Lawyer Offering Students $1,000 To Study Anything Else But Law School

[Hum]

Professionals in many fields relish the idea of loads of youngsters following in their footsteps, mentoring budding talents and encouraging them to continue to pursue their passions.

Not this guy.

Matthew Willens, a Chicago-based personal injury attorney, this week announced he is setting up a $1,000 scholarship he plans to award to any prospective graduate student who is willing to skip law school and go into any other field instead, CBS Chicago reports.

He is calling it the Anything But Law School Graduate Scholarship. Its description reads:

    Some of you may be wondering, why would a law firm create a scholarship to dissuade students from practicing law? The answer is simple; we currently do not have enough jobs to be able to effectively train the current number of freshly minted lawyers in our profession. To protect the reputation of our profession Willens Law Offices has created this scholarship to persuade undergraduates to pursue another graduate degree for a limited time.

Willens, who also teaches part-time at Loyola University Chicago's law school, doesn't consider his scholarship to be "anti-law school" and told NBC Chicago it's "simply a supply-and-demand issue."

AboveTheLaw.com's Elie Mystal agreed with Willens' assessment of the floundering legal job market and wrote Monday the scholarship should be "offered by the ABA. Any organization representing lawyers should be paying people to go away."

source

[DocM]

Tip- too many to do the legitimate work so the surplus end up as ambulance chasers etc. which can be harmful overall.

[+Mirumir Subscriber¹]

To protect the reputation of our HIGH INCOME profession

 

This is a very smart idea. They are trying to limit the flow of new graduates thus ensuring that the competition is kept low and the demand for existing experienced lawyers doesn't diminish.

 

Unfortunately, it's also an immoral act because they "rob" potentially good lawyers off of their future by bribing them with basically pocket change money in comparison to what they would make in this field in the future.

 

The good news, however, is that somebody who never thought of becoming a lawyer can make their story up and get $1,000 credit towards the programme they've always wanted study.

[HawkMan]

This is unlikely to affect any potential "good" lawyers, mostly the ones who barely get it and aren't fully set on being a lawyer. 

[Dotdot]

I get the reasons for this, hell its more than apparent for years.

However its no the only profession to go this route. Web/Graphic Design anyone? Every kid with a copy of PS thinks there it and have made it. 80% are Freelance and the nets so awash with free graphics, templates and tutorials its a bit of a joke.

But! And big but, to thwart creativity or indeed curtail it, is not a good idea. Mainly as it only leads to good people being lost, ideas being muted, projects un-finished and more. What this guy should be promoting and indeed herding folk towards is "speciality" niches within the field.

Creating more masters of specific functions and niches, and less plastic swiss army knifes, if you get what I mean.

Its the same with Web/Graphic Design. Stop generalizing start specializing.