It seems like everyone knows that the job market out there is pretty bleak. With national unemployment rates in the double digits, layoffs going on en masse and an endless stream of applications for every open position. Well, everyone except for Ethan Haines.
Ethan Haines is best known as the blogger behind the career site, UnemployedJD, a first person site that is written from the life experiences of a law school graduate without a job. The site covers both his personal feeling about the situation and the day-to-day reality of trying to find work as a lawyer right now.
Oh wait, Mr. Haines isn’t unemployed. Today he was revealed to be Ms. Zenovia Evans, an employed 28-year-old graduate of the Cooley Law School, but anyay more about the fictitious hunger strike that drew all of the media attention.
In what could be a publicity stunt for the UnemployedJD site, or a legitimate act of frustration with the job prospects in the current economic downturn, Ethan Haines has decided to take it upon himself to go on a hunger strike until law schools are more upfront with their students about their career prospects when the get out into the real world.
He has already been on the strike for more than 32 hours in order to draw attention to the problem that faces many law school graduates right now: the grim prospects of finding a job in a market were there are few options for JD’s.
In one of his posts he writes a description of the role he is hoping to fulfill with this strike
“I stand in place of countless law students and recent graduates who have been disillusioned by law school employment statistics, commercial school rankings, and antiquated career counseling programs. I designated myself class representative since these students are not able to come forward themselves; for fear that vocalizing their concerns will negatively affect their careers.
On August 5, 2010, I began a hunger strike to bring awareness to the concerns of my classmates, as detailed in the Notice I forwarded to law school administrators at ten of the nation’s top law schools. “
The question is, what will this hunger strike really do, besides drive traffic to the site of this particular blogger, and increase his ad revenue along the way? Well, the odds are probably not very much at all. After all, why should any law school, anywhere really give a flying fig if one unemployed blogger chooses to starve himself?
Unless it is being run by his mother, probably no reason at all.
Writer at the Above The Law blog also agree with this assessment, though in classic lawyerly fashion, they put it in a much less succinct way, “Law schools have no incentive to keep costs low. They have no incentive to be more transparent. And that’s because at this point the demand for legal education appears to be limitless. Tuition went up during the recession, and still new law students signed up in droves. The market for jobs for junior lawyers has totally tanked, and still new law students sign up for law school in record numbers.”
So, how long will Ethan Haines hold on before you he gives in at eats? Well, he told Yelena Shuster, a blogger at Huffington Post, that he, “plans to keep fasting for as long as his body can handle it.”