legal

It’s hard to admit it’s getting better: Legal Market Update October 2010

I’ve been holding back on doing this. Dreading it, in fact. The last time I posted about the legal employment market, the stastics out there showed little growth in May, and a dive back into the negatives in June. At the same time, the nation was dealing with a massive oil spill, Greek debt crises abroad, and latent unemployment everywhere driving what was supposed to be a “Summer of Recovery.”

Well, summer is at an end. The markets have been up for a month. Students who were fortunate enough to win the Summer Associate BigLaw lottery are looking at higher retention rates (and job security) and helping clear the field a bit for the 3Ls still looking for work. Legal employment numbers were also up for August and September.

But there’s still a lingering uncertainty in the stormy legal market. More and more entry-level legal jobs (and document review jobs that unemployed attorneys could rely upon) are being shipped to India. And then there’s that backlog of graduates from the last two years who have been unable to find work — those who haven’t given up on their dreams of legal employment may be coming back into the market to fight for jobs, even if their contract attorney work experience doesn’t carry much weight.

Sources near me tell me that even for low-paying legal secretary jobs at their firm, they are seeing hundreds of unemployed J.D.-toting applicants. It’s both an absurd and sad testament to the times.

So – are things on the mend? Probably so.

Are the nervous 3Ls who have watched the two law classes before them sentenced to unemployment purgatory beeming with excitement? Not yet, at least. And it’s fair to say not for awhile.

[UPDATED: Things are looking better for 2016]

Clerking in the Tropics (2): American Samoa

This is a continuation highlighting clerking opportunities outside of the fifty U.S. States available for American law graduates.  This time we highlight American Samoa, a tiny island territory hundreds of miles east of Fiji, which is still hundreds of miles east of Papua New Guinea.  If remote and tropical is your thing, (and if Pulp Fiction is right, if big people are your thing) you can ask for no better than here.

The High Court of American Samoa recruits law clerks for one year terms, but does so only on alternating years.  The recruit two clerks at a time, one for the first year, and one for the following year.  The next round of recruiting is scheduled to take place this upcoming spring for the August 2011, August 2012 terms.  The Court requires a cover letter, resume, official transcript, writing sample, and two letters of recommendation.  The application deadline be due in early 2011.