Somebody shake me, please

Alright enough whinin' and complainin' for now.

I don't have much insight to offer on the topic of jobs (as I do not have one), but since the economy is in the pooper and many people are feeling it for real now, I thought it might be worthy of a post.

First, the outlook is bad at my law school. Many people I know do not have jobs, nor any possibility of a job for the summer. Further, most 3rd years I know have nothing lined up, with the Bar exam looming for them next summer. We had a pretty decent OCI showing at my law school, too - but they only seemed to call back minorities or those with the highest GPA. Of those people, it is looking like the GPA won out over being a minority. I know of a few people who had cushy jobs over the summer, but were threatened with raising-their-grades-or-else ultimatums. I am not sure of what has come of this. I had a nice cushy job last summer in an area of law I do not wish to practice in. While they gave me an offer to stay on during the school year, there was no promise of work for next summer - and frankly, I would kinda like to get away from that field.

Anyhow, people talk about jobs at my law school. I know of a couple people who have offers but are a little shy to talk about them because they don't want to upset anyone or rub it in anyone's face that they actually have an offer when the reality is, the great majority of us do not. Mostly, however, the great majority of us just laugh at ourselves and the shitty situation and push the job-worry to the back of our minds because finding a free lunch on campus is more important, and after that we worry about exams. I have friends at other law schools that have said it's pretty brutal right now - no one talks about jobs at all because the presumption is no one has one.

To deal with the poopy economy, the career office has put together a special little "committee" to try and come up with strategies to help us get jobs. I've never known a committee to ever actually do anything, so it seems to me their purpose is more to give us students the idea that they are doing something. For all we know, they sit in a conference room once a month and play poker. I have no idea what goes on at their meetings. No one does.

There are the usual resume-workshops and "How to find a job" panel discussions every now and then, but all of these strategies don't really seem to be working for anyone. Frankly, I'm scared. I think law school is a horrible investment, and I wouldn't advise a single soul to enter school - be it a top 10 or not - right now. The job market isn't what it used to be, and it's fucking expensive.

My strategy right now is to reach out to the places I worked before law school began - something I never wanted to have to do. But I'm going to do it. It's that bad.

If that doesn't work, I am going to try and get a job at the law firm I worked at over the summer. And if that fails, I will be working for free - if I can nail down one of those jobs, that is.

It's tough out there. I hope it gets better, but I think my class is pretty much fucked.