Thank you so much for your help and advice, everyone. I really appreciate it.
Somewhere upthread someone asked what specialty he's looking at. He has an engineering undergrad degree and is looking to go into IP/patent law.
Quote:
Originally Posted by VandalSquirrel
I don't know how aware you are of what's going on in the legal profession, but assuming he'll make 160,000, let alone have a job, even with a degree from a T-10 school isn't realistic.
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There is a lot of information out there about the legal job market and the number of jobs in relation to the number of graduates and since you're in a relationship knowing as much about a situation that may affect you in the long term is worth a bit of googling.
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This is something that really does scare us, because we've seen the horror stories about so many students with mountains of law debt who are unemployed or can only get crappy jobs. It's something we're seriously thinking about. The reason I mentioned that his prospects are good for a big law job is that he currently has a 1L summer associateship in his preferred speciality with a V10 firm, and from the way things have been going and the feedback he has been getting he will most likely be invited back for 2L summer. If he keeps up the good work he will likely get an offer from them. The firm is currently building this branch and very commonly gives offers to their 2L summers. This year he is the only 1L summer assoc. they selected and there is only one 2L summer assoc.
But if for some reason things didn't work out there... I don't know what would happen. Is it better to be a top 1% graduate from a 2nd tier school with no debt and no job, or a mid-to-top (not sure exactly how he would fare, but he would definitely be in at least the top 30%) graduate from a T14 school school with 200K in debt and no job? I feel like his job prospects would be better in the second scenario, but it still scares the you-know-what out of me. I ask because I honestly don't know.
He's also planning to talk to one of the partners he's friendly with at this firm about whether transferring would affect his chances of getting an offer there. To me it would seem like it would make him a
more attractive candidate, but from his casual conversations with this person, the partner doesn't seem very thrilled about him going. I can't tell if it's because they're afraid they'll lose him to another firm (which happened recently to one of their summer associates with a similar situation, who ended up getting another offer from a competing firm and turned them down) or if it's because his doing his last 2 years in another region will make him a less appealing candidate.
Again, thank you everyone!
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