This Attorney Really Doesn't Want You to Go to Law School

A personal injury attorney in Illinois may have solved the nation’s underemployment crisis for law school graduates…paying them not to study law to begin with.

To swat back the swarm of newly minted attorneys descending upon the legal job market, Matthew Willens of Willens Law Offices in Chicago and Rolling Meadows, Illinois offered a $1,000 scholarship to students working toward a graduate degree in a field other than law. The aptly named “Anything but Law School” scholarship was recently awarded to a music teacher pursuing a master’s degree in music education.

Willens believes the legal employment market is too saturated and that there are simply more licensed attorneys than there are jobs. “Law school is no longer a safe road to a successful career,” he observed.

While any source of no-strings-attached scholarship money is a good thing, Willens shouldn’t have excluded non-practicing J.D.s. Giving an attorney who isn’t practicing law $1,000 would certainly help ease the burden of law school loans and possibly prevent her from reentering the legal market in an attempt to reduce student loan debt, thus preventing increased saturation of an already oversaturated job market.

There is no word yet on whether Willens Law Offices will be offering the scholarship again or not. 

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