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Law student looking for employment. Legal job market is awful. Feeling pretty gloomy about the future.Advice?

I am a third year law student graduating in May. My grades are not so great but my experience is. Here is the question for any lawyers or law students out there: is now a good time to send out resumes to firms? I feel like they will just throw them in the trash. Any advice? Why the hell did I go to law school?

Public Comments

1. Sorry you had to find out law sucks.........I'll bet you have a ton of student loans.......and I hate to tell you this..... Advice from another out of work Attorney who can’t pay his student loans….. Warning! Jobs in the field of Law are drying up FAST!! This is not a good field to invest time and/or money into. This is a SHRINKING vocational field. Many reasons. Many people today think they can do their own legal work, thanks to the Internet. We simply have WAY TOO MANY Legal Professionals - we have an absolute GLUT!! ("Legal Professionals" includes, but is not limited to: Attorneys/Lawyers, Paralegals, Legal Assistants, Legal Secretaries, Bailiffs, Court Reporters, etc, etc) Regarding being a Paralegal: Paralegals can be found in many types of businesses. Employers (usually law firms) in the field of Law want employees with BACHELORS degrees from traditional universities/colleges. Those "certificates" you sometimes see advertised, aren't worth the paper they are printed on - they are generally SCAMS. Even IF you finish law school, you won't be able to find a job when you are done. Since this vocational field is shrinking, many new attorneys/lawyers are, themselves, having to work "down" as Paralegals, Legal Assistants, Legal Secretaries, Bailiffs, Court Reporters, etc, etc, to simply try to keep some of THEIR bills paid <THIS would be your competition. And the competition is FIERCE!! Now... the law schools know this, but they won't tell you the truth >that the job market/economy is SATURATED with WAY TOO MANY Legal Professionals. Instead the schools will feed you a fairytale and will LIE to you. The root of the problem is we have too many law schools. We are in a recession, and the schools are fighting for their own survival - they will tell students ANYTHING to get to the students' money. (Which is why they won't tell you the truth about the job market for the field of Law.) AND these schools continue to recruit and churn out even MORE Legal Professionals............. If you don't believe me, then just do a SEARCH here on Yahoo Answers to see what other posters are saying about the current status of the field of Law. In the book "So You Want to be a Lawyer? by Marianne Calabrese and susanne Calabrese (ISBN 0-88391-136-1): "The United States has more lawyers than any other country in the world. About 38,000 students graduate EACH YEAR from 200 law schools in the United States. The competition is very keen for jobs and clients." If you want a JOB when you are done with your studies, consider and look into the field of >>>HEALTHCARE! <THIS is where the jobs are! and scholarships!
2. I've answered your question before and this time I'll add more detail. Law schools perpetrate the false myth that a lawyer is "supposed" to work for a law firm and earn six figures. I'll believe that when I believe that Athena sprang fully mature and wearing her armor from the head of Zeus. The essence of law is that it is a liberal profession--"LIBeral" in the sense of "free" (cf. LIBerty). We lawyers are knights in shining armor, thrusting our lances, not at windmills, but at injustice. We clean up the air and water, we make cars safer, we recover money for orphans, we secure rights for minorities, etc. Most of us do it on our own or in an office where we share rent and other expenses with one or two colleagues. We take continuing education classes so we can learn to help the debtor who goes to bankruptcy court after she has been cheated by a bank or an insurance company. We help the tenant who is being unjustly evicted. We are the paladins who protect those who do not have the benefit of our education and skills. We pass the bar and go down to the office of the local bar association. The people there can usually tell us which lawyers have an extra room for rent in their office and who might reduce the rent if we take care of the cases they don't want to handle. Then we borrow enough money for the down-payment on our errors and omissions insurance and for basic courses in bankruptcy and foreclosure law. Then we put on our best suit and hang around the courthouse. We don't hang a sign saying "lawyer" around our neck. People know we are lawyers by looking at us. Some of these people have tried to represent themselves and have realized that they cannot. All of them can borrow a a thousand dollars for a retainer even if they say they can't. Soon we have our first client and we have all day to work on the case. We go to the next court appearance and other potential clients see us present the case to the judge. Soon we're making enough money to pay back our own loan. We're practicing law! That's how I started. That's how most of us started. That's how you can start. This task is not too hard for you. It is not beyond your reach. It is very close to you. Before you are set life and prosperity. Therefore, choose life. "Justice, justice shall you pursue."
3. You are ahead of most people, depending on what your experience is. But you're right about the job market and for questioning your reason to go to law school. It's really tough out there. I'm not so sure that it's so easy as getting a steady stream of clients as one of the answerers suggested. There simply isn't enough attorney work out there. People now are taking small matters to legalzoom.com, which was work once reserved for small time attorneys. I'd be prepared not to practice law. I know it's hard considering all you've invested. I graduated several years ago, and I haven't been able to find gainful employment in the law. One guy was willing to start me at $0. In New York, I see Craiglist ads offering starting associates $8 an hour. The best advice would be to find a job in the field where you have experience and try to justify why you spent 3 years in law school. That was the biggest hurdle I had to overcome with many employers who couldn't understand why a lawyer can't find work.
4. Damn it. I spent all this time writing out a nice answer and it was erased. Along the same lines as the other answers... I have 7 years of experience and I was recently laid off from the big law job of my dreams. There is no future for me, nor is there for you. I, unlike you, graduated a while back when a law school education was attainable in under 100K. Now it's not. What I would do, if I were you, is default of your student loans--sue your law school for fraud and personally lobby Capital Hill to change the bankruptcy code so that you may get rid of that monkey on your back. Then you will be famous and eventually rich. I think about how rich I would be today if I had that extra $500 I have been sending in every month since I was 25. At least you can fix that part of your life. Jump on the first non legal job with potential for growth that you find. Sorry that your school is a jerk for enticing you to attend with lies. Check out my blog--along with those listed on the right side. They are all good people who made the same dumb mistake. You are not alone. BTW... they do throw your resume away--in the trash next to mine.
5. Change your major - asap.