There is a lot of great law school news to share with your advisees this week; as the legal career sector rebounds from the recession and law schools/the ABA start to adjust their goals, curricula, and other admissions and experiential opportunities in response to very local critics both inside and outside the legal education field, your students can start looking onward and upward with significantly more confidence. Let’s break it down:
Job Offer Rates for Summer Associates Almost to Pre-Recession Level
As your advisees have probably heard, it is a long accepted truth in law school circles that summer associate positions are the biggest “in” to great job offers, but in more recent, post-financial crisis times, that fact has not been backed up by actual job offer rates. The Wall Street Journal’s law school blog is reporting that for those who have landed a summer position with a law firm in 2013, however, times, they a-changin’… for the better.
According to the National Association for Law Placement, a non-profit that tracks legal employment, 92% of law students in summer associate positions in 2013 got job offers; before the recession in law jobs, the offer rate in 2007 was around 93%. Competition for summer associate positions is still fierce, especially since there are not necessarily as many of them available in years past. The takeaway for your future law students? They need to work to secure a great summer position from the moment they step through the door in law school: work hard that first year for stellar grades, network, explore connections your law school offers, go to career fairs, and make the most of any opportunity!
Big Law Feeder Schools: Hiring Rates are Up and Newly Ranked
As you probably hear everyday, many prospective law students are still looking to big law firms for their career prospects; the National Law Journal is here to help! They have ranked the top 50 law schools by the percentage of their 2013 graduates taking jobs at the National Law Journal’s top firms. The job market for big firm jobs is looking up; 27% of the 2013 graduates from those 50 law schools landed jobs at big law firms, the highest percentage since 2010; things are definitely looking up, especially for graduates from schools like Columbia Law, which topped the list:
National Law Journal: Go-To Big Firm Law SchoolsIn their breakdown of the figures, the Above The Law blog pointed out a great new feature of the list: the inclusion of tuition figures, which can really help your advisees figure out how much money they want to spend to get Big Law results. Some of the other excellent features NLJ included were “Firm Faves”, a list of what schools specific firms pulled from for their first year associates, and a breakdown of what schools outperformed their U.S. News and World Report rankings in terms of big firm hiring (the top school: Howard University). Your students should definitely check out the full lists as a great tool in the law school decisions process.
The law professors over at the Washington Post’s legal education blog pointed out some interesting results from a Harvard Law professor-conducted survey of attorneys at Big Law firms, specifically asking what classes they recommend students in law school take to give them the edge on the Big Law career path. The general recommendation mostly centered around financial classes: accounting and financial reporting, and corporate finance. They also included some recommendations for additional, non-business classes, specifically evidence, intellectual property law, federal courts, administrative law, patent law, conflict of laws and copyright law. For students seeking the firm route, these classes could provide some serious tools in a competitive career environment.
This list also got Carolyn Elefant at Above the Law thinking: for law students planning on hanging their own shingle, what courses are the most important? She points to classes that predominantly focus on experiential learning and practical application: legal research and writing, drafting, real world ethics, contracts, torts, & criminal, and clinics/practice classes. Since going solo necessitates a lot of learning as you go, her considerations are definitely worth reading for any advisees considering entering the marketplace as their own boss.
Tooting Our Own Horn: Fast Company Names Kaplan In Top 10 Innovative Companies in Education
Just to give a quick shout out to the hard work all of my colleagues do every day to give all of our students the very best experience possible, I wanted to let you know that Fast Company has placed Kaplan #3 on their list of the most innovative companies in education. For both advisors and advisees, we will keep pushing the envelope to get every tool, opportunity, and piece of information that might help students achieve their educational goals. Thanks for all of your support!
