The Job Market

It's tough out there.

Here is a summary of the applications for law-related jobs I have submitted to date: six to judges, four to private firms, five to federal agencies, and ten to state agencies. About half of those jobs required a law degree; the other half were administrative jobs in legal departments. I have also applied for fourteen jobs outside the legal field. All of my applications were for advertised jobs; I have only cold-called the one or two places I most want to work.

My applications have resulted in five unsuccessful interviews, the last of which was about six weeks ago. I have been politely rejected without an interview six times. Sixteen of my applications got no response at all. That leaves twelve jobs that are either still open or closed recently enough that I am still hoping for a response.

Suitable for Framing

Diplomas finally arrived at the registrar's office this week. You would think that picking up my diploma would be a morale boost, but not so. The career services office has decided that the most efficient way to garner responses to its employment surveys is to distribute them with the diplomas. Thus, every diploma comes with a tacit request to put a dollar value on it. So far, mine is worth zero.

Two weeks to bar results.

Job Hunting

My lack of a law license puts a crimp in my job search, but I can't just sit here and wait. So far I've sent applications to five judges, three law firms, and four government agencies, all in central Arkansas. My applications have resulted in four interviews, but no job offers.

I've also applied for a dozen or so jobs outside the legal field, but no one has so much as acknowledged those applications. I suspect that my law degree actually hurts my chances with a lot of employers; they may see me as overqualified.

Three weeks to bar results.

David and Goliath

It's good to be Goliath. I am one of two law clerks working on a particular case. Today I Googled the opposing attorney and learned that he's a solo practitioner who graduated from law school in 2008. Tough break for that guy. He probably doesn't have an army of clerks to deflect the storm of paper we're blowing his way.

The Lawyer-Client Disconnect

Here is the impression I get from the real, live lawsuits I have been exposed to in the past few weeks. The paper war over any given sub-issue in a lawsuit is likely to involve a couple of motions from each side, one or two written arguments from each side in support of or opposition to each motion, and possibly an in-person hearing. Researching and writing any of the legal documents involved is very time-consuming.
The upshot is that lawyers experience litigation as a constant stream of looming deadlines; their clients experience litigation as months-long (and fabulously expensive) stretches of time during which nothing gets decided. No wonder they hate us.

Supply and Demand in Action

Enjoy this map of my workplace parking options. I usually park in the $3.50 lot, but as the weather warms up the $2.25 option is getting more attractive.

Nice Work if You Can Get It

This is the view from the office I share with three other clerks.

There are ninety attorneys at the law firm and six clerks, so you'd think there would be plenty of work to go around. Not so. A project gets offered up via email about once a day, and it's a race to see who can get it first. I'm sure there will be feast periods to complement the present famine.

The work I have done so far has been interesting. I've researched eminent domain, guardianships, stock repurchase by insolvent corporations, and tax exempt bonds. I think I'm going to enjoy the semester.

People Aren't Litigious Enough

One of my coworkers was going to observe a jury selection this morning, so I tagged along. I had never been in any of the courtrooms at the county courthouse, and I was pleased to see that they are old in a good way--venerable, not dilapidated. They're also kind of small, and when we arrived the room was jammed with potential jurors, most of whom had already been waiting for half an hour or more. We sat and waited with them for another forty-five minutes while attorneys furtively slipped in and out of the judge's chambers. Just as a riot seemed imminent, the bailiff called the room to order and introduced the judge. He sat down just long enough to tell us that there would be no trial because the parties had reached a settlement. Everyone was free to go. My colleague and I hiked back to the office, crestfallen.

I'm not even a lawyer yet, and I'm already disappointed when people settle their differences without resorting to a jury trial. What will become of me?

The Tyranny of the Billable Hour

Ever since I started school I have been hearing about what a pain it is to keep up with billable hours, but I have not had to do it myself until this semester. I'm in the office seven and a half hours a day, and if I stay busy all day I usually wind up with about five billable hours.
On the one hand, I feel like I need to pack on more billable hours to justify my employment, so I have a powerful incentive to keep the meter running no matter what.
On the other hand, I know my time is being billed to the client at an extravagant rate, so I feel guilty if I bill even one minute spent chatting with my office mates, staring out the window or whatnot.
Billing is ethical dilemma number one in the legal profession.

Swimming with the Sharks

My spring clerkship is underway. This is my first exposure to a big law firm ("big" is relative--the largest firms in Little Rock would be considered "medium-sized" in a place like New York or Chicago). I haven't done much actual work yet, so I don't know what that's going to be like, but I can tell you that the offices are almost a parody of big law firms. Seriously, you can't turn around in that place without bumping into some burled wood or tufted leather.

Employed, But Not Working

Now this just isn't fair. Even when I find paying work, somehow the universe finds a way to prevent me from benefiting from it. I have been idle for weeks, just waiting for the first day of my spring clerkship. Today is that day, but Little Rock got five inches of snow last night and the whole city is shut down. So here I sit in my living room, getting poorer by the minute.

