Symplicity

Revamping Career Services: Two Modest Proposals

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There are two sides to law school career services. One side you meet at conferences and events. The CSO employees you meet in public are smart, earnest people. They care about their students, and they know better than their deans the challenges of the legal job market. They’re pleasing to look at and interested in meaningful reform. You end conversations with them feeling like they’re underpaid.

The other side of CSO is the side you only hear about from the disgruntled students who actually need them. If the student has a job, they say there is one good CSO person in an office beset by lazy morons. If the 3L doesn’t have a job, the whole office is a solitaire-playing, baby-making, incompetent den of secretaries who are contractually obligated to use the word “network” in every single sentence.

I think both sides are true. There are some real CSO gems who work hard, and the law schools like to show these people off. But the system of law school career services is based on legal jobs economy that is gone and never coming back. People are using 2003 skills to contend with the 2013 job market, and it’s failing students all across the country.

It’s failing even students at Ivy League schools, as this story will point out. But I have two simple solutions that law schools could implement for next fall that would significantly improve the performance of law school CSOs….

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Maryland Law’s Response Highlights Career Services ‘Expertise’

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Yesterday, we brought you news of a job opportunity that is currently available on the University of Maryland School of Law’s Symplicity job bank. When we first wrote about the listing, we called it a “career services nightmare.” After all, the job had more to do with orange parking cones than the law.

As it turns out, the powers that be at Maryland Law weren’t very happy that Above the Law called them out. Instead of hanging their heads in shame for trying to sell a job as a parking garage manager to its students, the career development office issued a vigorous defense of this exciting opportunity in vehicular supervision and coordination.

The email was written by the assistant dean for career development herself. What did she have to say?

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Today’s Terrible Jobs Have A ‘Do It Yourself’ Feel

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You have the tools to build your own life.

Another day, and another round-up of terrible job opportunities available to J.D. holders. I think it’s important to continue bringing these jobs to your attention. I think it’s important to have a place on the web where people can go to answer the question: Why is it a big deal if Indiana Tech opens another law school? Somebody needs to keep an eye on what future graduates from such institutions will be doing for a living.

Today we’ve got two God-awful job opportunities. As we’ve said repeatedly, you can’t get on our radar as a terrible job unless you are offering something more interesting than low pay for overqualified individuals (though offering a Depression era hourly wage is always a good start).

Check out these two jobs, which add the insult to injury that unemployed J.D. holders are really looking for…

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Law School Seeks One-Eyed Man To Lead Blind

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Somewhere down there live law students worse off than you.

You don’t see this every day. We have one law school offering the recent graduates of more prestigious law schools the job of teaching its law students how to pass the bar. It’s probably a great opportunity for people with only limited experience to get into legal academia, but man, I think it would make the students at the offering law school feel kind of crappy.

I mean, the position their school is looking to fill is called “Bar Passage Counselor.” It’ll be a non-faculty, administrative position. One of the core duties will be to “teach a law school course developed to increase students’ likelihood of bar exam success.” Isn’t that, like, the whole point of law school? What does it say about this law school that it’ll be looking for a non-faculty person to spearhead this effort?

At least they’re trying to fill this position with a person who went to a good law school….

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