seeing this type of numbers with nurses. Right now everyone and their mom is studying to gain a nursing degree. Yes there is a need for nurses but I seriously doubt the number is the pipeline can be sustained with this economy.

Way back when finding a job was a real bitch. Wash U is a top school and they viewed their mission as pure education. They delivered that, but the placement department sucked and as far as I know it still sucks.

For about 20 years my advice to law students was, without hesitation, to quit while they were ahead. Unless one has some kind of burning desire to be a lawyer, invest in some other career. I, myself, have always thought that I should have pursued a PhD in economics. I haven't changed that opinion but, on the other hand, I have managed to parlay my legal career into something good and something that I am proud of.

And today I just don't know what to tell people to do. I suppose computers and technical careers still work well, but there is no guarantee.

I've seen so much cronyism over the last 10-15 years that I seethe with rage. I was a victim of this "-ism" for a teaching job that I was fully qualified to do (applied some 16 years ago after finishing my PhD). Unfortunately, I wasn't a friend of one of the members of the "search committee."

Even this month a department in the institution where I work filled a full-time opening. Adequate salary and benefits. Several applicants and a few were interviewed. Members of the search committee told me the person hired was a proteges of the wife of the department head. No one wanted her but the department head hired her anyway. And then I found out the department head, who was hired last year, is a friend of someone in the administration!

It pays to know someone on the inside! A lot better than trying to find that job yourself...

It may be true for in house counsel but I have always viewed that as a dead end. As in house counsel you often have to say no to people, which doesn't tend to advance your career. I haven't noticed that in house counsel advance often.

The thing that I liked most about law was the idea of getting my own clients. They don't teach that at all in law school but ultimately it is about networking, which you may be calling "cronyism." I'm not sure that's fair.

Yes, it's about whom you know. But if you don't know people, what's stopping you from getting to know them?

I have always found "What Color Is Your Parachute" to be a timeless resource.

Getting your own clients is networking. Getting a call from someone you know to apply for a job that you have a good chance...(wink, wink)...of getting is cronyism.

I just wish of all the jobs I've applied to if I was told up front "We already have someone in mind, but go ahead a apply anyway so we don't get in trouble with the government," I would have saved a lot of time by not preparing a resume, coverletter, and contacting references and securing transcripts...

I also went through Bernard Haldane and they were big on networking. The idea seemed fine to me, even though a number of people who went through Haldane said it was a scam.

Their sales pitch was indeed a scam but when it got down to it the system works. Find some people who are doing what you want to do. Ask them to lunch for an information only interview. Tell them you would love a job but your goal is not for them to hire you, per se. You simply want their help in understanding what you need in order to do the job, and then you try to get a couple of names of others from them and permission to use their name.

Their point was that most jobs are never advertised and most ads are phony. It's not so much "wink, wink". For one thing this idea of informational interviews takes a lot of nerve and initiative. For another, if you're hiring someone whom would you choose? The person who showed you that kind of initiative or someone passively answering a blind classified ad?

tack up his (or her) 95 Theses on the doors of academe.

The whole edifice is pretty much rotten from the top down. (See Penn State U. as merely one example of this rot.)

Those sound like lower end law schools. Some people just want the degree and figure they'll practice on their own. Those sound like law schools with low bar passage rates, too.

There are 5 schools that will get you a job, at least back when I was a new lawyer: Harvard, Yale, University of Chicago, Michigan, and Stanford.

A friend of mine went to Duke, which is a little better I think than Wash U although pretty much on par. He told me that one person in his graduating class was without a job at graduation, whereas about half of us didn't have a job. The difference was that our Dean of Placement was part time Dean, full time law student. Of course he got a job in the largest firm in St. Louis.

At Duke, on the other hand, they were told from day 1 that they were going to get a summer job with a large law firm between their second and third years and that they were going to get an offer from that firm.

I recall listening to an NPR piece about a guy who worked in a large law firm, came home one evening and freaked his kids out (because they didn't know who he was). I just decided that wasn't for me, but I should have had a heart to heart with my Dean of Placement. You see, you don't have to work in a large firm forever. You can work there for a year and then trade down some salary for a lifestyle.

How was I supposed to know this?

Anyway a lot of people who started with these large firms are out of law, so maybe that's not the best way? I learned to get clients. It wasn't easy, but I tried and tried until it worked, and then no one owned me.

As for bar passage rates it's not correlated to the quality of the law school. In fact, as I understand it, Northwestern and University of Chicago have lower bar passing rates than Kent or DePaul. Why? Kent and DePaul are regional schools and they teach Illinois law because they figure most of their grads will practice in Illinois. Northwestern, U of C, and Wash U are national law schools and, well, you get the idea.

Not sure that bar passage rates mean much of anything other than preparation. The bar exam just isn't that hard, if you study.

in Legal Studies, with a concentration either in disability law, or labor relations. This is taught in the law school, by law professors, howeve when I did more research, if you received this degree from the law school, you were not permitted to utilize the law school career and placement offfice. I am not even considering this at this time.

Tuition was the same as the law school's. This a school in the top 25 of law schools.

and doesn't attend a top-tier school or a local school wiith a solid reputation in its community is throwing money down a rathole. When I went to an Ivy League school you could graduate with $20-30 k total debt for the seven years and multiple job offers. But that was nearly 25 years ago.

Getting in debt $100k to attend what amounts to Joe's law school is beyond insane.

He only managed to score an internship the summer before his last year because his dad knew someone at the firm. That firm ended up hiring him when he graduated.

They've been outsourcing paralegals for a while now - the legal profession is undergoing some big changes I believe.