“Primarily, we’re a service facility for students seeking jobs,” Miss Suzanne Close, Law School Director of Placement, explains. “We act as a clearing house and coordinator. But the primary responsibility for getting jobs rests with the students.”

The Law School has had a placement facility for many years, but the Office has expanded its interviewing services and taken on a number of new projects only in the last few years. In addition to providing facilities and making arrangements for interviews, the Office maintains bulletin boards and information files for students, counsels students about job opportunities and follows up graduates after they leave the School.

One of the major activities of the Placement Office consists of law students interviewing with potential employers, chiefly law firms, for jobs. But interviewers also include government agencies, business firms and Office of Economic Opportunity people, among others. The Office also works with the clerkship committee, which is under the direction of Professor Dale Collinson, and posts information regarding numerous and diverse job and educational opportunities.

Most interviewing begins on October 1 and continues until the Christmas recess. Some interviewing does take place in the spring, but most employers choose to visit the School in the fall. Three weeks before the interviewer comes to the campus, descriptive material which he has furnished is posted on bulletin boards. Signup sheets for students are posted two weeks before the employer’s visit.

It is the policy of the Office that employers should see any student. One reason for this is that many employers, especially in the past, tended to restrict their interviewing to students in the highest grade brackets or to Law Review editors. This is less and less the case as potential employers become aware of the unusually high academic qualifications of all the School’s students these days, as well as the valuable experience they gain through participation in many of the School’s extracurricular academic activities.

Miss Close estimates that about 90% of the School’s students have occasion to use the services of the Placement Office during their three years at the School. It is impossible to be quite precise, because there is no way of knowing how many students get jobs as a result of material posted on the bulletin boards. These listings include information on teaching fellowships, clerkships, government jobs and legal aid jobs, as well as jobs with firms.

The number of students interviewing with employers on the campus, as well as the number of firms interviewing, grows consistently. In 1968-69, 192 firms, corporations, government agencies and other potential employers interviewed at the Law School, a 50% increase since 1965. About three-fourths of the interviewers are law firms. Of these, slightly over half are California firms.

Consider the work and study options, other than practice with a law firm, that are open today to the well-trained young law graduate. There are clerkships, jobs with federal, state and local governments, teaching positions, business positions, work with VISTA legal services and graduate work. These, along with military service, draw substantial numbers of young graduates of the Law School. Other pursuits have accounted for the activities of a small number of recent graduates. They include sheep ranching, Peace Corps work, administrative work and foreign service. The information available to the Law School indicates that the plurality of the School’s graduates go directly into private practice and a majority of graduates are in practice with law firms after they have been out of law school for a few years. Of the 147 members of the Class of 1968, 50 are known to be in private practice. Of the Class of 1967, 53 of 140 members are with law firms. Two classes who have been out for three years or more indicate markedly higher percentages of graduates in private practice. Of 138 members of the Class of 1966, at least 68 are known to be in private practice; of 113 members of the Class of 1965, the number is 78.

A number of students are able to get summer and part-time jobs through the Placement Office. Firms interviewing for summer positions ordinarily prefer to see second-year students, though Miss Close estimates that about 40 members of the current first-year class have either interviewed for summer jobs or consulted her office about available opportunities.

The services of the Placement Office are available to graduates of the School as well as to students. Ordinarily, a graduate will contact the School and indicate the kind of job he is interested in and the location where he wants to work. Of the approximately 70 graduates who contact the School each year, most are interested in placement in the Bay Area and most are from classes graduated in the last four or five years. Candidates explain what they are looking for and send the Office resumes. They are sent listings which the Office has on file and copies of letters from employers who would seem to have openings of interest.

Other materials available through the Placement Office include a directory of legal service programs, Peace Corps and VISTA brochures, brochures on government agencies and the “Government Organizations Manual,” lists of employers who have contacted the School in the past, rules for admission to the bar in every state, bar review course information, brochures on military programs, daily notices of interviewers at the Graduate School of Business and the University Placement Office and reports and information on cities and firms, which have been collected by the Student Placement Committee. Students interested in jobs with business firms are invited to interview with some employers through the Graduate School of Business Placement Office.

