Attorney Glut Forces Many to Scale Back Expectations : Careers: Would-be lawyers face a job market that offers less money, less glitz and few openings in big cities.

When she entered law school, Julia Freis dreamed of joining a big urban law firm, the kind with long carpeted hallways and rows of impressive books on the shelves.

She ended up 55 miles north of here in Santa Rosa, grateful for a less-glamorous office in the county courthouse and a job prosecuting consumer fraud cases.

“You have to change your vision,” said Freis, now in her fourth year as a Sonoma County deputy district attorney. “In a smaller community you’re not going to make as much money. . . . But here I’ll stay late because the work is interesting--instead of looking at the clock thinking: ‘God, I’ve got to bill more hours for the firm tonight.’ ”

At Southwestern University Law School in Los Angeles, student Bridgette de Gyarfas of Upland looks uneasily to the future. Even though she is on the school’s Law Review and is in the top 30% of her class, only two of 25 firms granted her an interview for a non-paying, school credit job that could lead to a regular post upon graduation.

“It’s tough out there,” said De Gyarfas. “I consider myself a successful student, but right now the job market is closing tight. It’s frustrating.”

Amid a nationwide glut of lawyers and a lingering recession, major changes in the law business are forcing many young lawyers and law students to revise their expectations. For most in the field, legal careers will turn out markedly different from the glitzy portrayals on “L.A. Law” and the rest of the fictional legal world, experts say.

By 2000, analysts project that there will be more than 1 million lawyers in the United States. Tens of thousands become lawyers each year, saturating what as recently as the 1980s was a plentiful job market.

Increasingly, authorities say, big law firms are trimming their staffs. Corporate clients, seeking more for their legal dollars, are less willing to accept young attorneys they view as too inexperienced for the job. And over-lawyered metropolitan areas are offering fewer jobs, forcing lawyers to seek work in smaller cities.

“The legal market is going through a major correction right now that would have happened with or without the recession,” said Donald Oppenheim of Altman Weil Pensa Inc., a nationwide legal consulting firm. “We are seeing the inability of the market to absorb the large numbers who are becoming practitioners. . . . The bottom line is there are too many lawyers.”

Glut or not, large numbers are still flocking to the nation’s law schools. Law School Admission Services reports that 92,500 applicants sought entry this fall to the 175 schools accredited by the American Bar Assn.--down only slightly from the previous year’s record of 94,000.

In the same period, the number of applications rose to 455,000 from 450,400--a likely reflection of increasing competition to gain admission, said Jim M. Vaselek, deputy corporate counsel for LSAS.

At the other end of the pipeline, law schools are sending record numbers of graduates into the legal world. Last year, 38,800 received degrees from accredited schools--more than double the number of 20 years ago. The ABA reports that nearly 800,000 lawyers are practicing in the United States, compared to 542,000 in 1980.

“Sometimes I scratch my head about this,” said Mary Lynne Perry, dean of students at Western State University College of Law in San Diego. “With all the bad press lawyers get and the current employment picture, there are still a lot of people out there who still have a strong desire to come to law school.”

The prospect of a challenging and often lucrative career undeniably motivates many. But law school authorities acknowledge that the dashing images of lawyers on television also play a key role in attracting young people to the law.

“Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill, the Iran-Contra hearings--all that stuff glamorizes the profession,” said Janice Austin, director of admissions at Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco. “People think: ‘Wow, I can do this.’ And then reality sets in.”

For today’s young lawyers, reality means that the boom years of the 1980s--expanding law firms, big profits and dazzling starting salaries--have faded.

Then, graduates from top-ranked law schools could expect half a dozen attractive offers; now, they may have to settle for one good offer. In the peak time, leading students were sought by prosperous firms eager to land them for summer jobs; now, even top-ranked students scramble to secure interviews.

Daphne Humphreys of Los Angeles, a top student at Southwestern, believes she has landed a summer job next year--and counts herself lucky. “It used to be that law firms wined and dined you,” she said. “Now, they just get down to business. They are definitely not courting students like they did in the past.”

The law business, like other elements of the economy, began undergoing a change at the turn of the decade. Major law offices from coast to coast laid off younger, less-experienced attorneys and even eased out firm partners. Some notable firms--including Wyman, Bautzer, Kuchel & Silbert in Los Angeles--closed shop.

A survey by the National Law Journal found that 44% of the country’s 250 largest law firms reduced their legal staffs during 1991, compared to 17% the year before.

California’s 50 largest firms reported a 3% drop in the number of lawyers employed this year, a sharp change compared to a growth rate of 3% to 10% in the previous three years, according to a survey by California Lawyer magazine.

