March 25-29

This week at DGS and Pre-Law, I finished a flyer for social media for DGS. I made it in hopes that they could either give them to the students during summer registration or they could use them next semester if they decide to do a social media push. I sent it to the director of admissions so I may be making edits. I also made further TV lobby slides for National and International Scholarships (NISP). NISP gives me information and wants me to format it in an appealing way. I also went to the DGS and Pre-Law staff meetings. At the DGS meeting, we talked about summer registration, and I saw how they were improving their system from last summer. It was neat to see the changes and how the advisors continue to be innovative and student-centered. Like usual, I kept up with the social media pages for both pre-law and DGS and added appropriate entries to the news feed for DGS. I also worked on a blog post for the Pre-Law blog. I am writing a post for later in April about networking tips. Dean Bloomquist of Chicago Loyola School of Law came back in March and I went to hear her talk with interested students. She talked about networking so my post is inspired and based on some of the suggestions to the students. One of the Pre-Law advisors is doing a presentation in April but she says she always has technical difficulties so I went to the room and checked out the technology so that I can teach her how to use it.

This week, I read Leaving the Law: Occupational and Career Mobility of Law School Graduates. This paper explores the reasons why people who have a law degree do not practice law. Less than 2% of people who graduates law school are not practicing law but wished they were practicing law. There are also people who only work in law part-time and the reason they do this is because they could not find a job that worked for them. Less than 1% of law school graduates have given up finding a job because they have worked so hard to find one but couldn't. Around 2% of law school graduates are looking for jobs but can't find one. However, in 1993, 16% of law school graduates were employed but were not in the law profession. One reason why people with law degrees do not practice law is because they are not interested in it as a career any longer. Also, those who do not practice report that there was not a job in the field. Women do report leaving the profession for family matters. I think these are all reasonable but important for students considering law to think about. I recently had a conversation about women in the law field and how many leave the profession to have a family. One of the pre-law advisors left practice so that she could raiser her family. We discussed the societal implications of women leaving their practice to have families. I think it is hard for a 22 year old to decide between law school and starting a family when they don't know where they will be in their life in 7-8 years. Putting in time and effort towards getting a law degree and then stopping so that a family can be raised is a real issue. 

This week, I spent about 1.5 hours in staff meetings, 1.5 hours working on the news feed, 45 minutes updating and posting to the the pre-law and DGS social media pages, 1 hour and 15 minutes reading and blogging, 15 minutes checking the technology for the pre-law advisor, 2 hours designing the NISP powerpoint, 1 hour and 15 minutes creating the social media handout

Baker, J. G. & Jorgensen, B. K. (2000). Leaving the law: Occupational and career mobility of law school graduates. Journal of Legal Education, 50(1), 16-34.