In your last year of law school, you notice a sudden trend: as early as the first week of classes, your LinkedIn will be inundated with hiring announcements. 3Ls race to have their postgraduate plans cemented. They need to confirm their positions so they can worry about finals, graduation, and bar review without one more anxiety hanging over their heads.
Often, though, these announcements have a caveat. These are typically conditional acceptances. The offers are for employment after the graduate passes the bar exam. There are many reasons for this arrangement. The graduate, of course, has to study for the bar— anywhere from four to eight hours a day from graduation in May until the exam in July. (If you’ve never studied for the bar, think of it this way: what you spent three years learning in great, specific, crucial detail, you now get ten weeks to review or learn for the very first time.)
Bar review is a huge commitment of time and energy. A recent graduate may struggle to handle this alongside employment. Employers, too, may be reluctant to hire someone who cannot fully devote their time to work and is still familiarizing themselves with the law. Lawyers are too busy to spend their time holding a recent graduate’s hand. Perhaps it would be better to leave them to study and bring them on board once they’re barred.
Maybe not. Hiring a recent law school graduate to work before they pass the bar reaps benefits for everyone. Attorneys in their twentieth year of practice have irreplaceable practical knowledge and ingrained skills that new graduates cannot replicate. However, that graduate is immersed in intensive review of substantive law while working. The theoretical knowledge a graduate has is significant! Make use of a recent graduate’s unique “toolbox” to free up time for tasks only an attorney can do. Graduates can spare a few hours to research a novel issue, draft numerous legal documents, or run important errands. Certainly, an attorney could do any of these things— but why when a graduate would gladly do it? Law school graduates will produce detailed, substantively accurate, and technically exceptional work on these assignments.
Moreover, bringing on a new graduate before they are barred guarantees a better attorney in the future. A graduate who accompanies their supervising attorney to the courthouse will observe how their new jurisdiction functions and get the opportunity to network with the local legal community. A graduate who sits in on client consultations and conversations with opposing counsel will have greater comfort and skill in executing those discussions independently. A graduate who is given the opportunity to draft complaints, answers, and other legal documents will be a more efficient and focused young lawyer. A graduate who spends time researching new and novel issues will both widen their knowledge base and develop the skills necessary to quickly find answers to new questions in the future. Giving recent graduates the chance to perform tasks and observe those they are not yet permitted to do will create a more knowledgeable, skilled, and confident attorney.
The appeal of this approach is twofold: (1) employers should be attracted to the opportunity to utilize a graduate’s abilities while preparing them to be a better contributor in the workplace following their bar passage, and (2) recent graduate employees are eager to get controlled exposure to this environment and encounter the nuances of actual work that law school did not teach them.