ABA and NALP in Turf War

According to The National Law Journal, the ABA's new requirements that law schools report more details about graduate employment, which seemed like such a step toward honesty and transparency, has caused a turf battle with the National Association for Law Placement (NALP). (I believe this is Standard 509 (a), Basic Consumer Information, to be published in a fair and accurate manner reflective of actual practice. And an Interpretation 509(1), (8)"placement rates and bar passage data").

NALP says that this change interferes with their traditional, and more comprehensive collection of the same sort of information. And because the ABA is collecting information as part of the annual Questionnaire and the Self Study for re-accreditation or accreditation, the ABA is the question that law schools will answer most diligently, skimping on the NALP survey. NALP Executive Director James Leipold was also miffed, apparently, when the ABA announced the new rules without any notice to their sister organization, stepping all over NALP's toes. The ABA is also interfering with NALP's intellectual property, and Leipold is angry enough to threaten a suit. He claims that the ABA is using the same research and survey methods that NALP pioneered over the last 4 decades.

According the the National Law Journal article by Karen Sloan, that ABA's legal education consultant Bucky Askew explained the new changes to the accreditation rules,

"The bottom line is that the executive committee believes that because we are an accrediting body, we have to get the data directly from schools, not from a third party," Askew said. "There's a difference of opinion about that with NALP but, as the accreditor, we need to make certain that schools understand this is an accreditation issue."

The National Law Journal spoke to Prof. Bill Henderson of Indiana University, Bloomington, who thinks that the new development

will represent a major blow to NALP's ability to collect information and analyze the legal job market. Henderson has used NALP data extensively for his research on the legal industry.

"I think what's happening is a total disaster," he said. "Everything that we know about the industry on a systemic level is from NALP. The ABA won't crunch industry data the way NALP does. They won't have the will or the capacity."

The most logical solution, Henderson said, would be to create a joint NALP/ABA survey, which would allow both entities to exist and make clear that reporting is part of the law school accreditation process.

Anybody up for mediation?

Starting Pay for New JDs is Trending Down

NALP (National Association for Law Placement) issued a press release on the employment and salaries secured by the graduates of the class of 2010. It is not a happy picture, which should come as no surprise.

They had earlier reported (in June) that 50.9% of the 2010 grads had jobs compared to 55.9% of the 2009 class. And more of the jobs are in smaller firms than in earlier-graduating classes. As we will see, this tends to depress the salaries. Part-time jobs make up about 11% of the jobs reported to NALP overall of the jobs requiring bar passage. But part-time jobs are especially prevalent in the academic sector and public interest sector, for jobs requiring bar passage. Only 68.4% of the class of 2010 reported to NALP that they had obtained jobs for which bar passage was required by the time of this report, and only 64% had full time employment in jobs requiring bar passage. 27% of the jobs were temporary, including judicial clerkships. Excluding clerkships, the percent of recent grads holding temporary jobs requiring bar passage is 19%.

2009

Nat'l.
Median $72,000

Nat'l
Mean $93,454

2010

Nat'l
Median $63,000 (down ~13%)



Nat'l.
Mean $84,111 (down ~10%)


* All figures for those reporting full time work. Note that there is a large discrepancy between large firm salaries, which tend to cluster between $145-160,000 and small firm and other salaries, which cluster around $40-65,000. This means that there are very few salaries that actually fall anywhere near the mean or median points. They should actually skip this national overall analysis and just do the separate analysis for large firm rates and small firm and alternate practice rates, I think!

By type of work:

Law firm:

2009

Nat'l.
Median $130,000

2010

Nat'l
Median $104,000 (down ~20%)


Adjusted
Mean

2010

$93,748 (they did not include the 2009 figure)

Virtually no change from last year for public service & government salaries. So most of the downward pressure on the salaries is coming in the law firm market.

I recommend reading the short report in full, though it is not happy news.

Flying Solo

How bad is the job market for new attorneys? According to this press release from NALP, the National Association for Law Placement, the class of 2010 "faced [the] worst job market" since 1996. NALP Executive Director James Leipold stated that

The tail of the "Great Recession" is long and there are few bright spots in the employment profile for the Class of 2010 ... Most of the structural weaknesses in the job market faced by the Class of 2009 intensified for the Class of 2010 ...

The press release accompanied the "Employment for the Class of 2010--Selected Findings," which was published on June 1. The full report, Jobs & JDs: Employment and Salaries of New Law School Graduates, will be published in August. It is highly unlikely that the employment situation will be any brighter for the Class of 2011. According to Leipold,

There is likely more bad news to come ... we can expect that the overall employment rate for new law school graduates will continue to be stagnant or decline further for the Class of 2011, with the curve probably not trending upward before the employment statistics become available for the Class of 2012.

So what is the new attorney to do? Some attorneys are deciding to start solo practices, eschewing offices with high overhead and instead practicing from home with a laptop and a cell phone. NALP reports that the

[N]umber of recent law graduates going solo increased from 3.5 percent in 2008 to 5.5 percent in 2009, the biggest one year jump since 1982. ... That percentage increased to 5.7 percent of all private practice jobs for the class of 2010, the highest it's been since 1997.

This trend is discussed in a recent article which describes how new attorneys are hanging up "virtual shingles" by taking advantage of technology. One important task when setting up a solo practice is to build a website which can be used to attract clients. Blogging and social networking are also efficient ways of connecting with potential clients. Most of these attorneys are maintaining paperless offices and doing without staff support. The solo attorneys interviewed for the article were extremely dismissive of law schools and their focus on placing "graduates in government, public interest or corporate law firms." There is little to no attention paid to set up and maintain a solo practice. Even worse, according to the interviewees, is that the

[M]ajority of law schools continue to focus on how to interview for jobs or submit resumes for job postings, rather than honing the skills needed to be a successful business person.

A good resource for solo practitioners is the MyShingle blog, which describes itself as "the most comprehensive online resource for solo and small firm lawyers with thousands of blog posts and an impressive stock of free e-books, checklists and forms on starting and running a law firm." Another good resource for solo practitioners is Solo Practice University, "a subscription-based website founded in 2009 that offers video, written and audio tutorials for prospective or current solo practitioners."

I was surprised to see that the article did not mention access to legal research databases, such as Lexis and Westlaw, and less costly alternatives to them, both free and fee based. One of the best services my law school provides its graduates is free lifetime access to the law library. As a private institution, we are closed to the public, but our alumni do not have to pay the usual access fees. Many of our alumni have set up solo practices in the area, and they are coming back on campus regularly to use the library. Not only are they taking advantage of our public-access Lexis subscription, but also they are using other databases and the print collection. We have also created a research guide on free and low-cost legal resources, and this is extremely popular among both current students and alumni. It is great to see our alumni again, and to feel that we are contributing to their professional success.