Downturn Dims Prospects Even at Top Law Schools

The Social Security Administration, for example, said applications for lawyer positions and clerkships had more than doubled this year, to 2,000, from 800. The public-interest job fair at N.Y.U. this year was “packed to the gills,” Mr. Fanciullo recalled, but whereas in past years students had seven or eight interviews, some of his classmates this year had zero. “There’s a humongous trickle-down effect,” he said. “When the big firms don’t hire, everyone looks to government. And when those get filled up, then what happens?”

It has been a bizarre new reality, especially for elite schools. At Harvard, officials have had to hawk résumés or tell students, quite simply, to buck up. (“Now is not the time for avoidance, denial or panic,” Mark Weber, the assistant dean of career services, wrote in a March memo to Harvard Law’s graduating class.)

With the system’s frailties exposed by the recession, said Mr. Ellin from Skadden, Arps, the time could be ripe for “massive overhaul.”

Discussions at industry roundtables and casual talk among officials at leading schools and firms suggest a consensus that interview dates should be pushed back to the spring of the second year, if not the third year. The recent problems have arisen, reform-minded critics say, because the legal industry essentially hires two full years ahead of when employees begin to work. And because young lawyers have to be advanced by lockstep every year, it is difficult to make recruiting changes that are responsive to shocks in business.

“There’s a long list of issues that need re-examining,” said Ralph Baxter, the chairman of Orrick. “The current economic circumstances have helped people see the economic inefficiencies we’ve been living with.”

Even lockstep, as sacred a pillar of Big Law as the billable hour, has been undermined by the hiring headaches of the last year, some argue. Orrick and another major firm, Howrey, have introduced innovative programs for associates based on apprenticeships or tiered systems that depart from the traditional “up or out” partner-track models. Some industry observers say their moves represent first steps that may ultimately give firms greater flexibility in hiring.

“The situation is so dramatic it has freed them up to make changes that they wouldn’t otherwise,” said James G. Leipold, the executive director of the Association for Legal Career Professionals. “We’re going through a period of a surprising amount of experimentation.”

Not that any of those changes will come into effect soon enough to help the class of 2011.

On a recent Friday afternoon, Mr. Fanciullo sat at home waiting anxiously for his first callback after four days of interviews. Firms customarily called within 48 hours, he explained.

“You almost bank on the big firms hiring you because they’re really the only ones who can help you pay your debt,” he said, his mind already skipping forward to a situation he didn’t choose to articulate. “Quite frankly it would be an absolute disaster. I don’t know what I’d do.”