The Shark

got hope? maybe we all just need to think outside of the biglaw box.

[brian lauter]

So far this week we’ve heard from two unemployed 3Ls: Jaggers, who is pursuing a career as a prosecutor, and Dawes, who is pursuing a career in corporate law.

My next interview subject is “Pearlman,” a jobless 3L with government and private sector experience who is now pinning her hopes on the public sector.

Ed. Note: If you are interested in participating in an email survey on your job search experiences, please contact us. 

Disclaimer:  To encourage candid responses we’ve used pseudonyms to disguise the interviewees’ identities.

Brian: Why did you come to law school?

Pearlman: Med school didn't work out, so I tried being a paralegal after I graduated college and it seemed like it might be a good fit.

Brian: Can you give me a brief rundown of the jobs you've had in law school or the route(s) you've pursued?

Pearlman: During my first summer I worked at the California Chamber of Commerce, my second summer I worked at a private firm that took on plaintiffs' securities class action suits. This year, I've externed at the AG's office and am now at a local state courthouse.

Brian: Why haven't these worked out? (i.e. Why don't you have a job now?)

Pearlman: Well, I'm still hoping the AG might work out, but I can't apply until after I graduate. I didn't get an offer from my job this past summer, but I wasn't that surprised. Going in they told us that they would only offer jobs to one or two people, and they did just that. Would have been nice to get an offer, though, of course.

Brian: Are you depressed/discouraged yet? Do you feel like it's the economy's fault and not yours?

Pearlman: I'm sometimes depressed, always discouraged. I totally blame the economy because that's easier, but sometimes I wish I had made different decisions that would have given me better job prospects now.

Read the rest of Dawes' interview, in which she talks about while she'll likely "go government" or "get creative," after the jump.

got hope? think of the jd as a long term investment. and a social opportunity!

[brian lauter]

Next up in The Shark’s got hope? interview series is Dawes, a jobless 3L who thought she had a nice job lined up at a large, well-known law firm, but was no-offered for “macroeconomic reasons.”

Ed. Note: If you are interested in participating in an email survey on your job search experiences, please contact us.  You can read our previous interview with 3L Jaggers here.

Disclaimer:  To encourage candid responses we’ve used pseudonyms to disguise the interviewees’ identities.

Brian:    Why did you come to law school?
Dawes:  Because I was tired of being a secretary with a college education. I’d always thought about it, but took 2 years off before deciding to go. Wanted more job options/security - ha.

Brian:  Can you give me a brief rundown of the jobs you’ve had in law school or the route(s) you’ve pursued?
Dawes:  Public interest, small law firm, big law firm

Brian:  Why haven’t these worked out?  (i.e. Why don’t you have a job now?) 
Dawes:  The only one of those 3 that could have actually ended up providing a position is the big law firm. I honestly had no warning that I wouldn’t get an offer. I was told it was due to “macroeconomic reasons,” but they certainly didn’t warn me of any two weeks before in my final end of summer review when they said they loved me and “hoped to work with me in the future.”

Brian:  Are you depressed/discouraged yet? 
Dawes:  I’m discouraged, but not depressed. I’m just not really sure what to do about my situation and wonder at what point I should totally give up on having a law-related job.

Read the rest of Dawes' interview, in which she seems to be cautiously optimistic about her future and not so bitter about her law school experience, after the jump.

got hope for the future? yeah, but not for my future as a lawyer...

[brian lauter]

For weeks we’ve been reporting bad employment news here at The Shark. Law school recruiting is down, offers are being rescinded, and government agencies are instituting hiring freezes.

So, we’ve seen a lot of upsetting statistics recently, but it’s sometimes hard to tell how the tanking legal job market is really affecting law students who don’t have a job lined up. To get a better handle on how jobless 3Ls are dealing with the poor job market, I asked several 3Ls about their experiences, outlooks, and prospects. We’ll be presenting these interviews to you throughout the week.  Look for the got hope? logo on each.

Ed. Note: If you are interested in participating in an email survey on your job search experiences, please contact us.

Disclaimer:  To encourage candid responses we’ve used pseudonyms to disguise the interviewees’ identities.

