Jerry O'Connell, TTT Student and C-List Actor, Will Play a Lawyer on TV This Fall

Here goes another "comedic drama" about lawyers living it up in the big city,this time starring Jerry O'Connell and Jim Belushi. The show is called The Defenders and it will air on CBS this fall. I'll give this show a chance, but I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up in the television graveyard along with The Deep End by the end of the year.

In case you didn't know, O'Connell just finished his first year at Southwestern Law School. Nando recently profiled the TTT, which costs $74,050 for the 2010-2011 school year. It makes sense for someone like O'Connell who is wealthy and has nothing else to do between television pilots to earn the bragging rights of having a useless law degree. He's just following in the footsteps of other celebrities such as James Franco who slept his way through Columbia University and Tiger Wood's estranged wife Elin Nordegren who is a student at Rollins College. Unlike normal people, none of these celebrities need their degree to survive, find another job, and pay their bills.

For those of us who don't make millions of dollars each year from acting or a philandering billionaire husband, wasting $74,000 each year on a useless degree at a place like Southwestern Law School will likely be a life destroying decision. Just like the character O'Connell will portray, having an exciting legal career as a defender, meeting beautiful women, and living in a fancy apartment with a TTT degree is a fantasy. Enjoy it as entertainment but don't believe this in any way reflects reality.

Everybody is That Person

From Biglaw to Trash Bins

My must watch prime time shows are Lost, Modern Family, and The Good Wife. Fans were kept in suspense all season over the competition between Alicia and Cary for the junior associate position at their law firm Stern, Lockhart & Gardner. Last week's episode finally gave us a winner. Of course, most of us guessed the winner would be our show's heroine Alicia over the young and cocky Cary. But until the very end, the race was very close with Cary as the likely favorite because of his higher billable hours and politicking around the office to put in a good word for him with partners Diane Lockhard and Will Gardner. That is, until Alicia had the guts to ask Diane what exactly she needed to do to ensure she'd get the job.

Alicia takes the hint that she's a goner unless she uses the Florrick name to build her client list and save her flailing law firm from more lay offs, including her own. After a "BIDER moment" with her stack of unpaid bills, Alicia decides she can't lose this job no matter what and goes to her cheating husband's creepy political operative Eli Gold (played magnificently by Alan Cumming) for help. We know this can't be good because Gold has wanted Alicia to commit to her husband's comeback campaign for attorney general despite her many reservations to stand by her man after his very public and humiliating affair with a prostitute.

Btw, I love Alan Cumming. He plays cold and calculating characters like no other. I'm so glad to hear he'll be a regular on the show next season. I love the part when he's like, "Do you want me to offer your nemesis a job and dump him the minute he gets here? Because I can so easily destroy someone's life in return for your loyalty to do whatever I ask next season. Bwahahaha."

So Alicia, unsurprisingly, can be that type of person when it comes to saving her job and keeping her family from moving to Chicago's South Side. What we don't know is whether or not Alicia will regret being that person when Gold's favor comes back to haunt her . Will she be able to put on a happy face when Gold forces her on the campaign trail with her husband? From the look Alicia gave Gold when he mentioned her husband's campaign after meeting with Diane and Will, she's only beginning to realize the extent of this favor. What Gold gives, he can easily take away if Alicia doesn't deliver what he wants from her.

Hah. Like a lamb to the slaughter, Cary walked into the lion's den without a clue in the world that his biglaw career was dead the minute Alicia sold her soul to the devil in return for his client list. Cary's an arrogant asshole, but for a few seconds I sympathized with his plight. He put in 110% to the firm, worked long hours everyday while Alicia was dealing with family drama, and all of it was for nothing. Can't say I blame him for seeking revenge next week. What else is an unemployed lawyer supposed to do with his time?

Welcome to our world, Cary! You did everything right, but in the end connections won out over your Harvard JD, ass kissing and billable hours. You're welcome to guest post here in between your job search and destroying the lives of your former co-workers. Cheers!

The Overqualified, Under Experienced Graduate and Debunking More Education Myths

Recent graduates of various degrees and backgrounds have discovered that "too much" formal education and not enough work experience places them in the difficult position of being "overqualified" for entry level work but not qualified enough for mid-level jobs. I've seen both new graduates as well as those laid-off with fewer than 2 years of work experience faced with this predicament. Seeing that more people are returning to school to wait out the Great Recession (that will unlikely end any time soon), I predict that this particular demographic will continue to grow over the next decade. Disinformation spread by graduate schools looking to make billions from the recession and high unemployment rate have successfully convinced thousands that one can never have too many degrees. The reality of six figure loan payments during a time when employers are slashing wages or only offering low-wage and unpaid internships rarely gets mentioned during orientation.

