Yesterday, The Boy and I were discussing the economy. He wanted to know how the economy was making people spend less on Christmas presents... something that didn't personally affect him.
I explained that companies were going out of business, and people were losing their jobs, so they didn't have as much money to spend and were cutting back, and that meant that other companies were selling less, making them lay people off, and creating in general an atmosphere of worry that meant that nobody wanted to spend money because everyone was worried about their jobs.
"
But that doesn't affect you," he said. I asked why and he said "
Because you're a lawyer." I pointed out that, yes, it
does affect me, because as people get laid off and worried about spending money, they cut back on things and those "things" include hiring lawyers.
It's true, too: even the legal profession gets hit by downturns, and law firms can lay off people or let people go like any other company. But one nice thing about the law as a job : it rebounds nicely, and there's a lot of niches out there. It's not like being a retailer. Clothes are clothes -- if you sell shirts and people don't want shirts, it's hard to switch up and sell televisions.
But lawyer and legal professionals can move into new fields more easily. I practice a few areas of law, so when one is down, the other may be up. And that keeps me more employed than others in these times.
So having a job in the legal profession can be a real boon, both in keeping employed and in getting re-employed. Just look at all the
legal jobs available on one site, RealMatch. They're a job site that matches people based on their unique skills, one that uses a unique method of locating just the right person for just the right job, and they've got dozens of jobs in the legal profession: construction litigator, trusts & estates associate, even legal assistant jobs.
If you're thinking about getting into the legal profession, clicking over to RealMatch might just convince you that you're choosing the right career. If you're in the legal profession already, then RealMatch can help you find your first, or your next, job, even in these hard times.
Which would you find more weird and sort of frightening: sitting on a raft amidst a bunch of whales in the middle of the ocean, like Tom Hanks did in "Cast Away" or standing on a plain in the midst of a herd of buffalo?
I'd be way more freaked out by the whales. The ocean is spooky. Neat, but spooky. So it's probably a good thing I didn't follow my childhood dream of being an oceanographer.
Children tormented by demons. An old man accidentally killing people. Witches who live hundreds of years and escape from Hell repeatedly. An astronaut drifting through space... these and other great stories can be found only on AfterDark: The scariest things, you CAN'T imagine.
