Of course, much like the headhunters that specialize in finding lawyers new jobs inside the legal profession, this boutique industry of career advisers who assist attorneys in leaving the profession cater to an incredibly miniscule fraction of the profession: graduates of "top" law schools with BigLaw experience on their resumes. Frankly, they are the group that needs the least assistance.

Meanwhile, nearly 50% of all law school graduates are unemployed or underemployed nine months after graduation, and a plurality of those with *actual* lawyer jobs are so woefully underpaid that they also seek to leave the profession. Soon after the nine month mark, another class of law school graduates enters the workforce, and the labor supply becomes that much worse - and we are now in year seven of this phenomenon. These headhunters will not touch this group with a ten-foot pole.

Sadly, the author does not see fit to even mention the plight of these non-BigLaw attorneys and their Sisyphean efforts to leave the profession in her lengthy article. Mind you, Biglaw hiring at its peak in the Oughties never amounted to more than about 12% of all law school graduates, overwhelmingly concentrated at the schools at the top of the US News Rankings (like the author's UPenn).

- One of America's tens of thousands of un/underemployed attorneys

Sadly I think law schools have been cranking out way more graduates than will ever be able to be gainfully employed as lawyers. You're right that it's kind of obnoxious to focus on the people who have the opportunity to practice law and find they don't want it, when there are so many people who would jump at the chance and can't get it. I graduated from a "top 10" law school but in my experience in actual practice, law school grades and law school rankings have practically no correlation to abilities as an actual lawyer. Succeeding in real life practice has much more to do with drive, people skills, business skills, the ability to make good decisions under stress, and most of all, just giving an actual crap about doing a good job for your clients. So many lawyers DON'T, and clients can smell the difference thirty miles away. If you really feel strongly about wanting to practice law hang in there- I do think the cream rises to the top over time, even if "the cream" has to start out doing traffic tickets and court appointed criminal defense cases while working the night shift at K-Mart, instead of getting a gazillion dollar a year job in some Manhattan highrise. Ironically, you get a lot more respect from your peers and a lot more appreciation from your clients doing the former.

I don't want to give away too many identifying details about myself, but in one of my internships, one of my mentor/bosses/etc had a resume that forgers would hesitate to make. Top college, top law school, major scholarships, feeder clerkships, etc. And yet, the individual could barely get through the day, for a variety of ailments including, I suspect, a slight degree of autism. But pedigree is how the legal profession has hired for >125 years now, and they aren't about to change.

It's honestly competitive trying to be able to volunteer one's legal services in Massachusetts, let alone doing court appointed criminal cases, which are monopolized by Boomers with one hundred and one personal connections to the judiciary. If I could pivot into something like compliance or HR or consulting or whatever, I'd do it in a heart beat - but of course, I am simultaneously overqualified and under-experienced for those jobs, and a member of the long-term unemployed to boot. Perhaps I'll get around to finishing that Great American Novel (TM) someday...

It depends a lot on where you live. If you are tied to a larger city for personal/ family reasons, I can see how you could be up a creek. If you're able to move to an area with a small collegial bar where the attorneys all know each other by reputation, pedigree matters a lot less- I'd even go so far as to say not at all, after a year or two of practice. But you'd have to enjoy a smaller town and "general practice" kinds of stuff. Obviously you're not going to work your way into antitrust defense or corporate tax litigation from traffic tickets, but you can work your way into criminal defense/ med mal/ consumer bankruptcy/ domestic relations/ real estate and make a decent-to-extremely good living. There will always be a market for good, hardworking lawyers, although the first few years can be really rough. (I don't know your situation at all, so I'm not saying you personally should move to Smallville and hang out a shingle- just saying it's an option for some).

