In case you haven’t noticed, 2012 is going to be the year where I try to take a more critical look at the level of career service that law students are receiving from their law schools. The legal job market has been crappy for a long enough time that law schools and career service officers should have adjusted their game plan. Rolling into 2012 with 2007 career service programs is simply unacceptable.
A couple of days ago, I offered some networking advice to the functional alcoholics in the audience. Sure, my thoughts were a little bit outside the box, but they were better than the kind of standard networking tripe most law students get from their overmatched CSO administrators.
Case in point, take a look as some networking advice sent around by the Dean of Students at a New York-area law school just last week. The advice was perfect if the dean was trying to ensure that the students made no impression, and left all employers wondering why they bothered to show up for a silly networking event in the first place….
Continue reading “Dean of Students Gets Networking Advice All Wrong”
I wish I could name names; I really do. But I work at the world’s leading insurance broker for law firms, and I can’t go around offending the clients (or potential clients). You’ll just have to guess.
All of these interviews actually took place. I swear it.
First, there was the senior partner at a major New York firm, interviewing me at the start of my second year of law school: “You know, a lot of students want to make excuses for not having perfect grades. Sometimes, those excuses are pretty good: You hear from the single mothers. You hear from people who are working full-time and going to law school at night. The excuses aren’t bad.
“But I have to tell you something: If you have to give me an excuse, I don’t want to hear it. We have too many people who are perfect looking for jobs here. If you’re perfect, we’ll hire you. If you have to make an excuse, don’t even bother telling me. If you have to make an excuse, we’re not making you an offer.”
I didn’t say these stories were uplifting. I said only that they were true.
The next one’s at my expense:
Continue reading “Inside Straight: Tales From The Interview Crypt”
This is a real drink in a real glass with enough ice that it'll be appropriately watered down for networking.
There’s a list that’s been going around the past two days that purports to be A Drink-by-Drink Guide for networking events.
Don’t get your hopes up. It’s not really drinking advice for legal networking events. It’s regular advice for legal networking events that happens to use the word “drink” — instead of “level” or “number” — to demarcate the five tips in the article.
It’s fine advice, especially if you are so awkward socially that you can cool off a hot craps table simply with your inability to execute a high-five.
However, as a functioning alcoholic (emphasis on FUNction), I’ve got some real advice on how alcohol can help get you through these painful and boring networking events without being so terrified of not getting a job that your scent of desperation makes everybody want to stand three feet away from you.
Here’s how to look cool and confident while knocking back a few without getting so sloshed you end up on Above the Law in the morning….
Continue reading “How Alcohol Can Help You Network”
I recently participated in a Room for Debate forum for the New York Times on the controversial subject of unpaid internships. Critics of these positions argue that such exploitative arrangements contribute to “constricted social and professional mobility, growing inequality, and an economy whose top tier is becoming less and less diverse” (in the words of Ross Perlin, author of Intern Nation: How to Earn Nothing and Learn Little in the Brave New Economy).
In my contribution, I offer a measured defense of unpaid internships — of the non-abusive variety, in which the intern receives a valuable learning experience (and doesn’t just do scut work) — and also a defense of the status quo (under which most unpaid internships are technically illegal, but enforcement isn’t super-vigorous). You can read my NYT piece here (or on page 9 of yesterday’s Sunday Review section, if you’re a print person). You can also read a piece by Camille Olson, a labor and employment partner at Seyfarth Shaw, over here (focusing on the legal aspects of unpaid internships, and offering general guidelines to companies considering them).
Speaking of interns, Above the Law is looking for one — a paid intern, for the record. Details appear below, along with general information about our hiring needs, and our policy on guest posts or outside contributions….
Continue reading “On the Legality of Unpaid Internships
(And: ATL seeks a paid intern.)“
Insert face of law school student above.
Instead of hiring a new professor to teach Cross-Cultural Comparison of Masturbatory Prohibitions, I want law schools to start paying six-figure salaries to the people they hire to work in their career services offices. I want U.S. News to include the number of CSO professionals and money spent on CSOs as data points in their law school rankings. I want deans to start asking rich alumni if they would like to donate to help fight mental disability and extreme laziness in career services offices.
Because honestly, the lack of effort put in by career services professionals at the nation’s law schools really seems to be out of hand. Maybe they’ve just been collectively beaten down by the years of terrible job prospects and the throngs of students in need of help. Maybe they believe that there really is nothing they can do, and they are significantly more worried about protecting their own jobs than finding jobs for eager law students. Maybe the lack of institutional support and respect for their efforts makes them feel like second-class citizens whenever the Professor of Impractical Studies That Serve No Clients walks into the room.
