When it comes to looking for jobs after law school, graduates are expected to be chosen based on their experience in a real law firm as opposed to the ranking they achieved at school. This comes as part of a recent legal jobs survey conducted by Robert Half Legal Staffing Firm. The survey suggests that 4 out of 10 lawyers or law firms (44 percent) chose experience in a high demand practice as the number one marketable factor in hiring new lawyer or legal graduates. Coming in second at only 19 percent, was the class or school ranking.
The survey conducted was based on 100 telephone interviews with lawyers at large law firms with 20 or more employees, and with 100 corporate lawyers where their firm had over 1000 employees in the United States. They were asked the following question, “In your opinion, which one of the following criteria makes recent law school graduates most marketable?”
The responses showed that 44 percent of the surveyed group judged training or experience in a high demand firm as the main criteria, making class ranking come in at 19 percent, technological proficiency ranking at 8 percent, a joint MBA and JD degree at 5 percent, bilingual ability getting 2 percent of the votes, with 9 percent having other criteria, and 4 percent saying they didn’t know.
With the recession, many highly experienced lawyers are also looking for work, which makes the jobs market even tougher for college graduates to break into. In accordance with this, most law firms want to secure revenue generation above all else, and will select the lawyer with the best legal skills, experience, and ability to produce the required results in the shortest period of time.
Legal jobs are high paying and this means that there is also a lot of competition out there for job placement once you leave law school. The best thing you can do to ensure that you are shortlisted for the positions is to intern at high demand law firms where you can gain the necessary experience. Robert Half also released tips for all law school graduates which are the following:
- Make the most of your time post graduation securing interviews and taking on additional courses and training.
- Consider project or pro bono work to gain experience.
- Rethink the firm route and instead look into short term projects like dispute resolutions or mediation, which can lead to long term opportunities.
- Network with fellow industry professionals through social media networks, as well as bar association meetings, and alumni events.
- Look beyond your legal circle for contacts and connections that could lead to your next legal job.
If you want to get more information to get ahead of the pack with regard to your law career and legal jobs, you should become a member of 100K Job Finder, where you will gain detailed insight into the legal profession and discover current law job openings that will let you earn a large amount of money whilst doing what you love.
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