgetown to a ton of Big 10 schools (where most of us came from, including me) to 2nd tier regional schools.
But yeah, like Dinsdale said, Harvard was rarely seen around these parts until recently.
I guess your inability to appreciate their inherent value serves as further evidence why you aren’t management material! 
Heh. Not around these here parts, anyway. Seriously-4 years with the feds have given me so much material for my b-school essays!
The problem with doing that is it becomes near impossible to get back into the legal job market. I’d recommend against it if you want to end up in law.
Good luck with your search, though.
Since this was sort of ignored the first time I thought I would call attention to it - have you considered this option?
JAG is a good suggestion. Not only good experience at little personal risk, but results in veteran’s preference for future government employment.
I don’t get this. Before I started law school I made $36,000 as a marketing copywriter for a Fortune 500 company (and that was after 8 years with the company), and it was a perfectly fine living, actually. It’s actually the “National Average salary.” Non-profits generally pay more than that for junior attorneys. So, when I score that $50,000 NFP entry level position it will be a huge step up from what I was doing before law school. On that salary I have a plan to pay off all my school debt in 2 years. My debt is low since I took an academic scholarship at a lower ranked school.
“Make a living” … means whatever it means to you, it’s not some objective measure. I expect I will make a fine living at Nonprofit work. Since I never went to law school to make piles of money - its not a problem.
Houston is hurting too. My friend was at Vinson & Elkins (huge energy practice) and he got shown the door in the spring.
Judge advocates, even Reserve and National Guard JAs, have been deploying for a while now to both Iraq and Afghanistan. So there is definitely some potential risk, depending on the service.
The Feds pay 6 figures within 4 years, actually-especially if you’re accepted via the fellowship programs which have contractual grade increases.
Is it partner money with BMWs? Not exactly-but considering that we only work 40 hours per week and you’re allowed to accrue up to 3 months of vacation (after which you go into “use or lose” and are given vacation priority), you get all the federal holidays, that you get an official “tenure” status at my agency blahblahblah it’s hardly “not a living”-I probably make more per minute spent working than an investment banker!
Before lawschool I made 50K, after lawschool I made 55K (as a fellow) but my salary increased very rapidly every year after that.
Every one of my friends thinks I’m crazy to even think about giving it up, frankly…
I wouldn’t recommend law school to make piles and piles of money but I’m slightly more positive about it than some of the people in this thread. All that said, I strongly, strongly regret not choosing medicine. My sister is a psychiatrist and aside from the pain of med school schedule + call, her average day is a f*ck of a lot more fun than mine.
Look at it this way: at least you didn’t get hired by Thatcher Profitt. They went out of business after hiring their new associates.
Then the firm demanded back the advances given to take the bar.
Ouch.
Good luck by the way-- the market is very tough now.