Biglaw, Job Searches, National Association for Law Placement (NALP)

The Brain Drain Hasn't Destroyed Biglaw... Yet (NALP 2016)

Whether you think the problem is a brain drain or a pipeline problem, the talent flow has been interrupted.

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Brain Drain NewIt’s fun when you go to a panel and somebody says “the media has overstated [something, something],” and you know that they’re talking about you. I attended the “Fewer Law School Applications, More Adjustments” panel at NALP 2016, and the subtitle could have been “Convincing Firms Your Grads Aren’t Dumber.”

Unlike a lot of these discussions, firm-side people were there too, and their experience hiring in the market was instructive. The panelists included:

  • Susan Krinsky: Associate Dean at Maryland Law and Chair of LSAC
  • Don Smith: Director of Attorney Development at Fried Frank
  • Sarah Zearfoss: Admissions Dean at Michigan School of Law
  • Ann Rainhart: Executive Director at Briggs and Morgan

It was Zearfoss, well known to regular readers of ATL, who said that the media had overstated the impact of the brain drain on law schools.

Speaking for the firms, Smith and Rainhart said that they had not seen a decline in talent heading into their firms. Granted… what the hell were they supposed to say? “Our current first years are mouth breathers, but we needed bodies. Don’t worry, we keep them inside during bad weather so they don’t drown when it’s raining.” But their overall posture was that there was still enough “top” talent out there to fill their incoming classes.

And that view was backed up by many firm-side people at the conference. If you are a Biglaw firm or a respected regional firm or boutique, there are enough people at the top that you can still fill your class without having to truck with the kinds of students who wouldn’t have gotten into law school 15 years ago. But the school-side people noted that part of the story is that those Biglaw summer classes are so much smaller than they used to be, and firms that used to interview the top 20 percent of a school’s class are now hiring only from the top 10 percent. Even Smith noted that a firm like Fried Frank has the ability to tighten up their summer class size should the talent level ever decrease.

Schools benefit from the brain drain because they are able to fill their seats without having to seriously re-imagine the value of legal education. Firms are protected from the brain drain because they are engaging in a flight to quality by hiring only the best students from the best schools. It shouldn’t surprise anybody that the only people hurt by the brain drain are the students themselves. The kids in the bottom 50 percent of their law school classes. The people in the bottom 90 percent of their classes at very low-ranked law schools. The decline in law school applications hasn’t created new job opportunities for people who score poorly on the LSAT, it’s just created new debt opportunities for those kids.

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There were some causes for Biglaw concern. The panel talked about how the percentage of college freshmen who are considering going to law school is way, way down. The issue is not the number of people applying to law schools, it’s the number of people overall who want to be lawyers. The panel also noted that competition for diverse hires is incredibly intense. Smith said “we’ll travel for that,” when talking about schools that produce top diverse students, and that view was echoed throughout the conference. Diverse candidates with the skills and the grades to compete in Biglaw have a lot of options right now.

The panel talked about how the pipeline problem is more of a “marketing” issue with how the legal profession is portrayed. But calling it a marketing issue puts the problem beyond what law schools or law firms can address, and that strikes me as a cop out. It’s a money problem: schools are charging too much, or if you prefer, firms are paying too little to make law school a wise financial risk.

At least, the math isn’t working out for a lot of smart applicants. There will always be a certain number of intelligent, skilled people who just really want to be lawyers. Those people will take the LSAT and go to law school and fill summer classes from Akin Gump to WilmerHale. But for people who could go to law school or business school or get a grad degree or do whatever, law school is simply not an inviting option. It’s too much debt for too uncertain of a payoff that can only be earned by working too many hours.

Pipelines and drains both work because of gravity. Right now, there’s still a mountain of debt that is affecting how people are flowing.

Earlier: Nobody Really Likes The New OCI, But Nobody Can Change It (NALP 2016)

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