For a variety of reasons, I'm pretty geographically tied to the eastern half of Massachusetts, a state where about four people pass the bar exam every year for every one job in the profession and even the law schools at BU and BC, which are both Top 25 or Top 30 in US News, fail to get even 2/3 of their graduates into the legal profession, according to their ABA disclosures. Northeastern, Suffolk, New England Law Boston, UMASS Law, Western New England? Only between 25% and 45% placement these days. And that's nine months after graduation. Even for traditionally *back-up* fields of law like real estate and criminal defense, small law firms can pick up BC and BU grads (or grads coming in from places like Fordham or George Washington or wherever) to work for like $30k without benefits. The profession has thoroughly lost the plot, and if I'm going to be poor, I'd just assume be poor doing work that I enjoy, i.e. not trying to get alkies out of DUI convictions or foreclosing/debt collecting on people who've lost their job. No, no, hell no.

That sucks, I'm sorry. I hope you are able to find a job you enjoy soon!

Thanks. Me too!

hey, a lot of those alkies ARE lawyers, so you might be helping out a few classmates!

The classmates of mine I would peg as most likely to fall into alcoholism are predominantly the insufferable douchebro type; I have little inclination of helping them out.

Who'll be "gainfully employed" as lawyers is a function of demand and supply. If prices go down, business goes up. I'd certainly have some work that I'm not pursuing now because it'd be too expensive to be worthwhile, but that I'd let someone pursue who'd want to provide reasonably good legal work for $20/hour. Why should that be any different than in any other field--if lots of people want to be lawyers, wages of lawyers compared to other professions go down.

It's also not that people entering law school now or at any time in the recent past couldn't know that. The job market data are out in the open. If I get a degree in performance art and desire actually to work in that field, I know in advance that average wages for performance artist are low and median wages are even lower because a lot of the money goes to a few superstar performance artists. A lawyer is supposed to be someone who can plan actions wisely in advance, taking the relevant information into account. So why should I feel all that badly for someone who went to a second-tier law school and knew or should have known that getting the high-paying jobs from there is tough (perhaps not even so much because of the school's name, but because people qualified to graduate at the top of the class of a top-tier school also tend to get into a top-tier school), even the high-paying jobs are frustrating, and the more likely outcome is a low-paying and even more frustrating job?

Some law schools misrepresented the employment statistics of their graduates, making it seem like everybody was landing high-paying jobs when the reality is much different. A few schools wound up in court over this.

Sure, due diligence would have shown that law jobs aren't falling from the sky, but it is hard to discount information from what appears to be a reputable source.

That's still going on, according to a friend of mine who is a law prof at a top 10 school. They don't outright lie, but they definitely produce misleading stats.

I don't think you should stay up at night crying for anyone, but there was a pretty big bubble in the legal industry in the early 2000s, such that there were WAY more jobs (and more higher paying jobs) available to people who graduated in, say, 2003 than in 2006, and people entering law school in 2003 had no real way of anticipating that. Similar things have happened in a lot of other industries over the years, but it does suck for the people who have huge student loans and can't get the jobs they reasonably expected to be able to get.

Did ECON-101 (prospective lawyers take that in college, don't they?) mention the phrase "pig cycle"?

The legal job market hasn't historically had any kind of "boom and bust" cycle, this was a once-in-the-last-300-years event. I still don't fully understand the economics behind this particular bubble, although I'm sure it's been analyzed extensively. Basically all I can say is that I entered law school in 2000 and was wined and dined and generally courted like a star athlete by a bunch of large firms when I graduated; Then several of my friends, who were every bit as qualified as I was, went to law school a few years later, got similar offers, and then had those offers withdrawn as the large law firms hit the skids en masse. Law school enrollment has dropped precipitously since then, which is a good thing. Like I said, there are certainly better candidates for your pity if you've got a finite supply, but I can't pretend that all those law students should have seen it coming, because a lot of much better informed people didn't, either.

I found an interesting blog post at Mother Jones that discusses the starting salary issue, and illustrates it with a chart. According to the chart, about 18% of lawyers start at $160,000 and the rest, well, don't. Of course, that doesn't count law school graduates who can't find a job at all.

Here's the article: http://www.motherjones.com/...

I don't see a source for the Biglaw data in that motherjones article, but I suspect it is from the NALP, which rather notoriously undercounts the law school grads who are unemployed or working at Starbucks so as to overemphasize the positive outcomes. The NALP's data generally only covers 21,000 to 23,000 graduates, while nearly 47,000 people graduated from law school in 2013.

