Job Discussion Forums

[lastresort]

I graduated from law school last month and am planning on moving to Saigon around September. What sort of job prospects are there? My undergrad degree is in business admin, and I taught English in Japan for one year (JET).

Legal job market in the US is horrible, so figured I would try my luck in Saigon. Is a JD attractive to employers there or is it just as worthless as in the US?

Thanks for reading.

[mark_in_saigon]

My GUESS is that if your goal is teaching English, your specific degree is not going to be terribly important to the hiring managers, though ANY degree more or less qualifies you here, esp if you have the TESOL. My guess is doing the CELTA would then be worth as much or more to your job prospects as the JD. So, your degree certainly does not hurt, but I suspect it does not help in a profound way. Others with specific expertise on this subject may correct me if I am wrong.

If you are hoping for a job that really wants legal background, my GUESS is that they would want someone with real work experience as well. In other words, looks to me like you can consider yourself more or less in the same bucket as other native English speakers with similar qualifications (any degree and then yes or no on the TESOL/CELTA), and then the other questions relating to your appearance, presentation, mastery of the language and natural ability to teach (along with your attitude about dealing with all the realities of living and working here) will be what really matters.

We have many recent threads discussing the generalities of the job market here, along with discussions of pay and lifestyle. I recently made the point on one of them that the motivations of the newcomer for choosing VN are really important and rarely discussed in an honest way, along with some other related points. Your post is a pretty good example of this phenomenon. Unless you are implying that after achieving your education you are now convinced that your best economic future and career is likely in VN, it appears you really say nothing about why you want to come here. Not that it is really our business, but advice about coming is pretty much irrelevant without knowing this. In your case, if you indeed find this to be the best career move and economic future, I would suggest you may be mistaken. I do think other countries might give you a better opportunity to teach subject matter related to your education (maybe China?), to give you some hope of keeping on some sort of career track other than the daily slog of ESL in VN, which is a lovely little life for those who have some money already, but is not much of a career path other than what it is as long as it may continue to last.

[toiyeuthitmeo]

As usual Mark speaks well and in fact I did not practice reading for detail in his post, so apologize if her brought up any of my points already.

I am interested if OP has been admitted to practice (passed the bar) anywhere yet? If not, I would highly advise getting that done, first. There are internet revenue streams for bar-admitted attorneys by which you could do a bit of standard teaching here in VN and get by quite nicely with the combination of the income from online legal services. You would need to have at least some very loose affiliation with a terrestrial law office back in the states, but that could be pretty easy to get. Find a store-front law office in a Vietnamese-American neighborhood, for example, and tell them that you're already set on moving here, and could you do anything for them? This would not be to get good attorney work in Vietnam as much as it would be to have a terrestrial law office in the states to refer back to for any work you might actually get here.

I recently researched about immigration laws and was taken to a website where i could pay 20.00 for a random American attorney to answer my question live on chat. Now I would rather research on my own and I also think that a 20.00 internet attorney is a bit of a scam, but I'm sure there are tons of people who pay that 20.00. And that's not even a case, a filing, a motion, a brief, or whatever else legalistic term you can add in. Just an internet question for 20.00 So there's that idea and I don't think you need to be in America to answer chat questions.

In addition, there are expats in Saigon who would appreciate (and maybe even a few would pay for) a the company and/or billable services of a bar-admitted American attorney in their midst. People are getting married, dealing with power-of-attorney, dealing with work permits, dealing with tax issues, dealing with divorces, dealing with rental properties back in the States, etc.

OP I do have to comment, though, that it's very concerning that moving to Vietnam to teach English is a needed or viable option for a fresh doctor of jurisprudence. Yikes. Pretty soon I'll be teaching with down-and-out particle physicists.

[TRH]

While toiyeuthitmeo may have some workable suggestions, I would caution that they may not all be legal. Giving advice in exchange for money is practice of law and I could see the authorities coming down pretty hard on a foreigner without all the proper licensing. We know this is the country where you have to get a stamp on a paper from the local officials just to open a store. Here's a link to a list of law firms that serve US clients that was not hard to find: http://hochiminh.usconsulate.gov/uploads/images/bsX7MN5UKdG2BAxQPdp8gw/AttorneysNov282005.pdf The OP might contact some of them. In fact, it's a list any of us could potentially find handy.

