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There Will Be Blood?

Published: Oct 15, 2008

 Law       

Cameron Stracher, former Covington associate, author of the excellent Double Billing (the One L of BigLaw) and a now a professor at New York Law School, has a piece (“There Will Be Blood”) in today’s American Lawyer (free sub req’d) about what job-seeking law students ought to do during our current, er, “soft demand environment.”

 

But first Stracher tries to scare the hell out of his already anxious readers by loading his opening paragraphs with a Treehouse of Horror’s worth of lurid imagery:  There are “bodies piling up,” “firing sprees,” and “blood baths”; hopeful job hunters learn that “the knives are out, and your neck is ripe for slicing” and are helpfully informed that their situation is akin to “a herring caught in a blender.”  Happy Halloween, I guess.    

 

For those readers who manage to keep reading, Stracher does offer up some hope and (cold-ish) comfort. (“Although the market may be bad, it's never as bad as they say. The wheels of commerce never stop grinding; they just slow and occasionally roll over people.”)  The prescription here boils down to “don’t panic…be patient and thorough…always carry a resume…talk to as many people as possible…maybe even consider an LLM.”  Hard to gainsay any of that.

 

Stracher’s advice does seem much more useful than that found in a thematically similar American Lawyer article from earlier in the month, “Where Do I Send My Resume?” The answer to the title’s question turns out to be “Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Singapore, and ‘Reconsider Your Career Path.’”

 

                                               -posted by brian

 

                                               

 

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