Life skills and career tips for Canada's lawyers in training
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In addition, Gage says: "We are very for- tunate in our diversity of practice here at the firm; it keeps us pretty well-positioned to weather these kinds of economic storms. We have strength in a lot of areas that are counter-cyclical, whether it's restructuring, bankruptcy/insolvency work, employment and labour work — we're in fact actively seeking to add an associate to our Toronto employment and labour group right now. So we're not being impacted perhaps in the same way as our friends at other firms might be." Carol Chestnut is the director of stu- dent and associate programs for Stike- man Elliott LLP's Vancouver office. She says there's no need for concern with her students either. While Chestnut is care- ful to point out they only have a small office, and it would be difficult to derive any trends from it, the economy has not been playing a role in their hire-back deci- sions. "We have historically had very good hire-back rates, but we only hire three students. So it's not like we've got 15 of whom we routinely hire 13, and last year only hired two," she says. In September, they did choose to hire back only two of their three students, but she says the deci- sion to not make an offer to the third was based on circumstances that have nothing to do with the economy. Chestnut says they have a fantastic group of students, and great clients with plenty of work. "I don't think we ever have, and certainly this year we would not let the economy dictate whether or not we kept on an excellent student. If somebody's good, they'll be kept on — we can afford to do it because we're talking about small numbers." Things appear to have been relatively stable up to this point, but it's what to come that has some worried. "The firms have slowed down," says Adam Lepofsky, president of RainMaker Group, a legal re- cruitment firm. "2008 was still a very good year for everybody, off of 2007. 2007 was so tremendous — you run on the fumes — and 2008 was still a very good, strong year, for everyone. But it's what [is] in the pipeline, or what's coming down the pipe- line, which is what we're looking at." "We have not yet noticed a decline in large firm hiring as these firms have gen- erally indicated that they are biding their time and watching," says Lisa Blair, as- sistant dean of student services with the University of Ottawa. The mechanics of the hiring process gives some cushion- ing to these types of situations, she says. "Due to the early legal recruiting cycle, hiring being done now is for students who will not start articling for another 18 months, so the system is somewhat protected from immediate or reactionary fluctuations." Clea Ward, director of career develop- ment and external relations with the Uni- versity of New Brunswick Law School, says she has begun to notice a slight de- cline in the number of positions offerred by firms. "I have a slightly higher number of third years looking for articling posi- tions at this time than I have in the past few years," she says. "It's not up dramati- cally, but up probably between five and 10 percent more than usual." Untitled-1 1 4STUDENTS SPRING 2009 15 2/25/09 10:09:31 AM