uncertain future
Economies world over–and my future employment prospects–have changed dramatically since I applied to law school in 2007. Sometimes I second-guess my decision to pursue a legal career, but the truth is that freelance writing gigs (my current bread and butter) are becoming scarce, too, and I am not sure I have the necessary fire in the belly to resuscitate my prospects in that arena. After all, a key reason I opted for law school in the first place was that I didn’t see myself years hence as a 50-year-old marketing copywriter. To continue on, I knew I’d have to ramp up my business and make the shift from actual writing to consulting, from technician to executive. Ideally, I’d have to secure clients nationwide, not just in my region. Well, my heart just wasn’t in it.
Nevertheless, articles like “Graduating UW-Madison law students forced to seek volunteer jobs” don’t exactly make my day. The new trend of Big Law firms offering incoming associates stipends in exchange for accepting a delayed start date and securing a public interest position for the interim is likely have wide-ranging effects on the legal job market.* What will happen to the people who always intended to seek public interest jobs now they are competing with firm-funded candidates? What will happen if the big firms ultimately rescind their job offers even after the deferral year? What will happens when rising 1L and 2L law students can’t gain experience via summer jobs?
Predictably, this Wisconsin State Journal article spawned a number of anti-lawyer comments, along the lines of “Boohoo for the overpaid bloodsuckers.” My personal favorite came from “packer by birth” who wrote with a certain amount of color and verve:
Perhaps these new lawyers should volunteer for medical experiments. They should be very easy to operate on because they are heartless, gutless and spineless and their heads and butts are interchangeable. Personally, I would like some free help from a lawyer, even a green one, to make up for all the money I’ve been forced to waste over the years because of these reptiles. I hope some of these young people make a career change and choose a profession that contributes to society instead of sucking the life out of it.
So there’s my answer: If the legal job market doesn’t shape up in the next three years, I can always look forward to doing time as a medical guinea pig or, perhaps, metamorphosing into a reptile. In either case, I will continue have plenty of good material for my blog!
* See Above the Law for all the gory details.
