Here's a question that your Unemployed Lawyer has been wrestling with for quite some time. I've heard so many conflicting opinions that there's been no making sense of them all together.

Given that one is an unemployed lawyer with no immediate prospects of obtaining legal work, does one help or harm oneself by toiling outside the legal profession, especially at a minimum wage job? It's not that there's anything inherently shameful about these jobs: many of the people who have them are a lot happier and a lot nicer than many lawyers. But when you have college and three years of law school, plus however many years of private practice behind you, you develop certain expectations. Can we be bartenders, retail clerks, bicycle messengers, or pet groomers? At least with the latter, we'd finally learn The Truth About Cats and Dogs!

Seriously, aside from making some small dent in existing financial obligations, what does taking such a job do to us mentally and emotionally? Will we, as unemployed lawyers, be embarrassed to serve our former colleagues for tips when they take our former clients out to dinner? What happens when the corner-office partner who used to torture you steps up to your cash register at the bookstore? Do you want to deliver documents to your former office? Groom your former boss' dog?

What do such jobs do to legal job prospects? The legal community is a gossipy place. What happens when a still-employed lawyer from a target firm runs into you on the sales floor of a department store? Does that knowledge make you look like a failure to prospective employers? Does it make you look like a hero who grins and bears it?

Even assuming that you have to take a job, any job, just to put food on the table, how do you treat that job on your resume and in interviews? If you don't put it on you resume, it looks like you haven't been doing anything. If you do, well. . . . Do you leave it off your resume and discuss it if you get an interview?

Watch In Her Shoes, for the story of a lawyer who finds happiness as a dog-walker. But is it possible?

Please let me know!