FIFTY WAYS TO FIND LEGAL WORK AND EARN A LIVING AS A PRACTICING LAWYER
What is the Participation Trophy Syndrome? It's the development of bad character brought about through telling children they are winners, just for showing up. Only losers will accept a participation trophy, winners want to win one.
We have way too many lawyers out of work with not enough open positions to hire them all. If you're one of the unemployed lawyers you must be asking, how can you get a law related job or how can you get back to work? Let's explore that issue today.
Just keep in mind that you were born in the USA... and whining isn't allowed; being tough is though.
First I'm going to say, stop ya whining and griping about law schools and how they defrauded you and promised you the moon if you would only pay them $150,000. Let's face it no one twisted your arm to apply to law school. You did it voluntarily. What you are finding out is what we all figured out shortly after leaving law school. That if they paid us what we were worth they would get free labor. My first job was in Waterloo, Iowa. It paid me $17,500 per year in salary, no overtime, no benefits and one weeks paid vacation. When I asked Jim Hellman what hours I was supposed to work he said, "You're expected to work as long as it takes you to get your work done." Fair enough... My student loans were $470 per month, I had three rug rats running around and one on the way. I had no clients, no resources but I was hungry and woke up the same way every morning - I was afraid to be poor. But what I did have was a bar card, knowledge, skills to research and write with an ability to argue a point. And so do you, so stop griping about no one handing you a participation trophy and get busy learning how to be a practicing lawyer.
Get used to it, in real life no one is handing out participation trophies. As one elderly woman once said to me, "There's nothing wrong with this younger generation that a good depression wouldn't cure."
So stop the whining and get busy; your first job is to get busy learning how to be a practicing lawyer and learning skills that will make you a lawyer and a valuable one. After all, let's face it you have near zero skills, no clients, no experience and at this point a bad attitude. So leave the attitude behind and let's get busy mending fences so you become presentable.
Constant bitching about how your law school can't find you a job is like the guy shown in the picture; what law firm wants to hire someone who is working to alienate the rest of the bar?
HERE ARE WAY MORE THAN FIFTY WAYS TO EARN A LIVING AS AN UNEMPLOYED AND INEXPERIENCE LAWYER
1. Start your own firm.
2. Volunteer at a firm to get your foot in the door.
3. Work, even if you have to volunteer, at Legal Aid to gain experience, learn how to try a case, how to win, how to deal with clients and get to meet other lawyers in the courtroom and out.
4. Read about someone's case, research the issues and send it to the first chair lawyer.
5. Volunteer to assist a County District Judge with research to get yourself into a courtroom, make a friend in the court system who can then sell you, your skills and your determination to be a lawyer. Show some guts and determination.
6. Create a niche blog, research the law and write daily one article of legal significance to get you known and to create a resume builder that will sell you.
7. Apply in every state agency that has legal jobs.
8. Apply to every insurance company for a claims job adjusting claims.
9. Check with the State Bar Association for job postings.
10. Check daily with the every law school placement center in your state and the state where you would consider moving.
11. Write a Law Review article and submit it for publication.
12. Write guest blogs for practicing attorneys with a working blog.
13. Create a niche business, like service of process or legal investigation services, that get you in the profession doing something useful.
14. Go through the Iowa Code and locate every section that will allow the winner attorney fees as a part of the recovery. Then, after you research and understand the law, market yourself on the Internet and to law firms in that area.
15. Market yourself as a lawyer who will do work other lawyers either don't want to do, can't do or don't have the time to do. (i.e., small claims, FED actions, nuisance actions, small divorces, collections work, etc.)
Let's face it, if all you gotta worry about is unemployment you're luckier than some. Remember Vietnam?
16. Offer to write posts for lawyers with blogs who don't have the time to market.
17. Write articles and letters to the editor explaining legal issues to get yourself known in the community.
18. Join the Chamber of Commerce and attend the meetings to get to know the local leaders who may have a lead where you can get a job.
19. Check all area prosecutor's offices to see if they have part time positions available.
20. Volunteer at the State Bar Association.
21. Attend every job's fair you can find.
22. Read the newspaper want ads.
23. Get in the Internet and locate every website that advertises legal jobs.
24. Get acquainted with every headhunter in your city and town.
25. Contact legal headhunters online and ask them via email, what else you can do and where you should look for a legal job.
26. Add sensible, not angry or sour, and intelligent, thoughtful comments on legal blogs.
27. Contact the State unemployment agency and register for email notifications for open positions.
28. Take something, anything legal in nature that will give you experience and something else to talk about besides the amount of your student loans and how you got ripped off by the law school.
29. Call every insurance company you can locate on a daily basis asking about openings.
30. Apply for a teaching position at a community college or for-profit secondary school to teach legal classes.
31. Apply for a teaching position at the State Real Estate Commission Continued Education and Licensing classes. Offer to teach the legal classes.
32. Go online, visit blogs where lay people ask legal questions; answer the questions and offer to assist for a reduced fee.
33. Register, take the classes and then market yourself as a low-cost mediator for divorce cases.
34. Advertise, ethically, to do flat-fee divorces, small claim cases and landlord-tenant disputes.
35. Offer to work for nothing in a law office if they will teach you how to handle certain kinds of cases. (i.e., workers' compensation, small claims, divorce, family law, bankruptcy, landlord-tenant types of case.)
36. Learn how to handle and then advertise your services to do bankruptcy work.
37. Send a letter out to as many lawyers as you can locate offering to take any small cases they do not want.
38. Send letters to lawyers offering to handle their 'fish files'.
39. Offer to teach research and writing at the local law school.
40. Contact local unions and factories where immigrants like to work, then hold free Q&A sessions on Saturday mornings. You'll meet people with problems and you will pick up cases.
41. Take out an ad in the local shopper offering your services.
42. Contact nursing homes and offer a Q&A session for the elderly on a weekly basis.
43. Put up an ad at the local super market bulletin board or the local taverns offering low rates for standard legal services.
44. Take out an ad in every church bulletin you can locate. They are cheap and people who need confession also usually need lawyers.
45. Offer a low cost brief writing service.
46. Offer a low cost research service.
47. Change your attitude. If you're really angry see a counselor, get medicated, workout and get over it; life isn't fair and no one said it was going to be fair.
48. Get in good physical condition; work out daily. At least walk and stop shoving the food in your pie hole.
49. Get your financial affairs in order and if you don't know how to start seek advice. Hell, call me and I'll try to help you figure it out. Let's face it not all those student loans you owe were spent on your education. My guess is you bought fashionable clothes, iPods, iPads, beer, partied, went on vacations, had cable TV, iTune purchases, weekly Netflix, a cell phone, smoked and wasted a lot of what you borrowed. One elderly lady once said to me, "There is nothing wrong with this generation that a good depression won't cure." If this is too much to handle go to number 50.
50. Stop whining and get busy figuring out your life and how to earn a living. You've go marketable skills so now it's time to learn how to use them.
51. Do something else where legal skills are somewhat important but not the main qualification for the JOB.
52. Write and sell boilerplate forms online.
53. Write personnel manuals for corporations.
54. Run for Congress, pass laws that forgive all the student loans instead of the banksters and privateers making a fortune on ripping off the public. Can you imagine how many homes students would have bought if instead of bailing out the banksters we agreed to pay off all student loans? Hell, the students would have lined up to buy house and then headed to the shopping malls to buy furniture and all the stuff I'm selling at our downsizing sale.
55. To help the lawyers looking for work, add your suggestions to the comments section. Thanks.
In a future post I will discuss how to get free office space.
Comments (1)
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