August has arrived. If summer is measured as the span of time between the 4th of July and Labor Day holidays, we are, more or less, at the mid-point. It also marks a divide of sorts. August is the month of the legislative recess, both in state legislatures (my home state of Massachusetts being one such state) and in Congress. It is the month when baseball teams still in contention begin their final runs, and the first month when there can be no more "non-waiver" trades. Football teams in training camps soon will begin exhibition play. Colleges and universities prepare for the return of their students to campus. The heat of summer slowly begins its transformation to the cool of fall, summer golfers take their last swings, and vacationers take their final forays to the beach. And new lawyers take a deep breath as they put the bar exam into their rearview mirrors and look ahead to new jobs and the uncertainty of a wobbly job market.
In the past two days I have read reports of major law firms that are increasing the size of next year's summer programs. While that is good news for many students entering their second year of law school, it does nothing to help last year's graduates, this year's graduates, or next year's graduates who are entering the profession at a difficult and probably transformational time. Even the classes who will benefit from more summer jobs will be fewer than before, as the growing summer programs will still be a fraction of the size of programs past. And, as always, there is no guarantee that all, or even most, of the students in the firms' summer programs will be offered jobs that they can start when they graduate.
How changes in the legal profession are affecting new lawyers is an issue that deserves study. It is a complex issue, driven in large part by market forces beyond the profession's control, and calling into question the sustainability of the influx each year of thousands of graduating college students into the nations' law schools. It also is an issue of values, utilization and professional development, as we need to continue to find ways to train and deploy new lawyers on whom our society and our system of justice will in future depend. And, at least to some extent, it is an issue of matching unmet demand with abundant supply. We seem to have more unemployed and underutilized lawyers than at any time in recent memory, while at the same time the unmet need for legal services for the poor and middle class is dramatically on the rise. This disconnect between demand and supply is made all the greater as our legal services agencies face budget cuts and revenue shortfalls that have forced them to lay off significant numbers of their own lawyers. (I haven't even begun to touch on the funding crisis in the courts, which further exacerbates the problems of access to justice.)
Whether these issues are structural or merely cyclical has yet to be seen. What can safely be said is that the experience of new lawyers today is far different from what it was 30, 20 or even 5 years ago. While a great deal of attention has rightfully been placed on new ways of providing and pricing legal services to corporate clients, and that area deserves continued focus, we also need to look at how the changes in our business and professional models are affecting the opportunities and development of new lawyers. There needs to be a conversation among lawyers in law firms, corporations, law schools and legal services organizations to better understand the problems and to see if they have solutions that reach deeper than simply waiting for an economic turnaround. In a very real sense, the future of our profession, and of our legal system, may depend on it.
In the past two days I have read reports of major law firms that are increasing the size of next year's summer programs. While that is good news for many students entering their second year of law school, it does nothing to help last year's graduates, this year's graduates, or next year's graduates who are entering the profession at a difficult and probably transformational time. Even the classes who will benefit from more summer jobs will be fewer than before, as the growing summer programs will still be a fraction of the size of programs past. And, as always, there is no guarantee that all, or even most, of the students in the firms' summer programs will be offered jobs that they can start when they graduate.
How changes in the legal profession are affecting new lawyers is an issue that deserves study. It is a complex issue, driven in large part by market forces beyond the profession's control, and calling into question the sustainability of the influx each year of thousands of graduating college students into the nations' law schools. It also is an issue of values, utilization and professional development, as we need to continue to find ways to train and deploy new lawyers on whom our society and our system of justice will in future depend. And, at least to some extent, it is an issue of matching unmet demand with abundant supply. We seem to have more unemployed and underutilized lawyers than at any time in recent memory, while at the same time the unmet need for legal services for the poor and middle class is dramatically on the rise. This disconnect between demand and supply is made all the greater as our legal services agencies face budget cuts and revenue shortfalls that have forced them to lay off significant numbers of their own lawyers. (I haven't even begun to touch on the funding crisis in the courts, which further exacerbates the problems of access to justice.)
Whether these issues are structural or merely cyclical has yet to be seen. What can safely be said is that the experience of new lawyers today is far different from what it was 30, 20 or even 5 years ago. While a great deal of attention has rightfully been placed on new ways of providing and pricing legal services to corporate clients, and that area deserves continued focus, we also need to look at how the changes in our business and professional models are affecting the opportunities and development of new lawyers. There needs to be a conversation among lawyers in law firms, corporations, law schools and legal services organizations to better understand the problems and to see if they have solutions that reach deeper than simply waiting for an economic turnaround. In a very real sense, the future of our profession, and of our legal system, may depend on it.
Comments
Post a Comment