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Date:         Fri, 22 Jan 1993 09:40:31 EST
From:         kalrark%phu020.cis.smithkline.com@SMITHKLINE.COM
Subject:      Jobless attorneys - they deserve it.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
(c) 1993 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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FRIDAY, JANUARY 22, 1993



Law -- Legal Beat: Jobless New Lawyers Seek Other Venues
By Junda Woo Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal
   So far, 200 inquiries to employers have netted Sandra M. Birnbaum only
a temporary job processing worker-compensation claims at General Motors
Corp. For the 1992 law-school graduate who passed the New York bar exam
with flying colors on the first try, it's hardly what she had in mind.
   Hard economic times and a glut of young attorneys are pushing thousands
of 1992 law-school graduates into some unlikely jobs. And with roughly one
out of seven graduates still unemployed, many who find even law-related
work are looking well outside the traditional possibilities of law-firm
associate, government attorney or law clerk.
   Ms. Birnbaum, for instance, who graduated in the top 15% of her class
at the State University of New York at Buffalo Law School, gave up hope of
working for the New York attorney general because of a hiring freeze in
some of the department's offices. Now the 25-year-old is seeking work as a
litigator anywhere in southern New York state. Meanwhile, the temporary
jobs are barely making a dent in her $40,000-plus in school loans and
$8,000 in credit-card debt, all accumulated under the assumption that she w
ould have work when she graduated in May.
   "It's degrading," says Ms. Birnbaum. "I've been in national moot-court
competitions. I did well enough on my bar exam to qualify in two other
states. I think, `Here I am with a juris doctorate, and I'm doing work a
monkey could do.'"
   The legal market, career counselors say, isn't any tougher than it was
last year, when the law-firm recession was in full swing. But the market
isn't any friendlier, either. No national statistics are out, but
counselors at medium-size, non-Ivy League schools say about 10% to 20% of
their 1992 graduates are still unemployed, a figure considerably higher
than the historical average of 6% to 8%.
   One reason is that large law firms, squeezed by the slow recovery, have
clamped down on hiring. To make things worse, law schools have been
churning out more graduates than ever. Figures aren't available for the
Class of '92, but in 1991 the number jumped to 38,800, as many students
who might otherwise have pursued M.B.A.s turned to law as an alternative
to Wall Street.
   As a result, graduates are having to look harder, longer and farther
for jobs. Joanne K. Punu, assistant dean of the University of Hawaii law
school, has seen students fly in from the nearest states and even New York
to rummage for openings because they heard the Honolulu market was
promising. "It was," Ms. Punu says, "but it's not any more."
   New lawyers who are determined to make money off their law degrees are
angling for legal jobs in smaller cities and at far lower salaries than
they expected. Some graduates have fallen back on creating their own jobs.
After months of fruitless searching, former University of Georgia
classmates Anne Marie Couch and Heather E. McNay last month hung out a
shingle in Norcross, Ga., just north of Atlanta.
   "The whole time we were looking, Anne Marie and I kept talking about
that six-month mark," says Ms. McNay, 26. At six months, Ms. McNay was
writing again to people who had rejected her only a few months earlier.
Ms. Couch, 24, was applying for jobs out of state, even though her husband
attends college in Georgia.
   It was then that Ms. Couch mentioned once again that she had always
wanted to start a law practice. Conveniently, a distant relative of hers
was offering half-price office space in exchange for light legal work.
With a $5,000 loan from Ms. McNay's father, Couch & McNay was off the
ground.
   The firm has gotten five cases: a child-custody battle, a real-estate
closing, a driving-under-the-influence case, an uncontested divorce and a
negligence suit for a parking-lot accident.
   "I never expected to be doing this, but I'm really excited," says Ms.
McNay, who studied patent law. "I got disillusioned with patent law after
working in a law firm one summer. You don't get to work with people, and
there's so much office politics -- and they send women home if they have
pants on."
   The hardest part hasn't been the legal work but getting people to pay
for it. Clients owe about $700, and the partners are barely breaking even
each month. The two have promised each other to stick it out for a year.
Meanwhile, they've just finished drawing up an office manual. At Couch &
McNay, women can wear pants.
   Duane C. LaRue returned to his hometown of Seattle after graduating
from Notre Dame Law School in May, hoping to go into practice on his own.
But after looking at the market, he turned his back on the legal field.
   "Lots of small law firms here are competing with big firms for even the
little things now, like wills," says Mr. LaRue, who instead is working as
a broker at Kidder, Peabody & Co. in Seattle. "I had no clients, I had no
books, and I needed a loan for everything.'
   At Kidder, Mr. LaRue is specializing in estate planning so his law
degree doesn't go to waste. Although he hadn't previously considered any
work outside of law, he says he was drawn by the amount of independence
the brokerage firm offered. "You know, I think I would have been losing my
hair if I'd started my own firm," he says.
   A popular alternative for many rejected law-firm applicants has been
lobbying or other legislative work. Other recent law-school graduates are
simply returning to the job interests they had before entering law school.
   "I got sucked into, `Oh, I should be a corporate lawyer or go work for
a big firm,'" says Jennifer C. Jordan, 29, who graduated with honors from
Indiana University at Bloomington School of Law. After realizing she
wouldn't find a law-firm job anytime soon, she began looking into sports
promotion, her undergraduate interest. She now works in Buffalo as media
manager for the World University Games, an Olympics-style event. "I wasn't
really certain I wanted to work in the law, anyway," she says.
   Frustrated by the job market, many 1992 law graduates are simply going
back to school. "None of us would be doing this if we could find a job,"
says Barry P. Wilensky, a 1992 Syracuse University law-school graduate now
in Boston University's one-year tax program for lawyers. By the time he
was accepted into the tax program last March, Mr. Wilensky had sent out
400 resumes and still was without a job offer as law-school graduation
neared.
   Mr. Wilensky now has a tax-research job lined up at accounting firm
Arthur Andersen & Co., which he will start in July after finishing at
Boston University. "But most people in the program don't have jobs," he
says, "and I don't know that I would encourage anyone to go to law school
nowadays."
   One of Mr. Wilensky's friends, a 1992 graduate from the New England
School of Law in Boston, was selling clothes at an Ann Taylor shop until a
few weeks ago, when she finally landed a law-firm job. Mr. Wilensky says
many of his lawyer friends are too embarrassed to work outside the legal
field. "But once the student loans come due, I imagine they would just do
anything," he adds.
   Others, such as Ms. Birnbaum, the lawyer doing temp work at GM, already
have reached that point. "There's only so much money you can borrow from
your parents," she says. She held a credit-card-cutting party earlier this
month, slicing up all but three of her 15 charge cards. She tells the temp
agency she won't take jobs for less than $6 an hour.
   To look for job leads and to not lose touch with her legal training,
Ms. Birnbaum this week began working with a volunteer-lawyers project in
Buffalo. "I know that, given the opportunity, I would be a good lawyer,"
she says. "I'm aggressive and I'm smart, and I just haven't been given the
chance. . . . There's really nothing else that interests me. It's tough."
   ---
   Ruling Reversed

