Law students find fewer getting-to-know-you summer jobs

Law students who hoped to line up summer employment and the potential of future jobs with northern Nevada law firms are finding scant pickings.

While major law firms in the region aren't talking about it much, most aren't hiring these days.

And that, in turn, dampens their interest in the summer employment programs that historically have provided law firms and promising second-year students time to check each other out before employment offers were made at graduation.

"Firm are being more conservative this year," says Cynthia Asher, director of career services at the William S. Boyd School of Law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. "And a lot of Nevada-based firms aren't hiring."

The slowdown is particularly noticeable in northern Nevada, where law offices generally are smaller than those found in Las Vegas. If a Reno firm decides to hire one or two fewer second-year law students for the summer, the decision likely means that it won't hire any at all.

"Absent the goal of hiring, they do not do a summer program," Asher says.

Typically, she says, as many as two dozen students from the Boyd School land summer jobs in Reno and Carson City. While final figures aren't in yet, the number appears significantly smaller this year. Law students who landed summer jobs in the region appear to have more success with positions in the public sector district attorney's office or federal agencies than they found with private firms.

McDonald Carano Wilson, which will bring on three summer associates this year, saw more competition than usual for the available slots, says Neoma Saulnier, director of human resources for the firm headquartered in Reno.

The firm usually hires two to four summer associates, Saulnier says, with an eye toward scouting talented students who might later be invited to join McDonald Carano.

The difficult summer for law students isn't limited to Nevada firms.

Nationwide, the National Association of Law Placement says offers of summer employment are running dramatically lower than previous years lower, in fact, than during the first year of the current recession.

The number of offers of summer employment to second-year law students is running at less than half the level of two years ago, the association says.

"This represents an enormous interruption in the usual recruiting and employment patterns we have come to expect," says James Leipold, executive director of the association.

At the same time that law firms are taking a close look at fewer students in summer programs, they also are deferring the start dates for newly minted graduates to whom they offer jobs.

"Many of those who have offers at this time do not have start dates," Leipold says.

The placement association, he says, doesn't expect things to perk up for at least a year.

But the tighter job market hasn't dissuaded potential young lawyers. Applications at the Boyd School of Law this year are running slightly ahead of year-earlier levels.