A Mixed Blessing for Aspiring Lawyers

"Are you going to hold off on the law firm, knowing there's a line 20 deep to take it?" asked David Stern, chief executive of Equal Justice Works, a District-based nonprofit organization that offers 50 law graduates fellowships each year that pay $37,500. "Or are you going to take the bird in hand? How do you hold out? You have to have nerves of steel."

One night early this month, Roose-Snyder and Keller are debating the options in their Columbia Heights apartment, which is so small that an espresso maker and other wedding gift/kitchen appliances must be stored in a closet with the washer and dryer.

They lay everything out. Either Roose-Snyder takes a job with Drinker Biddle Gardner Carton, where she worked last summer, or she turns down Chicago and goes for fellowships. She's zeroing in on a $60,000-a-year fellowship at Georgetown's O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, which has a March deadline. An institute official is urging her to apply and forget the firm.

The fellowship would allow her to advance a project she helped launch that examines how universities license medical research to corporations. She dreams one day of possibly working in places without LLP in the name: the World Health Organization or UNAIDS, run by the United Nations.

But the firm would help pay off the couple's school debt and give Roose-Snyder litigation and transaction experience that could open up opportunities.

"I never forget that there are brilliant people who are toiling away at other schools who can't afford to turn this job down," Roose-Snyder says, rubbing her eyes.

They open a fortune cookie. "Learn Chinese Have Money," it advises.

They start rationalizing the Drinker Biddle offer. No more long-term debt. Enough money to adopt a child. "Neither of us has the feeling that we're not parents unless the child looks like us," Roose-Snyder says.

Maybe she could put her time in at the firm for a short period? Sort of like the Peace Corps, they joke.

"Friends call it 'Corporate Corps,' " says Keller, a science teacher at Langley High School in McLean.

About 56 percent of law school graduates immediately enter private practice, according to NALP (formerly the National Association for Law Placement). Fourteen percent go into business. Twenty-two percent enter government, and 5 percent work for a public interest organization or an advocacy practice such as Legal Aid.

The American Bar Association reports that the average amount private law school students borrowed in 2005-06 reached about $83,200; the total was about $54,500 for those in public law schools. The median starting salary for lawyers at non-governmental or public interest organizations is $40,000, according to NALP, and for those in government, $48,000. For private practice lawyers, the median is $95,000. This year, first-year associate salaries at some firms reached $160,000, partners say. That's not counting bonuses.