Careers
Hipster Cities Like Portland Attract Lawyers Willing to Work as Paralegals
Posted May 18, 2009 6:53 AM CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss
Portland, Ore., is among the cities attracting young well-educated “hipsters” willing to overlook a tough job market to live in a popular place. And some of the new arrivals are lawyers.
Portland, Seattle and Austin, Texas, don’t have enough jobs for all their young and educated migrants, but the places continue to draw new people, the Wall Street Journal reports. “What these cities share is a hard-to-quantify blend of climate, natural beauty, universities and—more than anything else—a reputation as a cool place to live.”
Among those dealing with a bad job market is 28-year-old Stephen Anderson, a lawyer who moved to Portland in June. He tried to find a legal job with Boly:Welch and ended up as an assistant to the firm’s recruiters, the story says. His duties include answering the phones, picking up lunches and sometimes walking the owner’s two poodles.
Anderson isn’t the only lawyer willing to accept a nonlegal job in Portland. Several lawyers have asked Boly:Welch for placement in paralegal jobs, but the firm generally refuses, the story says. The firm’s reluctance stems from the fact that lawyers are unlikely to stick around as paralegals when the economy improves.
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Comments
fed up
May 18, 2009 12:36 PM CST
Portland and Seattle are overrated. When I moved there, Portland was a magnet for young, wayward street people from all over the country. And jobs were scarce then too. Portland is the “whitest” large city in the US, and the least diverse major metro area. As for Seattle, you better like rain and overcast skies. Depression and suicide rates are notorious. The “hipster” component of a city may be appealing on television (think Seinfeld) but in real life, not so much. Also, the cost of living in Portland and Seattle is relatively high (especially housing) so it makes little sense to move there for a pay cut.
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J.D.
May 18, 2009 1:59 PM CST
Portland is the “whitest” large city in the US, and the least diverse major metro area.
Are you suggesting that the quality of a city depends upon the color of its residents?
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Steve
May 18, 2009 4:57 PM CST
“The firm’s reluctance stems from the fact that lawyers are unlikely to stick around as paralegals when the economy improves.”
Given the magnitude of the recent layoffs and the graduating students in the pipeline, I don’t think these firms have anything to worry about any time soon.
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fed up
May 18, 2009 9:22 PM CST
No, that was from a story I recall in the Daily Oregonian when I lived there. I think the story was suggesting a sameness in thought that results from a homogeneous population.
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Steven
May 18, 2009 11:23 PM CST
#3 do you have any idea how long it takes to train a good paralegal. They’re worth their weight in gold. I would never hire a lawyer as a paralegal because they would leave at the first sign of an economic improvement. The job market will get better.
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B. McLeod
May 18, 2009 11:51 PM CST
As I have said before, one of the problems contributing to the mass layoffs is that staff at every level have been grossly overcompensated by the larger firms for years. Paralegals have been as much a part of this as “associates.” While Steven’s comment is correct insofar as it is true that a good paralegal can be valuable, the “weight in gold” part is symptomatic of how salary expectations have been irrationally inflated. Note that a paralegal with a weight of 120 avoirdupois pounds would balance with a gold weight of approximately 1,749.96 Troy ounces. Using yesterday’s closing spot gold price, of approximately $919/Troy ounce, a 120 pound paralegal worth his or her weight in gold would fetch $1,606,463.28. Heavier paralegals would cost even more, and it is no wonder the law firms cannot afford to pay these salaries. I think the “weight in gold” contention must be somewhat overstated. It also does not make sense to me that a heavier (and probably slower) paralegal should be compensated more than a lighter, more nimble paralegal. I urge all my colleagues to reject this system of compensation. Until some basic sense is restored to compensation models, this economic crisis will continue. However, for those who elect to continue paying their paralegals on this basis, I would think that attorneys working as paralegals would be hard pressed to find much better compensation, even if the economy improves substantially.
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Bjorn T.
May 19, 2009 12:09 AM CST
Totally agreed. The weight-in-gold system felt absurd even in better economic times, now it just feels like looking back on Nero’s Rome to think about that system. I think nearly everyone can agree that it’s good that the system is gone now.
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