By Ashley Fletcher Frampton
aframpton@scbiznews.com
Published June 8, 2009

Nearly 400 recent graduates of South Carolina’s two law schools are competing for jobs in a tight market that’s left more young lawyers than usual seeking temporary work, further education and nontraditional careers.

Job opportunities for lawyers are fewer these days, as they are in most business sectors. In some cases, law firms are suffering along with the sectors that fueled their growth in recent years — real estate and securities, for example.

“If you don’t have businesses that are merging or issuing stock, the lawyers who do that kind of work don’t need help,” said Phyllis Burkhard, director of career services at the University of South Carolina School of Law.

Further constricting the job market is the lack of mobility among lawyers who already have jobs, said Leighton Lord, board chairman at Columbia-based law firm Nexsen Pruet.

In the past, seven or eight of the firm’s 180 attorneys might leave each year, recruited away by other firms or businesses, Lord said. That left openings for new associates.

“There’s none of that now,” Lord said. “Associates that have jobs are keeping them now.”

Stacks of resumes
Mariah Dodson, who just graduated from the Charleston School of Law, is working part time as a law clerk and looking for a permanent job while studying for the upcoming bar exam.

She is not alone in her search.

“A lot of my friends are having problems finding jobs,” Dodson said.

One fellow law school graduate worked for a large law firm in Charleston last summer and hoped for a job offer, as is often the case after summer work. But now that firm is laying off attorneys instead of hiring new ones, she said.

Another had a job offer from a firm in the Upstate, but that offer was recently withdrawn.

Dodson said fewer law firms came to campus to recruit students this year than in prior years. 

“The firms are not really coming and looking for us like they have in the past,” she said. “People are just mailing out just stacks of resumes.”

Job market barrier
Unlike some professions, lawyers have an added barrier in job-hunting that makes it difficult to expand the search to other states: the bar exam.

Passing the exam, offered in February and July each year, is a prerequisite to practicing law in any state. Because of South Carolina’s bar exam reciprocity rules, many states won’t let lawyers who have passed the S.C. exam practice law without passing their bar exams, too.

Charleston School of Law graduates participate in a summer review course for the state bar exam, given in July. (Photo/Leslie Halpern)

In most cases, it’s not possible to take two states’ bar exams during the same round of testing. All states give their exams at the same time, and even if getting to two exams would be feasible, each state’s test typically requires thousands of dollars for review classes and months of study.

USC’s Burkhard does not usually recommend that students try to look for out-of-state jobs, especially this late in the game.

“I think they have a better chance of getting a job here,” Burkhard said. “The employers here know this school and hire from this school. There is more unknown when they go out of state.”

Hiring trends
But in South Carolina, by most accounts, hiring is down among the state’s larger firms, many of which usually bring on new associates after the summer bar exam.

Though he didn’t have specific numbers, Lord said Nexsen Pruet is hiring some new lawyers this fall, but not as many as in the past.

“We’re more cautious about our hiring right now,” he said. “Part of that may be what’s happening with our clients, and also from reading the headlines and seeing what’s happening in the economy.”

Though the economy is affecting some of its practices, Nelson Mullins, another of the state’s largest firms, is hiring about as many new associates as last year, according to Dell Chappell, partner and chair of the firm’s associates committee. Chappell did not have numbers on exactly how many that would be.

Barnwell Whaley, a medium-sized firm on Daniel Island with 16 attorneys, will likely hire one of last year’s summer clerks in the fall, as usual, in addition to a more senior attorney joining the firm this summer, said Scott St. Clair, chief operating officer.

Those are normal hiring levels for Barnwell Whaley, he said.

Most small firms in South Carolina don’t have regular hiring timelines like their larger counterparts, Burkhard said, so it’s difficult to tell whether most are cutting back on new hires this year.

Other directions
Career services officials at the USC School of Law and the Charleston School of Law said they don’t have comprehensive statistics at this point on their graduates’ employment. The schools must have a count by the February after a class graduates, when they report to a national tracking organization.

Burkhard said about half of USC’s 248 graduates have jobs, but she has yet to hear from 40 of them. Burkhard said she can’t easily compare those trends to prior years because she previously did not make as much effort to track employment plans this early. 

Michelle Condon, director of public service and pro bono in the career services office at the Charleston School of Law, said she is seeing more students this year pursue master of laws degrees, a credential for practicing a particular type of law, like tax or admiralty law.

The school’s third class has 136 graduates.

So far, 14 students are planning to pursue LLM degrees next year, and more are waiting to hear about their acceptance to those programs, Condon said. Last year, six graduates went on to get LLMs, and two more pursued other master’s degrees.

Another career path more popular among this class than previous ones is the military’s Judge Advocate General Corps, Condon said. So far, two of the school’s graduates have been accepted this year, and more are waiting to hear. None entered the JAG Corps last year, she said.

Condon said the law school is encouraging graduates to consider federal government jobs, a growth area because of baby boomer retirements, as well as other jobs that don’t require law degrees but for which a legal education is beneficial.

Dodson said some of her classmates are taking those types of jobs. She’s considered looking for a government job now and moving on to a law job later, when the market improves.

But moving to a new city and starting a new job require an investment of time and money. And in order to practice law in the future, she’d still need to fulfill the annual legal work that the S.C. Bar requires.

Another route grads are taking is temporary work with law firms that need lawyers for a project but, in the uncertain economy, can’t commit to hiring them permanently or provide benefits.

“They’re not bad jobs,” Burkhard said. “It’s something you do while looking for a job.”

Not as bad here
Lord said the job market in South Carolina hasn’t suffered the large-scale layoffs that firms in larger cities have had in recent months.

“Most of our firms are not as tied to the financial markets as firms in New York, D.C., even Charlotte,” he said. “Because those firms were so tied to what was going on on Wall Street, when those dried up, they were a huge impact to those firms.”

Nexsen Pruet has not been forced to cut attorneys because of the economy, Lord said.

Chappell said the same is true for Nelson Mullins. “We have not at Nelson Mullins had to lay off,” he said.

Lord said another mitigating factor for layoffs is that S.C. firms tend to have one or two associates working with each partner, whereas larger firms had closer to eight.

“So you don’t need to have these massive cases to keep these associates busy,” he said.

Reach Ashley Fletcher Frampton at 843-849-3129.