As Jim Saksa was pondering whether to attend law school, his father offered what may have seemed like sage advice: You can do anything with a law degree.
Now Saksa is looking for a job outside the legal field, and he’s beginning to think his expensive JD is more of a hindrance than a help.
“In the last few months,” he writes in a column for Slate, “I’ve interviewed for jobs at a nonprofit, a think tank, and a PR firm among other places of business. I know from personal experience that the first question a lawyer will hear in a nonlegal job interview is, ‘Why don’t you want to practice law?’ My answer to that question always elicits, ‘Well, you know we don’t pay as much as a law firm, right?’ A law degree makes an otherwise qualified candidate look expensive, and often carries a rotten whiff of failure. And other than the New York Mets, no employer wants to hire an expensive failure.”
