Thursday, April 21, 2011

Graduate from Law School and You Too Can Sign Up for Food Stamps!

According to a recent post by "SoDespondent" on the JD Underground forum, a Top 20 law school's career services office helped a 3L sign up for food stamps!  Considering how extremely over-glutted the legal profession is and how having a JD often makes you overqualified and unemployable for non-legal jobs, a great many law school graduates are going to need food stamps.

If you are a college graduate and you qualify for food stamps, I think you should take the food stamps without guilt.  Our government's policies and our society's support for those policies have resulted in huge oversupplies of college and law school graduates.  So, smugly employed taxpayers and our government should help pay the price for the unemployment and underemployment crisis confronting many college graduates.

Here are some excerpts from "So Despondent's" initial post titled, Confirmed By Prof: Career Services Helping Students Sign Up for Food Stamps:

By telling them that yes, in fact, career services IS HELPING CERTAIN 3Ls LEARN HOW TO APPLY FOR FOOD STAMPS (EBT). They tried to provide some context and explain that the student who approached his counselor about how he would live has $140,000 in debt and will be working for "almost no money" at a nonprofit. They are trying to paint this as an atypical case and billing it as "noble self-sacrificing law student goes into poverty in order to do good works at nonprofit." Students aren't buying it, neither was the prof.

But apparently the word is out, now. I wonder how many more 3Ls, now that it's been confirmed, will slink into career services in the next couple of weeks to see if they too are eligible? Just another day at a TTTop 20 law school!
 From a follow-up post in the same thread, also by "SoDespondent":
Well, I don't know how well it stuck, but from talking to other students tonight, apparently this is in response to students asking them to start providing information on medicaid and food aid.
The big question on my mind, is, which law school is it and how many other law schools are doing the same?  Maybe the law schools can start advertising about how their career services offices will help graduates apply for food stamps, welfare, public housing assistance, and Medicaid.

Dear ABA, it's all your fault!

13 comments:

Nando said...

Perhaps "law professors" are right when they sqeal "One can do anything with a law degree."

JJD said...

I know several law grads on food stamps and many working for $8 an hour.

Anonymous said...

I too went to a top twenty law school for what it is worth. OCI, zilch, first full time attorney job at a small law firm, $25K. I will never forget when I applied for a used car loan during that time and the bank loan officer asked in puzzlement "You are a full time attorney and you are making 25K?" So many outsiders have no clue how ugly lawyer employment or lack thereof is for many, many, law graduates. The ABA, law school faculty, administrators, Sallie Mae, and others are evil. They are peddling a defective product with bogus claims.

Anonymous said...

I'm sorry 3:57, but you don't express yourself very well in English.

Greg Ness said...

11:00 A.M., what is the point of your comment to 3:57? Did you grin while you called this poster out for the mistakes in his blog grammar? Good work douche face.

Anonymous said...

It's not an oversupply of educated people. It's not enough jobs. And why is that? Because the FIRE sector sucks up all the money. That is why.

Anonymous said...

Um, the real issue here is: Why does a person who has been through 20 years of schooling - the last three at a law school - need assistance in applying for food stamps? Is that too hard a deal for a 3L to figure out for himself?

Anonymous said...

You cannot use law school as a trade school. As with any profession, you must network with people in the law field to find work. Only the lazy graduates don't get jobs. you have to start at the bottom and work your way up. All most all ceo's of major companies are attorneys, they learned there trade and figured out how to tranfer it to profitable business. If you spent more time seeking opportunities and less time blogging you would have a job

Frank the Underemployed Professional said...

@May 12

So are you saying that if 100% of the 45,000 law school graduates did everything you suggested that 100% or even 75% would be able to obtain white collar positions?

If everyone who graduates from college does as you say, will the number of white collar jobs available magically increase to accommodate all of the graduates?

Do you realize that the phrase, "network! network! network!" has become a long-standing joke on the JD Underground forums? Do you really think that 100% or even 50% of the law school grads will be able to successfully network with hiring partners and other important decision makers that they don't know? Do you think these people are even receptive to yet more networking attempts?

I think you're living in a free market-meritocracy fantasy world. Question the meritocratic dogma you've come to accept.

stephen said...

As a health care professional, I have needed a lawyer repeatedly in the last 3 years, for a rather minor case. My searches each time revealed lawyers unwilling to charge under $275 an hour. Each administrative case cost upwards of $6000. I believe those lawyers were way-overcompensated for what they do given that each case settled in a series of letters. Why then are you all fuming? Can you explain why the common grad can't get their feet into this narrow license defense field? I'd be happy to hire a new grad with a little experience to do what I would do if I had the time.

Recovering Lawyer said...

I, too, am wondering why a 3L needed assistance applying for food stamps. Be that as it may, this story does illustrate how bleak the legal job market is. I think if one really wants to practice law, the most realistic plan is to either line up a job with a friend or relative prior to taking on the debt, or plan to go into practice on your own upon graduation and earn a pretty meager salary during the first few years. If I had been told this during orientation, I would have cancelled my enrollment and accepted the perfectly good job I was offered after I earned a BA. Could, woulda, shoulda.

Anonymous said...

This is a late reply, but has anyone actually replying here tried to file for food stamps? There is an assumption that applying for food stamps is straightforward and logical. I am willing to bet that most of you would fail the first time without some assistance. Most of you would have your “paperwork” lost. I don’t care how smart you are, it is not about being smart, it is about dealing with “the system”.

I have tried to help a few people, but it required some training, and I still don't understand a lot of it myself. It varies a lot from state to state, I may be in the worst state, but I am not quite sure if anyone really knows how it all works. It is always changing. I think I would be a lot better at assisting people if I did it more frequently, but it does require assistance from someone who works in the corresponding government office. Also, the system is set-up to make it fail and be very difficult for the client, make people give up in frustration; there are incentives to serve less people, not more.

Anonymous said...

Why is everyone focusing on finding a job? Being a licensed Attorney gives you the opportunity to hang your own shingle. Think outside the box!

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