BB&K In The News

With the recession ending, more law school grads are finding full-time legal jobs – including at BB&K.

Ryan M. Norman is the son of a pharmacist, raised in Vacaville with dreams of being an FBI special agent. When that path proved unlikely, he became an attorney instead. But by the time he enrolled in the UC Davis School of Law in 2009, the legal market was drying up. As a law student, he secured a few interviews and interned his first summer at the U.S. Attorney’s Office, expecting that to lead to a job offer come graduation. When nothing panned out, it seemed another unachievable dream.

“It’s hard to describe,” he says. “It was just kind of a shock. For a lot of my class, I think we went in with a lot of expectations that were unsupported in the new market.”

Just two years prior, the legal market was booming. But in 2008, when the economy came crashing down, the legal industry followed suit. Across the country, firms cut back on hiring programs. Fewer recruiters visited schools. As a result, a large portion of law school students who graduated between 2009 and 2013 have failed to land jobs inside firms or in their legal field of interest. Only the best of the best were hired at big firms, while the rest — with debts eclipsing $100,000 — were fielding nickel-and-dime offers, doing contract work or applying to the nearest coffee shop.

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At Best Best & Krieger, the summer associate program remains in full effect, holding steady with five associates coming on this summer.

“During the economic downturn, there was a lot of concern about hiring and the need to either start people later or defer people,” says Danielle Sakai, BB&K’s recruiting chair and hiring partner. “That certainly has changed. We’re bringing people in sooner after the bar [exam] than we had.”

She has not seen many applications from graduates two to three years out of school, which means they already have jobs or left the field. The standouts among the new crop, she says, spent their law school years doing internships, clerkships with federal judges, gaining experience with political officials and getting multiple degrees.

“They’re not taking anything for granted,” she says. “We’re seeing that the entry-level attorneys we have are eager and want to hit the ground running.”

Click here to read the entire article published in the June 2014 edition of Comstock’s Magazine.