With the economy the way it is, times are tough for everyone, including lawyers. Tons of newly minted JDs are hitting the job market only to find that the jobs aren’t there. A colleague told me last week that she thinks about half of her graduating law school class is unemployed – or at least not employed in a legal job. Next year it will be even worse.
For those who went to law school to earn a paycheck, the collapse of the legal job market has been devastating. Since the 1980s – remember LA Law? – college grads have been told that the path to riches, if not happiness, ran through law school and a cushy BigLaw job.
But BigLaw was always unsustainable. Very few companies can sustain paying $300/hr and up for a young associate, let alone the hundreds of dollars more an hour it costs to hire a partner at a white shoe firm.
But those of us who wanted to practice law to represent real human beings, with real legal problems, the economic collapse has been fortuitous, forcing us to think about why we really went to law school.
Until I worked at the Wake County Public Defender while studying law at the University of North Carolina, I didn’t have a good answer to that “why?” question. I figured, as did probably most of my fellow students, that I would also end up at BigLaw, working on contracts, intellectual property, or complex litigation for corporate America.
But the opportunity to work with the Public Defender was fantastic, giving me a glimpse at what the practice of law really could be: helping human beings, facing very serious legal consequences, find their way through the courts, and achieve a favorable outcome.
And Catherine and I decided that we would invest in my firm, a small practice devoted to the criminal defense of North Carolina citizens accused of serious felonies, misdemeanors, and traffic (DUI/DWI/drunk driving) offenses. It’ll be a challenge, but no less a challenge than those faced by people I helped at the Public Defender and will help as private defense counsel.
