First-year law students are told to study hard, earn that invitation onto law review, become involved in extracurricular activities, obtain real-world experience through legal externships and graduate at the top of their class. They are told that if they do these things, they will land that Associate Attorney position at a reputable law firm. I followed this advice. I earned those honors, and I am currently working, not as an attorney but in the retail industry for about minimum wage.Mary has an undergraduate degree in biochemistry from UC-San Diego. She graduated #3 at Thomas Jefferson Law School (now with new campus!), where she also served as a Law Review editor. She also has multiple items of legal experience, including an intern stint at Pfizer.
If you read this, or her resume, and your first response to her working in minimum wage retail is "she should have gone somewhere like UCLA," you need to have your god-damned head examined.
This is sickening. Finishing in the top 3 students in the class is a big achievement, regardless of where one attends law school. If this doesn't inform lemmings about the state of the legal job market, nothing will.
ReplyDeleteActually, her biggest mistake was not going to law school. Quite the contrary, I've had coworkers who went to that shitpile of a law school and went on to successful careers as patent practitioners. Her biggest mistake was going *straight* to law school. What she needed to do was find a job as some sort of low level researcher or lab rat while getting her PhD. That's the price of entry to do patents in the biotech field. Once you're there, however, you're in a very niche group of people with a giant income potential. Had she gone to get her PhD in 3 years rather than law school, she could have been a patent agent staring a $150K salary in the face.
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