It’s been almost five months since you got your J.D. degree. But if you haven’t got a job, what are your options? Many jobless people prefer going to Starbucks everyday to use the free wifi provided there. Of course you are expected to keep drinking their coffee. For most of the new graduates, the only option is to sit at home in front of the computer all day and keep sending out resumes and customized cover letters.

If you want to stick it out in the legal field there are a few options – work pro bono, work for Legal Aid or some nonprofit. Nonprofits are always in need of legal minds and you can choose your favorite cause here, and if you don’t have any, just choose one which seems to have the best potential.

Finally, there’s always the government. Maybe you can be the next DA who’s putting away the bad guys like you used to fantasize about when watching Law & Order. But this was in the pre-recession days. Now even these secondary, “low” paying but “safe” careers have received a glut of applications from recent grads of highly ranked schools. So what are your options short of waiting tables or babysitting? There’s nothing wrong in either of those jobs, but you didn’t get in a debt of over $150,000 for this, did you?

One option is to study further. Go back to school and get an LLM. But unless you are planning to work in tax law and get into a good tax law program, you will just be setting yourself up for more student debt. The answers are not easy in this economy, with outsourcing expected to take away an increasing number of entry-level legal jobs. It’s obvious that an increasing number of lawyers are going to be working in jobs outside the legal field.