Those about ready to graduate law school will have more trouble than usual finding entry level jobs.

Jerry Kowalski, co-founder of legal consultant Kowalski & Associates, predicts hiring of summer associates for 2009 will decrease by 35 percent from last year. This means young lawyers hoping for entry level positions at elite firms could wind up being disappointed, according to an article by Reuters.

This could prove to be a problem in a market that already will give recent graduates the lower hand. The recent financial crisis has meant many law firms are saying goodbye to top clients, while a few big lawyers are garnering big paychecks throughout the turmoil.

Top bankruptcy attorneys, high-powered defense lawyers and regulatory law experts are big winners in the financial meltdown, while deal lawyers who enjoyed robust business in recent years are seeing a marked downturn.

Lawyers who represent shareholders in big class-actions could also do well, but only if they prevail against banks, lenders and others they blame for causing staggering investor losses. Most shareholder attorneys work on a contingency basis, meaning they do not collect anything unless their clients win damages at trial or negotiate a financial settlement.

"Everybody is going to be affected," Fred Krebs, president of the Association of Corporate Counsel, an organization of in-house legal departments at major companies, said in the article. "To the extent there have been these meltdowns, there is going to be litigation."

The disappearance of three banks-Bear Stearns & Co, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Merrill Lynch & Co Inc., which has agreed to merge with Bank of America Corp-is expected to curb business for law practices long accustomed to lucrative fees from advising Wall Street.

San Francisco-based law firm Heller Ehrman LLP recently shut its doors amid the malaise, and others such as Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft LLP of New York and Chicago-based Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP have laid off attorneys.

Employers usually go through an arduous process when choosing the right candidate for a job, be it full-time or internship. These days, social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace are among the places employers seek out for a quick glimpse into the applicant’s true colors.

Students looking for that first internship or entry level job should be cognizant of their internet presence. Unflattering “party pics” that can be found floating around on the internet may narrow job opportunities.

When Facebook was first introduced, all profiles were available to the public. However, with privacy features now in play, one must ask permission to view a full page. According to Morgan Baughman, of Short North Business Association in Columbus, Ohio, “You have to ‘friend’ most people before you can see anything but their profile picture. So I just try to get a general read from that tiny little photo. If the person is holding a party cup and looks really trashed, it makes me ambivalent.”

Experts agree that when applying for an internship or full-time job, candidates must think like an employer. Oftentimes information a student thinks is harmless turns out otherwise.

“I use Facebook to scope out possible interns,” notes Baughman. “I find it’s difficult to get an accurate read on people from a cover letter, resume, and half hour interview.” It goes without saying that applicants present their best behavior during a job interview, possibly slanting their views to fit what they think the employer wants to hear. “On Facebook, people let their guards down and you can get a better idea of who they really are.”

However, Facebook is meant as a social networking tool – mostly used among friends. “Admittedly, it’s not entirely fair for employers to use Facebook,” Baughman says. Employees are representatives of their companies during business hours, and unless there is a problem that might affect one’s productivity, employers cannot dictate what people do off the clock. “Companies should make their hiring decisions based on professional history, not recreation hobbies.”

Because we live within a deluge of information on the internet, it is ever important for job seekers to market themselves professionally in every way possible. Staying in control of the information posted about oneself on the internet is an important step in getting ahead in the professional world.

One company is helping many students secure internships.

University of Dreams is an all-inclusive, destination internship program, according to an article by insideVANDY. The company provides many college students the opportunity to get an internship with a big name company. These positions may have otherwise been impossible without the necessary connections. In addition to the internship, students also are provided housing, transportation to and from work, food and the option of a variety of weekend trips.

"We want students to stop and really think about what they want out of their lives before they jump into a career that perhaps was indicted by the major they chose, or that their parents want them to do," Eric Lochtefeld, CEO and founder of University of Dreams, said in the article. "Students must think by and hard about what it is that makes them happy ... so that they are able to say ‘I had the courage to live the life I want to live.'"

The company currently has 13 programs worldwide in 11 different cities. Its most popular program is in New York City, followed by their program in the Los Angeles area.

Because internships are so important as of late, many people are wondering whether the current economic crisis will affect how easy it is for students to secure a good internship.

"We have over 2,000 employers that we work with and we have reached out to almost all of them this fall," he said in the article "The indication is that they're re-upping with us and that there are going to be even more people this year to fill the open positions."

However, the individual intern might find it harder to get an internship because of the economy, making companies like University of Dreams a valued resource.

If you're in the veterinary field, a post-graduate internship may be the way to go.

According to an article by Market Watch, recent studies and reports published by the American Veterinary Medical Association found more and more students are trending toward post-graduate education, including internships.

Among the class of 2008, 40 percent of students graduating from veterinary programs planned to go into advanced education, 89.2 percent of that group planned to go into internships while 6 percent planned to go into residencies.

Many colleges are now giving students a chance to get a look at a star-studded career by offering Hollywood internships.

Many popular US colleges and universities, particularly from the East Coast and the South, are offering new and improved internships in places such as Los Angeles, according to an article by The Boston Globe.

Among the colleges that sponsor yearlong and summer programs in Southern California include Emerson College in Boston, the University of Texas at Austin, Boston University, Ithaca College in New York, Columbia College in Chicago, Temple University in Philadelphia and Elon University in North Carolina.

Most students in these internships focus on classes in screenwriting, acting and agentry, and most of the internships in television, film, music or advertising are unpaid. Many of the programs mock overseas programs by bringing in students from out of town and creating a whole new experience.

"We joke that we are in a foreign country here," Bill Linsman, who heads Boston University's six-year-old Los Angeles Internship Program, said in the article. "Many of the students are from the East Coast, and Los Angeles' entertainment business is a foreign culture."

Usually most of the students in the internship programs stay in the Los Angeles area if it is their final semester before graduation, and often join large networks of alumni already working in the entertainment field.

"It really does immerse you immediately into what's going on here and gives you a real sense of how to break into the industry," Jeff Bibeau, an Ithaca College senior, said in the article. "It would be silly of me to study four years of communications in upstate New York, cut off from the rest of the world."