“It is dangerous to look at [public service] as a fallback,” Weber says. “Sometimes it is even harder to get a job in the public sector because there are so many cutbacks in federal, state, and local budgets.”

Students who do choose to take positions in private firms are more conscious of their financial statuses, according to first year Law School student Sarah E. Davis.

“Students are looking more carefully at the firms’ structure to see how they will last through the economic crisis,” Davis said. “There is more awareness of firms’ relationship to the economy.”

Finding careers during a tough economic period has taught students not to simply take “the path of least resistance,” Jackson says.

In past years, students tend to focus on certain markets because that is “what everyone else is doing,” Weber says.

Now that the job search requires more effort, though, students spent more time mulling over their actual interests.

“The silver lining,” Davis says, “is that more people will be forced to use their skills to do something meaningful and beneficial for the world.”

And ultimately, students will be happier, Dein says.

“If you can’t do what makes you money, then you have to do what you enjoy!” she says.

FINE-TUNING THE PROCESS

Law firms’ responses to the economic downturn have spurred adjustments at the OCS, which saw the need to respond to the difficulties students faced in the 2008-2009 hiring cycle.

For the first time, the OCS launched an Early Interview Program, in which applicants for full-time positions interview in August along with roughly 75 percent of law schools across the country, rather than in late September after other schools finish the recruiting process.

Stanford and Yale have also recently moved to an earlier interview schedule.

Though the new schedule requires students to return to campus early, Weber says he believes that most students appreciated finishing their interviews before classes began.

In the past, other schools’ interview schedules were not a serious concern, Weber says.