After entering law school with designs on graduating to a job with a six-figure salary, Geri Hartley found the job market a bit more daunting....A J.D. AND an M.B.A. and she wound up in a non-bar position.
She had designs on graduating with her J.D. and M.B.A. combination and becoming a general counsel for a large corporation. Instead, she was unemployed for awhile, and briefly took a position at H&R Block that didn’t require her to have passed the bar exam....
Many of her classmates are having a difficult time. Almost none has stayed on their original plans when they went to law school. One is working behind the cosmetics’ counter at Macy’s, she said. Another creates websites for a living.
And it's not like the University of Kansas is some 4th-tier obscure private school. It's the flagship public in a state of 2.5 million with two cities over 300k. There's only one other law school in the state and it's a semi-obscure, lowly-ranked private. UMKC, just across the river, lacks the prestige of KU.
In other words, if KU grads are doing this poorly, where a J.D./M.B.A. has to take a job in Paola after being unemployed for awhile and working at HR Block, how are Washburn grads doing?
Here's the kicker. Many people claim that once the legal industry "turns around" and the recession ends, hiring with fire right back up. Uh huh.
Bill Modrcin is a 1978 KU law graduate now working as an attorney in Overland Park. He’s worked for several large Kansas City-area firms, and he’s seen the drop-off in recent years.
On the whole, the industry is doing just fine, he said. Established lawyers in large firms are doing well. But entry-level positions are extremely hard to come by, he said.
If the "industry is doing just fine," why Earth would it go back to paying overpaying entry-level workers? Will the entire history of business management suddenly do a U-turn contrary to all empirical evidence?
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