The Last Ship to Leave Middle Earth is Chartered for the Undying Lands of Riches and Eternal Life and a Job in the Legal Profession...So They Claimed in the Brochure.
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Free Labor
Do you need a job upon graduation? Internships and Networking are the answer. And don't forget perseverence. You'll finally be marketable by the time you finish that 11th internship.
When some moron tells me to go intern for a lawyer, I tell that person to blow me for free. (They would be gaining much needed experience, after all.)
Why should someone who has invested 7 years of their lives - plus six figures in student loans - subject himself to work for free while making someone else a bunch of money.
Starting law jobs are full of free labor opportunities for the unconnected. The problem for many unlucky law grads is they have to do this dance for more years than anticipated.
I've never had an issue with "paying my dues" - but that assumes that there is an actual bargained-for-exchange taking place, not slavery.
People need money to live, folks. This has been a well-understood economic concept since at least, well, feudalism. You can't keep asking people to do something for nothing without systemic consequences.
Meanwhile, the banksters and politicians get fatter in their compounds while people fall by the wayside, waiting on the apocalypse as far as I can tell. No doubt they have pretty swanky bunkers. They'll be ok while everything crumbles around them, I guess.
Most legal internships are garbage. The law schools get a number of them as favors which they then give out or help a select number of students get. The employers that give these to non-minority candidates are not actually looking to hire anyone. They are just looking to do a favor to the law school dean. They also don't really care if the intern learns anything. It is just a political favor. I had the misfortune of spending a summer in the DA's office. I won this dead end opportunity by getting top grades (and I had previous paralegal experience). When I got in, I realized that the internship would lead nowhere. The DA himself told me that he was so sick of people asking for these internships. He said that had explained to the law school more than a few times that there was nothing magic about the internships and that he had no jobs to offer to fourth tier people without connections.
When some moron tells me to go intern for a lawyer, I tell that person to blow me for free. (They would be gaining much needed experience, after all.)
ReplyDeleteWhy should someone who has invested 7 years of their lives - plus six figures in student loans - subject himself to work for free while making someone else a bunch of money.
You can't even vol to get experience; unless you have prior experience.
ReplyDeletetheyuppieattorney.blogspot.com
Starting law jobs are full of free labor opportunities for the unconnected. The problem for many unlucky law grads is they have to do this dance for more years than anticipated.
ReplyDeleteI've never had an issue with "paying my dues" - but that assumes that there is an actual bargained-for-exchange taking place, not slavery.
ReplyDeletePeople need money to live, folks. This has been a well-understood economic concept since at least, well, feudalism. You can't keep asking people to do something for nothing without systemic consequences.
Meanwhile, the banksters and politicians get fatter in their compounds while people fall by the wayside, waiting on the apocalypse as far as I can tell. No doubt they have pretty swanky bunkers. They'll be ok while everything crumbles around them, I guess.
Most legal internships are garbage. The law schools get a number of them as favors which they then give out or help a select number of students get. The employers that give these to non-minority candidates are not actually looking to hire anyone. They are just looking to do a favor to the law school dean. They also don't really care if the intern learns anything. It is just a political favor. I had the misfortune of spending a summer in the DA's office. I won this dead end opportunity by getting top grades (and I had previous paralegal experience). When I got in, I realized that the internship would lead nowhere. The DA himself told me that he was so sick of people asking for these internships. He said that had explained to the law school more than a few times that there was nothing magic about the internships and that he had no jobs to offer to fourth tier people without connections.
ReplyDelete