Twenty something and need advice about moving to Chicago!!! (rent, find a job)

[headin2CHI]

Hi! I will be moving to Chicago at the end of this year. I am graduating from law school and my girlfriend is looking to get into something artsy, like web or graphic design(she has a BA). What part of the city would be best for 2 twenty somethings to move to where it would be fun for us and also where our job prospects would be best. We are looking for an average rent of about $1000 a month for a one bedroom. Where can an average law student get a job in Chicago. I really want to stay in the legal field, but if I have to get a non-legal job to survive I would be willing to do that, given the economic climate around the country. Please give advice!

[Drover]

Many of your questions can be answered by reading this thread:

https://www.city-data.com/forum/chica...ds-moving.html

As for your career-specific question, well, Chicago is obviously one of the top legal markets in the country. Even so, your timing for looking for a job in the legal field anywhere, including here, is spectacularly unfortunate. I'm currently in an LLM program where several of my classmates are there simply because they were either laid off from their legal jobs or are recent grads who could not find a job with a JD alone -- and these are people who had easy access to career networking opportunities here. If you weren't recruited directly from your school by a Chicago-area firm and you don't already know someone here who can put in a good word for you, I think you'll find that breaking into the market here will be extremely tough. If you're serious about practicing law, I'd try to get a job in whatever market your school primarily feeds into, because if you try to ride out this economy for a couple of years and have a gap between graudating and trying to enter practice, that will probably make it even harder to get a job in the industry.

[headin2CHI]

What kind of LLM would be good for a career in Chicago? How about any other degrees that would benefit me getting into the Chicago legal market? For example, accounting or engineering degrees.