Time To Make CUNY Terrible Again

New York has more lawyers than it knows what to do with:

Even with 91,000 practicing attorneys in the five boroughs last year, a new wave of lawyers is hitting the city, as a record number of law school students are taking and passing the state bar, according to data provided by the New York State Board of Law Examiners.

In July, 10,907 students sat for the bar — an increase of more than 20% since 2000 — and a record 70.6% of them passed the bar.

While many associates who graduated law school in 2006 are earning bonuses at the city’s most prestigious law firms, boosting salaries to an average of $205,000 a year, recruiters said the competition for the top talent belies that the vast majority of lawyers in New York are not guaranteed lucrative employment after law school.

“There is a glut of attorneys in New York, and there always will be,” the president of Hanover Legal Personnel Services, Jack Zaremski, said in an interview. The total number of lawyers in America is now about 1.14 million, according to the American Bar Association, and more than one in 10 live and work in New York State.