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Employment Stats: A New Legal Market

At BU Law, we recognize that each student is unique and many paths can lead to a satisfying legal career. The law profession is dynamic and today’s attorneys use their skills to move among a variety of rewarding positions throughout their lives. You’ve heard the analogy that a legal career is a marathon, not a sprint. This is true. BU Law students are more prepared than ever to hit the ground running at the outset of their careers and to seize opportunities to move up the ladder throughout their lives.

As you know, the legal market remains unsettled after the unprecedented changes that began in 2008. Nationally, since 2009, fewer large law firms have hired summer associates and law students, including from BU. While BU Law continues to rank as a Top 25 school for placing students in large practices, according to the National Law Journal, we aren’t sitting still. To meet today’s singular economic challenges, we have taken even more steps to help our students build compelling résumés and strong career paths:

• In 2010, we began awarding fellowships to members of the graduating class to serve as judicial law clerks, allowing them to work full time for ten months. We expanded the program in 2011 to include more graduates and broadened the scope to nonprofits and government agencies around the country and abroad.
• Of the fellows from the Class of 2010 and 2011, all are now employed as attorneys, and half of the 2011 fellows are now working for the organizations where they completed their fellowships.
• Our newly established In-House Counsel Fellowship Program is attracting corporations and nonprofit organizations that hire recent graduates to work for a year in their legal departments.
• We conducted legal market research, including in-depth interviews with legal employers from around the country, as well as with our graduates. Our faculty then thoughtfully expanded the curriculum, maintaining our academic rigor while adding exciting practical skills options.
• Responding to law firms’ demand for first-year associates trained in drafting, structuring, and negotiating agreements and contracts, we introduced a Transactional Law Program in 2011, headed by a former partner at Skadden, one of the nation’s leading mergers and acquisitions firms.
• Our Career Development & Public Service Office offers a broad array of career resources and provided 2,200 individual appointments for students last year.

Use the links at left to view employment stats for the Classes of 2012, 2011, and 2010.