Ireland’s been buffetted more severely than many jurisdictions when it comes to the financial crisis – and the law jobs crisis – and so its great news for lawyers to learn of 50 new legal jobs being created  by law firm Mason Hayes + Curran  to take its headcount at the practice above 300.

The Irish Times report:

“These are real and they will happen,” Mason Hayes’ chairman Declan Moylan said yesterday.

“There will be 20 new trainees. We will also provide new jobs in litigation, a small number in corporate, and some in tax,” he explained.

“We’ve developed a niche in aircraft finance and I’d image two or three will materialise there and we’ll be recruiting two real estate lawyers, to buck the trend.”

Mason Hayes didn’t make any staff redundant during the crash although salaries were frozen.

Moylan said pay rises have been awarded of late at “modest levels”.

“I’m not saying this is all fantastic. There’s pressure on pricing; a lot of competition on marketing, trying to get new clients; and tightening margins. We are living in tough times.”

Speaking from Mayo, Moylan was attending a conference run by the Pennsylvania-based Brehon Law Society, which attracted several high-profile Irish-American lawyers and former Irish politicians here.

Incoming search terms:

• american lawyer jobs in ireland
• solicitor position mason hayes & curran salary
• us law jobs ireland
• irish Times Mason Hayes adn Curran Solicitors
• irish law firm salaries
• irish times mason hayes solicitors vacancies
• latest law in ireland
• salaries for solicitors mason hayes curran
• solicitor salary at mason hayes and curran
• mason hayes and curran solicitors may 2011

Law Jobs Upsurge!

Is it too early to pronounce that the law jobs market recession is over?

According to recent reports, including this one from the American Lawyer there has been 1500 new law jobs after a couple of months of declines.  The current position shows an increase of 1500 law jobs over the same period in 2010.  This comes from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics which nonetheless also showed an overall increase in general unemployment from 8.8 per cent to 9 per cent.

As AmLaw Daily reported:  The good news for the legal sector comes after the industry lost 300 jobs in March and 2,000 in February. (Last month, we reported that legal jobs were down by 500 in March, but BLS has since revised those numbers.)

The upheaval in the law  job market is especially troubling for the many  lawyers and law students who are ready to graduate this month but have no jobs to go to.  The law jobs positon has been through some serious upheavals with the recession, law firm closures, shrinking departments and more. 

Last week, in an article for The New Republic, University of Colorado law professor Paul Campos said the jobs picture is far more dismal than most law schools let on to students.

Law school employment statistics are flawed, Campos wrote–he says the National Association for Law Placement (NALP) and U.S. News and World Report often inflate graduate employment in the legal field. These reports–the ones students largely rely on–include temporary jobs and low-paying gigs that barely require a legal degree, Campos claims.

Whether the law jobs market is set for a sustained recovery only time will tell.

Incoming search terms:

• law job market
• attorney jobs in a recession
• job market lawyers
• law jobs
• legal job market lawyers graduates
• legal jobs recession
• recession lawyers job market
• recession legal market
• recessopm and legal jobs in us

How To Get A Law Firm Job

What do you need to do when you come out of law school to secure a law firm job?

lawjobspipeline.com-law firm jobs

What are the processes, the procedures, the ‘must-have’ information you need to secure that job in a law firm?

The Law Firm Job Interview Process

The interviewing process begins in the second year of law school, which is a date that may change by coming forward so that its after the  third semester.

Unlike with business schools the law firm will come to you and ‘compete’ with one another in that respect to interview you for jobs.  This occurs over two weeks.

The Bidding Process

There are different purposes to the bidding process that occurs with the interviewing and wh ich you need to know about. It can also differ depending upon the law school.  Sometimes it can be random and wind up choosing people who bid on the same firms who may not be qualified and therefore not matching students to law firms in the best manner.

Doing it yourself

This is generally unhelpful, particularly if you call recruiters seeing if you can land an interview.  It’s generally unhelpful.  Sometimes there might be first-year summer hiring of lawyers but they’re the exception not the rule and are very rare.

My Grades Aren’t Great, Now What?

Everyone might want to go to the top or “big law”  law firms, but if your grades aren’t that competitive, don’t waste your time by going to one of those firms that isn’t going to hire you. Get your foot in the door with potential employers who you have the best shot of getting hired by.

The last thing you want to do is apply to the top ten firms that you can’t get a job at and waste your opportunity to interview with somebody who would hire you.

These interviews are a half-hour. They are conducted by a lawyer, generally one, sometimes two, from the law firm. Most firms will have representatives from different offices. 

What Are The Interviews Like?

The interviewing process is about a half-hour. It’s a dialogue. It’s more a conversation than anything else. Just like with a personal statement, you want your interview to add something that your resume and transcript don’t.

You want your interview, when you’re doing OSIF, to add something to your profile that your resume and transcript don’t already have. Think of it like another personal statement. You want to show your personality. You want to show that you’re the type of person that they’re going to want to work with.

They’re going to ask you some generic questions, but I think the key is really making it easier for them. They’ve been doing this all day. They don’t want to ask the same basic questions over and over again. Make it into a conversation where, when the half-hour is up, they don’t even realize it’s been a half-hour.

