David Unze

dunze@stcloudtimes.com

Local public defense office and judges are seeing high numbers of job applicants and higher quality

Law schools are lowering admissions numbers%3B fewer students applying and fewer taking LSAT exams

More law school graduates are taking jobs outside the legal profession

When the state lifted a hiring freeze and allowed Rex Tucker to hire staff in the public defender offices he oversees, the applications rolled in.

The positions that used to attract primarily recent law school grads and lawyers who had practiced for a year or so were drawing more and better qualified applicants.

"The numbers (of applicants) have gone way up, and the experience that the folks have who are applying has gone up as well," Tucker said. "It's surprising to see the quality and number of applicants that we have."

It's the result of a continuing trend of law schools producing more graduates than there are jobs available. That's leading to more St. Cloud-area lawyers working outside their profession, working at jobs they likely would have leap-frogged in job markets past or not working at all.

A survey released last month by the National Association of Law Placement shows that the overall employment rate for new law school graduates fell for the sixth year in a row, to 84.5 percent. It showed that there are more law jobs than ever, but that there also were more law school graduates in 2013 than ever.

"When you start to look at those numbers, you realize that even though the total number of jobs increased during that period, there's still a slight drop in terms of overall employment," said Alan Haynes, director of the University of Minnesota Law School's career center.

There were 46,000 law school graduates last year, an all-time high nationwide, Haynes said. That makes for a tight job market for lawyers at a time when firms are preaching efficiency and being smarter about their hires, he said.

The incoming class this year for law schools nationwide was 36,000, he said.

'Moving forward'

Autumn D'Costa is an attorney struggling to make a living in her chosen field and pay off her law school debt.

She graduated law school in 2006 and clerked for a judge in Cass County before transferring to Stearns County in 2008 to clerk for Judge Frederick Grunke. She took a job in private practice for 18 months at a St. Cloud-area firm before she was laid off.

"That's where the trouble started for me, in terms of finding work," she said. "I think in 2011, I went on 23 interviews and ultimately got a job as a law clerk again. That was the only job that had been extended to me."

That job came in November 2011, meaning she spent most of 2011 unemployed. Her new job required her to move to southern Minnesota to work in Albert Lea.

She moved home with her parents because she couldn't afford to pay her student loan debt of about $140,000 and all of her bills. She moved back to St. Cloud after getting married and applied for jobs again.

She's been employed at the self-help center run by Central Minnesota Legal Service since July 2013.

While she enjoys the work, it was a long road to get to that point. After jobs clerking for three judges, she didn't envision being a staff attorney helping walk-in clients in a law library.

"I wanted to do public defense," she said. "Public service is really my passion, and that's where I wanted to go, but I just wasn't having any luck. And I had to go back to clerking again. And that's kind of seen as taking a step back in the profession. You want to keep moving forward."

77 applications

Stearns County District Court Judge Andrew Pearson saw the competitive nature of law jobs when he hired a law clerk after being appointed to a judgeship last year.

It wasn't that long ago that law clerk positions drew a dozen or so applicants.

He had 77 apply to be his law clerk.

"I was pleasantly surprised. I had no idea what to expect, but I didn't expect to get that many," he said.

He weeded out the applicants who hadn't written for their law school's Law Review and those that didn't have at least a 3.0 grade-point average in law school. That cut the pool to about 30, he said.

"I was shocked at how many of them were not currently working in the field. ... They had done the internship and externships," he said, "but very few were working in the field."

D'Costa considers herself lucky to be working in the field, although she'd love to get back into the courtroom and use the skills she was starting to develop when she was laid off. And though her financial outlook is poor — she's able to pay the interest on her law school loans and barely make ends meet with her other bills — she doesn't plan to leave law as a profession.

She's not regretful or bitter about what's happened.

And she remains hopeful about the future, striving to do her best at the job she has now and letting the future play out.

"I'm hopeful that things will eventually get better and pan out. I'm trying to maintain a positive outlook," she said. "Thinking negatively will get you nowhere."

Market correction

The market for lawyers is going through a correction, Haynes said.

Applications to law schools have dropped, and so have admissions. And the number of students taking the LSAT exams last year was at a 14-year low, he said.

While the graduating class last year was 46,000, the incoming class at law schools was 36,000.

"When looking at numbers like that, you're looking at some real change in the market for the future," he said.

At the same time, more law school graduates are looking outside of the legal profession at jobs in which a law degree is preferred or required.

The number of lawyers taking what's called "JD advantage jobs" was 13.8 percent in 2013, the highest since NALP began tracking that data in 2001.

Haynes said that law school students are more focused than they've been before and that law schools shouldn't be concerned if their graduates get good-paying jobs that they want outside of the legal profession.

"That's the future. I see that as something that becomes the norm ... that there are jobs out there where you can use the analytical abilities you learn in law school to work in business," Haynes said. "I think it won't be seen as outside the norm."

Follow David Unze on Twitter @sctimesunze.