■ Business Trends: BUSINESS LAW


“My impression is that there are still more young lawyers in Virginia than jobs,” says Brian Sykes of Vandeventer Black.


Still a buyers’


market Law school graduates still face challenges in landing jobs by Robert Burke


B 58 FEBRUARY 2016


rian Sykes has fond memories of his law school days when the leap from third-year student to a law


career was an easy one. He graduated from Washington &


Lee University School of Law in 1998, “and at that time, if you went to law school, you were pretty much guaranteed a job somewhere,” he says. These days the market is a lot differ-


ent, says Sykes, a partner and recruiting chair with the Norfolk-based firm Vande- venter Black, which has about 60 lawyers at offices in Virginia, North Carolina and Germany. “My impression is that there are still more young lawyers in Virginia than jobs,” he says. The recession of 2007-09 played a


role in creating the current job market by pushing up law school enrollments as stu-


Photo by Mark Rhodes


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