I've only come across one retired academic at a job seminar sponsored by my alma mater dissuade the audience from going back to school. The hundreds who packed the auditorium ranging in age from 23 to their mid-50s seemed to appreciate his candor and honesty. "The last thing you want to do right now is take on more debt or extend your stay in college or graduate school," he said as he went on to discuss examples of students who actually failed class on purpose so they could stay in college for an additional semester rather than face unemployment. "You don't want to come out of school in a few years with the same amount of work experience you have now just with more debt and a degree that is useless. Employers these days don't want to pay someone more money simply because they have an advanced degree." And yet, thousands more each year are fooled into believing the exact opposite.


I won't spend a lot of time discussing the problems having a JD poses on law graduates looking to start a career in a different field. Most of us who have attempted to branch out into other careers have found how much of a hindrance that "versatile" JD has had on our job search. I mentioned in my first post to read Esq. Never about the challenges entry level candidates with a JD face right now. I still recommend trying to branch out sooner rather than later if you no longer want to practice law or can't find a lucrative legal job because of your grades or law school ranking. Chasing after the $160k biglaw dream (or nightmare?) when you neither have the grades nor T14 cred is a lost cause imo, especially in this economy when even top law school grads and experienced attorneys like Angel are having problems finding jobs in the legal market.

Articles like the one Angel posted from the National Law Journal is BS for the most part, similar to the type of PR stuff found in those glossy diversity (chuckle) and lifestyle pamphlets given to law students during interview week. Those who have made it to the top through nepotism, backstabbing co-workers, or representing the most heinous of corporations, insurance companies, and criminals like to perpetuate story lines as unbelievable as the ones found on television shows like The Deep End and The Good Wife. As much as I love The Good Wife and Julianna Margulies' intelligent and admirable character Alicia Florrick (who just happens to always represent innocent clients or take on pro bono cases for her high-profile Chicago law firm Stern, Lockhart & Gardner), the glamorization of an otherwise depressing and elitist profession has helped the ABA and law schools rake in the dough while ignoring the more common realities of the legal profession including depression, desperation, corruption, high unemployment, and suicide. The majority of the lawyers I know who were laid off from both biglaw and mid-sized law firms felt almost relieved to leave the toxic and unfriendly work environment. I won't even go into my own short-lived experience at a firm - all I'll say is that the experience was overwhelmingly negative. Other than the paycheck most people find little fulfillment from working at these sweatshops, so don't envy us or feel bad if you never had the chance to experience it first hand.

Just a typical day in the life of a first year associate, right??

For those of us who would rather put our unrealistic dreams of becoming a real life Alicia Florrick behind us, convincing employers that the writing and analytical skills developed in law school makes you the best candidate for a non-legal job can be as nerve-wracking as a first year law exam. Getting your foot in the door of these non-legal jobs is a challenge in and of itself. Sometimes it means working from the bottom despite all of the money and time you invested into earning your law degree. One option is to take an unpaid/low wage internship. As an observant friend noted, unpaid and low wage internships are another way of weeding out people who come from poorer families as the employer assumes that young graduates who accept these internships will receive financial assistance from their parents. I know a lot of you, including myself, can't afford loan payments and an apartment in NYC on a $10/hour internship. Unfortunately, an internship is often the only way a young graduate or entry level candidate can get a leg up on other applicants once a full-time job becomes available within the company. I know one person who managed to get a full-time (non-legal) job after a summer internship last year and another law graduate who has put their pride aside to work their way up from intern to administrative assistant with a company. Yes, it sucks. But if you don't have the connections to get a full-time job, an internship might be the only viable option available at the moment.

The downside to this is that even internships today are extremely competitive and it doesn't always guarantee a job in this economy. I also know people working from one internship to the next with no job security or health benefits. It is unbelievable to some that someone with a graduate or professional degree has to accept an unpaid internship, but this is the nature of our new economy. Keep an open mind and if you can afford to, take an unpaid or low-wage internship in an industry that you want to transition into from the law and use your free time to find your niche and apply to full-time jobs in that field. At least the internship will make it easier for you to create a new resume that will make you more employable outside of becoming a paralegal with a JD or doing legal temp work.

As always, anyone with better advice is welcome to post their ideas. I will also begin to delete comments that I deem to be off topic or offensive.