Looking For A Law Job? The Fate Of Young Lawyers

What is the fate of young lawyers?

Recently, Aylward Game advertised for a para-legal.

In its wake were very few para-legal applying, but instead, there were law graduates and recently admitted legal practitioners. The firm specified that the role was unlikely to advance to a Solicitor’s role in the foreseeable future and they lined up in their droves.

Our Special Counsel fancies himself as a bit of a country cook and regularly attends the Farmer’s Markets in Brisbane to buy fresh meat from the paddock. The purveyor of these fine meats, from the back of a transit van, is a law (honours) graduate.

Entry-Level Law Job

What is happening to the Legal Profession at the entry law job level? Simple, there are too many law schools turning out too many graduates. The market is flooded, and this really lends itself to the old joke – “what do you call 1,000 lawyers chained together at the bottom of the sea? A good start”. In all seriousness, though, the number could be changed to 5,000 and a dent would not be made in these unemployed law graduates.

More concerning, however, is that a number of the recently admitted legal practitioners harboured no immediate ambitions to become Solicitors. We probed the reasons behind this and almost in unison they felt apprehensive about having real clients with real problems. They felt ill-equipped by the online learning that governs Practical Legal Training these days. Law is a service industry – it is about managing people. Impossible to learn online.

Return To The Old Law Job System

This enlivens the debate about whether there should be a return to the old system of articles, whereby the apprentice Solicitor was indentured to his master Solicitor for a number of years with real hands-on practical experience. Reducing this training to a short course is a big ask, and hence why the graduates we interviewed were somewhat daunted.

That said, very junior lawyers are probably going to get far broader experience at a firm like Aylward Game as opposed to sitting in a room doing discovery at a mega-firm.

The reality is that the very junior lawyer at a mega-firm will seldom meet, let alone act for a client. At firms like Aylward Game, our lawyers jump between fields as varied as civil litigation, wills & estates, transactional law, property law, and even criminal law and certainly meet clients from the get-go (under supervision of course).

At Aylward Game, we inspire and instill confidence. And yes we do play with the big boys from time to time!!

Do not get depressed law graduates and as the song says “Let the Sunshine In”. You will not be consigned to living in a Tee Pee and wearing a Kaftan, just yet!!

Pick up the phone and call Aylward Game Solicitors and stay ahead of the game.

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AYLWARD GAME SOLICITORS