Legal News

The Forecast for Rising 2Ls: Pain

By Ashby Jones

Think back, LBers, to the halcyon days just after you finished your 1L year. You weren’t sure what your grades were going to be or whether you’d make law review, but you were done with the year Scott Turow had warned you about, spring was in the air, and, at least for the moment, there was nothing big to worry about until the late summer, when on-campus interviews would kick up. You could, in other words, grow your hair long, drink bad beer and and attend Lollapalooza.

Flash forward to 2009. Presumably, the rising 2Ls can still party like it’s 1999. But hovering over everything must be a looming sense of uncertainty.

Take, for instance, this opening sentence from a Recorder article out today: “For younger law students, the recession won’t really start until 2010.”

Ugh.

The article continues:

Recent accounts from firm partners and school career counselors sketch a sobering portrait of the job outlook. With no sign of a lasting rebound in the wider economy, some law firm leaders are playing it safe by reducing their 2010 summer programs or skipping them altogether. Sedgwick, Detert, Moran & Arnold, for example, is planning to sit one year out. Gordon & Rees is doing some deeper soul searching. Still others don’t yet know what, if any, changes they might make.

Double ugh.

So what can students do? For one thing, start doing research on various firms now. Folks say you’ve really got to be on your game in order to crush the interview that might land you a job.

Lorraine Connally, the head of the summer program at California’s Allen Matkins says: “Students in the past just would ride on their grades and the school and their interviewing skills. But do they really want to be at our firm, or are they just filling their schedules because they can?” She adds: “It will be more important for students to know a bit more about the firm going into [on-campus] interviews, as opposed to waiting for the callback to make their case.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on May 13, 2009 (boomark / email).