Good news: Legal services industry adds 100 jobs in 2011

The BLS January jobs report is out, which reveals that, between January of 2011 and last month, the legal services sector in the U.S. grew from 1,116,500 jobs to 1,116,600 positions nationwide.  Now it's true that the sector includes a lot of non-attorney positions, but on the other hand there's no law that says an attorney can't work as a paralegal or an administrative support person (On the third hand there are a lot of employers who refuse as a matter of policy to consider people with JDs for non-JD-required legal positions).  So while not all 100 of those jobs went to previously unemployed law graduates, we can be pretty sure several dozen of them did.

Fortunately, the inherent flexibility  (h/t Nando) of a law degree ensures that if you're not among the lucky people who got one of the approximately one to two new jobs for lawyers that were created per week in the United States last year, you still have a veritable cornucopia, as Howard Cosell (an NYU Law Review alumnus) used to say, of alternative careers, including broadcast journalism, real estate speculation, founding an on-line dating site,  or an off-line one, becoming a best-selling novelist, or, if all else fails, President of the United States.

In the words of Shawn P. O'Connor, Esq., "the unique paths taken by these graduates reinforce the versatility of a law degree, which brings with it a plethora of marketable skills."