"Go Big or Go Home" for Future Lawyers

While the buzz amongst law students and those hoping to get into law school center around six-figure salaries, white-shoe prestige, competitive bonuses, and the other glossy amenities of BigLaw,[1] this lifestyle is largely restricted to graduates from the top law schools of the country. A quick survey of the exit opportunities available to the large majority of today's law school graduates is sobering. For example, at a second-tier law school like Brooklyn Law School, the median salary for recent graduates working at law firms is allegedly above $100,000, but this figure only reflects a small fraction of the graduates (only the ones who choose to respond). In addition, the school reports in its glossy advertising booklet that forty-one percent of its graduates work for firms with more than hundred attorneys, but fails to mention that this percentage also accounts for staff attorneys and contract attorneys.[2]

Every year, the top fourteen law schools graduate just over four thousand people,[3] a drop in the bucket compared to the aggregate number of attorneys produced in that year. With many firms only interviewing at these top schools or screening resumes for law school prestige, graduates of Harvard, Stanford, Columbia and others are overrepresented in prestigious BigLaw. Graduating students from lower-ranked schools simply don't even get the chance to squeeze through the door to interview for the positions. With the current legal market still in a state of contraction (126,669 total attorneys employed in the largest 250 firms in 2009, compared to 131,928 in the year before, which is a 4% decline overall[4]), there are even less entry-level associate positions available to go around. Thus, one blogger summarized the key advice for law school applicants with the pithy "Go prestigious, go public, or don't go at all."[5]

For additional insights on this topic, view this previous post: Salary Disparities Faced by New Law Grads

Building a Better Legal Profession (BBLP) is an organization based at Stanford Law School.   BBLP is a national grassroots movement that seeks market-based workplace reforms in large private law firms. For more information, visit BBLP's Web site at www.betterlegalprofession.org.

Footnotes and Sources

[1] See generally Law School Discussion Board, http://www.lawschooldiscussion.org/prelaw (last visited Mar. 28, 2010); Top Law Schools Forum, http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/index.php (last visited April 2, 2010).

[2] Amir Efrati, Hard Case: Job Market Wanes for U.S. Lawyers, The Wall Street Journal, Sept. 24, 2007.

[3] See Brian Leiter, Ranking of Top 40 Law Schools by Student (Numerical) Quality 2008, Apr. 6, 2008, http://www.leiterrankings.com/students/2008student_quality.shtml (last visited April 2, 2010).

[4] Leigh Jones, 2009 Worst Year for Lawyer Headcount in 3 Decades, Says 'NLJ 250' Survey, The National Law Journal, Nov. 9, 2009, http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202435276422.

[5] The State of Beasley Blog