It’s been said that finding a job right out of law school used be a lot like stepping onto an escalator and choosing when to get off.  If this were ever true, the Great Recession certainly changed it. The nation’s weak economy, which since 2008 has been frustratingly persistent, has had a major impact on the legal profession and has made the job market for recent law graduates much more difficult.  UF Law administrators are determined to build on the recent progress in the office that takes the lead in helping students and alumni with their job searches.

A search will move forward during the spring semester to replace Assistant Dean Pascale Bishop, who left the helm of UF Law’s Center for Career Development last month for a position in career services at Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago. UF Law Dean Robert Jerry said negotiations to retain a national search firm to work with a college-appointed search committee have been completed, and a national search for a new assistant dean will begin promptly.

“Two years ago, the college search committee worked very hard, but its initial effort to find the right person was unsuccessful, so we retained a search firm to help the committee, which led to a successful search,” he said.  “This being an extremely important appointment, this time we will start the process with the help of a search firm.”

Jerry notes that student satisfaction with career development rose dramatically during Bishop’s tenure and under the leadership of Associate Dean for Student Affairs Rachel Inman, to whom the Assistant Dean for Career Development now reports.

Jerry cited the national Law School Survey of Student Engagement that UF Law participates in every other year and to which half the college’s students responded.  Student satisfaction improved significantly for career services from two years earlier. “But we are committed to continuous improvement in all of our services, so there is still more that we will do,” Jerry added.

“We’ve got a great team over there now but we need one more person to serve as their coach and representative, manager and leader,” Jerry said. In the meantime, “we have a plan. Our office will not miss any beats.”

Rob Birrenkott, who has been appointed to serve as interim assistant dean for career development, says the Center for Career Development remains focused on serving students.

Birrenkott

“The roadmap (students) can expect first and foremost is outstanding customer service,” Birrenkott said. “Making sure each student is treated with the utmost respect and courtesy and the time and attention that they deserve is going to be priority No. 1.”

Services that will continue include a jobs database, making electronic resume books available to employers, on-campus interview sessions and individualized counseling with students assigned to their own counselors, all of whom have practiced law.

Career services is also experimenting with residency programs for UF Law graduates that can serve as a bridge for a young lawyer. Hopping, Green & Sams in Tallahassee will provide a year-long postgraduate fellowship to a UF Law graduate who specializes in environmental and land use law. The Center for Career Development has also initiated a Central Florida Law School Consortium that brings together law school representatives with law firms to exchange information about job openings and student recruitment data.

But students can also do much to help themselves. And now is the time to do it.

Birrenkott said 3Ls should engage in planning and effort at the start of the spring semester to improve their chances of securing a job by the time they emerge from the bar exam in the summer. Birrenkott notes that as the semester progresses tests and assignments pile up culminating in finals and then students head straight into preparations for the bar exam during the summer.

He recommends laying out a strategy by determining where you want to practice or what specialty you want to practice. Relaying this information to a career services counselor allows them to recommend mentors, bar associations and employers that fit with career goals. Then students can make the contacts needed to get that first job.

“The earlier you start it the better off you’re going to be. Nobody tries to run a marathon by showing up the day of the race and expects to do well,” he said. “Every student should almost consider themselves to be taking an extra course in this semester, and it’s called their job search. And we’ll be here to help with it.”

“Law School Transparency to provide info about law schools” (Feb. 14, 2012, The Alligator)

Bishop spoke to the Alligator about when UF Law will submit information for Law School Transparency – a nonprofit organization that will provide detailed information about law school statistics.

From the article:
Pascale Bishop, assistant dean of the law school’s Center for Career Development, said UF will submit information about its 2011 graduates in late February or early March. The data for the class of 2010 was submitted in early January.

Bob Dekle
Legal Skills Professor

“No Trial in Sight in ’09 Murder Case; Progress Halted Because of Language Barrier” (Feb. 10, 2012, The Ledger)

A Guatemala native and illegal immigrant in Bartow was arrested in 2009 on murder charges, but the case hasn’t been able to move forward because the man speaks a mixture of a Mayan language and some Spanish. His limited understanding of Spanish has prevented him from communicating with his lawyers to understand how the Florida criminal justice system works.

