The miserable employment situation for new law graudates: One 2011 graduate's story

My June 15 post, Congratulations 2012 law school graduates: What were you thinking, generated a fair amount of traffic, as did the follow-up,Update on last Friday's post on the parlous prospects for new law grads. The posts also generated a thoughtful letter from a 2011 law graduate. I've communicated with this individual since.

When I wrote advising that I intended to publish his letter, he asked me not to publish his name because he's recently found work on a "document review project" paying $30 an hour. Although he says the work is "mind numbing," and only temporary, he does not want to jeopardize either his present situation or his future prospects by revealing too much identifying information. I've chosen to respect his wishes and edited the letter accordingly:

I graduated from a Midwestern state law school. The school was ranked among the top 50 nationally. Tuition is comparable to most of the rates you listed. I believe I received a good education there and the school actually maintained all scholarships. (This is unlike many schools where a student who fails to meet the merit requirements after the first year loses that scholarship. Schools extend so many scholarships that statistically some students will lose them after the first year by not being above x% of the class. At my school, many of my classmates avoided crushing debt because the school's willingness to extend all scholarships.)

One of the main questions you seem to ponder is: "Why do we do this to ourselves?" You talk about how courts have dismissed lawsuits by basically saying: "if you were smart enough to get into law school, you should have been smart enough to see through the rosy employment and salary figures put out by all the law schools."

My only explanation is:

1. I understood the numbers were "rosy," but it was hard to really understand how badly they were off at the time. It's like the old quote: "There are lies, damned lies, and statistics." The numbers are just so far out of tune with reality that no one knew how bad it was. Eventually you just assume there is some accountability there. That law schools wouldn't and couldn't fudge the numbers that badly. We were wrong. The University of Illinois, a school I considered, was making numbers up!
2. Everyone assumed the economy would be better by the time we graduated law school. When you are in your twenties, three years is a long time. You assume things will be different when it's your turn to be actively job hunting. For that we have no one to blame but ourselves.
3. We just really wanted to be attorneys. Most of us still do.

As for the job market itself, it's as miserable as advertised. It's been seven months since I was admitted to the bar and I have had two interviews. Short of those interviews, I have had no success greater than a courtesy email informing me that my application was received. I have spent most of my time either covering appearances for other attorneys or working on document review projects for an hourly wage. Nine out of 10 times an alum won't return a phone call or email. When they do, normally their advice is to go get an MBA. My story is a dime a dozen among my classmates and peers. In fact, it's much better than most, as you generally can't get document review jobs anymore without prior document review experience! If a respectable firm offered me $10,000 for a position, I would leap at it. Right now experience is worth its weight in gold. There are jobs for attorneys being advertised, but very very few entry level positions.

The problem is, what's the alternative? Most attorneys have English or Poli-Sci backgrounds. What kind of job will you get with that? I have a Business and Finance double major and I have yet to even get a response from a company based on that. It's easy to think that we should just move on, but many of us just can't.

If recent news accounts can be believed, this young man's experience is all too common. Roughly half of the members of the 2011 graduating class of Loyola and IIT-Kent are apparently in this same situation; six out of 10 DePaul's 2011 graduates are still looking for full-time legal work. Twelve per cent of the University of Chicago's graduates can't find work, for cryin' out loud. Yes, the unemployment situation for newly minted lawyers is clearly exacerbated by the many continuing problems with the economy as a whole -- but the theory has always been that the more education one has, the less likely one is to become a victim of the economy. Clearly, the experience of recent law school graduates has been quite different; that suggests that something is fundamentally wrong with our legal education system, doesn't it?