Although we’re in no position to prove it statistically, our anecdotal impression confirms what hartlaw observes, namely there seem to be fewer entry level jobs for lawyers listed – at least relative to the years prior to 2008.
Starting with the financial meltdown that year, the legal employment marketplace (like all others) was virtually frozen for about 14 months. Even the largest firms were scaling back and in some cases foregoing new hires altogether. Smaller firms were certainly not going to hire in the face of daunting economic news. Beginning in 2009 hiring started to come back, but because of the long hiccup, and the still much weaker overall demand, there were far more experienced lawyers looking for work than ever before.
If you’re an employer (law firm, corporation, non-profit – any setting), training a new lawyer out of school is an expensive proposition. If there are people available for the same $ who already have experience, those people are going to get hired first. There are still, in 2011, far more experienced attorneys in the marketplace than we’ve ever seen in the past. These people are often on the sidelines waiting for friends and former colleagues to network them into the few available positions, and they get hired before any recruitment ad is ever run.
The other factor in play here is one that’s been written about before and is more independent of economic cycles, and that is simply the increased supply of law graduates. New law schools are opening every year; recently opened schools are getting accredited by the ABA in record time. The nation is graduating perhaps 15% or more lawyers now than in did thirty years ago, and the demand simply has not kept up. This increase in capacity is being fuelled by the economics of law schools: they’re cash cows, and any University with some classroom space available can set up shop and start reaping the big tuition bucks immediately (obviously it’s not that simple, but the economics are simple, and that’s what drives the expansion). By comparison, from 1980-1999 only ONE medical school was opened in the United States. (This is now changing, but available slots in law schools are still growing exponentially relative to seats in medical schools).
These two factors combined have significantly reduced opportunities for newly graduating lawyers. That said, law firms and corporations are coming to Lawmatch to find qualified candidates. Create your free attorney job seeker account on Lawmatch and help top law firms and corporations find you.