Brian:    Why did you come to law school?
Jaggers:     I wanted to continue my education rather than get a job just to get by after college.  I also figured going to law school would allow me to better pursue practically any serious job I wanted.

Brian:    Can you give me a brief rundown of the jobs you’ve had in law school or the route(s) you’ve pursued?
Jaggers:    I’ve worked for the major crimes unit in a DA office, a nonprofit organization called the Senior Legal Hotline, and for the California Attorney General.

Brian:    Why haven’t these worked out?  (i.e. Why don’t you have a job now?) 
Jaggers:    DA offices in California have let go many of their newer attorneys and even rescinded offers for 3Ls that have been assured a job.  For the DA office I worked for, 400 people interviewed for 4 open spots – most of those people included displaced deputy DAs and other 3Ls from schools all over the state.  The senior legal hotline had its funding substantially cut and is unable to take on new employees while struggling to keep the few it already has. 

Brian:    Are you depressed/discouraged yet?  Do you feel like it’s the economy’s fault and not yours?
Jaggers:    I absolutely feel like this is the economy’s fault.  I’ve consistently been in the top 15-20% of my class at a top tier law school, I have letters of recommendation from each of my employers and I have experience in several different areas of law.
I’m no longer depressed about the situation though – I’m viewing it as a blessing in disguise.  Truth be told, I don’t even want to be lawyer.  The lack of legal jobs out there will allow me to pursue something I actually enjoy, rather than get sucked into a career that will destroy my soul.

Brian:    How has your search for a job impacted your personal life?  Your school life (i.e. Do you dedicate a lot of time to it?  Do you feel like you still have to work harder?)?
Jaggers:    My search for a job did take a lot of my time at the beginning of the year.  Now, however, with the consensus being that there are no available jobs out there for law school graduates, I feel that a continued search would be fruitless.  I’ve read articles about how a law school grad’s best option is to move to Dubai or get into scooping dog poo.

Read the rest of Jaggers' interview, in which he assesses the number of his friends who are jobless or on a fruitless hunt and levies some pretty serious criticisms against career services offices, after the jump.

the rise and fall of the law school blogging golden age. yes, i said golden age.

[brian lauter]

Last week, The Volokh Conspiracy ran an item by Professor Orin Kerr that asserted law student blogs are not as numerous and important today as they once were. According to the item, around 2002-2004, “law prof blogs regularly linked to law student blogs, and for the most part there wasn’t a sharp line between them in terms of readership.”

I will take Professor Kerr at his word regarding the diminished role law student blogs now play in the blawgosphere. I didn’t start law school until 2006, so I was, unfortunately, not privy to this golden age of law student blogging.

Why has law school blogging decreased so dramatically? Commenters on Professor Kerr’s item picked up on a couple of issues that I’ve grappled with writing for The Shark.

The first major issue is fear. For ambitious law students competing with similarly qualified peers for jobs, an online record of your pithy comments can look like a real and unnecessary liability.  Blogging requires a certain approach and writing style. Why expose yourself needlessly to the critical eye of a potential employer who may not understand these blogging conventions, or may simply disagree with you?

This was a major concern of mine when I started writing for The Shark. At some point, however, I began to trust that employers would be able to separate blogging from my employment qualifications. Thus far, my faith has been rewarded.

I’ve discussed blogging in several interviews and I’m always careful to highlight that it keeps me up to date on contemporary legal issues. I also encourage them to check out the blog, but mention that I hope they’ll realize that it’s meant to be informative and entertaining, not reflective of the kind of legal writer or employee I would be. Interviewers’ responses have always been positive.

Another major reason law students don’t blog is time. Time is everything in law school and, even when it’s possible to carve some time out for non-law school related activities, it can be difficult to justify spending that time writing about the law or law school.  Getting paid to blog helps.

Despite these issues, many brave law students still venture out into the blawgosphere every day. There’s us, there’s Nuts & Boalts, and a bunch more can be found in The Legal Underground’s Weekly Law School Roundup.

cal law's bar exam resource: update for july 2008 exam.

