For years, students have believed that graduating from law school guarantees employment.
But data suggest recent law graduates are also feeling the pinch of the economic downturn after the collapse of the banking industry triggered a decline in the demand for legal services.
It’s taking students longer to find the jobs that remain, said Brian Lewis, assistant dean for career services at UNC School of Law.
And many firms are delaying new hires’ start dates by as much as a year, Lewis said.
“Many law students, including myself, have taken out student loans to pay for school, so we’ll be required to start paying those off after we graduate,” said UNC second-year law student Brooks Pope in an e-mail. “It’s scary to think about not having a job when you start getting that payoff notice in the mail.”
The national law student employment rate fell to 88.3 percent for the class of 2009 — a 3.6 decrease from the class of 2007’s all-time high and the lowest employment rate since the mid-1990s, according to the Association for Legal Career Professionals.
Deferred start dates
For UNC’s law school, which had the highest bar passage in the state this year, 96 percent of the class of 2009 found employment within nine months.
While that number is up slightly from the year before, students need more time to secure a position. In the past, most students had job offers by graduation, Lewis said.