Now, the ABA collects granular data for each law school for things like #of grads in law firms with more than 10 lawyers, more than 100 lawyers, more than 500 lawyers, etc - but it does not aggregate them at a national level. However, it does reveal that all law firm hiring for the class of 2013 adds up to just 39.6% of the class of 2013 nationwide. http://taxprof.typepad.com/... And as I pointed out in the comments to that article, only 3 of Massachusetts's 9 law schools managed to place more than 50% of their graduates in full-time, long-term, bar license-required jobs within nine months of graduation.

If you go here, http://www.lstscorereports...., which does some additional analysis of ABA data, you can see that only 30 of the nation's 202 law schools place more than 18% of their most recent class in law firms of more than 100 attorneys, which is a very generous definition of "Biglaw" and quite a bit more expansive than "Law firms that start at $160k." (sort the table by law firms with >101 attorneys and count the schools that did better than 18%).

Since my site (JD Careers Out There) is referenced in this article, I thought I'd reply to this thread of comments to let you know that my site exists to help more than just "top" law school grads. What you say re headhunters is true - they can mostly help the "top" school grads and the top-of--the-class grads of select other schools since that's what they're paid to do. I didn't graduate from a "top" school so it always bothered me as a headhunter that I couldn't help the many ambitious, bright people who graduated from other schools.

I made JDCOT to help everyone. "Top" law grads may have access to more jobs and higher paying jobs when they're coming out of school but after that, the problems people face are pretty much the same over time regardless of where they graduated. I've been in the law careers business for 11 years now and can say that assistance is needed everywhere - even in a great economy. This is due to a combo of reasons - including the practical stuff that law school fails to teach, the personality types who go to law school, the reasons that lead people to law school, etc.

So there is help out there for more than just "top" grads. I don't think this article was ignoring that....

Interesting. Perhaps my offline self will investigate your services.

Didn't you know? No one cares about the peons, the also rans and the less than spectacular. That's just the way it is. Not saying it's right, but no one cares (and I mean NO ONE) about the less than top 10%, of just about anything.
BTW, u got a job yet?
U can't sit on the sidelines forever can you? How do you eat man? I've heard you and your plight for a couple of years now. When do you move on?
Sheesh, I'm so lucky I dodged that kind of bullet. The static hell economic hell in which you find yourself is one I've avoided. Thank the heavens for that.

Just like the hordes of un/underemployed college graduates, most of my fellow un/underemployed law school graduates and I ended up moving back home. As to how my family eats, well, that's another story for another day.

Dang.
Still rough times.
I hope things turn around for you soon.

Thanks. Me too!

Maybe now you underemployed attorneys can do something for the rest of us.

Yeah, I got the whole 'out of touch' vibe from this article the whole time I was reading it. Plenty of lawyers look to get a job outside of biglaw simply because biglaw won't have them to begin with. How much sympathy should I have for someone that made a ton of money in a job that so many people attempt to get but fall short of? The only reason there's consultants to help these people change career fields is because they have enough money to hire consultants. There are plenty of other professionals who switch fields all the time.

I will say this in the author's defense. Seven or ten years ago, BigLaw associates who wanted out had decent options: high-paying jobs at boutique law firms, in-house lateralling opportunities, possible government jobs, maybe transition into consulting or banking if their pedigrees were sufficient. Nowadays? It's a real crapshoot. Many are the former Biglaw associates who can't find anything better than temporary document review gigs which pay about 60% of what they did five or ten years ago.

But yeah, the article is a bit too much in the vein of articles in the New York Times that go "Wall Street hiring is down; who will think of those poor Harvard graduates?" - which is why I commented in the first place.

glad you mentioned the doc review mill. Biglaw associates have been downsizing (not always of their own volition) to doc review over the past 10 years, however modestly, to the detriment of lower tiered lawyers. if anything, they have raised what agencies/firms want, while the pay continues to go down because there are more and more attorneys.

