Posted by Jonathan Adler:
"The Coming Law Firm Hiring Crisis":
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2009_02_15-2009_02_21.shtml#1234889315
Aric Press at the American Lawyer looks at current trends in the legal
market, and it's not pretty.
If nothing changes, this fall the same law firms that recently laid
off lawyers will start welcoming large groups of new lawyers, whom
they will pay too well and for whom they will have too little work.
If the layoffs were about saving money in a downturn, the new hires
will overwhelm any savings and will signal that the firms regard
the economic crisis as little more than a mild detour on the golden
brick road.
I wish it were otherwise. But consider the current Conventional
Wisdom: At law firms work (and profits) are down, attrition is far
below average, law school graduates hired in an optimistic time are
about to join firms awash in anxiety, and the conveyor belt that
will bring still more eager and talented young lawyers aboard is
about to start up again.
This does not seem to be a sustainable situation. If it's not, it
will, at a minimum, force law firms to make a harsh choice between
the lawyers they already have on staff and the ones they're about
to welcome.
What does this mean for law schools? I suspect it will become even
more difficult to place students with legal employers. This, in turn,
will have a big impact on debt-laden students. One big question is
whether it will discourage prospective students from entering law
school. After all, piling on the debt doesn't seem like such a good
deal if it won't be easy to get a well-paying job. And student loans
don't seem as easy to come by now as they were before either. In
short, law schools may soon feel more of the crunch that law firms,
young lawyers, and graduating students are feeling now.
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