Professor Peter L. Reich (Whittier) takes issue with our earlier post on the job market:
Re "A Difficult Job Market" (Law School Reports, 8/27),
I disagree that the greatest problems for new law graduates are faced
by those from non-elite law schools. At Whittier, our grads do not
expect to receive $160K to start, although some obtain this. Rather,
they have been finding employment recently in a variety of public
offices and small-to-medium sized firms; places that do not give any
special preference to J.D.s from Harvard, etc. At least in California,
the largest contraction has been suffered by the name firms, even
though all have downsized to some extent. People will always need
D.A.s, public defenders, county counsel, and general business
litigators. According to the next-to-latest ABA Journal, there are a
number of growth areas, including my own specialty of environmental
law, wherein Whittier has a number of successful alumni. What may
happen after the latest economic shakeup (if I may offer my own bit of
speculation) is that, similarly to what has occurred with medical
doctors, students seeking extraordinarily high incomes will look to
other careers than law, leaving it to dedicated public servants and
comfortably but not exorbitantly paid practitioners who serve a wide
range of clients.
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