A recent New York Times article highlights a recent trend all too familiar to anyone in the legal community: the big American firms have cut back on hiring, leaving many recent law school grads with huge debts and no salary to pay them off.
Posts on blogs and forums suggest it’s not quite as dire in Canada as it is in the U.S., but there are still more people (including new calls and experienced lawyers who were laid off) competing for fewer jobs. Even some students looking for articling positions are finding it harder to connect with the firms they had their hearts set on. Boutique firms and solo practices can take up some of the articling slack, but are less likely to expand their full-time rosters, especially right now. (If you’re still looking for somewhere to article, Joe Welch recently posted a modest proposal on lawiscool.com.)
This economic upheaval was bound to create a new normal, and that’s exactly what’s happening — at law firms, and nearly everywhere else. But if big firms are getting smaller, and small firms can’t afford to get bigger (and start-up firms initiated by laid-off lawyers finish before even getting started), what’s going to happen? What if there are too many lawyers?