Ryan & Partners PC, Saratoga.
BY JAMES T. TOWNE, ESQ.
Growing up most of us heard the French
proverb “the more things change the more they
remain the same” at least once from our parents.
So, too, it applies to the state of the legal profession
in upstate New York, which continues following
a pattern ongoing since the start of the
Great Recession in 2008-09.
Part of the barometer for the profession’s
condition can be measured by the condition of
New York’s law schools. They prime the pump
of the profession.
In the first decade of the century, they flooded
the profession’s engine, leading to a lack of jobs
and entry level opportunities. In recent years,
New York’s law schools showed a continuing
decline in enrollment as those schools continued
to shrink faculty and admissions in an effort to
catch up with the realities of employment in
the profession.
In 2015, 11,565 students enrolled in New York
law schools, down from 12,033 (3 percent) the
year before. New York lagged the national trend
which showed the total number of students
fell by almost 6,000 or a 5 percent decrease in
national enrollment. The National Association
for Law Placement found that overall employment
for recent law graduates fell for the sixth
straight year in 2013 (to 84.5 percent) and that
unemployment among 2013 grads was 12.9
percent, nearly double the national unemployment
average for the same period of 6.6 percent.
