TIME Magazine Article: Pity For Lawyers, Too?

[waitingtoexhale]

In addition to our challenges of job placement as graduate students, should we actually muster some sympathy for lawyers? An excerpt from TIME: http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1887270,00.html?iid=tsmodule

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After serving as a 2008 summer associate at Philadelphia law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, Harvard Law School student Juan Valdivieso was offered a position as a full-time associate and was anxiously looking forward to joining the firm later this year. Then, in an instant, everything changed. On March 12, Valdivieso received a memo explaining that the sagging national economy had forced the firm to defer his position for a year. Suddenly, with two months remaining in his law-school education, the 28-year-old found himself tantalizingly close to a degree and no place to apply it.

"The first thing that went through my head was, 'What do I do now?' " he said earlier this week from Boston. "It was disappointing to learn that I had to change plans and disappointing that I will have to postpone some of the things I was looking forward to." Valdivieso certainly is not the only casualty of creative downsizing in the legal industry these days. As the nation's economic climate flounders and legal work dries up, a growing number of large and midsize law firms are eschewing layoffs by redistributing or deferring young associates instead.

Some firms, such as Los Angeles

[kahlan_amnell]

They are getting paid that much for not working for a law firm for a year, and more if they do a specific kind of work? Sorry, not much pity.

[TulipOHare]

I too don't pity anyone getting paid $60k to do nothing at all -- but let me assure you that most law grads are not getting paid deferrals. Most are being deferred and not getting anything. (Can you imagine if a school accepted you, and you enrolled, and then they called you and said "Actually, we can't afford you this year, so can you sit around and wait a year, and if we can afford you next year you can come?") And a whole lot of them are simply not getting jobs at all.

[synthla]

I remember graduating from law school a few years ago with a job starting in October, which is pretty typical because you're expected to study for and pass the bar exam over the summer. Firms often give you a summer stipend, but even in New York, it was barely enough. I can't imagine how screwed some of these new law school grads are - many of them are probably living in $2500/month apartments they ran out and rented assuming they'd be fully employed by early fall, and now are being deferred with no compensation. I have no idea what I would have done - default on the lease? Not that I advocate feeling sorry for lawyers, but I can sympathize with anyone in those circumstances.

[rising_star]

You also have to keep in mind that they would get that money for working in public interest law and that those jobs aren't plentiful at the moment (at least as far as I understand) as laid off lawyers and law school grads are both competing for them.