From the article:
George “Bob” Dekle, a legal professor for the University of Florida, said Lemos’ situation calls attention to a fundamental right of all people in the criminal justice system.

“How can you put somebody through a process, and they don’t know what’s going on?” asked Dekle.

“It’s basic to any criminal justice system that the person who is being prosecuted have an understanding of what the charges are against him and what the process is whereby they’re going to be held accountable for it.”

“Inmate set to die for slaying of St. Pete woman” (Feb. 12, 2012, The Associated Press)

A Florida inmate was scheduled to be executed after spending over 30 years on death row. Dekle addressed some of the reasons why it is not uncommon for death row inmates in Florida to remain in prison for such long periods of time before execution.

From the article:
University of Florida law professor George R. “Bob” Dekle, a former prosecutor who sent notorious serial killer Ted Bundy to death row, said Florida governors have rarely been forthcoming about the reasons they select one inmate over all the others for execution.

Dekle said appellate lawyers do their best to make sure it’s not an easy choice for the governor. They file whatever they can for as long as they can to keep their cases alive in the courts. New issues based on recent court rulings and changes in the law provide new fodder for appeals all the time, he said.

“It’s guerilla warfare,” Dekle said. “As long as you can put it off, as long as you can delay, as long as you can keep the thing going in any way, shape or form possible, that’s how much time you’ve got.”

Meshon Rawls
Legal Skills Professor

“The law is a friend, not a foe, youth told at UF conference” (Feb. 11, 2012, The Gainesville Sun)

Rawls, who is also the Josiah T. Walls Bar Association president, commented on the inaugural Law and Justice Youth Conference held at UF Law. The Walls Bar Association co-sponsored the event with the UF Law chapter of the ABA Young Lawyer Division.

From the article:
UF law professor and Walls Bar Association President Meshon Rawls said Saturday’s event was a condensed version of the Street Law program, a series of classes held in neighborhoods throughout Gainesville to introduce youngsters to the legal system.

Rawls said the one-day conference also enabled more kids to participate along with more attorneys and law students, who may not be able to attend Street Law classes when they are held after school.

“We turned a six-week program of one day a week into a one-day conference,” Rawls said. “We hope to make this an annual conference.”

Jennifer Zedalis
Legal Skills Professor

“1 administrator soon will oversee 2 hospitals for mentally ill” (Feb. 14, 2012, The Gainesville Sun)

The administrator of the Northeast Florida State Hospital in Macclenny will be the head of the Macclenny facility as well as the North Florida Evaluation and Treatment Center in Gainesville when Bill Baxter retires from the Gainesville location. The Gainesville facility serves “people who are incompetent to proceed to trial or who have been judged to be not guilty by reason of insanity.” There have been concerns raised about the effectiveness of one administrator running both facilities. Zedalis commented on the issue.

From the article:
But Jennifer Zedalis, a University of Florida law professor, said that the facility she regularly tours with her students is operating on a shoestring as it is.

“A forensic facility is charged with the awesome responsibility of handling individuals who have been found incompetent to stand trial,” she said, explaining that the state is legally obligated to restrict an individual as little as possible.

“There’s not much controversy associated with the North Florida Treatment Facility because of its dedicated staff,” she said. “I’m not sure we should be lumping these two facilities together under one umbrella.”

“It’s a buyer’s market for young legal talent” (Feb. 2, 2012, Florida Trend)

Bishop addressed the legal job market and current hiring process in the current economy.

From the article:
“They want the security of having a job at graduation, but the market is making them wait,” Bishop says. More often, only the top-ranked graduates are offered law jobs within the first six months of receiving their degree, and Bishop says more are looking at using their law degrees in alternate careers.

Paul R. Gugliuzza
Visiting Assistant Professor

Gugliuzza presented his paper “Rethinking Federal Circuit Jurisdiction” at the Junior Faculty Federal Courts Workshop in Miami.

Diane Mazur 
Professor of Law

The Fordham International Law Journal published an article reviewing Mazur’s book A More Perfect Military: How the Constitution Can Make Our Military Stronger. An excerpt is available here.

