Santa Clara University

New Year, New Beginnings

Alexandria Bullara

With 2005 underway, we enter a new year with signs that the job market is on the upswing. Not only are legal recruiters and hiring attorneys verbalizing more optimism, but our office has witnessed some measurable indicators that the legal job market is slowly improving. For instance, our job placement statistic (which measures employment at nine months after graduation and is reported to the American Bar Association) for the Class of 2003 was three percentage points higher than the Class of 2002. We also hosted more employers during our busy fall recruiting season on campus. The number of registered employers was up 12 percent over last year.

With all of these promising indicators, however, I believe that we can do more to help our recent graduates succeed in a market that can still be a difficult one to navigate, especially when searching for that first placement. I am pleased to announce that I proposed and Dean Polden approved a new assistant director position in Law Career Services that is dedicated solely to helping graduating students and recent graduates find their first legal job. The new person will begin in the spring. I hope that the friends and alumni of the law school will extend a warm welcome to our new assistant director as he or she begins to reach out to the legal community.

Alexandria Bullara
Assistant Dean for Law Career Services