I don’t know why we’re here, but when you can’t even trust your CSO to effectively cull Simplicity to remove stupid and insulting job prospects like the ones below, it’s time to change the entire approach to law school career services….
Continue reading “Is Your Career Services Office This Lazy?”
You may be one of those people who realized early on that law firm partnership is not for you. For me, this was the case even before I started law school. Law was going to be a second career for me, and by the day of my first 1L class, I already had two small children vying for my attention. Surprisingly, having small kids while in law school full time was not easy. You really need to be engaged in your kids’ interests, which can be hard when you’re also trying to dodge Socratic bullets for the first time. There was one semester when it literally took me an entire week to defeat the Elite Four in Pokémon Yellow. Tough times, tough times.
I later went into Biglaw with the understanding that the experience would look good on my résumé, and that I would get what people refer to as “great training.” (And, of course, the money was nothing to complain about, either.) And I actually did enjoy the work. But you can’t work Biglaw hours and expect to just breeze through all of the Pokémon versions — Gold, Ruby, Platinum, Black, etc. — there are so many of them! It’s just not possible, and I will challenge anyone who says it is.
So once you’ve decided that the in-house life is the life for you (or that there’s no way in hell they’ll make someone who’s so obsessed with kids’ games partner), when’s the best time to make the move? Well, it depends….
Continue reading “Moonlighting: Going In-House? It’s About Time”
The last time we wrote about somebody on the Emory Law faculty trying to “help out” struggling, jobless Emory Law students, we were covering the train wreck of a commencement speech by professor Sara Stadler. She told graduating law students, many of whom didn’t have a job, to “get over” their sense of entitlement.
You’d think that the Emory faculty wouldn’t risk condescending to their students again, even in the name of trying to help them. But sitting in my inbox is a series of emails from Sarah Shalf, the director of the Emory field placement program, offering students the opportunity to babysit kids and “network” at her Super Bowl party.
Condescending? For a certain point of view, absolutely. But Shalf is honestly trying to help, and she’s using her party to do more for students than Emory Law career services is really doing right now. It’s not her fault that Emory Law students are so desperate for job opportunities that babysitting at a Super Bowl party where judges and lawyers will be represents a good deal.
Such a good deal that Shalf had to devise an application process for the babysitting gig….
Continue reading “Emory Law Students Rush to Apply for Babysitting ‘Opportunity’”
Hey 1Ls, is law school getting you down? Are you tired of doing your 1L bitchwork, like briefing cases? Then have we got a deal for you! For the low, low price of a weekly cup of coffee, you can outsource all of your undesirable tasks to an up-and-coming sucker! Because why try your hardest to succeed when you can get someone else to do it for you?
As one tipster puts it, this is exactly what an “unbelievably entrepreneurial 1L” is doing at a top-tier, southwestern law school. Watch out, law schools: you’re not the only ones who can play the game of duping unsuspecting undergraduates.
Does this kid have what it takes to farm out his work to a gunner in training? Let’s find out….
Continue reading “How to Succeed in Law School Without Really Trying? Make a College Kid Do Your Work”
Here at Above the Law, we try to notify our readers about job opportunities for law students and lawyers. Some of these positions are less desirable and some are more desirable, but hey: in this economy, a job is a job.
(At least as long as it pays. Some jobs don’t, of course.)
Back in the fall, we reminded you about the application deadline for the Presidential Management Fellows Program (PMF). In case you’re not familiar with the PMF program, check out the official website.
Now we bring you an update about the program….
Continue reading “Congratuations to the 2012 Presidential Management Fellows Finalists”
You realize your kids won't even learn how to do this.
Given the tough job market, law students are doing everything they can to get a leg up on the competition. Whether that means showing up with freshly baked cookies before the interviews, or pumping out handwritten thank you notes after they meet people, students are going to the mattresses.
I’m serious about the cookies and notes. I had a person ask me if she should bring cookies to her interview (to which I said, “I think they’ll be more eager to receive their blow jobs…. you realize I’m joking, right? Do not bring cookies or blow people in interviews.”) For thank you notes, even some career service professionals suggest handing them out. Because nothing says “I’m desperate to have one more second of your attention before you throw this away” like a thank you card.
But why should a law student hand-write his own handwritten thank you card? This is American legal education in 2012, baby. Surely, there is a law student out there who is just desperate enough to write another law student’s thank you cards. At least that’s what one student at a top law school was hoping….