Daniel Sokol
Associate Professor of Law

Sokol presented his working paper on cartels and corporate monitors at a conference sponsored and hosted by NYU School of Law.

Michael Allan Wolf
Richard E. Nelson Chair in Local Government Law

Wolf recently published “A Yellow Light for ‘Green Zoning’: Some Words of Caution About Incorporating Green Building Standards into Local Land Use Law” 43 URBAN LAWYER 949 (2011).

It’s no secret that the legal profession is a rapidly changing field, with factors such as technology and globalization reshaping the landscape in ways previously unimagined. At the same time, expectations of the skills new graduates should possess before entering the legal world continue to evolve.

The University of Florida Levin College of Law has always been a state leader in education, and in keeping with that tradition, Dean Robert Jerry, the UF Law strategic planning committee, faculty and staff are looking closely at how the college can best prepare students for this new legal world.

Prepared, practiced, professional

Pascale Bishop, UF Law’s new assistant dean for career development said that at her previous school, the slogan “Prepared, practiced, professional” expressed what legal employers like to see in young law school graduates these days.

Bishop said employers are looking for “students and graduates who have already received practical experience, who are prepared to take a file and run with it, and who know how to interact with clients, other attorneys, judges, support staff and the professional world at large.”

This might seem like a common sense goal, but it hasn’t always been like that in the legal world. Although students in the past received practical experience through internships, externships and clinics, the main thrust of their legal education focused on the theoretical and academic study of legal theories, not hands-on experience.

“The critique is that students can leave law school without really having a deep understanding of what the practice of law is like,” Jerry said. “In the past, I think many graduates of law schools nationally have acquired understanding in their first practice years.”

So on-the-job-training was the traditional expectation for legal educators and employers alike. Not anymore.

In the last few years, economic pressures combined with a more competitive legal marketplace have led to new normal.

“There is definitely more pressure to be ready to practice from day one with little training or hand-holding, in order to prove (new employees’) value to the law firms,” Bishop said.

And to meet those expectations, UF Law is looking to the future and staying ahead of the curve by evolving its curriculum to produce graduates equipped to compete in this still-changing legal field.

New Mission guides curriculum

UF Law recently adopted an updated academic mission statement proposed by the College of Law Faculty Senate’s strategic planning committee to focus curriculum so students will be optimally equipped to meet the expectations of employers.

The statement hinges on five core competencies: Legal analysis, legal research and writing, fundamentals of client services, fundamentals of dispute processing and legal problem solving, and fundamentals of professional responsibility and identity.

Jerry said UF Law has led the way in legal skills training — pointing out how many law schools today are touting newly added legal drafting programs to their curriculum, a mainstay of the UF Law curriculum for years. But to align with the core competencies outlined in the mission statement, some practical skill areas will gain emphasis.

“We’re looking at how we can make what we’re doing even better,” he said.

Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Alyson Flournoy said UF Law is ready to implement a few changes in the curriculum.

“The faculty has approved a new one-credit legal research course that will be taught by the law librarians to all first-year students beginning next year,” Flournoy said. “Also beginning next fall, all first-year students will take a new Introduction to Lawyering course which will provide an introduction to the profession, a segment on professionalism and developing a professional identity and an introduction to the skills lawyers use.”

She said this course will provide students with a grounding to understand the legal profession better and help inform the choices they make in their academic program and other career development decisions.

“The strategic planning committee has now turned to focus on developing skills in the upper level curriculum and is looking at an array of options to achieve the goals set out in the mission statement,” Flournoy added. “This will build on some recent changes we’ve made to further strengthen the skills curriculum, including the recently developed Interviewing, Counseling and Negotiation course.”

The course will offer a significant number of students the chance to learn these core skills each semester and will serve as a gateway course for all the litigation clinics.

The Center for Career Development is also implementing new and innovative ways to help students succeed after graduation.

“We are incorporating professionalism into all of our programming and making sure that our counseling includes a discussion of how to handle their own professional development,” Bishop said, “including taking on new challenges like publishing or participating in bar associations, extracurricular activities or CLEs even as a student.”

Bishop encourages students to accumulate practical experience through internships, externships, volunteering, working as a law clerk or even classroom situations involving client problems and simulations.