Ask real-life questions that show you’re actually thinking about working at the law firm, to prove that this law firm is not just the 50^th one you’ve interviewed at this week. I love asking questions like, “How do you get to work? Do you take this freeway or that freeway? What type of restaurants do you like in the area?” and other things that make the interview more personal.

Keep in mind that law school does not really prepare you for most law firm jobs. Don’t expect to be quizzed on what exactly it is you want to do. Most lawyers don’t know when they start exactly what they’re going to be doing, meaning that reciprocally, you shouldn’t come in trying to boast as if you already know everything you’ll be doing.

More articles on law firm jobs coming

Incoming search terms:

• moshe gerstein harvard
• resume for police job
• interview for accounting job in a law firm
• jobs
• law firm
• law firm interview process
• moshe gerstein
• process of getting a law firm job
• things to do in an interview lawfirm

The WSJ Law Blog has an article onthe latest ‘product’ to hit the legal industry – JD Match .  No it’s not dating.  But kind of.

It’s not often that we write about just-announced products designed for the legal industry.

(Frankly, we typically prefer to wait until all the initial public-relations hoo-ha dies down and the marketplace has had a chance to react to the product.)

But we’re going to make an exception this morning for a product whose very idea has piqued our interest.

The service is called JD Match, and its premise is to link law students looking for jobs with hiring law firms without a lot of the wasted time, effort, expense and overall agony brought on by the current law-school hiring process, with its interviews and fly-backs and courtship and disappointment.

JD Match, which is largely the brainchild of law-firm consultant and writer Bruce MacEwen, who will serve as the company’s president, will “match” law students with firms, much in the way matching services pair up medical students and residency programs.

It’ll work like this: law students will pay $99 per recruiting season to sign up. From there, they’ll upload their information, including a resume, etc., and will then rank the law firms they’d like to work for. On the other end, the firms will rank students who’ve signed up.

Incoming search terms:

• cnlu protest update

Superb new legal opportunity – nz law job -

Medico-legal decision making

Suitably qualified applicants are being sought for the position of Deputy Health and Disability Commissioner under the Health and Disability Commissioner Act 1994. As Deputy Health and Disability Commissioner you will:

• Publicly promote and protect the rights of health and disability services consumers
• Hold a key health and disability leadership role
• Enjoy a dynamic and intellectually stimulating environment
• Investigate and resolve complaints.

See details here.

Incoming search terms:

• medico legal jobs nz

Those seeking legal jobs have little to seek solace about during 2009, but a Lawyer story reported in LawFuel gives a good insight into the changes that have taken place in the UK legal industry in the past decade, with a major move towards the major legal centers of London and New York.  Clifford Chance’s David Childs (pictured) and others speak.

The National Law Journal took a look at what it takes to get a law jobs in the new environment.   In a down economy, law firms across the spectrum of size, geography and practice concentration have reduced their hiring goals. We all know about the layoffs – boring.  But while some law firms have disappeared and law jobs have gone by the thousands,  the financial turmoil may herald changes in the recruitment process that could eventually work a fundamental restructuring of employment in the profession. Here are some steps jobseekers may consider to help adapt to the new recruitment practices. 

n a buyer’s market, law firms can afford to be more selective. Reduced profit margins and client demands for more efficient service, moreover, make every hiring decision more important.

As a result of these economic changes, firms have begun to apply more stringent criteria in hiring, and some have employed more rigorous new forms of screening. Both the ABA Journal and American Lawyer, for example, recently reported on the use of “behavioral interviewing,” in which candidates are asked specific questions about how they have handled difficult circumstances in the past.

Kiwi legal job recruiter Damian Hanna wrote in his law recruitment blog about the strange world for recruiters at present.  Tell us about it!  But there’s some light out there, says Damian:

“There is definitely more of a sense of optimism around and for the first time in quite a while, there have even been a number of options for junior lawyers. I have recently met quite a few younger lawyers who, after sticking things out for the annus horribilus that has been 2009, have said ’stuff this, I’m off to London’.

“Whether it is the onset of summer, the prospect of a new year which will hopefully bring a new beginning or just people being fed up with being pessimistic about things, it seems that the tide has turned and to borrow a phrase from one of Ireland’s most over-rated performers D:REAM – “things can only get better.”

“So with this in mind, I opened up the latest edition of (the very good) NZ Lawyer magazine to see who was advertising, only to find a total of 3 job advertisements in the whole edition. Back in the heady days of 2006 and 2007, there probably would have been 20-30 and it seemed as if the whole publication was one big recruitment fest with some articles thrown in to break up the ads.

“Historically, Seek would have 300-400 legal jobs. As I sit here now, it has 223 legal jobs in NZ, quite a number of which are different agencies advertising the same job. (Yes, we do do that!)

“So where is the truth? Is it getting better or worse?

“My opinion, which I’ve outlined in earlier posts, is that the worst is behind us. I believe that people will start moving jobs, if only because they are sick, sore and tired of what they are currently doing. This will create some fluidity in the market which will result in the current stagnant market unraveling somewhat. Hopefully in conjunction with this, the law firms will feel confident enough to start making some positive hiring decisions and will be considering how they should be staffing up in anticipation of the wave of people who will leave these shores when the overseas markets pick up.”

Incoming search terms:

• funny legal jobs
• jobs pipeline