Jobless Pace Law Grads Live at Home, Go Back to School, Hang Own Shingle
Kavitha Mukund is a cum laude graduate of Pace University School of Law who speaks three languages. Her classmate, Jennifer Lincoln, was an intern at the Hague’s International Criminal Tribunal.
Both 26-year-olds have been unable to find work after graduating. But John McCarron, 35, was luckier—he has been able to return to work as a computer consultant, the same job he did before he went to law school, reports the Journal News.
In his spare time, McCarron operates his own small firm with one other partner. Knowing that he wasn’t likely to be offered a job with a law firm, he focused his efforts as a third-year student at Pace on creating his own, he explains. Nonetheless, even with the consulting gig, just getting by is a constant struggle.
Lincoln plans to study modern legal history at Durham University in England for a year, at which point her prospects, she hopes, will be better.
Mukund, who is living at home with her parents after graduating in May, is now focusing her search on policy jobs, thinking they may be easier to find.
The law school is trying to provide more opportunities for students to learn about the practice of law before graduating so they can become masters of their own careers, the newspaper reports.
But the bottom line, according to Stephen Younger, who is president of the New York State Bar Association, and other career experts interviewed for the article, is that the job market is much worse for young lawyers than it used to be. And it isn’t likely to get better anytime soon, as an increasing number of applicants seek entry to law school.
“There is an enormous unmet need for lawyers in America, especially for people who can’t pay the rate that Fortune 500 companies can pay,” Younger tells the Journal News. “These jobs don’t pay $165,000 a year, but they pay something.”
Another unmet need, reports Crain’s New York Business (sub. req.), is for lawyers with doctoral degrees in the sciences. To fill their attorney rosters, firms such as Ropes & Gray are recruiting new Ph.D.s and paying for them to go to law school.