Pascale Bishop, UF Law's new assistant dean of the Center for Career Development

“You don’t just go to war, you prepare for it first,” said UF Law’s new assistant dean of the Center for Career Development. “The job search is the same. There is a lot of preparation and research before you start the application process.”

And Pascale Bishop — who comes to UF from the Chicago-Kent School of Law — is arming law students and alumni with the necessary tools to find success in today’s job market.

Bishop acknowledges that the legal job market is tight, owing partly to the soon-to-be-12 law schools in Florida and economic woes throughout the country, but she is working hard to provide the best opportunities for students.

“My plan is to make us as visible as possible starting on day one,” said Bishop, who took over the office Aug. 1.

In this case, increased visibility isn’t just a figure of speech; the Center for Career Development moved this summer to a new location on the ground-floor of Bruton-Geer Hall near the cafeteria, a high-traffic and high-visibility spot for students.

The CCD will employ new ways of connecting students — and alumni — with internships, training and jobs, which will also raise the Career Development Center’s profile, Bishop said. She also emphasizes the importance of one-on-one attention.

“With individual students assigned to a single counselor for the duration of their legal education, the idea will be establishing a more proactive role for the counselor to do follow-up and connect to the student in a more profound way.”

Not only do alumni get to participate in events that the CCD offers, but the center provides access to job postings in Symplicity and an intercollegiate job bank. Alumni can receive updates on job opportunities, networking events and receptions through an alumni listserv. UF alumni can gain access to the job listing for other law schools. For more information go to www.law.ufl.edu/career/alumni/.

The center will continue to help students with setting up resumes, networking and explaining expectations of employees. Alumni can participate by becoming entering the mentor program in which they are assigned a current student to mentor.

Wes Stephens, 2L and treasurer of the John Marshall Student Bar Association, is hopeful the center can help find his first job in a medium-sized practice or working for the state.

“I don’t expect them to do it for me,” Stephens said. “I just expect the proper tools for me to help myself.”

Stephens said the most important change the CCD has made is Bishop.

“She is very intelligent, poised and dedicated to improving the CCD,” he said. “I think every student will benefit from her becoming a part of our school.”

Other new programs Bishop is implementing include assigning liaisons to practice area student groups and to staff departments. Their role will be to help with contacts and keeping the rest of the school — including the college’s tour guides — updated on the latest information, Bishop said.

The center will be advising in new market areas, such as alternative legal careers — anything that doesn’t involve the traditional practice of law, Bishop said. Some students pursue J.D.s to help them in career paths outside of the legal world.

The CCD also began publishing bi-weekly newsletters for 2011 graduates and 1Ls that will point out volunteer and networking opportunities and job leads, and in the spring virtual resume books will be implemented that will put student resumes in front of more employers.

Bishop wants to conduct more student polls and forums to tailor outreach toward the students.

This year, Bishop — along with Assistant Director for Career Development Rob Birrenkott — are introducing themselves to 1Ls by encouraging them to participate in programs the center will host.

One such program, September’s Professionalism Week which was co-sponsored by the John Marshall Student Bar Association, helped UF law students develop connections and hone skills that complement their job search. The events covered the “Dos and Don’ts” of professional dress and included a mock networking reception with lawyers.

Students had the opportunity to meet UF Law alumni, including Oscar Sanchez (JD 82), Jo Thacker (JD 87) and Judge James S. Moody (JD 72) who spoke on topics such as a typical day practicing law, and offered advice on how to get an externship and recommended courses.

Bishop said alumni connections to UF Law are key to helping Gators obtain jobs upon graduation.

Students brought together everything they learned during the week at a reception hosted by the UF Law Alumni Council in the 2-Bits Lounge.

The panels and receptions during that week were available to help students and alumni network at their own comfort level, especially for students who are too eager or too shy.

The CCD also assisted students by stressing the little things. During Professionalism Week, some alumni noted that students needed to work on their handshakes, Bishop said.

“Small things like that can make or break an interview or a first impression,” she said.

Bishop said helping students is a matter of constant relationship building, and working with motivated students in the career development field keeps her own motivation high.

“The students are excited and it’s sort of infectious,” she said.