Jobs

Biglaw

Summer Associate Job Survey: The Kids Are Still Stressed

The American Lawyer just released its annual summer associate job survey. Back in the day, law students paid a lot of attention to how summers before them enjoyed their summer associate experience. Of course, back in the day the summer associate experience used to be a 12-week-long recruiting event. Now, it’s a 12 (or 10, […]

Bad Ideas

Would You Work for a New York Law School Student… For Free?

Self-awareness: it’s a really important character trait. As you go about your day, your life, and your life’s work, it’s important to have an understanding of who you are and how you are perceived. But what if your self-perception is grossly misaligned with objective reality? Well, then things could get tricky. You might make a […]

Job Searches

A New Approach to Fall Recruiting

Back in February of this year, the National Association for Law Placement (NALP) announced a minor change to its recruiting guidelines. I was underwhelmed. New associates are graduating law school in a terrible job market, firms are sick of being forced to hire people two years before they know their staffing needs, and NALP is […]

Biglaw

The World Hates Lawyers: Mainstream Media Manages to Criticize Biglaw Summers AND Public Sector Lawyers in the Same Breath

Earlier this week, Conor Friedersdorf, writing for The Atlantic, poured a big bottle of haterade all over the legal profession. More specifically, he criticized the way “Ivy League” lawyers are recruited, and the “palpable sense of entitlement” they exhibit even when they don’t take Biglaw bucks and instead work for the government. Here’s the set […]

Cheapness

Firms Now Looking for Unpaid Summer Associates

It sounds like something firms would try to keep on the down low, through anonymous postings on Craigslist. But in the new economy, it’s apparently no big deal for law firms to ask career services offices to send over students who are so desperate they’re willing to work for free. The ABA Journal reports: Law […]

Blogging

Scamblogs Get Some Mainstream Media Attention

It’s been ten days since I last logged on to “the internet.” Ten days since I picked up a newspaper or let the dancing visions on MSNBC poison my mind. Ten days since I’ve tapped into the 140-character pulse of the world. While I’ve had my head in the sand, it appears that the mainstream […]

Bad Ideas

Unemployed J.D. Goes on a Hunger Strike

As of this writing, Ethan Haines, writer of the UnemployedJD blog, has gone 32 hours without food. I think the kid might be joking, but Haines said he is going on a hunger strike — to convince law schools to be more transparent about the employment options of graduates, before the schools rope them into […]