The most hysterical lawyer ad I've ever seen was for an intellectual property boutique firm a while ago (at least 18-24 months ago) in Mass Lawyers Weekly. It was for a senior associate. They wanted:

1) Top 20 law school or better (so no Massachusetts law school qualifies except Harvard)

2) Class rank in the top 1/3 of your class

3) A M.S in biochemistry was required, but they heavily preferred candidates with a PhD.

4) "substantial" book of business

5) At least ten years' experience in IP work at either a Vault 50 firm or at a major pharmaceutical company.

So, let's see. Putting aside the difficulty of accomplishing all of those things, and the absurdity of needing a certain class rank at a certain tier of school after ten years in practice, and all the rest of it. Let's look at the time commitment: that's 4 years undergrad + 3.5 years law school & bar exams + 6-9 years for the PhD + 10 years work experience. At a minimum, you would have to be about 45 years old to qualify for this nonequity legal position!

My favorite line for recruiting (not law specific) was a conversation from an HR person talking about working in a database.

HR: do you have experience in this database?

Me: I'm familiar with what it does, i haven't specifically worked with that exact software, but i have experience in these five other database softwares that are all similar and one made by the same company. In my six years of operating financial databases, i've never had an issue learning how to use a new one. It's like learning how to drive a honda vs a toyota...they're all cars.

HR: but no experience in this one database specifically?

Me: Like I said, not in particular, but the information that the database is storing/using...i've operated in that world for six years now. It'll just be a simple matter of translated one database language into another, but they all operate with the same principal...store data, extra data, form charts and graphs.

HR: I'm confused, is that a no?

Me: Um, yes....that is a no.

HR: Oh, well then you shouldn't have applied for this job. Sorry.

Me: So wait, what is your ideal candidate? Because this is a pretty niche software, with very few users. If you will ONLY consider those with specific experience in this one program, your options are limited. Who are you looking for?

HR: well ideally we're looking for someone with an MBA, with 5-7 years experience in this one program, and really doing this exact same job at their current company and is just looking to switch companies...for about the same salary or less.

Me: best of luck to you.

HR is terrible. Have you read Wharton professor Peter Cappelli's "Why Good People Can't Get Jobs"? He lays it out as about 10% skills gap and 90% unrealistic HR expectations (I am making up those percentages, but you get the drift).

I agree with you. Its partly a collective action problem. As long as everyone repays their loans on time, the "market" doesn't care about the social problem the law school bubble has created. If everyone started defaulting, then Power would take notice, but for now, the risk to individuals is too high, and the tipping point is somewhere off in the future-

Much like the author, I'd rather just leave the profession and donate my law degree to Mythbusters for one of their episodes where they just blow things up.

me too....

PS- I'd strongly advise getting malpractice insurance in addition to that word processor. I've never been sued by a client, but there have been plenty of times when having the insurance helped me sleep better at night. Also forming an LLC or PLC is not a bad idea- it doesn't matter for most purposes but it can help protect your personal assets if something freakish happens, like you run someone over with your car in between client meetings or something.

I think joining the Inns of Court might also help, if there's an active chapter locally. In my experience a lot of the most reputable attorneys are members, and they are happy to do what they can to help someone hardworking and scrappy find a salaried job, when they have developed a good reputation doing the kind of work you describe.

I don't think such Inns are present in the U.S., though I could be wrong. They're definitely not in Canada.
Hanging up your own shingle is certainly one way to go. I have classmates who did the same straight out of lawschool (which is terrifying given that you don't know jack and could easily get sued out of existence for your ample negligent practice, or simply disbarred for incompetence). Another former colleague set up his own shop after 3 years in Biglaw. He seems to eat ok. Me, I just wanted out after 7 years.

The Inns of Court in the US are different than the English Inns. There, membership in the Inn is a prerequisite to being a barrister. Ih the US, the Inns are a voluntary organization designed to foster collegiality, civility, and higher standards of practice.

Hmmm.. Learn something new everyday. Thanks for that.

They are in the US, I'm a member. They might not be in every city.

Yes, and this article isn't about them. So what? There's a world of people who did go down this path, and there's nothing wrong with examining their plight. There seems to be a knee-jerk assumption that getting a hefty pay check somehow inures you to life's problems. Ironically, it's the same holding up of money as the key to happiness that causes so many people to thoughtlessly go into law to begin with.

