Unemployment in law profession rises in 2002, economy blamed
By Michael Jahina
May 7, 2003 9:00 p.m.
A rise in law unemployment has marred the fail-safe image of
attaining a career in the legal field.
The U.S. Department of Labor reported that unemployment in the
law industry escalated by 50 percent in 2002 compared to the
previous year.
As the law unemployment rate rose to 1.2 percent, the Labor
Department reported that the law profession has reached its highest
state of unemployment since 1997.
Though it may seem like a nominal figure, the true rate is
higher because the report considers anyone who works at least an
hour a week employed.
Many students choose to get law degrees for the prestige without
having plans to pursue a legal career, according to Jeremy
Steinman, a University of California, San Diego, economics
professor.
“With the economy in the state it is in, a lot of kids are
choosing to stay in school rather than test the uneasy job
market,” he said.
“A solid number of students who don’t know what
profession to go into choose law for various reasons,” he
added.
Additionally, many lawyers fresh out of school went to work for
dot-com corporations during the internet boom, said UCLA law
professor Gillian Lester.
Most of these people found themselves jobless after the internet
industry crash in 2001.
One San Francisco Internet company had 875 attorneys who all got
laid off in the summer of 2001, according to a National Law Journal
report.
“My fear is that after putting all this effort into my law
degree, I will end up working in a totally different field,”
said Sheila Wyatt, a fourth-year political science student who
plans to attend La Verne Law School in the fall.
An issue with law graduates working in other jobs before
pursuing their law careers is they lose an “unpolished
aura” they have following graduation, Lester said.
She added that problems arise in cases of layoffs that bear no
correlation to a person’s skill as a result of economic
factors, like in the dot-com instance.
“There is the problem of having been scarred. If
you’ve been laid off, you’re old goods. Someone fresh
out of school has a clean slate,” Lester said.
Through all the ups and downs, UCLA maintains a quality law
program that is still ranked as the top law school in Southern
California by the U.S. News & World Report.
“Our graduates tend to compete very well on the job
market,” Lester said.
Overall, the rise in unemployment isn’t much of a factor
to law students at UCLA.
“These percentages change just about every day. I
don’t think any of us has anything to worry about,”
said first-year law student Bennett Corwitz.
“As a lawyer, we will always have jobs. That is why we
chose to have law careers,” said Joseph Hwang, also a
first-year law student.
