Atlanta law firms hire fewer new grads, interns

The current economy has taken its toll on national law firms, which have had to scale back by reducing attorneys and headcount as workloads have lightened.

It’s also hitting another segment: newly minted law school graduates who are finding fewer opportunities for work.

Typically, a law school student might work as a summer associate for a national firm — which would have offices in several major cities — before returning to school in the fall. If that student performed well, by graduation the following year, he could expect an offer for full-time employment from that firm and start working in the fall.

But the slumping economy is making things anything but typical this year.

“It has been a really difficult time. It’s not something that folks in our office have seen before,” said Janet D. Hutchinson, an attorney and assistant dean for career services at Emory University’s School of Law. “There’s certainly fewer of our graduates who are employed this year than in past years.”

Some graduates who served as summer associates last year at big firms were offered full-time posts only to have those jobs rescinded, she said. Others have had their starting dates pushed back by as much as a full year.

In the meantime, some of those new hires are being loaned out to social service agencies such as the Atlanta Legal Aid Society until their new start dates begin, said Cheri Tipton, the agency’s deputy director.

Atlanta Legal Aid, which has one open position, has received plenty of résumés, many of them that “suggest not a lot of public interest work,” Tipton said, adding more people are looking at public interest law. “In two of the cover letters, the people were saying the economy has pushed them to consider doing something that’s been in the back of their heads.”

At Kilpatrick Stockton, all the graduating students who worked as summer associates last year in the firm’s Atlanta offices were offered jobs. But the firm pushed back the start date from the usual October to April. Some new hires may start earlier if there’s workload demand for staffing, said Charlie Henn, a partner and chairman of Kilpatrick Stockton’s summer program.

Law students who aren’t scheduled to graduate for another year or two have found difficulty in getting summer associateships as law firms trim the number of openings, shorten the length of their programs by weeks, or both. Last year, for example, Kilpatrick Stockton had more than 20 summer associates; this year, it has 14.

Firms say they’re naturally being cautious given the current business climate.

After all, overhead per employee at national firms — which includes salaries, office rentals and continuing education, among other things — can run anywhere from $150,000 to $275,000 per year. If business is slow, that could result in a lot of nonbillable downtime.

J.D. Humphries, managing partner of the Atlanta office of Stites & Harbison, said he stayed out of the race for new hires because the firm began seeing cracks in the economy in the fourth quarter of 2007. As a result, the firm hasn’t had to lay off people, he said, and this year, the Atlanta office doesn’t have any summer associates.

Even those firms that haven’t made drastic departures from past hiring practices are being more prudent.

“Both the size of our summer associate class and the incoming first-year class is only slightly less than last year. In Atlanta, we have limited the size of our incoming classes for the past several years to maximize opportunities for our new hires,” said Tom McNeill, managing partner of Bryan Cave in Atlanta. “In light of the changing economic climate, we are taking an even more conservative approach in projecting our future hiring needs.”

Still, some are finding a silver lining in the economic tumult hitting the legal industry.

FSB Legal Counsel, an Atlanta-based firm that has its attorneys work out of their homes or in their clients’ offices, plans to increase its army of lawyers to 100 by the end of the year from its current 41.

Kevin B. Broyles, who co-founded the firm seven years ago, said the hiring burst comes as the workload has increased at FSB, which touts its low-overhead business model as an advantage over traditional firms.

And because the firm won’t hire anyone with less than seven years of professional experience, Broyles said it cuts down on the costs associated with training junior lawyers.

“We have no pressure whatsoever. We view the economic challenges as the traditional firms’ issue,” Broyles said. “It’s proving to attorneys at larger, traditional firms and corporations that their jobs aren’t as secure as they thought they were.”