About 200 Thelen and Heller Lawyers Still Looking for a Job
About 200 lawyers who worked at the dissolving law firms Heller Ehrman and Thelen are still looking for new jobs.
About 130 of Thelen’s 400 lawyers are still associated with the firm and are likely looking for work, the National Law Journal reports. And 81 out of Heller’s 550 lawyers still don’t have new jobs, the story says.
Summer associates of 2007 due to start work at Heller this fall are facing the worst job market, said former partner Ray Hixson, who started his own law firm. “I don’t know of any of them who have found jobs,” he told the NLJ.
Legal recruiter Gary Davis of Patterson Davis Consulting told the publication that the unemployed lawyers may not land at a big law firm. “There are opportunities right now to switch gears, to change the equation completely, and that might mean going to a smaller firm, starting your own practice, doing something you really love,” he said.
Davis said he worked with an associate who took a federal clerkship, while other lawyers are jumping to boutique firms.
Legal recruiter Avis Caravello told the NLJ that the lawyers may also want to consider relocating. Texas is a hot market for energy lawyers, she said.
