Best Legal Jobs Sites

Legal jobs for lawyers are expected to grow about as fast as the average for other occupations – 9 to 17 percent - through 2014.

Job growth among lawyers also will result from increasing demand for legal services in such areas as health care, intellectual property, venture capital, energy, elder, antitrust, and environmental law.

However, growth in demand for lawyers will be limited as businesses, in an effort to reduce costs, increasingly use large accounting firms and paralegals to perform some of the same functions that lawyers do.

Competition for legal jobs should continue to be keen because of the large number of students graduating from law school each year. Graduates with superior academic records from highly regarded law schools will have the best job opportunities.

Because of the keen competition for legal jobs, a law graduate’s geographic mobility and work experience assume greater importance. In addition, employers are increasingly seeking graduates who have advanced law degrees and experience in a specialty, such as tax, patent, or admiralty law.

Employment for paralegals and legal assistants is projected to grow much faster than the average as firms try to reduce costs and by hiring paralegals to perform tasks formerly carried out by lawyers. Experienced, formally trained paralegals should have the best employment opportunities.

Private law firms will continue to be the largest employers of paralegals, but a growing array of other organizations, such as corporate legal departments, insurance companies, real estate and title insurance firms, and banks hire paralegals.

Paralegals who specialize in areas such as real estate, bankruptcy, medical malpractice, and product liability should have ample employment opportunities.

To a limited extent, paralegal jobs are affected by the business cycle. Paralegals, who provide many of the same legal services as lawyers at a lower cost, tend to fare relatively better in difficult economic conditions.

Here are the top five online job sites for legal jobs, as measured by the Alexa rating (the lower the rating, the more popular the site. See our Online Job Search page for a detailed explanation of Alexa ratings.

• Association of Corporate Council (Alexa rating 58,600)
• Immigration Lawyer Association (Alexa rating 68,300)
• EmpLawyer (Alexa rating 155,600)
• Law Jobs (Alexa rating 222,500)
• Affiliates (Alexa rating 237,700)