<p>To agree with cranky: I think the medical school analogy is instructive.</p>
<p>There are two circumstances in which a medical school will hire its own graduates. The first is Residency Training, in which a medical student becomes an intern and subsequently a resident. That will be a temporary job, insofar as it will expire at some point (1-7 years) in the future, but the point is that it trains the young physician for another job and almost always leads to future employment at the job for which he is being trained.</p>
<p>The other alternative would be to hire a medical school graduate, usually as a “research assistant,” if he failed to obtain a residency placement either in the “match” or in the “scramble.” This position does not consist of further clinical training, does not prepare a student for practice as a physician, and is not a direct route to any other employment. Usually such students will re-apply to residency at the end of this year, meaning that the year was a detour at best. It certainly is not the road to a long-term job.</p>
<p>Law schools have, as padad argues, some jobs that are analogous to medical residency, because they consist of training which students actively seek in order to lead directly to employment prospects. Cranky is right that they also have some jobs, employing their own graduates, that are similar to research assistantships – these consist of jobs which students would not choose except as an alternative to unemployment. They are not primarily intended as training, they do not lead directly to other employment, and they are detours at best and dead ends at worst.</p>
<p>We on CC are debating this issue in a vacuum. Padad is asserting that these jobs are like residencies; cranky is asserting that they are more like research assistant years. Obviously there are some of each, but on the whole I’m inclined to agree with cranky as to the majority of them. But we’ve presented no evidence on the relative proportions of residency-like jobs to research-assistant-like jobs, and so we’ll find ourselves arguing in circles if we continue.</p>