Minnesota Lawyer Blog

It was a red-letter day for hundreds of law school grads Tuesday, as they gathered at the Minneapolis Convention Center for the first half of the Minnesota Bar exam.

Minnesota Lawyer Editor-in-Chief Mark Cohen was there to catch test-takers at the peak of their anxiety - moments before the exam began.

Oh, and he brought a one-man camera crew to preserve the moment for posterity ...

Lawyers: Did you shun society, J.D. Salinger-like, in the weeks before the exam? Did you lie awake the night before? And then down eight Grande Mocha Fraps that morning?

Or do you think the stress-filled mythos surrounding the Bar is a bit overblown? (Certainly a couple of these test-takers appear almost Zen-like as they enter the hall.)

The Minnesota Lawyer blog would like to extend its best wishes to the hundreds of law school grads who will gather at the Minneapolis Convention Center tomorrow for the first day of the two-day Minnesota Bar exam.

Typically, the bar exam is administered at the RiverCenter in St. Paul, but the facility is currently in the process of being retrofitted for the Republican National Convention. The good news is that change of venue allows exam- takers who fail to blame the GOP. ("I coulda' done better in the RiverCenter!")

Exam-takers on the first day need to bring in a driver's license, a white admissions card and a black pen. I found more interesting the list of things they can't bring in, which includes: highlighters, digital clocks, beeping watches, cell phones and pagers (do people outside the medical profession still own pagers?). On the second day, exam-takers must bring in a No. Two lead pencil. With all the advances in technology, it's good to know somethings never change -- at least for those who did not opt to take the test on laptop in the specially set up computer room. (Worried about the clickety-clack of the keyboard? The scratch of pencil hitting paper? The screams of those who put in inadequate preparation time? No sweat! Ear plugs will be made available to any exam-taker who requests them.

Results of the exam will be mailed on Oct. 7 and posted on Oct. 8. May the force be with all of you taking the bar exam -- and may the rest of your summer be a little more enjoyable than the last few weeks have been!

As we close in on law school graduation season here in the Gopher State, not everyone who will be donning a robe and mortar board next month is a happy camper. Every year at about this time we hear from a disenchanted law student or two -- and this year is no different.

In a recent post, we noted that the University of Minnesota Law School had "slipped" from 20 to 22 in the U.S. News & World Report rankings of the "Top 100" law schools. In response to that post, yesterday we received the following comment purportedly from a third-year law student at the U of M:

Honestly, for job placements Minnesota Law School (sic), isn't even 4th tier. We send less than 20 percent of our graduates top the top 250 firms, while most schools in the top 30 send at least a third. We have significantly lower salaries than other comparable law schools In my 3l class most students do not have jobs.

Appropriately enough, the comment was made under the nom de plume "Bitter 3L." I cannot vouch for any of the factual assertions contained in the post. In fact, I am nearly positive that, if called upon to do so, the U of M would pull up all sorts of placement statistics showing things are not nearly as dire as portrayed in this comment. But the statistics are not what interests me. Whatever the real numbers are, every year some law students head merrily off to prestigious clerkships or lucrative Big Law jobs, while others live lives of quiet desperation, facing a lot of debt and few job prospects. Schools trumpet the stories of the first group, but rarely mention the second.

I have some thoughts of my own on some of the issues implicated in 3L's remarks, but thought I'd toss it out into the blogosphere to let you comment. Do any of you more seasoned and grizzled attorneys have any words of wisdom for our bitter young friend?

A couple of news stories lately have raised some questions about what the profession can expect from its new lawyers, and what new lawyers will be available.

Corporate Counsel reported last week that larger law firms are losing 30 to 50 percent of associates after three to four years -- with half to two-thirds of the defections due to associate, not firm, choice. “Where do they go? Smaller firms, more competitive firms in the same city, firms in other cities, in-house, government, teaching, nonlegal jobs,” the report said.

Money and perks are increasing at many of the big firms, but retention isn’t. The article says that associates find the profession disappointing and demoralizing, and recommends “coherent, systematic, up-front law firm investment in young lawyer development programs within the firm, not fancier recruiting restaurants, to develop skilled, energized lawyers who can, and will, provide longer-term value to the firm -- and to the profession.”

But what young lawyers?

A report on law school enrollment by the American Bar Association Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar showed that total enrollment by students seeking the J.D. degree increased only slightly during 2007-08, while enrollment of first-year students was nearly flat, compared to the previous year.

Broken out by gender, the ABA report further reveals that total enrollment of male students increased slightly but first-year male enrollment dipped, and total enrollment by females decreased despite a rise in the number of women students in the entering class. Minorities posted slight gains.