[cynthia foster]

For those of you anxiously awaiting your California bar exam results tomorrow (good luck!), I bring you something to occupy your obsessive mind: sample answers to real questions from the July exam, written by experts in the field of passing the damn test.  Additionally, there's a story on job search tips on this cruel and unkind economy.  All of these resources are free, with no registration required.  Check them out when you wake up tonight in a cold sweat.

government work is the new biglaw.

[brian lauter]

It looks like the public sector is about to be flooded with young attorneys.

The other day, I read an article on Law.com about increased law student interest in public sector jobs due to the recent political campaign and, specifically, due to Barack Obama’s win.

Obama himself spurned lucrative Biglaw offers and probably a Supreme Court clerkship in favor of going into public service.  He’s also repeatedly encouraged youth to enter public service and has outlined a plan to put his money where his mouth is after he’s sworn in.

I don’t doubt Obama’s power to inspire law students to public service, but I think there also may be larger forces driving law students into government work. Namely:

With Biglaw firms going under left and right, mid-size firms trimming their ranks, and even small firms feeling the crunch, students that would have been in line for Biglaw jobs in the past may also be turning increasingly to public service.

I have several friends who, after being no-offered or having their offers rescinded for economic reasons, have been interviewing for government jobs. Others came to law school hoping to go into government work, but have been seeing increased competition for jobs they would have easily gotten a year or two ago.

For instance, District Attorney hiring, always competitive, has been hyper-competitive this year.  The Ventura County DA, for example, interviewed over 80 people for four positions last month.  I’d be willing to bet state and federal agencies have been experiencing similar upticks in interest.

Government law work has always been enticing to a lot of young attorneys. Reasonable hours, a varied practice, and excellent in-court experience make for a pretty killer combination.

If the economy continues to tank and President Obama decides to help young public sector lawyers get rid of some of that oppressive law school debt, BigGov might just become the new Biglaw.

hastings' alumni mentor program offers reassuring view of a broader legal world.

[justin gosling]

Along with the rest of you, I am worried about the sour economy and the effect it will have on my job prospects. Not only are there fewer jobs available, but firms are applying pressure even to those that receive summer offers.

This is not a time to sit idly or bury my head until springtime.

So off I went to Career services to take advantage of the UC Hastings Alumni Mentor Program, which pairs up interested students with alum that have similar interests. While the program isn't directly about finding the student a job, the process is a great opportunity to ask a practicing attorney questions about real life layering in a specific field. The mentor may reveal practice areas you didn't know existed, or may help you realize that your dream job probably won't mix well with your dream social life. All in all, the process seems very cool, and will give students a better idea about how and where to search for jobs.

The only problem is that our program is also very popular.

lawyers and law students have bad manners. usf is on the case.

[abony holmes]

Last week, I witnessed my good friend get reamed by a member of the Boalt staff.  While trying to file a form, my friend ended up on the receiving end of a curt and tense exchange with a beleaguered staff member not in the mood to do her any favors. Many Boalt students have bad relationships with the staff, so my friend is not alone.

Law students and lawyers are very busy, logical people. They see no point in pleasantries; those only wastes precious time. Most law students believe a nice tone of voice and a please and thank you is the most that can be expected by the support staff we encounter on a daily basis.

Maybe this is why University of San Francisco's School of Law is offering meditation and interpersonal skills courses to help their students with social skills.

Dean Jeffery S. Brand described USF law students, and lawyers in general, as not having particularly good communication skills.

"Their notion of a communication skill is arguing to the hilt. There may be other ways to handle things."

Brand chalked up much of the communication problems facing law students and lawyers to depression, substance abuse and stress brought on in recent years by a collapsing job market, student debt and other anxieties. The interpersonal course, modeled on a course taught at Stanford Business School, features small group sessions and role playing that teach students “how to relate to co-counsel and judges and how to improve their self-awareness, communication skills and empathy.”

firms applying pressure, hoping students will accept summer offers in mere minutes.

[justin gosling]

Imagine participating in OCI and landing a call back interview at a small Bay Area firm. After acing the call back and receiving a job offer, the firm rescinds the offer less than two weeks later.

