Bar Exams, Law Schools, Money, UVA Law

This is How A Top Law School Should Look Out For Unemployed Grads

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A couple of days ago, we told you that NYU 3Ls without jobs lined up are receiving discounts on tickets to their law school formal. It’s a nice gesture, but some NYU Law School students wanted more action from the NYU administration regarding the soon-to-be-unemployed students.

Well, maybe the NYU kids should have gone to school down south.

We are years into this legal-industry downturn, but finally we have a top-10 law school taking a basic step to help students who were unable to secure employment. Since law school doesn’t prepare you for the bar exam, and since bar review prep courses are expensive, this law school will pay bar expenses for graduating 3Ls who don’t have jobs lined up.

Which law school has adopted this policy? And why isn’t every law school doing this?

The school is UVA Law. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. Remember, UVA is the law school where unemployed 3Ls have been wearing T-shirts protesting the treatment they’ve received from the administration. They’ve even been pestering admitted students.

UVA is also the place where that kid made an awesome model of the law school building out of rejection letters.

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So let this be a lesson to 3Ls everywhere: consistent, organized (and non-violent), occasionally funny protests can put pressure on law school administrations and force them to stop ignoring you.

Without the pressure brought by their unemployed 3Ls, who knows if UVA Law would have been willing to provide what really should be a basic service to its unemployed graduates? Here’s the report from Virginia Law Weekly:

Students graduating without a job—and thus without a source of revenue to pay for these expenses—are being offered a subsidy that will cover bar applications fees and bar review course tuitions.

Unemployed students were notified of the program Monday morning via a letter deposited in their Law School mailboxes from Dean Paul Mahoney. The letter informs students that they will be eligible to receive up to $500 to cover bar application fees and up to $1500 to cover bar review study courses.

There, was that so hard? Did we really need to endure three years of economic Armageddon before somebody said: “Maybe we should cover bar prep expenses, since we didn’t prepare them to take the bar during their three years on campus?” We know law schools expect private employers to do the hard work of training people to be practicing attorneys, but picking up bar review expenses is just the right thing to do for graduates who are iced out of the job market.

Kudos to UVA. This is clearly a good thing it is doing for its 3Ls.

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Maybe it’s the least they can do, but there are so many schools that aren’t even doing this much.

Law School to Pick Up Bar Related Expenses [Virginia Law Weekly]

Earlier: Evidence That Students At Top Schools Are Also Getting Crunched By The Weak Job Market
Law Students at a Top School Protest Continued Unemployment
Most Creative Way To Shame Your Office of Career Services

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