A story in today's Boston Globe reports on the decline in law school enrollment attributable to continued weakening in the employment market for new lawyers. The precipitating event was the financial crisis of 2008, which soon thereafter led to a massive tightening of corporate legal budgets and an increasing intolerance by corporate counsel for the practice of staffing their matters with inexperienced law firm associates. Law firms reacted in various ways, with some rescinding offers of employment they had extended to soon-to-be law school graduates, others finding (and funding) temporary public sector placements for their incoming classes of new lawyers, and virtually all either eliminating or drastically reducing their summer associate programs from which new lawyers were typically recruited. Public interest law firms and other publicly funded legal employers were not immune from this sea change. The financial crisis also took a serious toll on their budgets, resulting in layoffs and hiring freezes. Suddenly, what had always looked like a reliable career path had become a debt-ridden path to unemployment.
In 2010, as I began my one-year term as President of the Boston Bar Association, I convened a Task Force to examine the problem, which we referred to as "The Future of the Profession." Led by a bar leader with whom I had worked closely before my Presidency, and by the Dean of a Boston law school, the Task Force studied the growing problem and considered ways in which a bar association could help recent law school graduates who suddenly found themselves confronted by this new, unwelcome reality. The Task Force issued its Final Report in late 2011, shortly after my term as President expired, and while it did an admirable job, not all of its recommendations were implemented. One of the most positive outcomes of the focus that the Task Force brought to bear on the difficult plight of new lawyers was the affirmation that the Boston Bar Association was a place where they could find resources and networking opportunities to assist them as they sought to find their place in their chosen, and increasingly frozen, profession.
Since then, I have often been asked what advice I would give to college students considering a career in law. It is an important question, not lightly answered, as it implicates both society's continued need for good lawyers and individual students' need for good advice about their personal futures. I have pretty consistently advised them as follows: If you are truly passionate about being a lawyer, then by all means pursue it, but do so with your eyes open to the costs of legal education and the risks of a weak job market. If you harbor any doubt about whether you want to be a lawyer, then take some time off to give more careful consideration to whether you really want to make the financial and personal commitment that it requires. And if you get into more than one law school, choose a school with the best reputation among potential employers (often meaning one that is highly ranked or that is highly regarded in the community where you hope to practice), unless another school offers more (or any) financial aid for you to attend. Once in, take it seriously, working to achieve the best possible grades you can in that very important first year, and seeking out good experience (on a journal or moot court, for example) thereafter.
When we began the work of the Task Force, some of us believed that the changes we were witnessing were structural, not cyclical. So far, time seems to have borne that out. To some extent, the marketplace is self-correcting, with fewer people applying to or enrolling in law schools, forcing some schools to have to adjust their own structures and practices, as reported in today's Globe. While a tighter supply of inexperienced lawyers may be welcome relief in an era of more limited demand, it comes at some cost. No doubt we are losing some bright minds and dedicated public servants whom our profession and the people it serves will always need. And there continues to be an overwhelming need for lawyers by those who can least afford them and who are most at risk during economic downturns, such as homeowners facing foreclosures and tenants facing eviction, victims of domestic abuse, persons who need help securing unemployment or other benefits to which they are entitled, and the like. Perhaps the saddest reality of our great profession is that we seem fundamentally incapable of finding a way to match the tremendous need for legal services to the large numbers of people who are or wish to become lawyers. It is a reality for which more than our profession is to blame.