That is the story of a fellow 2L (who would like to remain anonymous), and I can't help but feel sorry for them. In this case, the firm in question is not a member of NALP.  This student did not do anything that would force the firm to drop the offer. Instead, they fell victim to a firm that overestimated their future needs. This problem is pervasive at NALP-member firms, as well.  While the student would have a 45 day window to accept an offer from a NALP-member firm, that window is not as much protection as one would think.

In the face of NALP rules, firms have been informing people with standing offers that the firm screwed up and overestimated their summer associate capacity for the summer 2009. Abovethelaw has more details here, here, here, and here, where they are repeating the mantra that students should accept summer offers with haste.

While I have not heard of big firms flat out rescinding offers in defiance of NALP rules, if you receive a heads up phone call about an oversubscribed summer class, you can bet that you are right on the edge and the firm is trying to do you a "favor" by pushing you to chose another option. Of course, this assumes that you have other employment options, and considering the souring economy and the dissolution of some law firms, I doubt that most students are lucky enough to pick among multiple summer offers.

Even if you are able to accept an offer before a firm rescinds it, there is a storm on the horizon.  If you do accept an offer from a firm with a bulging summer class, you may find yourself competing with fellow summers for a job offer after graduation. Your experience over the summer may not be as rich because you have to prove that you can get the job done better than your fellow summer associates rather than just demonstrating that you can get the job done on your own - the bar is set high, the pressure is on, and there are no guarantees like we've seen in previous (richer) years.

All this sounds like a great recipe for a terrible summer experience, if you ask me.

oci tips, from a bitter lawyer. and a not-so bitter law student.

[abony holmes]

I'm lucky that I chose not to deal with the On-Campus Interview Process (lovingly referred to as OCIP), but if you aren't as lucky as me and you need some advice on how not screw things up, read Bitter Lawyer's interview dos and don'ts.

My favorite:

"1. Don’t write stupid, trivial things under the 'Personal' section of your resume.  Nobody cares if you’re a Woody Allen fanatic, bake a mean kiwi-lemon pie or 'love to travel.' Save this section for real things only.  Stuff like 'Speak Cantonese fluently,' 'Varsity Golf, Vanderbilt University,' or 'Published Various Political Essays in The New Yorker, 2004 - Present.' In other words, if you don’t have anything legitimate and unique to add, say nothing.  Please."

Though this may be true, I can't resist the urge to include my love of fiction writing in my personal section. No, I've never been published, but I'm only 25 and there is still hope for me yet. And in an effort to appear more well-rounded than I actually am, I have to include my love for cycling (i.e., riding my bike on mostly flat terrain for 20 minutes or so in perfect weather conditions).

But the way Bitter Lawyer puts it, unless you have some outstanding hobby that has gained you some kind of recognition (or is clearly an intellectual asset, like fluency in a language), there is no reason to add it to your resume.  Darn.

The most useful tip Bitter Lawyer provides is also the most practical:

"The most important thing is to be enthusiastic and eager.  The interviewers assume you’re smart—that’s why you got an interview in the first place.  So do yourself a favor and try to be 'normal'—not intellectual.  It’s far more impressive.

I've never interviewed for a law firm, but I have had a few experiences on the interviewers side of the table, and I have to say that being "normal" is a HUGE asset. The people who don't get the job are the people who seem like they will be a pain in the ass to work with. A good rule of thumb here is that your resume will provide an interviewer with the information they need about how smart and capable you are, and the interview lets them know if they can tolerate being in a room with you for 25 minutes.

There's also a tip about not harassing interviewers with thank you emails and letters.  This was underscored for me by a friend who received an offer from a firm yesterday, just as she was sending an email thanking them for the interview. After some thought she decided not to send the email, and not to send any thank-you emails at all, because they waste everyone's time and don't make one iota of difference when it comes to the hiring decision.

As thorough as his list is, the one tip Bitter Lawyer is missing was provided to me by a 3L friend two days ago:

"The best thing in the world is to schedule all your call backs in other cities in the same week. Last year I spent a week in the Hyatt in DC, and it was the best week of my entire law school career."