The job market is still sucky for new lawyers

[MillCreek]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/19/business/dealbook/an-expensive-law-degree-and-no-place-to-use-it.html

How are you going to pay off tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in college debt without a high-paying job as a lawyer?

[Perd Hapley]

What? We've achieved Peak Shylock? I didn't think that was possible.

[makattak]

[Scout26]

I'm not seeing a problem here.

[230RN]

But can't you use that knowledge in other ways independently from a private practice?

[lee n. field]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/19/business/dealbook/an-expensive-law-degree-and-no-place-to-use-it.html

How are you going to pay off tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in college debt without a high-paying job as a lawyer?

sex work?

[AJ Dual]

http://i.imgur.com/89pDr2F.jpg

Be careful what you wish for... If they can't find work with established firms, out of desperation they will:

- Apply the "Legal Mindset" into whatever other fields or careers they eventually find themselves in.

- Start "Debt Collection Agencies". Probably by buying out the worst/oldest/unverified "paper" out there and staffing a call center full of bums and ex-convicts.

- Become professional lawsuit chasers with themselves as the plaintiff. Slipping on sidewalks etc.

- Run for political office.

 

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

Unemployed lawyers means a rise in crime rate


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[230RN]

Be careful what you wish for... If they can't find work with established firms, out of desperation they will:

- Apply the "Legal Mindset" into whatever other fields or careers they eventually find themselves in.

- Start "Debt Collection Agencies". Probably by buying out the worst/oldest/unverified "paper" out there and staffing a call center full of bums and ex-convicts.

- Become professional lawsuit chasers with themselves as the plaintiff. Slipping on sidewalks etc.

- Run for political office.

 

- Find a drug with an unusual side effect which affected more than a dozen people and start a class action suit against the Mfrs.  Advertise on inexpensive nighttime TV for more potential victims.  Line up compliant Drs. who will swear to the most horrible effects.  Make sure the side effect blurbs have a misplaced or missing comma so that claimants can say they were improperly advised as to those side effects.

[T.O.M.]

Problem is that too many people go into law school thinking they get to come out of the other side and walk into a six figure income.  So a lot max out the loans, live a kife of luxury, buying cars, and making choices thinking that money won't be an issue.   Reality is that rarely happened back in the 90s when I graduated,  and it happens even less now. A lot of grunt work the big firms used to pay associates to do has been eliminated by technology.  Book research that took hours or days can be done by computer in hours.  Basic document drafting...wills, power of attorney, etc., is now a Word document that the printer spits ouf in 15 minutes.  The bread and butter of small local firms used to on be wills, estates, real estate transactions,  and thanks to online resources, most people can do simple law work on their own.

Yes, you can still make a good living as a lawyer.  May not get rich, but you can do alright.

[MillCreek]

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2016/06/17/get_ready_for_more_stories_about_jobless_law_school_graduates.html?google_editors_picks=true

A followup article in Slate.

[grampster]

The information here and elsewhere about how college graduates come out of college with some sort of degree, big debt and expecting six figured employment while resting with their feet up on the desk is getting rather endemic.  That's why whenever I talk to young people who are contemplating college I tell 'em to go to trade school and learn how to do some dirty work that will always be around like turd hurding, tin knocking, electrical, etc etc.  I told my kids and grandkids to learn a trade and thumb their noses at college.  They are all doing quite well as printers, odd jobbers/pickin'/internet sales, journeyman insulator/tin knocker/welder and the 2nd youngest just got to work learning plumbing.  The best part is they earned money while they learned rather than got in debt and loafing at a school for 4 or 6 years.

[HankB]

. . . A lot of grunt work the big firms used to pay associates to do has been eliminated by technology . . .

You mean an internet connection to an office staffed with Indian law students working for 100 rupees an hour in Bombay?

[cordex]

You mean an internet connection to an office staffed with Indian law students working for 100 rupees an hour in Bombay?

This just gave me a terrible thought.  What if our barely functional legal code is actually outsourced to be written by the same companies who write so much barely functional source code?

Then I realized that the special interests who buy our laws would never offshore such an important job. Too risky, and it would be false economy to spend so much money lobbying for sub-par exceptions and special treatment.

[Ned Hamford]

:Ned holds out his hat and smiles at his cardboard sign:

Legal Evaluations and Professional Insight; $450 an hour.

[MillCreek]

A lot of grunt work the big firms used to pay associates to do has been eliminated by technology. 

Woohoo! I remember how one of my first lawfirm tasks was to do manual deposition indexing (with a highlighter and typing indexes into an Excel spreadsheet) and preparing exhibits out of boxes and boxes of paper discovery documents.   This was as the local defense firm for the Dalkon Shield litigation.

[MechAg94]

We used to have comments about Union workers whose job could be replaced by robots.  What comments do we have for lawyers whose job is done by a computer? 

The answer is obvious.  Make it illegal for computers to do legal work.

[Ron]

On Isle Royale, our least visited National Park, forest fire suppression has caused so much overgrowth that the tick population has exploded.

The moose on Isle Royale are often not very healthy due to the hundreds of thousands of the parasites feeding off each moose.

A healthy moose can survive the onslaught of typical tick populations but with the overabundance of ticks even healthy moose will die off in the winter due to being so weakened all spring, summer and fall by the relentlessness of the parasites.

[T.O.M.]

We used to have comments about Union workers whose job could be replaced by robots.  What comments do we have for lawyers whose job is done by a computer? 

The answer is obvious.  Make it illegal for computers to do legal work.

I guess I should have said that technology has made grunt work so easy that (a) firms don't waste money paying associates to do it (like research and memo writing on issues of law) and (b) a lot of basic law work is now available as a form so people can do it pro see instead of paying an attorney to do it.

Computers don't do the work...yet.

[lee n. field]

On Isle Royale, our least visited National Park, forest fire suppression has caused so much overgrowth that the tick population has exploded.

The moose on Isle Royale are often not very healthy due to the hundreds of thousands of the parasites feeding off each moose.

A healthy moose can survive the onslaught of typical tick populations but with the overabundance of ticks even healthy moose will die off in the winter due to being so weakened all spring, summer and fall by the relentlessness of the parasites.

So we should allow periodic natural lawyer fires to happen, to weed out the weak.

[RoadKingLarry]

So we should allow periodic natural lawyer fires to happen, to week out the weak.

Managed hunts to cull the weak and/or scrofulous. Selling tag draws could probably seriously reduce the national debt.

[Ron]

Lawyers are like cops, we bitch and moan about them until we really need one  

[cordex]

Lawyers are like cops, we bitch and moan about them until we really need one  

Then we bitch and moan afterward.

[RoadKingLarry]

Lawyers are like cops, we bitch and moan about them until we really need one  

The need for lawyers exist primarily because of all the damn lawyers.

[Ned Hamford]

The need for lawyers exist primarily because of all the damn lawyers.

Then we bitch and moan afterward.

I can assure you no one has a better appreciation for how terrible lawyers can be than those that have to interact with them daily... other lawyers.   

But hey, isn't this particular forum all about those 4% exceptional in general?