Law School Class of '80 Flocks to Private Firms

Nearly three-quarters of this year's Law School graduates will enter-private law firms next fall--the most in recent years--while less than 2 per cent will work with public interest organizations, an unpublished report finished yesterday has found.

The interim report for the Law School Class of '80, due for publication later this year, also shows that more than 17 per cent of the 560 members of the graduating class found temporary employment as judicial clerks.

Eleanor R. Appel, placement director at the Law School, said yesterday the number of graduates entering private practice will continue to increase because more law firms are recruiting at the school.

Almost 60 per cent of the students surveyed in the report relied on interviews at the school for employment after graduation, with less than 6 per cent depending on their own initiative.

This year more than 16,000 interviews took place at the Law School with second-and third-year students. More than 950 organizations gave the interviews, with corporate law firms conducting more than 90 per cent, Appel said.

Job-hunting usually begins early in the second year, when firms offer students lucrative summer clerkships in hope of hiring them after the third year, Appel said. Almost twice as many interviews are conducted with second-year students as with graduating third-year students, Appel said, adding that one quarter of those surveyed found jobs through the summer clerkships they held the previous summer.

Many public interest organizations do not have the resources and organization to recruit heavily, and consequently only a small percentage of Law School graduates find employment with such groups every year, Appel said.

"A lot of people talk about public interest law when they enter law school, but by the end of the third year, most are going to the largest firms in the largest cities," David N. Johnson, a third-year student at the Law School, said yesterday, adding that it is more convenient to accept a job from firms that recruit on campus.

The World Go Round

Initial average salaries for those graduates entering corporate law firms range from $20,000 to $30,000 and may reach as high as $33,000 in New York City. With debts from college and law school to repay, many students "do feel like treating themselves to something after graduating," Jeffrey G. Thomas, a recent Law School graduate who joined a large Los Angeles corporate law firm, said yesterday.

Richard B. Bernstein, a third-year student who will join a private firm next fall, said, "A lot of people here need the money, and the big firms can supply it," adding that the Law School "has traditionally been a factory" for private firms.

Mark K. Crook, a third-year law student who will work in government next fall after spending a summer in a big corporate firm and "hating it," said the placement process "takes up much too much time," and disrupts the fall terms of the second and third years