To be clear, we at Above the Law don’t go out and proactively search for the most terrible jobs being offered to law graduates in this economy. But because of the recession, there just seems to be an endless supply of really horrible things you can do with a J.D.
The latest entry into the “you call this a job” contest comes from Craigslist, San Francisco.
National staffing agency is seeking contract attorneys for an upcoming document review project in Kalispell, MT (near Missoula, MT on the west side of the state). Licensure in any jurisdiction is OK. Please forward resume as a word attachment. At this time, travel and lodging expenses will not be covered. Details to follow.
Some thoughts on this opportunity, after the jump.
What does it say about the value of a law school education if recent law graduates are begging for an opportunity to work for free? I wonder if applicants for the law school class of 2013 are paying attention. We mentioned this Craigslist post in Non-Sequiturs last night:
NY licensed attorney work for free (DC/Maryland/Virginia)
2008 graduate from 1st tier law school, with one year law firm experience, licensed in NY state, DC bar pending, is willing to work for free for one year or more, in exchange for experience in civil litigation, criminal defense, family law, contract, bankruptcy. and/or property law. I am very reliable, hard working and easy to work with. I can start working immediately in the DC and surrouding [sic] area.
“Why buy [the associate] when you can get [the blood, sweat, and tears] for free?”
Look, I hate traffic cops and parking tickets as much as the next guy. I especially hate traffic cops in the greater Boston area — those people have no appreciation for the spatial genius required to park a Cadillac in Cambridge. That said, fighting the traffic overlords always felt like a waste of time.
But perhaps I was wrong. On Craigslist, there is a job posting by a company looking for some legal muscle to fight parking tickets:
EXPERIENCE IS REQUIRED
With an ever-increasing quantity of Boston parking tickets to handle we are hiring individuals to assist us in the review of Boston parking tickets for our business and individual clients. Our policy is that you can work from home with highly flexible hours. Experience is however, required.
As our hours are highly flexible you can choose to work days, nights or weekends. If you are not looking for work yourself but happen to know of a qualified professional who is, please pass this along to them.
We want you to know that we have great passion for what we do and take great pride in our relationships with everyone on our team. Accordingly, we are always looking for better ways to do things. Therefore, we place great value on your input. To be sure, YOUR ideas will be listened to.
What kind of experience is required? After the jump, we see that the company loves liberty.
Think back to taking law school exams as a 1L. Remember the IRAC method — Issue, Rule, Application, Conclusion?
One horny creative female law student in Los Angeles has decided to deploy IRAC towards carnal ends. Via craigslist, she recently filed a brief in the matter of You & Me Doing It v. You & Me Not Doing It (2009).
Read her brief, an eloquent attempt to get inside a classmate’s briefs, after the jump.
Like most people, I’m having trouble focusing on my duties given the perils of Balloon Boy, Falcon Heene. According to my television, the balloon is down, there is no boy in it, and as of now we don’t know where the boy is. And the parents were on Wife Swap. Here’s a write-up of the episode the Heene family was featured on. Crazy story.
Of course, multitasking is an important life skill. It’s a skill that one law student hasn’t seemed to master, at least when attractive women are around. Here’s the Craigslist ode from a law student somewhere in the D.C. area to an apparently stunning vixen:
Morally Bankrupt – m4w
I saw you in my bankruptcy class. I was so distracted by you that I could barely pay attention to the riveting lecture about the history of bankruptcy law. I imagine that you are a creditor and I am a bankrupt and I will have to work off my debt for you or risk debtor’s prison. You can have whatever you want; no state law exemptions. I want you to declare bankruptcy all over me.
I am sick of ending my nights pro se. I promise if you entertain my claim that you will have a huge judgment entered in your favor over and over again. We can even violate the Model Rule of Professional Responsibility and engage in a 108(j).
My interests include hilarious law-based puns; and mocking others. If you think we are a match, let’s grab a drink after class. I know it’s a weeknight but my parents let me stay out as late as I want to as long as I call by 11pm to check in with them.
P.S. I am neither the ginger nor the weird guy next to you.