Continue reading “How Much for an Ivy-Educated Scribe?”
What happens when you put thirty American lawyers in a London pub where the drinks are free for the evening? Well, let’s just say it’s rather different to what happens when thirty British lawyers are assembled in equivalent conditions.
The attendees at last week’s inaugural Benedict Arnold Society meeting for young and young-ish American lawyers in the United Kingdom, held at the Witness Box pub in the heart of London’s legal district, were impeccably behaved. No one collapsed, vomited or — in spite of my continual prying for insider information — gave away a single secret about their firms. In fact, I think I was the only one there who was drunk.
Still, my memories of at least the first part of the evening remain. What stood out was how nicely many of the assembled Yank expats had done by coming to London — be it because they had saved money on legal education costs, were enjoying heightened status due to their willingness to travel, or were appreciating the health-inducing lighter U.K. workloads.
Several had undertaken their legal studies in the U.K., thus circumventing the enormous fees charged by U.S. law schools….
Continue reading “Letter from London: Can Jobless U.S. Law Grads Find Work in Britain?”
Not shown: the empty bottle of Jack in this guy's carrel.
Last week, I derisively noted that legal blogs were pushing a silly story in U.S. News about great careers that you can pursue with a law degree. No matter how bad legal hiring gets, law schools like pushing the “you can do anything with a law degree” angle, based on the anecdotal evidence of those who were lucky enough to parlay their J.D. degrees into something non-legal.
Obviously, I’ve got some anecdotes of my own.
But here’s a job, a real live job, that’s actually being offered to law students as we speak (or type). If you really want to know “what you can do with a law degree,” take a freaking look….
Continue reading “Things You Can Do With a Law Degree: Bank Teller”
Meet the new Biglaw. Same as the old Biglaw.
As we mentioned in Morning Docket, the Wall Street Journal has a good article about how various recession-era cutbacks have become entrenched in Biglaw. If you have been paying attention or are a current law student, you know the issues: smaller entry-level classes, stagnant salaries, and a partnership track long enough to make a first-year Ph.D. student laugh.
Basically, if you were already a Biglaw partner when the recession hit, you are likely to say, “What recession?” Your profits per partner have probably gone up, despite the general economy’s woes. Other industries use economic downturns to retool their business models and develop new ways to compete. Not Biglaw. It appears that Biglaw has used the recession to fire a bunch of people, exclude new partners, and keep associate salaries and bonuses at recessionary levels. They haven’t developed a new business model; they’ve just found a way to reduce the costs of the old business model.
Biglaw partner: It’s great work if you can get it. The WSJ even found one partner who was so busy loving himself and his life that he appears to be totally oblivious to the struggles of everybody else…
Continue reading “Biglaw’s New Normal Isn’t Great For New Talent”
Landing a Summer Public Interest Legal Job: hotsexyskippy@yahoo.com is not an appropriate email address to have on your résumé. LOL.
– PSLawNet, offering job search advice over Twitter.
The “commenters” at Above the Law are — as you know if you’ve ever looked — a tough crowd. If you’re a partner at a big firm, then you’re a loser, because you’re a workaholic stiff with no life. If you’re a partner at a small firm, then you’re a loser, because you couldn’t succeed at a big firm. If you’re an associate at a big firm, you’re a loser, because you’re a lifeless drone who doesn’t have the courage to pursue your dreams. If you’re a scholar, then you’re a loser: Those who can’t do, teach. If you’re a judge, then you couldn’t cut it in private practice, so you had to bail out.
You get my drift.
The correspondents who choose to write to me personally (by clicking on this link) are an entirely different breed. (Perhaps it’s because they’re not anonymous.) My correspondents have been consistently civilized and reasonable, and often quite thoughtful. But I recently received a well-crafted, nicely written email from a law student who utterly missed the boat. I devote this column to that correspondent, and to others who might be suffering from a similar misconception.
Here’s the backstory: I wrote a column about how improving the quality of law firm interviews might improve the quality of associates that a law firm hires. A law-student-correspondent suggested that law firms might in fact not care about the quality of associates. To paraphrase: “Law firms count on having high attrition in the associate ranks. So you need a fair number of associates who will either leave on their own or have to be shown the door. And law firms make very few partners, so, after an entering class has been winnowed down over the course of a decade, the firm is likely to have one or two remaining candidates who can be offered partnership. That’s true regardless of the quality of the entering class.”
