It'll All Work Out

Don't worry. It'll all work out. Things will fall into place. You'll end up where you're supposed to be.  Have you applied for unpaid internships? Have you even applied anywhere? You're not getting anything because you're not trying hard enough. Stop being lazy. There are so many opportunities for lawyers. You can be anything!

Just find your passion.  Then it'll all work out.

If you just graduated with a J.D., jobless, then you heard something to this effect at least three times on graduation day. Not to mention at 3L luncheons, alumni events, career service events, and from family and friends.  Surely this phrase is meant to comfort us.  To instill in us the drive to carry on and prosper.  As if without this tidbit of advice we juris doctorates might not know we should continue to apply for jobs. Of course we want to find a legal job after all this time and money.  But 'it'll all work out' is not the right advice.

Following advice is part of what got me here.  You can't make a life out of dancing, it's just a hobby. You're smart, you should go to college.  College grads are special and should aspire to save the world.  Shaping the law will help you save the world.  You should go to law school. (What else are you going to do with a liberal arts degree?)

So you want to succeed at law school? Here's what you do: 1) excel at legal research and writing, 2) get onto law review, 3) become close with your professors, 4) get varied and prestigious internships, 5) get a CALI award or two, 6) maybe do a moot court, 7) graduate with honors, and 8) find a way to distinguish yourself.  Check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check. Phew, got 'em all. Law school success! But wait, law school success no longer equals a job at the end of your legal education.

There was a time when intelligent people could go to law school and not have too many problems finding jobs. Of course they got rejection letters.  But come August, the majority had paid legal positions.  These are the professors we look up to, the alumni we seek out, the attorneys we interview with, the grandparents, aunts and uncles we sit with at Thanksgiving dinner. These are the baby boomers and they lived in a different time.  Look around.  The market is saturated. The economy sucks. There are too many lawyers. There are ever more law school graduates. There are far fewer law jobs.  And yet we jobless J.D.'s are surprised. We shouldn't be.  And besides, it's not the end of the world.

Some people will say it was our fault for not doing the research, or the law school's fault for not portraying accurate job placement data, or the economy's fault for not having enough available positions for all of us graduating law students.  But in the end it doesn't really matter whose fault it is.  It matters that we stop pushing students towards law degrees, increasingly high debt, and a job market that just can't accomodate them. There are jobs out there other than the ones listed in the Game of Life. And we should learn more about them before we are 27 with a law degree, bachelor's and master's degrees, and a pile of debt, down-playing resumes to try and get a job as a barista and a beer wench just to makes ends meet until 'it all works out.'

This is the situation we are in and it sucks.  We need to realize that it sucks and be honest about it.  When you told people you were considering law school, did anyone tell you that you shouldn't go? That you should really think about it?  That there aren't jobs? No. If it was anything like my experience, you heard about all the wonderful opportunities lawyers have. About your cousin who works in Switzerland, or a friend of a friend who clerked on the Fifth Circuit and is now a partner at a big firm. You don't hear about the barred barista or the thousands of jobless J.D.'s upon graduation these days.  What will you tell people who ask you whether they should go to law school?

Now this blog is not a sounding board for whining about the woes of graduating without a job.  The situation sucks, but we can deal with it.  This blog is meant to shine the light on the reality of most graduating 3Ls: we are jobless J.D.'s who must now spend two months studying 10 hours a day in order to pass a bar exam, wait three months, and then wait for a job to come along where we can finally utilize this $100,000+ license.  This blog is meant to dispel the good advice from the bad advice so that we can move on with our lives. And in the process maybe it will help those who think that law school equals a well-paying job upon graduation realize that those days are past.

So, starting next week, amidst the excitement of starting bar prep (hooray!), I will be following the advice we've been given. I need a distraction from learning everything I was supposed to learn in the past three years anyway.  Who knows, maybe some of it will work. So tell me what advice you've been given, and I'll test its veracity.   For now, we'll start with find your passion.

Find my passion and it'll all work out? Well then. If you say so.