Law Students

NY Times on Law Firm Layoffs and Cutbacks

By Erik Schmidt

This article tells us something we already know: Law firms are playing it careful these days. I wonder though, how are law schools going to respond to this? Some law school graduates (self included) elect not to become lawyers. Some want to become lawyers but can’t find good jobs in the legal field. And some find legal jobs and get the axe because of circumstances beyond their control.

From what I’ve seen, law schools give lip service to the notion that a law degree is useful in a variety of non-legal fields, but they don’t do a very good job of exposing those options for students. The result is that many students go into tremendous debt and wind up having to scramble to find a job outside the legal profession, without any real help from the school that was more than willing to take their tuition money.

I guess this gets to a fundamental question about the role of law schools: Are they simply professional schools that churn out lawyers? Or are they graduate schools that turn out critical thinkers who can apply their skills in a variety of jobs?

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Full post as published by Mac Law Students on November 14, 2008 (boomark / email).