Recession Leads Chicago-Area Legal Non-Profits, "Big Law" To Form Odd Couple In Utilizing Lawyer Oversupply

In Chicago, Illinois, the Chicago Tribune reports:

• Cabrini Green Legal Aid ended its 2009 fiscal year with a deficit for the first time in years. Even though it provided legal aid to more poor people than ever before — 5,348 — the not-for-profit could not afford to hire another full-time attorney on its $2 million shoestring budget.(1)

• Last year's recession also hit Chicago's big law firms that individually generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue from corporate clients. They were sitting with an oversupply of lawyers and were forced to lay off hundreds and postpone the starting dates of law school graduates they had hired to begin in the fall of 2009.

• The opposite ends of Chicago's legal profession found a way to come together out of economic necessity to partially consume the supply of highly educated young lawyers looking for work. Despite several challenges, the unusual experiment has paid dividends. It also has sparked discussions of whether a more permanent model of apprenticeships can be developed that would train law-school graduates at a lower cost and benefit public-interest legal organizations that are suffering from funding constraints while attending to a greater need because of the recession.

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• About 60 first-year associates have gone to work for more than 20 public-interest and legal-aid organizations, estimates Kelly Tautges, director of pro bono services at the Chicago Bar Foundation, which has kept track of the placements.

For more, see With no space at the firm, rookie lawyers find a place in legal aid.

(1) According to their website, Cabrini Green Legal Aid provides free legal services to low-income Chicagoans in four areas of law: family, housing, criminal records, and criminal defense.