In 1967, the Office assisted in the preparation of a reference volume titled “Training, Work and Study Opportunities at Home and Abroad: A Guide for the Stanford Lawyer.” The many programs cited by the work included criminal law, graduate study, work in underdeveloped countries and in underdeveloped areas of the United States, and short-term law teaching assignments. The main purpose of the study was to supplement the facilities of the Placement Office and alert students to the significant opportunities for professional development which exist apart from traditional patterns of job placement. During 1968-69, additional projects were undertaken in an effort to enlarge upon this source book. Under the auspices of the International Society, letters were written to government agencies and law firms with international practice requesting information on jobs of interest to the law school graduate. Similar letters were written by the Placement Office to legal aid and other agencies funded by the Office of Economic Opportunity. Replies were first posted, then filed for future student reference.

Under the sponsorship of the Office, sometimes in conjunction with the Law Forum, speakers have been brought to the School to discuss career choices. In 1967-68, Mr. Evelle Younger, Los Angeles District Attorney and NIr. Charles W. Bates, Special Agent in Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation, visited the Law School. In 1968-69, representatives of the Army’s Judge Advocate General’s Office, the Los Angeles and San Diego District Attorneys, members of VISTA and spokesmen for the Reginald Heber Smith Fellowship* program were at the School.

In 1968 Miss Close visited with law firms and others in seven western states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, Oregon, Utah and Washington. The purpose of her trip was to learn about the communities and various law firms in them which had expressed interest in Stanford Law School graduates or in which students had expressed an interest. Though the majority of attorneys she saw were alumni, a substantial number were not.

Miss Close’s itinerary in each city was arranged by the local Stanford Law Society president. She attended small luncheons and evening receptions and visited a number of firms. In all, she met representatives of 80 firms, with a total of 867 members. Interestingly, 50 of these firms had ten members or fewer, 18 had 11-20 members, nine had 21-30 members and three had 31-43 members. As a general rule, the firms Miss Close visited are not able to send representatives to the Law School during the interview season. Among the subjects Miss Close discussed with various attorneys were the advantages and disadvantages of living and working in a particular city, local politics, salaries, the bar, cost of living, schools, recreational facilities and the like.

In an effort to get as comprehensive a picture as possible of the different communities, Miss Close also met with judges, placement deans, an assistant attorney general and department of public works officials.

In sum, the trip enabled Miss Close to broaden the scope of Placement Office services. The Office has been better able to counsel students about opportunities open to them in a number of communities, to the benefit of both students and law firms.

Two law societies, the Stanford Law Society of Northern California and Nevada and the Stanford Law Society of New York, have greatly assisted the School’s students and graduates by establishing placement committees. A third group, the Stanford Law Society of the Peninsula, is in the process of setting up such a committee. The groups advise students about opportunities in their regions. They also provide valuable contact between students and alumni over and above those contacts made directly through the Placement Office.

Apart from Society-based placement committees, alumni generally have been more than willing to give their time to students seeking jobs. While no figures are available, it is reasonable to suppose that these alumni sources have been responsible for a number of contacts that resulted in jobs for both students and graduates.

It is hard to say whether the growth of Placement Office services in the last few years is responsible for the student and graduate contact with a larger and more diversified group of employers or whether the growing demand for well-trained lawyers made necessary the growth of the Placement Office. Certainly, as Stanford Law School becomes increasingly well known throughout the nation more interviewers seek to recruit Stanford lawyers. It is just this interest in Stanford Law School students by employers from many parts of the nation and a wide variety of fields that makes the Placement Office, in Miss Close’s words, “quite an exciting operation to be a part of.” The Office will doubtless continue to be one of the School’s most important service facilities for Stanford Law School students and for members of the profession.

*Reginald Heber Smith was a pioneer in the field of legal aid in the United States. In 1920 he published a study entitled Justice and the Poor. The Reginald Heber Smith Community Lawyers Fellowships are awarded to young lawyers who will be given training in poverty law prior to doing a year of field work in the Legal Services Program of the Office of Economic Opportunity. The Program is administered by the University of Pennsylvania School of Law.