THE LAWYERS WEEKLY
September 23, 2011 | 25
BUSINESS
CAREERS
Civility
Continued From Page 23
Anand argues that law schools
should also provide more experiential learning to help lawyers
develop a better sense of professional identity and decorum. At
the University of Saskatchewan,
students work in a downtown
legal clinic called CLASSIC, Community Legal Assistance Services
for Saskatoon Inner City.
Traditionally, articling pro-
vided that real-world experience.
But the quality of articling oppor-
tunities varies, says Anand, and in
jurisdictions like Ontario, the
number of unplaced candidates is
growing every year. Law schools
may feel increasing pressure to fill
the experiential gap, he predicts.
“We haven’t done enough to train
students appropriately,” says
Anand. “It’s very possible to go
three years in a Canadian law
school without ever meeting a
real client or being in a court-
room. You’re not going to develop
a sense of professional ethics or
professional decorum by reading
cases in a book.” n
AMPHOTORA / ISTOCKPHOTO.COM
Young lawyers are feeling anxious about job searching during a slumping economy.
Young lawyers on job hunt
MATT LAFORGE
Those of us who interact with
American media — that is to say,
those of us who can speak and
read English—have long been
hearing that the lawyers in the
United States are facing a cut-
throat job market. The U.S. Bur-
eau of Labour Statistics reported
on Aug. 5 that the legal-services
industry added 4,000 jobs in
July and has netted 3,400 new
jobs since July 2010. Sounds
good — especially when placed
next to the net loss of 2,700 jobs
between May 2010 and May
2011—until you read elsewhere
that American Bar Association
(ABA)-accredited law schools
graduated between 45,000 and
50,000 students over that same
July-to-July period. In a June
Wall Street Journal profile of a
New York City lawyer working
on the front lines of third-tier
document review, the paper
reported another chilling figure:
“About 10% of all private prac-
tice jobs accepted by last year’s
law school graduates were
reported as temporary, a steady
increase from 5.4% in 2007,
according to the National Asso-
ciation for Law Placement.”
Predictably, or maybe even
inevitably, these grim employ-
ment numbers have given birth
to an online cottage industry
composed of disgruntled law-
schoolers and junior associates
(who call themselves “scam blog-
gers”) who inhabit online perso-
nae of pure vitriol. A sampling of
some of the denizens of the
scamosphere: “Subprime JD,”
“Outside Lies Magic: A Law
School Vendetta,” “But I Did
Everything Right!,” “Temporary
Attorney: The Sweatshop Edi-
tion,” and, my personal favourite,
“Sallie Mae’s Bitch.”
No, the situation in the U.S. is
not good. Those who either are or
will soon be job seekers outnum-
ber by tens of thousands the
quantity of available jobs. And
the firms’ clients, themselves
scrambling to reduce costs, are
demanding smaller bills. The
results: downward pressure on
compensation, working condi-
tions, job security, and profes-
sional prestige.
“The articling success
rate of our students is
between 96 to 99 per
cent and has remained
constant throughout
the downturn and
to present.
ing a cohort of contractors and
temps, a generation of law school
grads who see themselves as having been sold a bill of goods?
It almost goes without saying
that the issue is top-of-mind
within the profession. Law stu-
dents, new calls and junior asso-
ciates have heard the horror stor-
ies, and they want to know where
they stand. In the July issue of
Novus Tellem, the newsletter pro-
duced by the Young Lawyers’
Division of the Ontario Bar Asso-
ciation, Stephanie Sales, who last
spring completed her articles at
Ottawa’s Connolly Obagi LLP,
wrote an article about an event
held in Ottawa called “Life After
Articles,” a by-lawyers-for-law-
yers pep talk of the sort that is
dotting the cosmos of the profes-
sion with increasing density.
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