By taking away the possibility of easy employment in high-paying jobs, the economic downturn may end up helping the current crop of law students.
Very few law students at elite schools make meaningful explorations of the broad array of career choices available to law school graduates. Instead, lured by prestige and a high salary, they march through on-campus interviews to large urban law firms, where a great many end up leading unfulfilled lives.
As the jobs with large salaries disappear, law students will draw on the thoughtfulness, intelligence and perseverance that got them into law school in the first place in order to find employment that they actually find rewarding. They will also find creative ways to pay their loans and other expenses.
Most law graduates already do not expect a starting salary of $160,000 and yet are able to make ends meet. Graduates of elite schools will adjust to the new financial realities and come out better for it.
What an insane, paternalistic point of view. Anyone intelligent enough to read this letter should be offended by it. Poor law students! They used to have so many employment choices! Good grief! First of all, no matter how you feel about law firms, how can you possibly make the argument that a law firm job, at $160K/year, is worse than no job, poverty, and sitting in front of your computer all day desperately sending out resumes? Second of all, is there a SHORTAGE of lawyers for all these other amazing jobs that this guy wants lawyers to find? No! The places people can find rewarding employment? Those jobs are already filled! And when there's a vacancy, you know who ought to get them? The people who would have wanted them enough in the first place not to be seduced by the lure of a law firm job that wasn't right for them. Why should an abundance of choice be blamed for people making bad choices. People who make bad choices deserve the outcomes they get. People who are intelligent enough to get into law school should be intelligent enough to live with the consequences of their decisions. If you can be swayed to come work for a law firm, you deserve the law firm life. And if we hire you even though you won't like it here, we deserve to have you, and to have to deal with you complaining all day.
Here's the problem. What about the law students at "non-elite" schools, who don't have these choices, and have long had to do what this author says. Who had to use their intelligence and resourcefulness to find a job. These graduates who have long been "able to make ends meet."
Well, they're shit out of luck now, because all of those jobs they really wanted are going to be snapped up by "elite" law school graduates who'd rather be working at firms. So all these jobs that probably ought to be filled by people passionate about doing them (instead of just upset they can't work for a law firm and settling for an inferior backup choice) will be filled by the "elite" and everyone else can go sit on the unemployment line.
Taking away choices is great! Law firms are worse than poverty! The recession has vanquished evil from the face of the Earth!
Ridiculous.