At the same time, corporate clients are demanding that lawyers cut their costs and take other steps to improve their service.

“It’s a whole new world out there if you are a lawyer,” said Martha Fay Africa of San Francisco, a partner in Major, Wilson & Africa, a nationwide attorney consulting firm. “The balance of power has changed between clients and lawyers. The clients are now kings . . . and law firms are terrified.”

To meet new demands, some law firms are surveying client needs, seeking to provide faster, more-skilled service at a reduced price. “What people are looking for is greater efficiency on the part of their lawyers,” said John W. Larson, managing partner of Brobeck Phleger & Harrison in San Francisco. “The idea is: better, faster, cheaper.”

Blane Prescott, vice president of the legal consulting firm Hildebrandt Inc., notes that corporations with a large volume of legal business are increasingly demanding and receiving discounts from law firms of 5% to 15%.

Firms that used to make small profits when billing clients for copying, secretarial services and fax machine use have reduced such charges--and some are considering not billing for them at all, Prescott said. Other novel billing arrangements are being used in which clients agree to pay firms more than the regular fee if they win--but less if they lose, he said.

Though clients will accept routine work from junior firm members, experts say many also are insisting on more service from senior lawyers, figuring that even at a higher hourly rate they will get more for their money.

In response to new demands, firms are charging clients less for work done by junior lawyers. A recent survey by the Institute of Continuing Legal Education in Ann Arbor, Mich., shows that in the coming year average hourly billing rates for work by newly hired lawyers will drop to $60 from $80.

“It’s due to the general tightening-up of business,” said the institute’s Mary Steffek Blaske. “Eighty dollars an hour is just not going to fly anymore.”

None of this, of course, is particularly good news for young lawyers. But law school counselors and legal consultants stress that the future is not as bleak as it might seem. They say that young attorneys must take a realistic look at alternatives to big city law firms.

“We think smaller firms in other than major metropolitan areas will be absorbing more people in the future,” said Lujuana Treadwell, director of law career services at UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall Law School. “Our graduates may prefer New York or Washington or Los Angeles--but they should be thinking of Sacramento, Bakersfield, Phoenix or even smaller communities.”

Consultants Oppenheim and Africa believe that, despite the growth of the industry, vast legal needs of the poor and middle class remain unmet.

“There are still opportunities in different segments of our society to build a legal practice,” Oppenheim said. “They just may not be as lucrative as an $80,000 starting salary with a big firm in L.A.”

Africa contends that lawyers need not join government anti-poverty or legal aid programs to serve less-affluent clients whose basic legal needs are not being met.

“There are ways to price services so that lower- and middle-income people can afford them. There is a huge unserved market out there, but services have to be priced appropriately.”

Young lawyers also will have to be more flexible in the future--willing to consider career moves, not only from one firm to another but from one community to another, analysts say. For two-career families, this may be tough--but it also may be the price of advancing in the legal world, as it is in other businesses.

Lawyers also may not be able to enter the specialty they want to practice. Kris Forkus of Brea, in her second year at Southwestern, comes from a law enforcement family and hopes to represent police officers in court. She now realizes such opportunities may not immediately exist.

“I could end up doing pretty much anything,” Forkus said. “Given the current conditions, it’s unwise to limit yourself. I’m keeping all the doors open.”

Experts also expect more young law graduates to consider careers that are challenging but outside the practice of law--such as jobs in business, government or journalism.

“A lot of what you’re trained for in law school can be put to good use in other fields,” said Boalt Hall’s Treadwell. For example, she said, a law graduate entering the business world might be usefully employed in contract negotiations or employee relations.

For Freis, a law career in Santa Rosa is turning out to have its rewards. These days she is working with a task force of state and local prosecutors on a challenging case involving a firm charged with using coercive sales practices against senior citizens.

Several colleagues from law school days also have ended up in law firms or prosecutor’s offices in smaller communities after beginning their careers in urban areas, she said.

What would she advise young law graduates today? “To be flexible--there’s nothing permanent, nothing written in stone,” Freis said. “It’s going to be very difficult to find a job these days. . . . I’m very happy not to be out there right now.”

A Glut of Lawyers

A record number of students are enrolled in law schools, despite a lawyer glut that is revamping job prospects in the legal industry. Number of lawyers in U.S.

1980: 542,205

1986: 686,250

1992: 799,760 Enrollment in law schools

1970-71: 82,041

1980-81: 125,397

1990-91: 132,433

1991-92: 135,157

Source: American Bar Assn.