That email is proof that insanity can be made to sound plausible . . .
Continue reading “Inside Straight: Silly Email Of The Year Award”
Despite the media echo chamber saying that the economy is improving, it’s obviously still tough to find work. Especially for lawyers. Everyone says you’re supposed to have a can-do attitude, but we sometimes prefer to think about all the things that you can’t do as an attorney.
Included in that list is getting a paying job at the U.S. Department of Justice. The DOJ has had a hiring freeze in place for a year now. We’ve heard reports of some thawing — i.e., selected parts of the DOJ receiving authorization to fill a handful of priority positions — but, for the most part, there are hardly any paying lawyer jobs to be had in that division of government.
Instead, U.S. Attorney’s Offices around the country have been posting unpaid Special Assistant United States Attorney positions for some time now. We covered them last May. My colleague (and former assistant U.S. attorney) David Lat defended the SAUSA gigs somewhat, arguing that the nonpaying jobs might not be as bad as they seem. It’s fun, exciting work, and it provides valuable experience and serious professional credibility.
There is a crucial, ominous difference between then and now, though. Previous SAUSA jobs were generally aimed at entry-level or fairly junior attorneys. Now we’ve got a recent opening that’s asking for more.…
Continue reading “The DOJ Wants You, Experienced Attorneys — To Work for Free”
Wait, you expected a real burning man? Well, that's just silly.
As you know, some people have taken to suing law schools because despite the education and expense, they find themselves unemployed.
Suing people is such an American way of handling a problem. “Wahhh, your system took advantage of me and thousands like me. I’m angry. I’m gonna sue you, and even if I lose, it’ll make you all sadfaced.”
In other parts of the world, they know how to freaking protest a scam:
A 27-year-old Moroccan who set himself on fire to protest his unemployment died from his burns Tuesday in a Casablanca hospital, his wife said.
Boom goes the dynamite! (Too soon?)
Continue reading “If Lawsuits Fail, Unemployed Law Students Still Have the Self-Immolation Option”
There’s a really funny post up on Constitutional Daily, in which the protagonist — who holds a J.D. from NYU Law and was laid off from Biglaw during the recession — recounts his inability to secure a job at Target. It got me thinking of that other great lie that law schools tell incoming law students: “Yada yada, you can do anything with a law degree… also, I’d like to interest you in partial ownership of the Brooklyn Bridge.”
But many J.D. holders have found out the hard way that holding a law degree only opens doors to “law” jobs. They aren’t degrees of general utility.
If anything, they close more doors than they open….
Continue reading “What ‘Can’t’ You Do With a Law Degree?”
Kyle McEntee (left) and Patrick Lynch (right), co-founders of Law School Transparency (LST).
Late last year, plaintiffs’ lawyer David Anziska pledged to make 2012 “the year of law school litigation.” Anziska, who’s currently spearheading efforts to sue law schools over allegedly misleading employment statistics, told my colleague Staci Zaretsky that he and his team members “want to sue as many law schools as we can to bring them into the fray.”
That’s all well and good — for plaintiffs’ lawyers, and for news outlets like ours seeking juicy stories to cover. But there are other ways to achieve reform. So here’s another thought: Could 2012 instead be the year of law school transparency? Transparency achieved voluntarily, by law schools coming forward on their own to share comprehensive data about how their graduates are faring in the job market?
In the weeks since we wrote about the University of Chicago Law School providing very detailed employment data about its recent graduating classes, based on our interview with Dean Michael Schill, we’ve heard from deans, professors, alumni and students of other law schools, all with similar messages. They believe that their schools, like Chicago, are also transparent about graduate employment outcomes — and they want to be recognized for it.
This chorus of “me too!” messages raises a promising possibility: Is law school transparency becoming, for lack of a better word, “cool”? Will honesty about employment data become the hot new trend for U.S. legal education?
Perhaps. But there’s still a long way to go, as shown by a report issued this week by Law School Transparency….
Continue reading “Law School Transparency: Who’s Naughty and Who’s Nice?”
At the start of this new year, what is the outlook like for legal employment? There’s certainly a fair amount of bad news out there, particularly for recent law school graduates.
But what about for denizens of Biglaw, the lawyers fortunate (or unfortunate) enough to work at the nation’s largest law firms? What does 2012 hold for them?
Earlier this month, my colleague Elie made some predictions for the legal profession. I will follow in his footsteps and venture some prophecies of my own for the year….
Continue reading “Is the Legal Recession Finally Ending?”
