A Chicago lawyer is so concerned about the future of the legal profession that he is offering money to graduates who opt not to go into law. Matthew Willens is launching a $1000 Anything but Law School scholarship which will select one graduate a year to go to a nonlegal graduate school. He is looking to push gifted students into choosing a more promising career to save them from the huge burden of law school debts and the temptation to set up a legal practice with no experience. Applications for law school in the US are down by 18 per cent in 2013 as demand for lawyers decreases.Mr Willens, who also teaches at law school, ractices as a personal injury lawyer.
Hard times
Only eight per cent of US law graduates get jobs at law firms employing 250 or more lawyers. The rest are experiencing harder times with statistics last year suggesting that just over half of law students got a full-time job as lawyers nine months after they graduated with the other 45 per cent were working in totally unrelated jobs, including Starbucks. With most law school graduates having an average debt of nearly $100,000, law is increasingly becoming an unpopular career choice.
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