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Georgetown Law Lamentation on NPR

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The mainstream media is on to the fact that life kind of sucks for the law school class of 2010. The Wall Street Journal brought your troubles to the attention of the general public earlier this month, and we encouraged you to send the article to your family and friends to explain how screwed you are. But the Wall Street Journal is a subscription-only publication, so maybe your loved ones couldn’t access it.

Now, luckily, National Public Radio has tackled the issue of tough times for law grads. Five Georgetown then-3Ls, now alumni, shared their dismal prospects with NPR on All Things Considered last week. Now those family and friends who either don’t subscribe to the WSJ or are illiterate can also have the opportunity to hear about how screwed you are. Pass it on: Economy Seems Bleak For Graduating Law Students.

Why you gotta hedge, NPR? We think it’s fair to say it IS bleak. Host Robert Siegel asked the five grads how many jobs they had applied for. “I’ve sent out at least 150 résumés and cover letters,” responded one female Georgetown 2010 grad, who scored a government job. “Hundreds,” said another, who is still jobless.

Judging from this little sample, Georgetown will not have a 93.5% employed-upon-graduation rate this year: Two have jobs, three do not. So, what are their plans?

The two female 2010 Georgetown students both have jobs lined up, with one heading to BigGov and the other to BigLaw, with a deferral stop at a nonprofit in San Francisco until January 2012. “You’ve been given a job by the law firm, but that job won’t begin for another year and half after you finish law school?” asked host Siegel incredulously.

Yup.

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The three male grads were less lucky. One, with a non-American accent, expressed an interest in international arbitration or tax law, but said he’s jobless and hoping to work at a friend’s small practice. (Update: His first language is French, but he is American.) Another one, who dropped out of a PhD program to attend law school, who hoped to be making six figures with his JD, is jobless and heading home to Maine to run for an elected office. The third is also uncertain and plans to maybe hang up his own shingle. (Careful there.)

One grad urged Siegel not to judge the entire profession based on the travails of grads from a top school. He said grads from good schools are finally suffering the same fate of grads from lower-ranked schools:

We five on this panel are unrepresentative of the legal industry as a whole. For a lot of the schools below us, it was a struggle for a very long time. Now their struggle is our struggle… Just because we’re struggling now doesn’t mean that everyone else has had it hunky-dory for the past ten years.

Law students of the world, unite.

Another grad criticized the law firms for their terrible business skills:

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The real problem that’s happened with the legal profession is that now we’re suffering because the economics of the large law firms just doesn’t work… Maybe law students are going to have to realize that coming out of law school after a three-year education expecting $160,000 a year just isn’t a realistic business model.

Good luck, Georgetown grads. We hope you find jobs with those diplomas. Because if you get desperate and try to sell them, the market value is pretty low.

Economy Seems Bleak For Graduating Law Students [NPR]

Earlier: An Article To Send To Your Family and Friends to Explain How Screwed You Are
Update on the Georgetown Law Grad Who Sold his J.D. on Craigslist

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