Law Professor Offers Scholarship To Not Attend Law School
CHICAGO (CBS) -- A personal injury lawyer and Loyola University Law School professor is offering a $1,000 scholarship, for a graduate student to do anything except go to law school.
Attorney Matthew Willens said law school still attracts many of the brightest minds, but the jobs simply don't exist.
For several years, as graduation has neared, he has asked his third-year students who has a job.
"Very few hands go up," he said. "Then you follow that up with, 'Well, what do you want to do?' And most of them are like, 'Look. We just want to work. We just want a job. There's no jobs out there,' and the morale is very low."
Law Professor Offers Scholarship To Not Attend Law School
He said many newly-minted lawyers, under pressure to pay off expensive student loans, try to practice on their own, without experience, and get in over their heads. He said that is bad for clients and bad for the legal profession.
He insisted he is "not anti-legal education," but said there are other fields today in which a bright mind can prosper with far less difficulty.
Applications to law schools, both in the Chicago area and elsewhere, are already down substantially.
To obtain his scholarship, Willens is demanding transcripts, a completed application form, and an essay telling how the applicant would use it and why the applicant deserves it.
