Professionals in many fields relish the idea of loads of youngsters following in their footsteps, mentoring budding talents and encouraging them to continue to pursue their passions.
Not this guy.
Matthew Willens, a Chicago-based personal injury attorney, this week announced he is setting up a $1,000 scholarship he plans to award to any prospective graduate student who is willing to skip law school and go into any other field instead, CBS Chicago reports.
He is calling it the Anything But Law School Graduate Scholarship. Its description reads:
Some of you may be wondering, why would a law firm create a scholarship to dissuade students from practicing law? The answer is simple; we currently do not have enough jobs to be able to effectively train the current number of freshly minted lawyers in our profession. To protect the reputation of our profession Willens Law Offices has created this scholarship to persuade undergraduates to pursue another graduate degree for a limited time.
Willens, who also teaches part-time at Loyola University Chicago's law school, doesn't consider his scholarship to be "anti-law school" and told NBC Chicago it's "simply a supply-and-demand issue."
AboveTheLaw.com's Elie Mystal agreed with Willens' assessment of the floundering legal job market and wrote Monday the scholarship should be "offered by the ABA. Any organization representing lawyers should be paying people to go away."
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