Job Searches, Law Schools

Finally, Some New Jobs For Law School Graduates

A new, growing program offers recent grads an opportunity to work and train with a leading third-party legal services provider.

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Everyone knows how the legal market works. You go to law school for (at least) one year too long and then try to get a position with a law firm. There are a few alternatives — a government agency, the clerkship/academia path, shepherd — but the law firm associate is the tried and true path for beginning a legal career. Consider it legal industry purgatory where you sweat out your debt-financed sins before moving on.

But that model is due for some disruption if UnitedLex has anything to say about it.

Recently, we noticed a press release trumpeting a new program devised by UnitedLex. The program, dubbed a “legal residency,” is a collaboration between UnitedLex and four law schools: Vanderbilt, Ohio State, Emory, and the University of Miami. The program models itself after a medical residency, which takes fresh-faced med school grads and plops them into a hospital for a couple years to learn the ropes.

While UnitedLex isn’t a practicing law firm, when it comes to the nuts-and-bolts of practice in the modern era, third-party vendors like UnitedLex have a lot to teach. Graduates work with UnitedLex as a resident for up to two years (not foreclosing the possibility of longer-term employment), compiling genuine hands-on experience. It’s not uncommon for a resident to manage their own team of reviewers and interface directly with the client and its outside counsel to develop strategy. Additionally, about 10 percent of the residency is devoted to training programs that UnitedLex and the schools developed to keep the grads learning the practical skills needed for a developing practice.

The program — which has been bubbling under the radar for over a year — has hired around 100 residents from the ranks of its four collaborating schools and hopes to expand to more law schools in the near future. UnitedLex CEO Daniel Reed admits that the company has so far taken a patient, long-term approach in building out this program, but that belies his zeal for forging an alternative job path for graduates who don’t see toiling for a few years in a Biglaw firm as the key to a viable career.

By all accounts, it’s a hit at these schools, with both grads and faculty raving about the program. In a recent National Law Journal article, Ohio State’s Dean Alan Michaels said:

“I think there will be excellent jobs in these areas, and we’re eager to develop pipelines for our graduates.”

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And the schools stand to gain more than a new source of graduate jobs.

The schools receive 50 percent of the profit generated from clients that come to UnitedLex through their alumni networks. The money pays for student scholarships. Reed said he has written “six-figure checks” to law schools. White declined to specify how much Miami has collected, but said, “It creates an additional source of revenue for our law school, and our alumni have been supportive and interested.”

Why would a graduate choose UnitedLex over a firm? Well, associate gigs are fewer and fewer to come by. Job dissatisfaction with the firm life is at an all-time high. And clients are getting stingier about paying for the on-the-job training law firms used to provide.

Meanwhile, third-party legal services outsourcers like UnitedLex are growing in size and influence — aided by increasingly cost-conscious in-house counsel. LSOs are no longer a legal oddity, but a fixture of the industry.

And when it comes to training — once the province of the firms, before clients pushed back against paying for associate training — companies like UnitedLex have got just plain better than firms at certain legal tasks.

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The billable hours that used to be wrapped up in document review are transferring from the firms to third-party providers, and with them LSOs are developing an expertise gap in eDiscovery. Not to mention the inherent advantages they enjoy in technology and economies of scale. Combine the importance of learning key eDiscovery skills with the opportunity to dabble in other forward-looking industry practices — litigation consulting, litigation finance, cybersecurity — where UnitedLex outpaces firms, and the idea of beginning your career outside the traditional law firm makes more and more sense.

The downside, of course, is that the pay cannot match the Biglaw associate track. UnitedLex is offering $55,000 and $70,000 per year, depending on where the graduate is stationed. That said, comparing this opportunity to a Biglaw gig is fraught with stupid. The $160,000 Biglaw job in New York isn’t available for every intrepid Buckeye. And remember, Ohio isn’t New York City. Earning $55,000 in Cleveland is the equivalent of $116,000 in Manhattan. Still not $160K, but by the time you consider taxes, it’s probably a wash on salary.

As for the long-term prospects of the legal residents, while chatting with folks over at UnitedLex, I heard more than one story about a resident moving in-house with a client. Which makes sense — if I were an in-house litigation department, seeking a seasoned lawyer to manage eDiscovery, I’d scour the ranks of UnitedLex before I’d consider a junior associate from a Biglaw firm. And with a focus on cybersecurity, UnitedLex residents likely have a leg up on the firms in what’s sure to be the top legal concern of the next generation.

When I spoke with Dan Reed, he described the conventional, Biglaw-centric wisdom as an “anachronistic idea of what law is.” Surveying the industry, it’s hard to argue with that sentiment. Companies like UnitedLex have changed the way clients hire and lawyers practice. It was only a matter of time before they revamped the model of recruiting.

A New Career Path — Legal Residencies [National Law Journal]

Earlier: Now That’s Transparency: ‘Most Honest Law School’ Admits a Graduate Is Employed as a ‘Sheep Farmer’

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