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Maybe It Is Time to Rethink Your Strategy and Career Goals By Surajit Sharma One thing I have learned over time is that a great number of happiest people in the world are people who never fail to achieve their career goals, simply because they always shift the goal posts with changes in circumstances.
With campus recruitment rates shrinking even at Harvard and New York Universities, and with the highest grossing U.S. law firms having almost halved summer recruitment, the market trend is pretty obvious and it’s time to shift those goal posts. According to a September article in Bloomberg by Cynthia Cotts, the executive director of the Association for Legal Career Professionals, James Leipold thinks that the job crunch is going to extend to 2011 as well. Leipold has gone on record saying ‘’We expect to see more students taking non-legal jobs in industry...We expect to see more students taking jobs at small and medium-sized law firms or launching solo practices right out of law school.’’ Know what, that sounds wonderful to me. Even with heavy education loans riding on your back, and God only knows how many obligations to pay off, still I know, you will survive, and find the way to beat the economy crunch. And I am sure in the process, you will find a better life and a better chance to actualize your innate abilities. Usually the up-or-out mentality of big law firms, and being recruited by law firms being projected as the ultimate goal of students, it was both the student and the country who stood to lose most. Brilliant students diving straight into firms and letting their lives get dictated by demands of the firm created cripples who were specialized in their stuff but were next to blind about most aspects of law. A small town independent practitioner usually has a greater holistic idea of the system and the roles that lawyers play in the system of this country. It is not all about the hourly bills: your career choice decides the quality of justice in this country, and the survival of your humanity.
In 2007, I remember, it was internees and law students who, in effect, were being sought after, and they were actively seeking more work-life balance than money. In 2009, the picture has changed entirely, and forget work-life balance, getting recruited by big law firms is hardly a possibility. Thanks to the economy, I hope some of you would be joining the middle level law firms, spread a bit of better quality around the country and where it is needed, and in the process get the work-life balance that every lawyer should have. The situation is bad only for him/her whose life and career begins and ends with getting recruited by the top most law firms in the country. However, the situation is tolerable enough for those who are ready to join middle-level or small law firms, or get enrolled in the bar and try to start their own practice. It is my personal opinion, which is not universally applicable, that a few years of litigation and exposure in small courts can work wonders in the life of a lawyer who later becomes a specialist. So, this might just be your opportunity to learn about life and courts from the angle of small firms and help them, for they serve the masses. The experience will stand you in good stead in the coming years, and if it had not been for the crunch in economy, may be you would never have had this chance to see the legal world from where it really matters. So cheer up, there are enough small and middle-level law firms to look for who need just people like you to realize their dreams. Help them to realize their dreams, and you wouldn’t even know when your own dreams start getting fulfilled. Just search the data at LawCrossing.com and you’d know that there is no question of going jobless just because the economy is in a crunch.
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