Law firm jobs

A California woman who says she can’t find work as a lawyer and is suing the law school she graduated from turned down a $60,000-a-year job from a Southern California law firm shortly after graduation, Thomas Jefferson School of Law says in a court filing.Anna Alaburda, the lead plaintiff in a class action suit against Thomas Jefferson School of Law, originally accepted the offer from the unnamed firm, but rescinded her acceptance because the firm refused to pay her bar dues and required her to travel to another city to receive one month of job training, according to a document filed in connection with the school’s motion for summary judgment.Alaburda, who is now working part-time as a document examiner, says she was tricked into attending Thomas Jefferson by the San Diego school’s misleading post-graduate employment statistics, which indicated that nearly 80 percent or more of its graduates in the past several years were employed nine months after … [Read more...] about Law School Says Lead Plaintiff in Job Stats Suit Against It Turned Down a Full-Time Law Firm Job

Starting pay is down for 2010 law graduates, and the drop is greatest for law firm jobs.Median starting pay dropped by nearly 13 percent for all jobs and by 20 percent for law firm positions, according to NALP, which calls itself the association for legal professionals.The national median for 2010 law grads working full time and reporting a salary was $63,000, compared to $72,000 for the class of 2009, NALP says in a press release. The national median salary at law firms was $104,000, compared to $130,000 the previous year.The drop in law firm pay largely reflects a shift in jobs to smaller firms, rather than a drop in salaries paid by individual employers. Fifty-three percent of the class of 2010 who obtained law firm jobs went to firms of 50 or fewer attorneys, compared to 46 percent the previous year. Only 26 percent went to firms of more than 250 lawyers, compared to 33 percent the previous year.The drop in overall pay is also spurred by the erosion of jobs in private practice. … [Read more...] about Average Starting Pay for Law Grads Is on Downward Shift; Drop Is Largest for Law Firm Jobs

An obituary apparently written by a lawyer’s widow blames his stressful law firm job for his heart attack.“Robert Bruce Evanick (always known as Bruce to those who loved him—and those who employed him and exploited his work ethic)—died Tuesday afternoon, Dec. 4, 2007. A massive heart attack killed him,” reads the obituary published in the New Orleans Times-Picayune.“His death should be a warning to all those who believe that they are being used by insensitive employers. He deserved better, both in life and death. Bruce had been seduced into a sedentary and high-stress lifestyle after he moved to New Orleans by the promise of ‘big money’ from a corporate defense law firm. Essentially, his succumbing to that seduction and his devotion to duty caused his death.”A hat tip to Above the Law, which posted the obituary. … [Read more...] about Obit Blames Lawyer’s Death on Stress of Law Firm Job

Last year’s law school graduates snagged fewer private practice jobs than any class since 1996, according to an analysis of the statistics by the National Association for Law Placement.Among employed law school graduates from the class of 2015, 51.3 percent found jobs in private practice, according to a NALP press release. In the 40 years before the economic downturn, 55 to 58 percent of law grads found jobs in private practice.In raw numbers, there was a 7.6 percent decline in law firm jobs secured by the class of 2015, compared to the prior year’s class, according to a NALP article (PDF). The decrease was 3.5 percent the prior year.One bright spot in hiring for the class of 2015 was in law firms with more than 500 lawyers, where the number of entry-level jobs grew by more than 1,000 over the past four years. In every other job category, last year’s law grads obtained fewer jobs.In another bright spot, reported starting salaries rose slightly. The median starting … [Read more...] about Are law firm jobs declining? Private practice jobs drop 7.6 percent for class of 2015

A New York lawyer who has until now worked in high-level managerial roles at well-known financial institutions has accepted her first law firm job: as head of a new practice group at Dechert.Vivian Maese will oversee the firm’s new global outsourcing and offshoring practice group. It is intended to help investment bank clients with the increasingly complex compliance issues raised by the Dodd-Frank Act concerning financial institutions that contract to have work done overseas, explains a law firm press release.Maese will work from the Philadelphia-based firm’s New York office. Her practice group will be considered part of the intellectual property department, because a number of the issues clients need to address are computer-related, Martin Black, who co-chairs the IP group, tells the Philadelphia Business Journal.A graduate of Brooklyn Law School, Maese comes to Dechert from Morgan Stanley, where she served as global head of its workforce strategy and solutions team. She … [Read more...] about Dechert Hires Bank Counsel to Run New Outsourcing Practice; It’s Vivian Maese’s 1st Law Firm Job