February 2012

This is one of those glass half full reports. The industry gained about 5,000 jobs year-over-year, a decent showing after a long period of contraction and slow growth. Of course, during this time nearly 50,000 people graduated and another 50,000 are due shortly. Things are so bad that even Columbia Law School is fudging its numbers. From the NY Post:

Some students reported having jobs paying $160,000 lined up. But legal-staffing firms reported placing recent grads of both NYU and Columbia in paralegal and support staff positions for as little as $35,000.

"I’ve never seen more attorneys applying for non-attorney jobs," said Tony Filson, president of Filcro Personnel, a staffing firm in New York.

"They’re all from top schools," said Maritza Murphy, a legal account manager at DeltaForce legal staffing. "Columbia, NYU, Fordham. A lot of small law firms are hiring them in paralegal jobs because they can get them at a lower cost."

TLS posters should read the last paragraph until it sinks in. C'mon, read it again. And, again. Got it? A CLS degree may not get you even a shitlaw associate position in the largest, possibly healthiest, legal market these days. That's pretty much everything anyone reading this blog needs to know. If Columbia and NYU have a cold, the NY-area toilets must have pneumonia.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t17.htm

Not seasonally adjusted	February	2011	1,107,600
	December	2011	1,118,800
	January	2012	1,111,400
	February	2012	1,113,000	5,400
Seasonally adjusted	February	2011	1,114,700
	December	2011	1,115,600
	January	2012	1,118,800
	February	2012	1,119,600	4,900
Change from January 12-February 12				800

O noes!

Yale Law applications are down 16.5%. The decrease has administrators quaking in their boots. Just kidding.

While the decrease is real, and mirrors that of peer schools, no one is losing sleep. As far as I can tell, all ABA schools have more-than-ample applicants to fill their 1L class. Granted they'll have to dig deeper into the applicant pool to maintain class size, but in Yale's case that means replacing one 173/3.9 with another 173/3.9 who previously would have had to settle for Columbia.

Hell, even Touro, which is as presTTTigious as they come, had only a 38% acceptance rate in 2009 according to Law School Numbers. For comparison, Yale's rate was 7%. Put simply, Touro will shrug off an applicant drop like a spring rain, replacing one future justice with another future justice.

A misguided blogger suggested that 1Ls and 2Ls could harm schools by dropping out. En masse, sure, but that will never happen. These are lemmings we're talking about.

Meanwhile, over at Yale ...