Thought For The Week: “In the depth of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.” Albert Camus

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Hiring Freeze Leaves Thousands of Law Students In the Cold

I remember when my husband, in the fall of his third year of law school, was invited to join the US Department of Justice as an honor hire. The DOJ Honors Program was such a sweet plum to harvest, and he and I — a mere 1 L at the time — were so excited. All of the hard work he had done to make himself eligible for that job had paid off. He went on to spend the first five years of his practice at DOJ, using his combined background as a fighter pilot and a lawyer, defending the United States in plane crash litigation, which was all too prevalent at that time. He received excellent training at DOJ, which resulted in a strong foundation for the next 45-plus years of his practice.

Not much changed for those lucky enough to be DOJ honor hires until a few days ago. It is a highly select program. In 2024, as few as “more than 100” lawyers were hired in that program according to the National Association of Law Placement, and we could have expected a comparable number in 2025. But all that changed in the blink of an eye when the White House froze salaries and hiring at all agencies, and those hired in this year’s class were notified that they no longer had jobs.

All agencies of the federal government. In one fell swoop, jobs for thousands of 2025 law school hires disappeared. Currently, the freeze is being fought in the courts, but there is no guarantee how it will end up.

This is tragic. This should not happen. And now all of those lawyers are in complete disarray as they contemplate a very different future than the one they thought was before them.

As bad as it is, this is not the first occasion of such freezes. For more information on that history, see https://www.yalejreg.com/nc/hiring-freezes-and-job-offer-revocations. But this may be the worst.

Fortunately, I have seen programs announced in the last few days to help victims of these freezes find employment in state and local government and non-government jobs. I hope some of you can access that help. Your law school career services offices should know about these programs and should be able to help you.

So, make an appointment with your career services office asap. They are not just there to take credit for your job successes based on all your hard work. They also need to be there when things fall apart. Press them until you get the help you deserve.

After all, rent does not wait. Student loan payments do not wait. The basic necessities of life do not wait.

Good luck to all of you. Some of you suffered similar blows during the pandemic, and, for sure, you do not need this. But keep in mind that you are not the biggest losers. The biggest loser is the United States Government and the agencies that will not get benefit from the talent you present.

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Thought For The Week: “Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point.” C.S. Lewis

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