Craigslist

3L Desperately Seeking Perfect Boss on Craigslist

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Maybe finding a job should be like online dating, with job seekers putting up advertisements describing their perfect match.

That’s the approach a law student in New York is taking. The 3L placed an ad on Craigslist this week, titled “3rd Year Law Student Seeking Competent, Sane, Paying Legal Employer.”

According to the student’s self-description, this 3L is the perfect legal employee, with “excellent, substantive experience in the legal field”; their “own Westlaw and Lexis-Nexis password and unlimited access to both databases” (courtesy of the student’s school?); “a lot of experience drafting contracts, including very complex and lengthy contracts”; “high work ethic”; and “good social skills.”

This stellar job seeker will not accept just any job. The 3L writes:

In order to be considered for this opening as my new boss, in addition to being willing to pay for my services, you must also meet all of the following criteria:

There are 21 requirements. Number 1: “You must not be a lunatic.”

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Paging All Bankruptcy Lawyers….

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Are you a bankruptcy attorney who needs to empathize more with your clients — e.g., by declaring bankruptcy yourself? Check out this job posting — which won’t be our Job of the Week anytime soon — courtesy of that gold mine of employment opportunities, Craigslist:

Bankruptcy Attorney Position (Dallas)

Small Consumer Bankruptcy firm in Dallas looking for new associate attorney. 50-60 Hours per week, with some travel to Fort Worth required. Salary: $40,000.

If “travel to Fort Worth” is required, you need to add another zero to that salary. This is not the kind of income that will help you pay off massive educational debt (non-dischargeable in bankruptcy, at least for now).

But wait, there’s more….

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Pro Se Litigants Also Want Cheap Legal Advice

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We’ve done a number of posts on terrible job offers. You can pretty much go onto Craigslist once a week and find some firm trying to get legal services on the cheap. Usually, it’s a firm or a solo practitioner that’s trying to take advantage of the legal recession by lowballing prospective associates.

Yesterday, an ad went up from a Pro Se litigant looking for legal help. This guy isn’t willing to hire a lawyer to represent him, but he’s got no problem finding one to do all the work:

Recent law school grad needed for research by Pro Se Litigant in areas of civil law including contracts and due process. Please include resume with your response. PayPay will be method of payment. Please indicate which legal search engine you will be using.

Wonderful, so not only does this guy want you to do all the work, but he also expects you to pay for your own Westlaw or Lexis access.

What’s this guy going to pay you for this opportunity?

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Soliciting a Date from the Solicitor General: Man Woos Kagan — Over Craigslist?

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There’s a long tradition of seeking Supreme Court love via Craigslist (see here and here). And the tradition continues.

From a Craigslist posting entitled 40-something SJM ISO Elena Kagan (we’ve added some links to clarify various references):

I’ve had a crush on you for almost twenty years (and you deservedly made fun of me when I got tongue-tied in front of you), but it never seemed appropriate to move on it. Either I was dating someone, or you were in another city…

But now! Our careers seem to have settled in DC. I’m single. Politico and Eliot Spitzer tell me you’re single. We have so much in common: I love the law (even civil procedure!) and can’t get enough of it. I like books and baseball and poker and New York City and Medici pizza. I admire Thurgood Marshall. Like you, I love the Federalist Society. My mother was the first bas mitzvah in her Orthodox synagogue, but I’m relatively non-observant. We disagree on some First Amendment issues, to be sure, but I’ll never ask you to watch a dogfighting video. Ok, you’re smarter than me, but I’m no slouch (like you, I turned down Yale Law), and I’m cool being Mr. Ginsburg to your Ruth Bader if you are.

This is not a joke. I am gaga for Lady KaGa. I understand you have other priorities in the next few weeks, and Andrew Sullivan and Glenn Greenwald would be scandalized if we started dating, but I’ve waited for you this long, I can wait until after the inevitable investiture. Just send me a signal: mention your love of the Mets in your opening statement before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and I’ll know to send you a dinner date invitation for the first Friday in October. We’ll go for Chinese food at a restaurant better than City Lights.

Finally, some suspense for the Kagan hearings: Will she mention the Mets? Tune in and find out.

