The Red Velvet Lawyer

Here's the headline: Adapting to the Current Realities of the Employment Landscape for Lawyers, Half of Pre-Law Students Say They Plan to Use their Law School Degree in a Non-Traditional Legal Job So started an April 11, 2013 news release published by Kaplan Test Prep.  It goes on to report: The employment stats don’t paint a pretty picture for pre-law students looking ahead, but flexibility about their future career and their passion for it is driving them forward. According to a recent Kaplan Test Prep survey of more than 200 pre-law students, 50% say they plan to use their law degree in a non-traditional legal field. Of that 50%, nearly three out of five (58%) said the current job market for lawyers factored into this decision.   Forty-three (43%) percent of survey respondents overall said they plan to use their law degree to pursue a job in the business world rather than in the legal world—which helps explain why 42% said they’d likely pursue an MBA if t...

Michael Simkovic, one of the authors of the new report -- The Economic Value of a Law Degree , is debating the author, Brian Tamanaha, of the 2012 book --  Failing Law Schools .  The debate began earlier this week and appears at Brian Leiter's Law School Reports .  It should be an interesting exchange that will go on for a while. Both authors are law school academics. Simkovic serves as an Associate Professor of Law at Seton Hall University School of Law.  Brian Tamanaha, serves as the Dean of Washington University School of Law (my alma mater ). I summarized Simikovic's paper  here .  Tamanaha's book is available  here  (yes, I am encouraging you to use Barnes & Noble, and not Amazon). One of the factors affecting both authors' projections is the cost of law school tuition. Given the drop off in applicants to law school -- from about 100,000 in 2004 to about 50,000 this past recruiting season -- lower-tiered law schools have substant...

I graduated from law school in 1982.  At that time, 7.6 percent of new law graduates became solo practitioners;  40.3 percent entered small law practices (2-10 lawyers);  about 11 percent entered firms 51 to 100 lawyers in size;   only 15. 6 percent of new law grads entered large firms of 101 plus lawyers, and more women did that than men; and  NALP, the Association of Legal Career Professionals, did not keep a separate category for firms with more than 500 lawyers. See trend report here .  According to an earlier trend report , in 1982, about 10 percent of new law grads entered business and industry. About 23,000 students graduated from law school in 1982. Fast forward to 2007, the year of record employment among lawyers, NALP reports that: 3 percent of new law grads became solo practitioners (a 4 percent drop); about 33 percent entered small law practices (2-10 lawyers) (a 13 percent drop);  about 6 percent entered f...

My mom and I both celebrated summer birthdays.   We both came from a long line of farmers and gardeners.  We both loved those long, lazy sultry days of summer pulling weeds in the garden, dead-heading roses, drinking iced tea, spitting watermelon seeds out over the lawn, and sitting on the screened porch under the ceiling fan reading a magazine.  The heat did not bother us much.  We loved the sound of buzzing bees, the flash of lightning bugs, the smell of grilled meat, and the feel of the cool water in a swimming pool.  We both loved the taste of delicious fresh peaches.   In celebration of her birthday, I have assembled and sorted peach recipes recommend by Southern Living and The New York Times.  Enjoy them with your mom and your other loved ones! Beverages and Cocktails Governor’s Mansion Summer Peach Tea Punch:  http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/governors-mansion-peach-punch-50400000112157/ Carolina Peach Sangri...

That’s right. A very large number of law graduates choose not to practice law.  Instead, they pursue careers in banking, other financial institutions, insurance, technology and e-commerce, management consulting,  corporate contracts administration, alternative dispute resolution, government regulation or compliance work, law enforcement, human resources, accounting, the military, government executive positions, legislative positions, administrative agencies, teaching, journalism, risk management, judicial clerkships, law school administration, law firm professional development or CLE training,  or other professions.  In the report I summarized in yesterday's blog , authors Simikovic and McIntyre analyzed data for 2009 from the U.S. Census Bureau and  the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) to conclude that about three out of five law graduates work as lawyers.  Fifty-eight percent of all law degree holders report “lawyer” as their occup...

