Court report: in-house lawyers and McDonald’s
Hamish McNicol considers whether young people looking at a career in law might be better off applying at McDonald's. With special feature audio.
A couple of intriguing legal trends have emerged over the past week, confirming anecdotal ideas about young lawyers and the appeal of moving in-house.
First, there was a report from law graduate Josh Pemberton, which surveyed more than 800 young lawyers from around the country.
While about three-quarters were mostly satisfied with their work, a number of issues were highlighted: work-life balance, the reality of legal work compared to study, and feeling undervalued.
About 45% were unlikely to still be in law or were uncertain about their future in the industry in 10 years’ time.
New Zealand Law Society president Kathryn Beck says most of the findings were expected, although the level of feeling about some issues, particularly remuneration, were surprising.
“For some of them they were saying, 'when I look at how many hours I put in and what I get paid, I’m not doing much better than if I was at McDonald’s'.”
Ms Beck says the legal industry needs to listen to the report, otherwise it risks losing people from its industry.
Later in the week, law firm DLA Piper launched a programme in response to the trend of lawyers moving in-house to corporations, rather than practising at law firms.
About 22% of New Zealand’s lawyers are now in-house, up from 12% in 1995.
Follow NBR on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram for the latest news and free on-demand audio from NBR Radio.
NBR Radio
Thu, 07 Jul 2016
Thu, 07 Jul 2016
© All content copyright NBR. Do not reproduce in any form without permission, even if you have a paid subscription.
Court report: in-house lawyers and McDonald’s
59710