BABY YOU CAN DRIVE MY CAR. I think that the ATL commenters are getting a little overwrought about this. It’s not such a bad part-time job for a law student.
UPDATE: A reader emails:
Please don’t quote me or my firm by name on this, but that post and the comments are sadly typical for Above the Law and a few similar lawyer-related blogs. The multiple references to the jobs not being worthy of students at law schools “ranked #15” are perfectly in tune with the elitist sense of entitlement expressed throughout the site and pervasive among many law students and young lawyers. I’m a partner at one of the 10 largest firms in the US and many of my fellow partners are both amused and dismayed by both the tone and substance of many of the posts and comments on those sites.
You write frequently about a higher education bubble. Our law schools are great evidence of that as they continue to churn out untalented, over-educated, over-credentialed snobs who really can’t do anything. (Sorry, professor). It’s been quite clear for several years that law students feel that they “don’t do windows” or other tasks that they view as beneath them, which unfortunately includes most aspects of actually, you know, practicing law as a young lawyer. Now that the economy and legal market has imploded, they’re finding out exactly what their “skills” are worth.
And it used to just be Yale Law grads who were that way. . . .
ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Chad Chandler writes:
Chad Chandler
to punditshow details 8:49 AM (32 minutes ago)
It’s not just law school, and it’s not that new. My wife graduated with an accounting degree from Birmingham Southern College in 2000. For four years, she was assured by countless professors and administrators that her business degree from such a unique liberal arts school would giver her an advantage over her peers. She and her classmates all believed they’d graduate from school, play around town for a few weeks, and then take on the arduous task of weighing multiple job offers. When they eventually realized that they’d have to beg for jobs — jobs that didn’t start at $50K — they felt betrayed. Nowadays, tuition has gone up and graduates’ prospects have gone down. I can only imagine how disparaged the kids must feel today. I, on the other hand, graduated college with a realistic outlook on life. If there’s one thing Auburn’s business school taught me, as inadvertent and embarrassing as it must be to the administration, is that I’m not special at all. Sitting in a theater-style classroom among 300 peers, you could see your competition all around you. If you missed a class, no one called to see if you were alright. If you did poorly on a test, the professor didn’t ask if you were having trouble at home. To the university, I was nothing more than a recurring check and a social security number. I was entirely replaceable and unappreciated. In that environment, I learned perspective and self-reliance. That frame of mind transferred over to the “real world,” where I worked in post-9/11 DC at a dead-end job as a temp with other recent graduates who couldn’t understand why they were stuck in corporate purgatory. After all, they had college degrees! They were entitled to the good life!
Well, let’s hear it for large, impersonal state universities.