   A U.S. appeals court reversed a bankruptcy-court ruling against former
Continental Airlines pilots, partly because the bankruptcy judge didn't
remove himself from the case.
   Former Bankruptcy Court Judge T. Glover Roberts ruled in 1986 that the
pilots didn't deserve furlough pay from Continental's bankruptcy estate.
Several weeks later, he stepped down to become a partner in the law firm
that represented Continental.
   The appeals court in New Orleans had ruled that the judge should have
removed himself from the case because of the appearance of partiality. But
the appeals court hadn't previously reversed any of his rulings because it
had found that any harm to employees could be corrected by other courts.
   But the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the "risk of injustice
is greater" in the furlough-pay decision. The court said the judge should
have found that the pilots deserved the furlough pay.
   Mr. Roberts, who is a partner in the Dallas office of Houston-based law
firm Sheinfeld, Maley & Kay, said he hadn't seen the ruling so he couldn't
discuss it. In the past, he has said he didn't talk to Sheinfeld Maley
about a job until several weeks after approving Continental's bankruptcy
plan.
   The appeals court's ruling won't benefit most pilots, who settled their
claims with Continental in June. But Marty C. Harper, a Phoenix attorney
for the pilots, said at least "a few hundred" can still seek money.
   A spokesman for Houston-based Continental, which filed for Chapter 11
bankruptcy in 1983 and again in 1990, said only 50 or so pilots have valid
claims. The carrier is now a unit of Continental Airlines Holdings Inc.
(Joseph E. O'Neill et al. vs. Continental Airlines, Fifth U.S. Circuit
Court of Appeals, New Orleans, 89-2943)
   ---
   Law Notes ...

   WHO'S NEWS: Lawrence S. Eagleburger, formerly secretary of state in the
Bush administration, has joined law firm Baker, Worthington, Crossley,
Stansberry & Woolf as a foreign-policy adviser. Mr. Eagleburger, who isn't
a lawyer, will advise the firm's U.S. clients on foreign business
ventures. Former Sen. Howard Baker is head of the Knoxville, Tenn., firm.
. . . Walter B. McCormick Jr., former general counsel of the Department of
Transportation, will join St. Louis law firm Bryan Cave as a partner. He
will practice out of the 350-lawyer firm's Washington office, mainly in
the areas of communication and transportation. . . . Harry J. Weiss,
former associate director of the Securities and Exchange Commission's
enforcement division, joined law firm Arnold & Porter in Washington. He
will focus on securities law and corporate compliance.



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