Ah, the summer job search is in full swing. I was planning to be low-key about my search for legal employment but my alumni mentor has, rightfully, pressured me to step up the activity.

The common wisdom is that working for a judge is the best way to go. Ah, but there are so many judges. At the federal level there's appeals judges, district judges, magistrate judges, bankruptcy judges, etc. Then you get to the state, where the judicial population explodes.

In a couple weeks UCLA has its public interest job fair, which I imagine involves many students interviewing for what are probably a tiny number of actual jobs. Which by the way have no pay -- you have to go get a public interest law grant on your own from a 3rd party if you want to avoid working for free.

There's a smattering of big-firm jobs out there for the truly ambitious / masochistic. I'd be interested to hear how similar the summer job experience is to the permanent position experience at a big firm. If they have any sense they'd make the summer job like a dream vacation so that people would think "Damn, I'm getting $2000 a week to wear a suit and eat catered lunches? I could do this for the rest of my life no problem ..."

24 Jan 05