Terrible Jobs

I Need A Contract Attorney: An ‘Ivy League’ Contract Attorney

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Usually, when we discuss terrible jobs we’re talking about an employer offering a very low salary (or asking for payment), for a low-level, menial job. This time, the hourly rate is actually pretty decent — at least when you can find the work.

It’s one of the requirements that seems totally ridiculous and newsworthy:

Ivy League or comparable only, please.

This is not going to be a post about how contract work is beneath Ivy league (or comparable) attorneys. This is going to be a post about what kind of a giant douchebag you have to be to feel like your collection work can only be completed by Ivy league attorneys….

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Terrible Job Watch: Employer Claims To Offer Job Worth More Than Money, So He Won’t Pay Anybody

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Only the guy on top thinks this is a mutually beneficial relationship.

I know people are desperate. Last week, we wrote about a person who is so desperate, she was thinking of working for an allegedly disreputable attorney just to get experience.

But employers who are trying to take advantage of the desperation in the recent graduate market are real jerks. Trying to get desperate recent grads to work for free (or to actually pay you to work) isn’t taking advantage of a market opportunity, it’s taking advantage of people.

We’ve seen a lot of employers offering to “hire” people for free, but rarely with the kind of pompous overtones of the Craigslist ad below. It’s one of those ads that boasts about a lot of things in ALL CAPS, except for when it comes to paying people….

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Terrible Job Potpourri: Your Womb Is More Useful Than Your Law Degree

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It’s time to take another look at some of the worst jobs being offered to recent law graduates around the country. Most people think that getting a J.D. is a path to high-salaried positions where you work in an office that smells of rich mahogany.

For some people, it all works out. But many recent graduates of law school end up fighting it out on salaries between $30,000 and $60,000 a year. It’s the bi-modal salary distribution curve, folks, and it’s not your friend.

Today, we’re not looking at full-time jobs, though. We’re taking a look at some positions available for people looking to supplement their income. These are part-time positions, but if you are a student or a recent graduate who needs some extra cash, you should check these out.

And, you know, despair…

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‘Aggressive’ Associate Wanted, Albeit One With Extremely Low Expectations

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It's great to work this hard and get paid less than minimum wage. And by 'great' I mean 'amazingly horrible.'

Welcome to Above the Law’s ongoing series: “Jobs that will put y’all back in chains.”

Unlike many of our terrible jobs, today’s story about the terrible job market is at least a job for lawyers that involves the practice of law. And earning money.

Mind you, it’s not a lot of money. Depending on how many hours you work, it’s below minimum wage. And the ad says that the hours are grueling.

But the combination of low pay and hard work isn’t what makes this job particularly horrible. It’s the fact that the employer thinks they’re going to attract the best of the best with this pathetic excuse for legal work….

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Adventures in Babysitting: Does Babysitting Count As ‘Employed Upon Graduation’?

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We’ve done a surprising number of stories about law school career service officers who push babysitting gigs on their unemployed students. I say “surprising” because after our first story, you’d think law schools would figure out that law students don’t like being put up for jobs that they could have secured in high school.

Since that first one, most CSO personnel and other law school staffers have figured out that babysitting jobs are best when the employer is a professor or somebody else connected with the law school. Then it’s less of a “career of last resort” and more of “helping out a member of your community” (who happens to be well-connected).

But it looks like one school has regressed to the point of just insulting its students with a babysitting ad that kind of rubs salt in the unemployment wound….

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Collection Agency Is Just ‘Fee Shopping’ And Looking For Barely Competent Lawyers

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Low hanging fruit needs love too.

If you think collection agencies are mainly staffed with unscrupulous jerks who barely understand the law and care about it even less, you might not be wrong.

A tipster sent in a Craigslist ad for a foreclosure firm in Pennsylvania. It’s pretty straight forward in terms of what the agency is about, and what kind of lawyer they’re looking for. Let’s just say that they’re not looking for people who made law review.

In fact, they aren’t even looking for a lawyer who will prepare his or her own documents. If you can sign your name, you can be their lawyer….

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Summer Associate Stories: What To Do When You Find The Office Gun

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Regular readers of this blog will know that I don’t like guns. I don’t like gun owners, and the Second Amendment is the only amendment I can’t stand. If there was an unsecured firearm just hanging out around the ATL offices, I’d be very unhappy. Guns kill people and I’d be far more worried about a co-worker accidentally shooting the biggest target in the room than the Adam Kaisers of the world making a personal appearance to our offices.

But, even though I’m a pansy-ass liberal who trusts in power of peace over the false security of loaded weapons, I would not freak out if I found out that somebody around here kept a gun under his desk in case Evan Chesler hears one too many “Cravath no longer pays top of the market” references and decides to execute order 66.

Of course, I’m a grown man who knows that when the bullets start flying there’s no shame in running or hiding like a bitch. Other people with less experience and confidence might see a gun and turn into a useless pile of fear.

And that’s when the internet needs to step in and give some advice…

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Is Your Career Services Office This Lazy?

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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 Symplicity to remove stupid and insulting job prospects like the ones below, it’s time to change the entire approach to law school career services….

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Emory Law Students Rush to Apply for Babysitting ‘Opportunity’

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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….

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UCLA Law Offers Most Depressing Job to a Law Student (2010 Edition)

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It’s been a while since we’ve had a true contestant for the title of most depressing job offered to a law student. Sure, there have been a lot of jobs that offer $10 an hour, or even $0 an hour, for legal work. But at least those jobs were offering the opportunity to put long years of legal education to some sort of use.

No, the most depressing jobs for would-be lawyers in this economy are jobs they could have easily gotten before they went to law school. Or college. Really, the most depressing job I’ve seen appeared last year, when University of Texas law students were given the opportunity to do some babysitting for extra money. That’s an opportunity you present to responsible high school students, not students at the fifteenth-best law school in the country.

If you thought those days were behind us, think again. Take a look at the job that was blasted out yesterday to students at the other law school ranked #15, UCLA Law.

Traffic in L.A. is notoriously horrible, and now one UCLA law student might profit from his or her stop-and-go driving skills…

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