Lets take a wee break from our usually scheduled program of things I want to buy and goats and other nonsense and look at the economy.
Yes. I'm serious.
This
article from Above the Law citing an NALP study about the jobs rate for 2011 law school graduates was deeply saddening. If you're in the legal field, or have a friend in the legal field,
go read it... I'll wait.
READ IT.
ok. So the overall employment rate is 85%. That's in any job. So the friend of mine who is working at a gas station is not part of the unemployed 15%, he counts as a law school graduate who is employed! That is insane. Completely insane.
I also loved and really appreciated that this article points out that really the class of 2011 didn't know better. People assume that since the economy tanked in 2008 I should've known better, but the economy tanked for the legal sector in the FALL of 2008, after I'd started law school. The writing may have been on the wall in the beginning of 2008, but I'd already spent a summer studying for the LSAT, applied to Law School in 2007 and been accepted by February 2008. It felt a little too late to turn back.
I feel incredibly lucky/blessed to have a job, to be part of the employed 85% of law school graduates from 2011. Incredibly blessed to not feel the stress of having no job, and even better I work at a private firm (something only 49% of graduates have achieved).
Though, I am in the group of about 20% of 2011 law school grads who have a job, but it does not require bar passage. ie, not a real attorney.
When I went into law school I hoped to leave law school with an attorney job that paid over $100K a year... as law school went on I realized that $75K was a more reasonable goal... as law school ended, I just wanted a job, any job, and hopefully they would pay me. I suppose scaling back your expectations is a part of life and growing up, but when national reviews of my chosen profession show that it isn't just MY dreams that have been diminished, that it is thousands of attorneys who graduated in 2011 who are unemployed or employed in non-attorney jobs, it makes me wonder who the recession is over for. Because it isn't me. And it isn't for those I graduated with last May.
The name of this blog is La Vie of me, and the lack of job prospects for attorneys right now is a large part of my la vie, and tomorrow we'll go back to our regularly scheduled program, but I just wanted to let you know about this part of my life.
HAPPY MONDAY!
