May 06, 2009

What Would You Do With A Year and $80,000?


Clearly not everyone is struggling in this crappy economy. I read an article this morning describing how some large law firms are paying would-be hires up to $80,000 for the next year to keep them happy and on standby to start work with the firms once the market picks up and the firms can afford to pay them the full-time law firm associate salary. Confused? Here's how it usually works: many law students interview with big firms during the fall of their second year for a summer internship during the summer before their third year. Based on the student's performance during that summer, most law firms will make the student an offer for employment to begin after the student graduates from law school and takes the Bar exam the following year. So, for the most part, law students go into their final year of law school with a guaranteed job and (large) salary for after they graduate. A pretty sweet deal. And one I was fortunate enough to take advantage of myself.

Well, with Wall Street in the dumps and with law firms laying off associates left and right, apparently some firms can't afford to hire this new talent, but can't afford to lose them either. So the compromise is to pay them tens of thousands of dollars to putz around for a year until the firms get their finances in order. I wonder what I would have done if given this opportunity. I might have traveled. I definitely would have gotten myself an unpaid but priceless internship at a New York City magazine. I probably would have volunteered with various organizations. The possibilites are endless.

I wish someone would come along and offer me $80k now to stay home for the next year. Now that would be a sweet deal.


5 comments:

Jennifer said...

Get outta here! Ugh. I would love to be paid to do whatever I wanted! At least those get something to pay their student loans - law school ain't cheap! ;-)

Jonesie stopped by my blog yesterday, so I came over to see what you all were doing! Love, love, love your site!

Justice Ny said...

Maybe we should go back for an LLM and then we'd be back in running - it'll be soooo worth it!!!

Susan said...

Oh, I would so be in for that offer. But would still want to hire a babysitter. ;)

Dee @ tifiblogs said...

I read about this in the Times. I would be all up on it! I'd spend my year volunteering and trying to get my own business up and running. Though who am I kidding...what would actually happen would me spending about 300 of those days on twitter, hehehe.

Natalia said...

Unfortunately that just means that those of us who weren't going to go the "big firm" route are now competing with those classmates for the few non-profit jobs out there. I just finished law school this past April, I'm sitting for the bar this upcoming week, but there are very few job prospects out there for those in my situation.

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