How old is your student? Are they fresh out of undergrad, going straight into law school, and then graduating? Or have they already spent time pursuing one career, and decided to transition into law?
Many of the students who have done-something-else in life before transitioning into law will take evening classes while keeping their day job. They often end up graduating in December-- as do students who weren't quite able to make it all in 2 years.
After graduation, it's straight into bar prep. In Texas, BARBRI is the big test-prep program, but there are probably others in other areas. Bar prep is even more stressful than law school itself was. The thing about law is that it makes sense, and is very logical... the thing about the Bar is oh-my-goodness-I've-got-to-have-it-all-in-my-head, regardless of the type of law you plan on focusing on. The Bar is essentially a guild system, and they work hard to keep the field from being flooded with newcomers. The test gets easier (higher passage rate) when they need more new blood, the test gets harder (lower passage rate) when there's not enough work to go around for all the current attorneys. In Texas, there's a certain set of blue books that basically breaks down every municipality and lists how many attorneys-per-capita there are... The last time I checked them, there might be one attorney for every 2,000 or 5,000 people in some rural areas, whereas in metropolitan areas, it's more like 1 attorney for every 250-300 people. It was very enlightening.
How many times you can attempt to pass the Bar varies, also depending on how many people they want to let in at any given time. When DH took it in Texas, I think you had three? four? shots, or else you were out of luck. Then it shifted to infinite tries, if I recall. Then it shifted again to five times, where it currently is, if I'm not mistaken. Other states will vary-- North Dakota will give you six tries; South Dakota requires Supreme Court permission to take it again after three tries; Virginia gives you five tries; and so on. However, the bar exam always includes the last Wed in February, and the last Wed in July, regardless of where you live in the US. In TX, it takes three days to administer-- a Tue/Wed/Th, where the MBE (Multistate Bar Exam) takes place on the Wed.
During your last year of law school, you generally get an internship/clerking opportunity as one of your prereqs for graduation. It gives you the opportunity to make connections and get real-world experience. DH came from a nonprofit background before he got into law, so he went with one of the major firms in the area that dealt with nonprofit law. He absolutely hated their firm--- the attorneys there fit all the usual stereotypes. The secretaries were sad when he left, because he was a decent human being who treated the support staff like human beings as well.
Nepotism is alive and healthy.
One girl DH went to school with had a job lined up clerking for the TX Supreme Court-- her dad knew the right people, so the position was offered even before she took the bar. Right now, one of DH's colleagues is trying to get his son to take on his practice so he can retire. The son was cock-of-the-walk when he graduated law school, and acted like he owned the courthouse, but I think he's on his third or fourth try to pass the bar. (DH had offered to help him with his exam prep, but he was too cool for that...) One woman was a legal secretary for a local practice; her niece graduated law school and passed the bar. She'd wanted to bury herself in contract law, but was given a job at her aunt's workplace, where she had to do criminal work, which she hated. If your graduate doesn't have a job lined up-- I'd probably look at them a little squinty and wonder what's wrong with them.
For DH-- he graduated in December, studied for the bar exam, took it in February, found out that he passed it in April. During all this time, he continued working at his day job. (At a local university.) He did a few things in private practice--- wills, estates, trusts-- for coworkers while we figured out where we were going to land. I was tied to the area with my job until September. After September came, however, we started shopping around to see where life would take us. A married pair of attorneys invited him into their firm in City A, but then promptly got divorced, which broke up their law office and made them rescind their offer within days of having made it. Then an attorney in City B invited him to join his firm, and I got a job in a nearby city as well. So we spent December/January getting our ducks in a row and relocated, and we both started work in February.
If he wasn't married (and thereby didn't have to take my limitations into account), and didn't already have a day job--- he would have been able to fast-forward his schedule by almost a year-- he would have just had to wait for his passage to be confirmed in April.
You can work in a law office without your license, but you're limited in what you're allowed to do, of course. Whether they do that will depend on how closely tied they are to their employer (dad/a friend/someone they have history with is going to be more flexible) and how much debt they graduated with (gotta start earning those paychecks to pay it off!).
If someone wanted to take a vacation, the best time would be while waiting for their exam results to come back in. Presuming they're not up to their eyeballs in debt. And presuming they're not carrying around a knot of stress in their stomachs for two months while they waited for the pass/fail verdict.
The legal community is very small and tight-knit-- at least, where I am. I asked a corporate attorney friend how many different firms she'd worked with. She said that if you hop around to more than two or three firms in your entire career, people will perceive you as unstable and unreliable, unless one of those times is to hang your own shingle. Corporate attorney etiquette may be different from, say, wills/estates/trusts/family law/criminal law etiquette, but that sort of last-minute change-of-horses would be something I'd be super-leery about.
When DH was a freshly minted attorney, he hated the term "baby lawyer". But as he's gained experience--- he understands it better now. Many of his colleagues who went on to join major firms spent the next three, four, five years pushing papers in back offices. They had to put in their time before they got the good stuff. He ended up working in a small practice in a rural community-- a big fish in a small pond-- and he got more hands-on experience in his first six months than many of his classmates got in six years. Likewise, the ones who were working for big firms were expected to put in 80-hour weeks... so if you mentally cut their salaries in half, it wasn't as good money as it would have seemed. So if your Ivy Leaguer is planning on joining a major firm, know that (a) she's the low man on the totem pole for a few years, and (b) is destined for long hours and mehh pay. So she needs to find a place where she'll be content to be for the next 10, 20 years... but the dream part of a dream job probably won't kick in for another 10 years as well.