I noticed similarities between this and another inquiry about someone wanting to enter into marketing with a similar lack of experience. Those of us who have worked for multinational corporations know that nowadays they rotate new management between countries, in part as a way to give them a test of fire. There are surely very nice jobs for recent graduates working for big US or European companies in District 1 but these people are here because they got sent here, not because they walked in the door and said, "I want to work in HCMC." They work a few years and get moved somewhere else. To make the pot sweeter they may get their usual salaries and perquisites like housing and airplane tickets home on holidays. The only way in to this situation is a desire to work for the company, not a desire to work in a given country. HCMC might be good, but the next career stop could be Bangladesh. How about working for Pepsi or Coca-cola in Kabul?

[deadlift]

RMIT university needs lecturers to teach their law courses. Requirements include:

"2) Academic staff teaching into undergraduate or post-graduate programs must hold either a discipline relevant degree at least one level higher than the degree they are teaching or an equivalent discipline relevant
degree together with substantial relevant industry experience."

More info here: http://www.rmit.edu.vn/jobs/expression-interest-academic-positions-commerce-management-ref6112

[Tigerstyleone]

[lastresort]

Thanks to all for the replies!

mark_in_saigon - I chose Saigon because I have family there and have been stuck in America too long. I could probably bust my ass to find a $60k government job, but I don't want to stare at a computer screen for 8 hours every day. Plus, I don't really want to be a lawyer. Guess I will find out if law school taught me any "transferable skills" that professors always talk about . . .

toiyeuthitmeo - Yes, I am taking the NY bar exam next month. Thanks for mentioning the internet lawyer thing, I haven't heard of that and will look into it. Unfortunately, law school degrees aren't worth much these days. Just search "law school scam" and you will find quite a few angry blogs from law students and even some law professors.

TRH - I've heard about working and then getting transferred overseas, but for me it's time to get out of the US for a few years.

deadlift - Awesome, will look into it!

Tigerstyleone - Haha, you're right, I did not choose Saigon at random. I want to live in Saigon and was wondering if my law degree was worth anything there. Seems like not really . . .

[TRH]

[lastresort]

I'm only half Viet, but I speak Vietnamese like a retarded baby. Sounds like I am stuck in the worst of both worlds!

[charlesmarlow]

A: His lips are moving Q:

[mark_in_saigon]

[lastresort]

[TRH]

If you decide to go forward with the teaching idea, you might want to think about adding taking an IELTS test to your to-do list when you get here. Look on the British Council VN website. It is not absurd that you might take it as a native speaker. In fact the website cautions that not all native speakers will get the maximum score of 9 and that you need to prepare. Of course it will be nothing compared to the NY bar which I understand runs about 75% pass for first time takers. An IELTS score of 9 might help you to overcome the hiring prejudice against you, and maybe even allow you to demand a full native speakers wage. An interviewer at a language center will not be able to objectively evaluate your English fluency because they are still stuck at 7, but if you have a paper document they respect such things here.

In some respects, you are ideally situated to get started. You could stay with family while taking the CELTA course and have a good social life on weekends. As you apparently have already found out, the days when half Vietnamese are socially stigmatized as children of the enemy is long past. Staying with family should turn your "baby" Vietnamese into relative fluency in a short time, and it sounds like your relatives are successful enough that you should not be subject to pressures to give them much beyond maybe a little meal money as a courtesy.

[mark_in_saigon]

Not really advising the OP here, but I would just suggest that MOST native speakers would not get an overall 9 on the IELTS. I would be very interested to see what scores they WOULD get, but I would even go so far as to say that most ESL teachers would not get an overall 9.

This snippet was found on google, but the entire page would not load. It does sound pretty close to correct to me though:

In a recent experiment, native English speaking graduates in the UK were given the IELTS test and guess what the average score was? Only 7.5

I think having these scores documented is a good strategy, I have one on my resume that gets a lot of interest. However, I discussed this here a couple of years ago and some of the posters disparaged this idea, saying any native speaker would get a perfect score (which I do not agree with). I suspect most of us would be challenged to get a perfect score on these tests. I took the TOEIC and was surprised to get the 990, it was NOT a piece of cake, and especially without any real preparation.

Good thing about these higher scores, if you can achieve them, they are not really open to interpretation or corruption. While they do not guarantee your ability to teach, they surely confirm your mastery of the language.