I was lucky enough to paralegal at a Park Avenue law firm while putting my law school applications together, which was enough to convince me that I needed to rethink what I was doing. Of course, that led to twenty years of confusion and relative poverty...but I still feel like I dodged the bullet.

Plight? Oh those poor Ivy-league graduates...
Budget properly and work your lucky ass off for 10 years at $160k+ and you can just retire; considering you just made 40 YEARS worth of income compared to normal people.
and a hefty pay check *does* inure you to life's real problems: like food security, housing, and utility bills.
Can't afford the S-class? have to settle for the C-class? boo.hoo.

They weren't lucky-they were better than you. They were better and harder working than most people. And working an Associate lawyer's hours for ten years is a great way to put yourself in the ground. You can talk a good game, but that's because you don't actually have to do it. And you aren't in position to do it because you never worked hard enough to put yourself in position to do so.

These people don't know what "hard work" is.
Harder working?
I have never met anyone earning over $100k that actually works "harder" than fruit pickers and hotel maids.
I can talk and play the game, I have my MBA, it was easy, and I was also lucky enough to be a white male born in the US.
I don't deny my privilege and it is extremely disrespectful to the actual working class to say they worked harder. B.S. Go be a roofer in Arizona for a summer and then tell me how hard it is to sit at a desk. #1%problems

What a load of crap. Just read all the "Big Law" blogs out there to see plenty of examples where the Big Law associates who do all the work are the 2nd and 3rd tier graduates. The Ivy League graduates got their jobs on coat tails and spend the rest of their lives contemplating massive political donations and vacations in the Hamptons.

Yes, that's always the dominant narrative- silver spooned Ivy League grads resting on their coat tails and picking out the proper S-class. Just like the other post, where the "lucky" Ivy Leaguers should shut up and collect their ten years of $160 K because it was more money than most people would ever see in their lifetimes. But those arguments completely fail to recognize that by the time they have graduated from a top Ivy League law program, those grads have already worked longer and harder than most people ever will in their lifetimes. Getting into an Ivy undergrad is no joke, and getting into an Ivy law program is even less of one. Anyone who has gone to an Ivy, or who teaches people who go on to Ivies, recognizes how completely false this kind of sour grapes smearing is. The vast majority of those grads have been running proverbial marathons since they were in grade school to get themselves to that point in life, and they've beaten out 95-97% of their peers in the process. The notion that they are lazy and undeserving is beyond laughable.

"Getting into an Ivy undergrad is no joke, and getting into an Ivy law program is even less of one. "

Actually, Harvard Law's acceptance rate last year was 15%; compare to Harvard undergrad at 6% or so. Except for the legacy students, who tend to be accepted at around 25%. And given the unbelievably insane grade inflation at Harvard (and Yale and Dartmouth),* the only *difficult* thing about getting into a top grad school is the standardized test. Fortunately, aside from the recruited athletes at the Ivies, whose SAT scores are well below the norm (according to Karabel's The Chosen), learning the very learnable LSAT is not much of a challenge. The real joke is that grads of Harvard or Yale or what have you are thought to be so very much better than the grads of a Bowdoin, Boston College, or similar.

- Reality

*Average GPA at Harvard is approaching a 3.6 or maybe even a 3.65 - it's right on the cusp of A- and A - compare to the 3.0 to 3.1 average GPAs at places like Princeton, MIT, and Reed.

I agree with this. I figured out a long time ago that having the ability to get into an ivy, specifically Harvard, is different from being intelligent or working hard. A lot of it can be learned and is passed down in the culture of families. High School level material isn't all that hard and to get a great SAT score just requires preparation. This is why all of the top colleges have such a difficult time winnowing down the applicant pool and in the end they turn to almost a random selection for the non-legacy admits. It's unlikely that those who are accepted are more intelligent or worked harder than those with the thin envelope.

Which means very little. When you have a classroom full of high achieving students, you shouldn't expect a bell curve. It's fine to have one set of results at Harvard and another set at Princeton, for that matter--grades can mean different things depending on the philosophy of the instructor.