Beautiful bankruptcy babe — you know who you are — it looks like you have a not-so-secret admirer. Let us know if it works out. Morally Bankrupt [Craigslist]
I don’t think there are a lot of people who have been working in Biglaw for only four years and are sitting on a portable book of business. But, if you are, this Craigslist posting may be for you:
ATTORNEYS WITH BOOK OF BUSINESS ONLY! NYC (Midtown)
I am starting my own law firm, and will be soon opening my law firm based in downtown NY, I am currently the head of a corporate group at a large fim and I seek entrepreneurial attorneys (attorneys ONLY) to join as either potential partners or for Of Counsel positions to help establish presence in New York, and other major markets. Only attorneys already admitted in NY may apply.
The law firm is seeking lawyers with experience in a range of different practice areas, principally in Securities, Capital Markets, FINRA Arbitration and Securities litigation, also including, but not limited to, general corporate, real estate, tax, energy, tort , intellectual property (including patent, trademark, copyright and technology licensing), white collar criminal defense, litigation, commercial litigation, international and/or labor & employment law.
Successful candidates will have self-sustaining practices as well as a strong desire to work in a collegial, collaborative, flexible and entrepreneurial environment law firm or become part of building their own firm as Of Counsels or join our starting firm benefiting from large marketing, the ability to show prospective clients that they are with a large firm rather than sole practitioneers and cross refer business clients and retain their relations with their clients and increase their portofolio.
Don’t you usually look for a professional headhunter to fill a position like this? I just can’t imagine a person with a self-sustaining practice looking to lateral over Craigslist.
Then again, check out the minimum qualifications. The candidate this firm is looking for might not exist.
Unlike some firms which post ads on Craigslist looking for attorneys to work for free, at least one Greenport, NY man is looking to pay for legal services.
The service he needs rendered could be out of community building 101. Here’s the ad, via Jerks in your Area:
Need Halloween Legal Help (Greenport)
Every year I put on a Halloween haunted house for my neighborhood. In the past few years, I’ve really stepped up my game with fake blood, assorted limbs and bones (shins, arms, skulls), and lots of pop up zombies, mock executions, etc. Last year I had a bit of a legal snafu when a kid on my block had a seizure and another had to go to therapy after a bullet squib popped too close to his head. Their parents threatened to sue me and the whole ordeal was a hassle. Anyway, I was thinking that this year there are so many out of work lawyers out there that I could probably get one pretty cheap to come and hang out around the house and keep an eye on things. If another parent gets pissed off or whatever, it would be good to have someone who knows the law. I might also need you to write up a release because this year the guillotine will be real.
I’ve never really hired a lawyer before so I’m not really sure what they charge but I’m guessing it won’t be more than like $18 an hour. If you have one of those insane clown masks that would be really helpful too.
Aww, that’s sweet. That’s just how we roll on “Strong” Island.
But are former Biglaw types even qualified to do this kind of work? Let’s discuss after the jump.
Back in the day, young lawyers would complain that they were “selling their souls” for $160K a year. But now we are in a recession and the price of a fresh soul has come down considerably. From Craigslist:
1 Soul of Healthy Young Man – $100000 (Hamden, CT)
For sale: The gently used soul of a healthy, Roman Catholic, young twenties, quinnipiac law student.
So, let me give you some background on the product and the reasons for selling:
My student loans are piling up and I’ve realized I really don’t give a shit what type of law I practice, I’m really only in this thing to further myself economically. Problem is, my student loans are outrageous and by the time I pay them off I’ll be spending the rest of my money on Cialis and colonoscopies. I don’t want that, I don’t need that. So let’s make a fucking deal.
In exchange for the payment of my student loans you will get my soul. This is a la motherfucking carte. No organs included. No skin, no vas differens, and certainly no homunculus.
Dude, you go to Quinnipiac, can’t you get a job as a pollster?
Just the other day, we told you about a law firm that was looking for free labor from an attorney who had already graduated from law school and passed the bar. Here, this law student wants somebody to purchase his soul for $100,000 bucks. When inflated expectation meets free market capitalism the fields are soaked with the tears of the martyrs.
Read more of the ad after the jump.
There is nothing wrong with taking an unpaid internship. When you are just starting out and looking to get some experience under your belt, internships can be a great opportunity.
It’s just that usually lawyers who have been through three years of law school and passed one of the most difficult bar exams in the country aren’t in the position of having to work for free.
