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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I am a big law associate and can tell you this is a very difficult position.    Your best shot is to do everything you can to find a job at a mid size or even a small firm with an excellent reputation; work your butt off; and then in 2-3 years you can lateral to someplace better.   When you are 2-4 years out of law school, law firms fall over themselves to hire people.    You need to try to find a way to position yourself for that.   But I will be brutally honest that finding the initial job at a mid or small place isn't easy.   I also don't agree with the advice that you should move unless you really have something lined up elsewhere.   The reality is that in most geographic areas regional law school students can have a major influence on hiring and unless youbwent to law school in area and have the same alumni connections, it is going to be just as hard, if not even harder, to find a job.   You should not pack up your car and drive to say Philadelphia because you went to a school with a better ranking than Temple and Villanova -- you will be very disappointed when you realize that most other people in Philadelphia went to Temple or Villanova and don't care about your school and its ranking.

The government is an option but the hiring freeze complicates that and being pegged as a government lawyer can also complicate things.   It is MUCH harder to lateral from the government to a big law firm than it isn't to lateral from a small/mid size firm to a big law firm, unless you have some truly compelling government experience that frankly you probably won't have.

Contract work is a killer if you want to do real big law work, but it does pay the bills.   It depends how much you need money soon.

As for policy jobs -- this is a huge misnomer.   Why is an attorney who likely has a major aversion to stats, math, etc. more qualified to do public
Policy analysis at the very highest levels of such analysis in Washington DC than someone with a Masters or PhD who actually went to school to become a policy analyst (and is likely good with numbers)?   It is total nonsense.   I say this as someone who worked in a low
level job at a think tank before law school.  The good jobs at a think tank -- and yes I would put ones that pay 60k in that category -- are highly competitive and nobody is going to hire an attorney who has never even practiced law for such work (unless you have something truly unique in your background)

Good luck.    
[/quote]

I'm the PP suggesting he/she should move. No - I didn't mean move randomly without a job. I meant start applying for jobs in other markets and then go where you find one. Secondary markets like Philadelphia are really hard - they are very much biased towards Philadelphia locals, as evidenced by all the Temple, Nova grads. They won't care that you went to a school better than Temple bc often the hiring partners went to Temple and think it's perfectly fine; and if somehow they want grads from a hire ranked school, a small number of Penn grads remain in Philadelphia post graduation. I was thinking BIG cities - NYC, Chicago, LA/SF where they don't just get applications from regional grads.[/quote]

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