Legal Departments May Want Recent Grads—But Do Recent Grads Want Them?
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Corporate legal departments that have traditionally targeted more experienced attorneys for job offers may now be more willing to hire recent law school graduates. However, those circumstances may quickly reverse themselves as businesses continue to recover from the pandemic. Law.com reporter Frank Ready asked TRU founder and CEO Jared Coseglia for his input.
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It isn’t just academics who are noticing a change in legal department hiring practices. Jared Coseglia, founder and CEO of TRU Staffing Services, also noted “a significant uptick” in service providers and corporations being willing to hire graduates straight out of school.
“But not necessarily for lawyers’ jobs. They like people to have their J.D.’s, but the work that needs to be done is often more tactical [or] operational than it is legal,” he said.
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“It’s remarkable how many of my clients are coming to me saying, ‘If you show me with somebody with the right attitude and aptitude, we’ll groom and train them.’ And [at] the right price-point, of course,” Coseglia said.
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Coseglia at TRU Staffing confirmed that law firms do typically pay new graduates more than legal departments offer. However, he also noted that there are some networking advantages for graduates who jump directly into an in-house data privacy-related role.
“It’s the one part in corporate legal where you really have to interact with all parts of the business. And that creates all sorts of opportunities for building relationships that are cross-functional, developing credibility, getting visibility. And things like that are hard to do in a law firm,” Coseglia said.
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As for the in-house teams who are willing to hire lawyers out of school—that’s likely temporary. Coseglia at TRU Staffing believes that departments will eventually rebound from the pandemic economy and readjust their hiring preferences to once again target candidates with more years of experience.
“I think it’s inevitable,” he said.
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