Summary: The ABA has noted the rise of alternative JD careers.
Perhaps it was inevitable. With the legal market glutted with JDs and the market collapsed and barely recovered after 2008, of course all these debt-ridden JDs are going to seek other ways to earn a living, considering firms are balking, and further, so much more work is being outsourced than ten years ago. If you block a river, it will send tributaries in other directions: this is natural. In the case of the JDs, they are often pursuing “J.D. advantage jobs” instead of just traditional lawyer jobs.
The traditional jobs are those such as working at a law firm, judicial clerkships, and government jobs which require bar passage. The ABA has described J.D. advantage jobs as those “for which the employer sought an individual with a J.D., and perhaps even required a J.D., or for which the J.D. provided a demonstrable advantage in obtaining or performing the job, but which does not itself require bar passage or an active law license or involve practicing law.” A tortured attempt at a definition that, but what they mean, basically, is they find JD’s useful whether or not they passed the bar. Personnel or human resources, consulting firms, investment banks, or compliance fit this bill.
Law schools are wising up to this career course, offering more than bar prep, but curriculum thickeners such as accounting, project management, and e-discovery. They are offering courses that would give an advantage over those lawyers who know only the law.
With 15 percent of 2014’s JDs seeking such alternative careers, it was overdetermined, bound to happen, by river logic, if you will, that JD advantage job would become a thing. Besides, the millennial generation of lawyers wants better work-life balance, and alternative employment offers that better then the drudgery and intensity that so characterizes American law firms.
News Source: Huffington Post