We interviewed the Craigslist poster about his wacky plan….

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Update on the Georgetown Law Grad Who Sold his J.D. on Craigslist

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Somebody bought this degree off Craigslist

What do you think the resale value on your law degree is? Earlier this year, a San Francisco lawyer put his degree up for sale on Craigslist and found out.

The Georgetown grad was miserable working for a large law firm in Silicon Valley. So he quit and posted his degree in the Craigslist “For Sale” section for “the bargain basement price of $59,250″ — the current value of his student loan balance — or best offer. He hoped to get rid of the piece of paper with “the amazing ability to keep you from doing what you really want to do in life, all in the name of purported prestige and financial success.”

Back in March, the best offer had come from a documentary filmmaker who offered to give the miserable lawyer $50 to “piss on the diploma and then set it on fire.”

That would have been a serious markdown on the $100,000 degree. We checked back in with him this week and found out that a slightly better offer came along…

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This Time, The Lawyer Wants To Get Screwed…

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One of the reasons we brought Courthouse Connection to New York is that we came across so many lawyerly personal ads on Craigslist. (Um, not that we troll Craigslist for dates. Our readers send them to us.)

We were wondering whether Courthouse Connection has caused a drop-off in legal types posting on Craig’s pages. When we recently searched “lawyer” in the personal ads section of New York Craigslist, we had three hits. Two were romantics attesting to the fact that they weren’t lawyers (and thus more attractive specimens to the rest of humanity), and one was a lawyer, whose ad attests to the fact that lawyers are not attractive specimen to the rest of humanity.

The ad is too explicit for our front page. Here’s an excerpt:

I am a middle aged whtie [sic] married discreeeeet male. Somewhat overweight but clean, safe, sane, dd free. Even more fun for some: I am a lawyer LOL…any of you want to pretend I represented your hubby in that nasty divorce? LOL

He wants to give those screwed over by a lawyer the chance to screw one back, nastily. Full ad, after the jump.

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A Round-Up of Terrible $10/Hour Lawyer Jobs in California

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We’ve done a lot of stories on terrible legal jobs advertised on Craigslist. But they keep getting worse. Last week, a posting went up that was so bad it was possibly illegal:

Entry level plaintiff’s civil litigator wanted (Downtown San Diego)

We are looking for aspiring, licensed lawyers with a passion for trial advocacy on behalf of consumers and injured victims in San Diego county.

Candidates should be 0-2+ year attorneys. The office atmosphere is professional, busy, collegial, and we are located in downtown San Diego. This position offers the unique opportunity to join our team and learn every aspect of civil litigation. The successful candidate will be expected to be eager to try small-to-moderate injury cases to a jury within only a year or two of joining the firm. Respond only if you have a strong desire to learn how to litigate and try cases, and have the strong work ethic to keep up with the rather large learning curve.

Email:

1. Cover letter
2. Resume
3. Writing sample
4. References

The starting salary is $1,600-$2,000/month

***Please: If the starting salary is too low, please do not respond.***

If everything works out great for you, you could make $10/hour. But at the bottom end, you could wind up making $6.67 an hour. Minimum wage in California is $8.00. I know some people think that recent law school graduates are worthless, but this is a bit ridiculous…

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Did You Go to Law School to Earn $12 an Hour?

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In a cover story last year for Washingtonian magazine, on the subject of lawyer incomes, Kash and I posed a question: Are lawyers like white-collar auto workers?

Answer: no. Autoworkers are better paid. Check out this latest job listing, from craigslist for Orange County:

Full time associate attorney start at $12 an hour.

Welcome to the OC, bitch.

Salaries in the legal profession may be experiencing some deflation, but $12 an hour for the holder of a J.D. is… ridiculous. As one of the many readers who sent this to us observed, “I made this much in high school.” Said a second: “They’re looking for an associate who will work for $12 / hour. At that rate, one might as well go for an In-N-Out gig. You’ll probably get benefits there.”

But wait, it gets better….