But times are tough. And at least one law firm in Menlo Park, California is ready to capitalize on the desperation of young lawyers. Here’s the key part of their Craigslist ad:
The current economic climate has made it difficult for young lawyers to find paid positions. Employment prospects improve with experience and a stronger resume. Good experience with a top notch firm is what we offer. If you can realistically make a six to twelve month commitment and can get by without compensation (other than billable travel, mileage, parking and related expenses), this is an excellent opportunity. We cannot make any promises of future paid positions. Candidates who have proven and distinguished themselves during internships, will be considered for future paid positions with the firm.
Let’s look at the positives of not earning any money and do a reader poll after the jump.
Are you a laid-off lawyer who has been spending way too much time on Facebook? Here’s a way to turn that “résumé gap” into job experience:
Director of Social Media
Medium-sized Atlanta law firm seeks candidates interested in a part-time or full-time social media position. The primary responsibility of the Social Media Director will be to actively promote our growing law firm using a variety of social media such as Twitter, Facebook and our existing web-site. Projects include: managing the firm’s Twitter, Facebook and web-site account, research current and relevant legal stories in the news and republish to social networks and firm web-site on a daily basis, communicate through social web-sites about all specific practice groups and their developments, update marketing team on a weekly basis with web-site content.
Managing a professional presence on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites felt like a full-time job to me. But I didn’t know you could draw a salary for it.
So what are the qualifications for this position — and, more importantly, the salary?
Watch to find out what some of our subscribers received in their May box!
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We currently have a number of active openings for associate roles at US and UK firms in HK / China, Singapore and two new in-house openings. As always, please feel free to reach out to us at asia@kinneyrecruiting.com in order to get details of current openings in Asia, as well as to discuss the Asia markets in general and what we expect for openings later this year. Our Evan Jowers and Robert Kinney will be in Beijing the week of March 25 and Evan Jowers will be in Hong Kong the week of April 1, if you would like to meet them in person.
The US associate openings we have in law firms are in the usual areas of M&A, cap markets, FCPA / white collar litigation, finance, and project finance. The most urgent of our top tier (top 15 US or magic circle) law firm openings in Asia (among many other firm openings that we have in Asia) are as follows:
• 2nd to 5th year mandarin fluent M&A associates needed in Beijing and Hong Kong at several firms;
• Korean fluent 2nd to 4th year cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 5th year Japanese fluent M&A associates needed in Tokyo;
• 4th to 6th year mandarin fluent cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 4th year M&A / cap markets mix associate needed in Singapore.
The last time I flapped my wings your way, I tried to make at least enough noise about your mobile phone to make you more than a little bit uncomfortable. I hope I did. If enough of us become anxious enough about the known and unknown unknowns and knowns in our mobile phones, then we can start making wise decisions about how to manage that information and its resultant investigations.
Today, I’d like to put a finer point on the last installment’s topic by asking a question that seemed to catch most attendees off-guard at a conference panel that I moderated last week: is there discoverable personal information in a mobile app? Our panelists’ answer was a uniform “yes” with one stating that, if he had to choose only one type of data that he could discover from a mobile phone, he’d choose app data. Why? Because there’s simply so much of it and because almost all of it is objective – not just user-created like an email – but machine-tracked like GPS, usage duration, log in and log out times, browsed web addresses, browsed actual addresses. Also, most of us seem to have the idea that data doesn’t actually “stick” to our mobile devices the way it “sticks” to our hard drives. Maybe there’s a disconnect based on the fact that our phones are mobile so we assume the data is mobile to?
The traditional job application and interview process can be impersonal, and applicants often struggle to present themselves as more than just the sum of their GPAs, alma maters, and previous work history. ATL has partnered with ViewYou to help job seekers overcome this challenge. ViewYou NOW Profiles offer a unique way for job seekers to make a personal, memorable connection with prospective employers: introduction videos. These videos allow job candidates to display their personalities, interpersonal skills, and professional interests, creating an eDossier to brand themselves to potential employers all over the world. Check it out today!
To be clear, we at Above the Law don’t go out and proactively search for the most terrible jobs being offered to law graduates in this economy. But because of the recession, there just seems to be an endless supply of really horrible things you can do with a J.D.
