Arizona State University’s law school is attacking head on the growing problem of law school graduates — who are in the fifth year of a near-depression-level job market — not being able to find work. It plans to open its own nonprofit law firm, as the New York Times recently reported, with the goal of keeping 30 recent graduates off the unemployment rolls. Law schools have also been offering public interest fellowships to help recent graduates get a foothold in the legal market — and creating incubators to train solo practitioners. But all of this law-school work-making is raising some fundamental questions about whether there are broader forces at work that are permanently altering the legal profession. It may seem far off today, but it was not long ago that the good times were rolling for lawyers. In 2007, 91.2% of law school graduates got jobs and salaries were soaring. After the 2008 meltdown, the employment rate was far lower — and the quality of jobs a lot worse. In 2009, just 65.4% of law school graduates got jobs for which they needed to pass the bar. (MORE: Sonia Sotomayor Debate: Should Unhappy Lawyers Blame Themselves?) A grim sport has emerged of exchanging stories about just how bad things are. Many lawyers are stuck doing tedious, document-intensive contract work for as little as $25 an hour — not the worst job in the world, certainly, but not what many of them envisioned when they spent three years of their lives and $150,000 to get a law degree. And there are plenty of worse jobs.  “Above the Law,” a website that follows the grim legal market closely, reported one listing on Boston College Law School’s job site that offered an annual salary of just $10,000 which “Above the Law” insisted the firm “had to have known” was “below minimum wage.” And it gets worse still. There are a surprising number of job postings for lawyers that offer no salary at all, including government law jobs. That raises the question — as one headline put it — “Would … Continue reading Just How Bad Off Are Law School Graduates?