Careers
Fake Ad for $30K NY Lawyer Job Gets Real Responses
Posted Jan 15, 2009, 05:58 pm CST
By Martha Neil
Frustrated with the lack of good legal jobs, a New York contract attorney earning $60,000 a year posted an advertisement of his own on Craigslist.
A 2005 law school graduate, the unnamed 30-year-old intended the $30,000 job listing for an associate attorney working for a 20-lawyer firm in midtown Manhattan to be obviously satirical, recounts Above the Law: For one thing, the position—which calls for 12-hour days and a six-day work week—offers only three sick days and a week of vacation, which is "limited to the months of January and February, as we will need you to be in the office while the partners are taking their time off in the summer."
However, the ad, sadly, received a number of apparently serious responses, the legal blog reports. So the poster has now put an update on Craigslist, stating that the confidential materials he received from would-be applicants have been destroyed because the earlier ad wasn't for a real job.
"I thought it would be clear that it is a fake. Even if it wasn't fake, who in their right mind would apply to such a position that retains a second year med student in lieu of health insurance?" he writes in the update, referring to another "benefit" of the nonexistent job.
Related ABAJournal.com coverage:
Law Grad with LLM Lands Just One Job Interview from 300 Resumés
Law Grad, 32: Don’t Do What I Did
Comments not appearing after a few seconds? Try emptying your cache ("Temporary Internet files"), making sure Javascript is activated, and refresh this page.