Career Exploration

Employment Stats for 2011 Law School Grads

By Terrence Galligan | Posted on

NALP recently published some selected findings from its national law school grad employment survey (which collects information on employment 9 months after graduation).  They relate to the Class of 2011 (stats for the Class of 2012 will not be published until next year). 

We published the results of the Berkeley Law grad employment survey last Spring.  You can find them here.   

Here are some key comparisons.

Nationally, the employment rate for 2011 law grads was 85.6%.  Our 2011 grads had a 94.16% employment rate. 

Nationally, only 65.4% of those employed were in jobs requiring bar passage.  Here, the figure was 92.07% (An additional 4.14% of 2011 employed Boalt grads are in “JD preferred” positions).

Nationally, 49.5% of employed graduates obtained a job in private practice.  53.1% of our employed 2011 grads immediately entered private practice (another 12.76% of our grads went off to clerk for a judge immediately after graduation).

Only 16.2% of private practice jobs nationally were with large law firms (+500 attorneys).   In contrast, 59.74% of private practice jobs accepted by our 2011 grads were in firms of 501 or more attorneys. 

Conversely, jobs at firms of 50 or fewer lawyers accounted for 59% of all private practice jobs nationally whereas that figure was 15% at Boalt.  

Public interest organizations, including public defenders, accounted for 7.5% of post-law school grad jobs nationally.  15.52% of our grads went to work for public interest organizations in 2011.

NALP Report: Last Year’s Recruiting Volumes Slightly Up, Number of Summer Positions The Same

By Terrence Galligan | Posted on

NALP, the Association for Legal Career Professionals, recently completed crunching the numbers from last summer/fall’s recruiting season.  There is a nice summary in the National Law Journal.

Bottom line:  slightly more offers, slightly more callbacks, but overall (nationally) the average size of summer classes at large firms in 2012 is the same as it was for the summer of 2011.

Experts Forecast Continuing Challenges and Uncertainty in the Legal Market

By Terrence Galligan | Posted on

The latest annual Hildebrandt/Citibank Client Advisory is out.  We’ve posted about the Client Advisories before (see here and here). 

You can read the whole report here.

Some highlights:

  • demand for legal services is not likely to grow robustly for the foreseeable future
  • to gain greater efficiencies, firms will continue to seek out new business models based on “redesigned work processes, greater emphasis on project management, and new approaches to expense management and professional development”

Networking Guide for Introverts

By Terrence Galligan | Posted on

Here is some great career advice for introverts.  I remember reading somewhere that while extroverts outnumber introverts in the general population (by a margin of something like 3 to 1), among lawyers, there are actually more introverts than extroverts.

Introverted lawyers/law students may also want to check out a recently published book called “Quiet, Please: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking.”   You can read an interview with its author Susan Cain here.

December’s National Jobs Report

By Terrence Galligan | Posted on

According to the Wall Street Journal, the economy added 200,000 jobs in December 2011, but the legal sector lost about 1,800.  From December 2010 to December 2011, the sector lost approximately 2,700.

Q3 Numbers: At BIGLAW, Expenses Outpace Uptick In Business

By Terrence Galligan | Posted on

The well-known legal business consulting firm Hildebrandt Baker Robbins just published a report of its Peer Monitor Index, which includes information about key law firm business metrics for July – September of 2011.

We’ve regularly blogged about the Peer Monitor system before, but to refresh you , it is a service that allows law firms to access their peers’ financial data (in the aggregate) in exchange for supplying their own data to the system for others to access (on a normalized and aggregated basis). There are 35 Am Law 100 firms, 35 Am Law 200 firms and 30 NLJ 250 firms in the system. You can find more information about the Peer Monitor system here.

You can read a summary of the report here.

Among other things, the report shows that demand for legal services continues to grow, though the rate of growth has slowed.  At the same time, expenses have continued to increase as has the rate of that increase.   Part of the explanation for the increase in expenses is that new attorney hiring has increased (as it has been doing for the previous three quarters) in anticipation of growing demand. 

The report warns: “While firms have been hiring, however, demand has slowed as the year has progressed, widening the gap between law firm capacity and available work. Whether this trend continues will depend on the performance of the broader economy and whether we see continued recovery in litigation and transactional work.”  Stay tuned.

Citibank’s Mid-Year Financial Report on Biglaw

By Terrence Galligan | Posted on

Citi Private Bank recently surveyed its customers, which include many of the largest law firms in the country and its results were similar to those of Hildebrandt and Wells Fargo (which are the subjects of our previous two blog posts). 

Both demand and revenue are up slightly, but so are expenses.  Headcount remained flat, which suggests lawyers are working a bit harder. 

Citi’s report states:

[T]he economy appears to be in for a protracted period of slow growth or no growth, given the systemic issues it is facing. . . . It’s hard to see any way that this environment is good for law firms in the short term. There’s a good chance that M&A, private equity, and IPO work will slow as companies and investors seek some clarity before doing deals, and a spike in litigation seems unlikely.

 

Since the pie is not getting any bigger, one of the only ways for firms to grow is by cutting into their competitors’ slices.  Accordingly, Citi predicts, “top-performing firms will seek to leverage their market advantage to buy talent for their weaker practice areas” just as “rainmakers at underperforming firms” are exploring the job market for other opportunities.

Further Evidence of Slight Improvement in 1st Half of 2011

By Terrence Galligan | Posted on

The American Lawyer’s AmLawDaily just wrote about results of a Wells Fargo survey that supports the findings of the Peer Monitor we blogged about a little over a month ago.

While there was a wide divergence of results, on average, net income, revenue, and profits per partner were up slightly at the nation’s largest law firms.

The survey also found that there is more litigation work. 

In discussing the survey results, a Wells Fargo managing director predicted that growth will slow for the second half of 2011, but that it will still end up being a better year than 2010 overall. 

The full survey results, which were collected by Wells Fargo Wealth Management’s Legal Specialty Group, are not available, but you can read the AmLawDaily report about them here.

By the way, for those of you think you may be headed to biglaw or are considering it, you ought to consider subscribing to the AmLawDaily enewsletter.  There’s a free limited access version, which you can sign up for here.

Q 2 Numbers: Law Firm Market Continues Incremental Improvement

By Terrence Galligan | Posted on

The well-known legal business consulting firm Hildebrandt Baker Robbins just published a report of its Peer Monitor Index, which includes information about key law firm business metrics for April – June of 2011.

We’ve regularly blogged about the Peer Monitor system before, but to refresh you , it is a service that allows law firms to access their peers’ financial data (in the aggregate) in exchange for supplying their own data to the system for others to access (on a normalized and aggregated basis). There are 35 Am Law 100 firms, 35 Am Law 200 firms and 30 NLJ 250 firms in the system. You can find more information about the Peer Monitor system here. 

You can read a summary of the report here. 

Among other things, the report shows that — very much in line with how the overall economy performed in Q 2 — the market (at least for large law firm legal services) gained a bit for the third quarter in a row.  However, the “soft patch” that the economy recently hit is causing law firms to “prepar[e] for continued uncertainty and  monitor[] headwinds and risk factors.” 

Bottom line:  “While the law firm market continues to show gradual improvement, growth is still well below historical averages, and a myriad of cautionary factors remain in place, including client rate pressures and
rising costs.”