This past week, a number of news outlets and bloggers reported on a new economic analysis of the value of a law degree.  The authors make a persuasive, well-researched argument that a law degree confers measurable life-time advantages on law graduates compared to persons who get only a bachelor’s degree. The report:  Micahel Simkovic and Frank McIntyre, The Economic Value of a Law Degree (unpublished manuscript 2013) is found here .     Simkovic, an Associate Professor of Law at Seton Hall University School of Law, and McIntyre, an Associate Professor of Finance and Economic at Rutgers Business School answered the following questions:  Does a law degree typically increase the earnings of law graduates compared to what such individuals would likely have earned with only a bachelor’s degree? How does the law school earnings premium vary by gender and at different points in the distribution of outcomes? How much of the increase in earnings is...

An ASL grad posted this Facebook comment in response to my blog posting yesterday about claiming your right to success, abundance, love, and creative energy found here . "Prof. Young, last year you recommended bar takers to do affirmations to boost our confidence and success rates. It felt hokey and certainly could never take the place of diligent studying[.] [B]ut, it definitely helped me relax before the exam and helped reduce my stress during it. A very belated thank you and a recommendation to bar takers that you give wonderful advice!" To make it easier for you to find some affirmations that may work for you, I am providing them below. Find the affirmation that deals with a specific challenge you face right now in connection with the bar exam.  Also, find an affirmation you plan to use shortly before the exam date and as you sit to take the exam.  Write the affirmation ten times in your journal every day.  Say it just as often.  When you say...

Only two weeks to the July bar exam.   Will our 2013 graduates take the big leap?   My business coach recommended that I read, The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks, which suggests ways to conquer your hidden fear that prevents you from keeping and enjoying greater love, financial abundance, increasing success, and more creative energy.  You can find more information at http://www.thebigleap.net/ Hendricks is a psychologist, writer, and practitioner in the field of personal growth, relationships, and the mind-body connection.  He has written 25 books, taught at University of Colorado, has a consulting business, and graduated from Stanford University. The Upper Limit Problem He uses the term “Upper Limit Problem” to identify our tendency to follow great leaps forward on all these dimensions with big mess-ups.  We subconsciously use the mess-ups to keep us in our comfort zone when increasing success is taking us to new areas of personal growth and...

When I was in grade school, we lived in a typical St. Louis bungalow.  It had a wide front porch and a small back yard.  A wire fence separated our yard from the neighbor's yard.  On it grew an abundant vine of sweet pea with huge purplish-pink blossoms.  Giant bumble bees grazed the blossoms throughout the summer. My youngest brother, John, was still a baby sustained by jars of Gerber baby food.  I would take the smallest jars -- the squat ones -- and herd a bee into the jar and then screw on the lid.   I was capturing the largest bee in the smallest jar.  I do not recall why I did it, or why I chose that method.  I do recall several people suggesting I was daft or careless or fearless. I'd have one captured bee at a time.  But, I had them all summer long. I now have a garden that blooms from late February to late September.  I pay attention to my pollinators, which include bees, flies, wasps, and perhaps bats.  I protect t...

Declare our Inter-dependence Last night, while I was ironing linen blouses, I watched a Netflix film called Connected .  Written and created by Webby Awards founder, Tiffany Shlain, it was an oddly organized musing about what it means to be connected in the 21st century. Her discussion of disappearing honeybees and the intentional killing of sparrows showed graphically how we are connected at a fundamental biological level. Her stories about the important role her neurologist father played in her life spoke to family connections, that for her, extended back to Russian pogroms against Jews.  She wove the news about his brain cancer in with her story about her pregnancy with twins, -- who came later in her reproductive life through fertility medicine after a successful birth and then five miscarriages. She talked about her early interest in something that would later be the World Wide Web, and the role it might play in making feminist dreams of work-life balance real...

As part of my summer concentration on books written by Seth Godin, I recently read his 2010 Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?  It ties to many of the themes I summarized in my post, “Leaning In” as a Woman Lawyer , found here .   Godin argues that with so many means of direct communication with so many different “tribes” in a hyper-competitive world, each one of us can make an indispensable contribution, as a linchpin, to a business, art, project, or something we care deeply about.  You have the choice of being indispensable.  Just make it. He defines linchpins as the “people who own their own means of production, who can make a difference, lead us, and connect us.”  “The linchpin is an individual who can walk into chaos and create order, someone who can invent, connect, create, and make things happen.  Every worthwhile institution has indispensable people who make differences like these.”   They are artists and givers of gifts.  T...