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Boutique Firm Advertises Law Job That's Above Minimum Wage (And Below Everyone's Standards)

If you think you're above a job like this, then maybe you should think again...

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Back in May, we brought you news about a full-time job opportunity that appeared on Boston College Law School’s Symplicity page. Everyone expressed outrage over the position advertised, simply because of its annual salary of $10,000. If you do the math, that works out to about $4.81 per hour, which is well below minimum wage. But apparently our economy is such that at least 32 people applied for the job — a job that didn’t even yield a living wage.

Keeping that tableau in mind, tipsters recently brought our attention to yet another low-paying job. This one is above minimum wage. But even jobs that will get you off of a ramen noodle budget just aren’t good enough these days….

Yes, we get it. We understand that when you went to law school, you didn’t think that you’d be working for less than six figures when you graduated. But to be fair, times have changed, and some of you will be lucky to be working at a law job at all. Because really, one of our own columnists, a law school graduate, is a stock clerk.

That’s why I chuckled when we received tips about a job with a boutique firm that boasted these numbers:

Yep, an annual salary of $24,000. Here’s what one tipster had to say about the job ad in question:

I don’t know what’s more insulting – the salary or the fact that a law firm representative misspelled “attorneys.”

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Yes, the fact that someone at the firm misspelled “attorneys” (spelled as “attornies” in the ad, which you can view on the next page) is certainly unfortunate — and as our commenters can attest, it happens to the best of us. But to bitch about a salary of $24K when one of your other options is to go unemployed is just plain silly, especially since it’s nowhere near the ridiculousness of a $10,000 salary.

This job opportunity is located in Virginia, a state where the minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. The pay for the position in question comes to about $11.54 an hour. Sure, the cost of living there is a little bit higher than in other parts of the country, but that’s a salary that you can scrape by with. Trust me, because I know. My first law job paid LESS than this one, and yes, sometimes it was a struggle, but I was able to manage just fine.

Please keep in mind that I’m not advocating for more jobs that have these kinds of salaries. I’m just saying that having a job with a less-than-luxurious salary is better than not having a job at all. Can you really afford to have an employment gap in your résumé while you’re holding out for something more that may never come?

In this kind of economy, and knowing what the job market is like for recent law school graduates — i.e., that it barely exists — if you think that you’re above a job like this, then maybe you should think again.

(If you’re interested, you can see the full Craigslist ad on the next page.)

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