Career Services Need Help, Y'All

Hanging out with law school career-services people was a hell of an experience.

Sat in on a panel titled “Ending Reporting Nightmares: Collecting Information You Need Before You Need It” here at NALP15. Right from jump I knew I wasn’t going to get what I came there to see when the panel opens with, “We’re going to talk about law school career services data reporting, but we’re not going to discuss the ABA employment reporting process.” Hmm. Kind of wanted to hear how that sausage was made. But undeterred, I hunkered down for a lesson in the processes and technological solutions that career services officers use to do their jobs.

But that was pretty boring.

Not boring were the indirect lessons from the discussion.

1. Career Services Are Woefully Understaffed.

While introducing herself, one panelist explained, “I’m the Director of Career Services. I have a line item for an assistant… but no budget to hire one.” And yet the whole damn room, packed to the gills with career services folks, nodded approvingly. They didn’t laugh. They acted like this was a perfectly reasonable thing to say!

With non-stop tuition hikes almost entirely going to packing administrations with a bunch of assistant deans of racist s**t, why are career services — you know, the people with the one support task the school actually needs — getting the short end of the budgetary stick? We get it, career services can’t miracle your ass a job, but there’s a lot of stuff they can do to grease the rails for budding lawyers. Technically, legal recruiters don’t produce jobs out of thin air either, but we all acknowledge the important work they do — let’s give a little love to the folks on the bottom of the pyramid.

2. BHREAM — Billable Hours Rule Everything Around Me.

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While clients are pushing firms to dispense with the archaic billable hour pricing schemes, law schools are prisoners to the clock. They’re still using the Socratic Method so archaic things are just awesome there.

To hear them talk, the biggest struggle in the day-to-day job of career services seems to be logging time. Everyone on the panel — and a bunch in the audience — offered tips and tricks for properly accounting for every second of their day. Emailing themselves reminders after meeting with students, Google Calendars, spreadsheets, creating aliases for unknown students — if there’s a way to ensure every second is logged to the right activity, they’re on it. Apparently logging and cataloging and cross-referencing every second of their day is more important to law schools than actually letting them get students friggin’ jobs. Seriously, a lot of this data ends up in the hands of alumni relations people because… money.

3. “K” Is The New 0L.

First it was pre-L. Then 0L. Now K, because they aren’t quite an L. The Twitter-ification of jargon continues apace.

4. There’s A Lot Of Turnover In Law School Leadership.

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They polled the audience at one point to ask if anyone had “a new sheriff in town,” namely, a new dean or a new assistant dean for career services to report to, and damn near everyone in the room raised their hand. Is the terrible market creating constant turnover? I’d hope so, except I feel like the only people getting these gigs are other deans who are proven train wrecks. It’s like getting real excited about the “new direction” of your football team and learning Idzik is coming in. Elie has said it before, and if he weren’t crawling to the bathroom to throw up, he’d say it again: he’s available to be your new dean, people.

I guess the lesson is, “Hug a career services person today.”

Earlier: Revamping Career Services: Two Modest Proposals