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Will Bill Hours for Basketball

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Maryland Terrapins logo.jpgAs Scott Van Pelt is fond of saying: “fear the turtle.”
We all know that University of Maryland basketball fans are a strange bunch. Some might call them the red-headed stepchildren of the ACC. I prefer to think of them as a litmus test for how strong Duke and UNC are in a given year. If you can beat the bag out of the Terrapins, you’ve got Sweet 16 talent. If not, it’s upset city, my friends. Maryland’s often in contention, but rarely pulls it out.
Of course, occasionally slow and steady does actually win the race. The team won a National Championship in 2002, beating the last relevant Indiana team in the finals. It’s the kind of thing Maryland fans live for, and with the team being second in the ACC this year, Terps fans are losing their minds. Even Terps fans currently in law school. One such law student fanatic is desperately trying to get tickets to tonight’s headline Maryland-Duke match-up. From Craigslist:

trade of services for md-duke ticket(s) – $1 (college park, md)
I am a Terp fanatic, but as a law student I am in the unfortunate position of not being able to afford tickets to Wednesday night’s game against duke. In exchange for tickets, I am willing to sign a contract that will guarantee a TBD number of billable hours of attorney services fully redeemable upon my passing of the Maryland bar.

The poster is a 1L at the University of Baltimore Law School, so this may just be a clever attempt to get somebody to give him some work.
An UPDATE after the jump.

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The Resale Value of a Georgetown Law Degree

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Law Degree on Craigslist.jpgOn Friday, we told you about the San Francisco lawyer trying to sell his degree for “$59,250 or best offer.” Sick of practicing law and being “surrounded by hobby-less a**holes whose entire life is dictated by billing by the hour and being anal dickheads,” he hoped to get rid of the piece of paper with “the amazing ability to keep you from doing what you really want to do in life, all in the name of purported prestige and financial success.” He posted his degree in Craigslist’s “For Sale” section last week. He also put it up on eBay yesterday for 99 cents.

The West Coaster did not identify the university from whence the degree came, writing instead that “it’s from one of those elitist BS institutions that accept people like George W. Bush cause their daddy donated $20 million.” Our readers quickly identified it as a JD from Georgetown University Law Center.

We reached out to this hapless Hoya to see what offers he has gotten. He’s received over 300 e-mails. He told us:

So far I’ve received an offer for $200 and at least two dozens offers to buy me drinks. Another guy offered to give me an Ipod Nano. One girl told me I’m her soul mate and that she wants to go on a date…. I got an offer from a women lawyer with “marry me” in the subject line and a comment that my post saved her from stabbing herself with a pencil in the eye. I know, wtf?

Apparently, misery attracts company.

The bidding is up to $222.50 on eBay. What could beat that?

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Craigslist Post of the Day: Top-Tier Law Degree ($59,250)

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Law Degree on Craigslist.jpgThis should sound familiar to many of you: After several years of practicing law, a San Francisco lawyer has come to regret the decision to go to law school.
Unlike many of you, this lawyer has decided to try to hawk their law degree on Craigslist. From the “For Sale – Collectibles” section of SF Bay Area Craigslist:

Though I spent over $100,000 on it I am willing to sell it for the bargain basement price of $59,250, which is the current value of my remaining student loan balance.
This priceless collectible will permit you to be surrounded by hobby-less a**holes whose entire life is dictated by billing by the hour and being anal dickheads. Additionally, this piece of paper has the amazing ability to keep you from doing what you really want to do in life, all in the name of purported prestige and financial success.

Let’s take a look at the full ad, shall we?

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Craigslist Post of the Day: Screw Temple Law School (Student)

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Too bad this Temple Law School 3L isn’t at a southern school where students aren’t just “law school hot.” See Adrielle Churchill of the University of Arkansas.

From Craigslist Philadelphia Missed Connections:
Temple Law student wants undergrad loving.jpg
But will he be a lawyer with a job? Temple University Beasley School of Law came in at #42 on the National Law Journal’s list of Best Law Schools for getting a Biglaw job. NLJ reports that 16.2 percent of grads at Temple score a job with one of the top 250 firms.

We’re glad to see this Temple law student taking advantage of the more favorable odds of scoring with an undergrad. Some of the responses, after the jump.

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