Fortunately, the research project I undertook a few weeks ago went well. I put in a total of around fifty hours, which went a long way toward funding my spring tuition. The supervising attorney didn't give me much feedback, but he did say I can use him as a reference, so I must have done a decent job.

Paid Up

I just wrote what should be my last tuition check. The Bowen school sells one of the least expensive legal educations in the country, but considering tuition, books, and most of all the cost of being unemployed for three years, I am still out well over $100K. It's going to take a long time to make that back at the $0 per year I have arranged to earn upon graduation. I have excelled at academic life, but I'll look like a real dummy if I don't find a job pretty soon.

Finally on Someone's Payroll

From time to time, the student body will get a mass email looking for a student to take on a short-term research project for a professor or an attorney. As luck would have it, one of those emails coincided with my last day at the state supreme court. I sent in a resume and got the job, so for the last week I have been poking around the library on behalf of a local law firm, trying to see if its client has a legitimate claim.

This is the first experience I have had working for a real client. More importantly, it is the first hard evidence I have that people in this town sometimes do in fact get paid for doing legal work. Very heartening.

Externship Extinguished

Last week I logged my one hundredth hour at the state supreme court. That means that I have fulfilled my externship obligation. I am still going into the office every day as a volunteer (I'll probably keep that up for a couple of weeks), but it's nice to not have to worry about time sheets and activity journals.

Knowing that my time at the court was drawing to a close, I looked back at all the legal memoranda I've written this semester and totted up just how much work I did. In about 110 hours spread over 8 weeks, I wrote 7 memos for a total of just over 10,000 words. The law review note I wrote last year was around 10,000 words, so if you assume a 40-hour work week it seems safe to say that your average appellate court clerk writes the equivalent of a law review note every three weeks. Phew! I really loved this job, but I can see how that kind of grind might get old after a while.

Attending Oral Arguments

Yesterday I lived some lawyers' dream: I stepped out of a courtroom and confronted a wall of reporters and cameras. They weren't there to see me. The latest of the West Memphis Three's many appeals was argued before the Arkansas Supreme Court yesterday, and my externship got me a seat in the gallery. The attorneys for both sides brought their A game, so it was interesting stuff (the webcast is archived here), but the borderline party atmosphere outside the courtroom felt a little ghoulish. The press blitz lasted about half the day, but security did a good job of insulating court employees. I never had to come within a hundred feet of a reporter.

Bombs Away

I just sent out my first few applications for real, honest-to-goodness, full-time lawyering jobs. The application process makes me sick to my stomach. The economy being what it is, there are scores of applicants for every job, so I know that every employer's first order of business will be to scan my application materials for a reason--any reason--to put them in the "reject" pile. No amount of proofreading feels like enough.

Schedule Conflicts

About half of my credits this semester are coming not from classes but from "co-curricular" activities: externship, moot court, law review. You would think that would make my schedule very flexible, but I am starting to see that it is going to cause some problems.
This week, for example, the judge I extern for wanted to take the office to lunch. I wasn't about to pass that up, so I missed Decedents' Estates. That would be fine if I weren't already scheduled to miss Decedents' Estates twice in October when I travel for my moot court competition. The DE professor will summarily drop anyone who misses more than four classes, so I only have one more absence to spare. My calendar is going to be pretty hairy before this semester is over.

The Externship Begins

Working at the state supreme court means passing through these doors to get to the office every morning. The resulting sense of self-importance is pretty intense. Here is what I learned in my first week:

1. Real attorneys spend a lot less time proofreading than students do. Every document I've looked at has more than its share of typos and grammatical errors.
2. Being asked to decide which side is right is much harder than merely being told to argue for one side or the other.

So far, I love the work. All indications are that it's going to be a great semester.

Externship Orientation

Yesterday I endured a grueling six-hour orientation for my upcoming externship. The advice from a bona fide judicial clerk was terrific. The explanation of the rules and procedures of the externship program was necessary. The two-hour ethics lesson was a real drag, given that ninety percent of the attendees had already completed a semester-long ethics course. I suppose the professor needs to have proof that we knew better if one of us commits some egregious breach of ethics.
My externship doesn't start for another week or so, but I can tell already that the workload is no joke. I'm really going to earn these two credit hours.

What I Probably Won't Be Doing Next Summer

It's time to stop worrying about getting good grades and start worrying about getting a job. Application season for judicial clerkships starts in September. I am very enthusiastic about the idea of clerking for a judge, but those jobs don't come easily. Clerking for a federal judge is right out--I'll apply, but those are prestigious jobs that attract out-of-state candidates with much better academic credentials than I have. That leaves state judges. According to the information distributed by the career services office, exactly one state judge in central Arkansas is planning to hire a clerk next summer.
The upshot is that I plan to spend a goodly chunk of my August putting together application materials for jobs I will never get. I am trying to gird myself for ten months of similar windmill-tilting. Looking for work in a bad economy requires a healthy appetite for rejection.