The Law School began taking steps to cope with the downturn last year when they announced that the 2009 fall recruitment schedule would be moved up by a month. Also this year, the school will mediate a second recruiting session in the spring.

Students say the Law School’s Office of Career Services has generally been helpful in guiding students through a tough job market—anything from presenting students with possible career options to offering fashion advice on interview days.

But several students criticized OCS for issuing newsletters packed with “doom and gloom” predictions about the job market.

“It was almost like fearmongering,” said Julia K. Seider, a second year student at the Law School.

Law Professor Asish Nanda said he is leading a movement to reform the recruiting process that would entail transitioning law schools to a system similar to the method medical schools use to match students with residencies.

Under such a system, firms would interview all applicants in the spring of their second year. Firms would then list preferences for applicants, students would list their firm preferences, and a matching program would pair students with firms.

But some students say that the getting an early start to the recruitment process gives them early exposure to firms and in many cases guarantees that they will land a high-paying job, even as they watch their student loans pile up.

“The interview process is an opportunity to learn about the firms,” Murray said. “It would be hard to get a firm idea of what the firm is like under a different system.”

But law firms today publicly defend the extended recruiting system as an important component of acclimating new hires to life at a firm.

“I think one of the things that works well is that it gives students a real opportunity to come spend some time at the firm and get a very real sense of what it’s like to work at the firm,” said Michael J. Summersgill, chair of the hiring committee for Wilmer Hale’s Boston office and a graduate of Harvard Law School. “What other industry has that opportunity to work? I think it’s a unique approach, and I think that’s a good thing.”

A STRUCTURAL CHANGE?

For experts on the legal profession like Nanda and Law School Professor David B. Wilkins ’77, there has not been a better time in the last 30 years for structural reforms to take shape in the industry.

“I’m in the Rahm Emanuel camp,” Wilkins said. “Never let a crisis go to waste.”

Now that the boom years are over for Wall St. and the law firms it patronized, Nanda said that firms will need to start outsourcing many of their basic legal services and improve the quality and performance of their associates.

“We teach students how to think like lawyers and firms teach them how to be lawyers on the client’s dime,” Wilkins said.