In Megalopolis, the number of law school graduates who went to work for large, corporate firms declined by 15 percent over the last three years, whereas an increasing number of graduates took jobs at small, general practice firms. Even though large firms usually offer much higher salaries, law school graduates are choosing to work for the smaller firms most likely because they experience greater job satisfaction at smaller firms. In a survey of first-year students at a leading law school, most agreed with the statement that earning a high salary was less important to them than job satisfaction. This finding suggests that the large, corporate firms of Megalopolis will need to offer graduates more benefits and incentives and reduce the number of hours they must work.
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The argument concludes that the law school graduates in Megalopolis are increasingly opting to work for smaller law firms as they gain better job satisfaction in those firms, and to bring back the students to their fold, the big corporate firms should offer more benefits and incentives to their employees and decrease their workload. The speaker cites the decrease in the number of law graduates joining big corporate firms and the increase in number of graduates joining small law firms as evidence. The outcome of an opinion in a leading law school has also been quoted as proof to support this argument. Additionally, it has been assumed by the speaker that while the benefits at large companies are sub par and the employees in those places are overworked, the law graduates are finding better job satisfaction in the smaller law firms.The augument is full of deficiencies and is open to a lot of questions since it presents meager evidence and dubious assumptions. Neither are the premises convincing nor is the conclusion compelling. The argument is very evidently the upshot of an impetous generalization.
Firstly, it has been mentioned that the number of law school graduates who went to work for large corporations has decreased by 15 percent in last three years, while the number of law graduates joining small firms has increased. This statement does not eluciate on whether the large law firms have reduced their recruitment in the last three years, while simultaneously a myriad small law firms have burgeoned, which may account for this purported imbalance in the employment of law graduates. Also, it may very well be possible that the large corporations have raised the hiring standard for law graduates in the last three years, and perhaps are not finding the graduates of the Megalopolis law school measuring up to their expectations.
Secondly, the speaker mentions the survey at a leading law school reflecting the opinion of students favoring job satisfaction over a big pay check. This piece of evidence is not convincing at all because one survey is not representative of a wider and general opinion of majority of the law graduates; students at other schools may well opt for a higher salary compared to anything else that a company offers.
Furthermore, while mentioning that "large, corporate firms of Megalopolis will need to offer graduates more benefits and incentives and reduce the number of hours they must work", the speaker provides no evidence to substantiate that benefits at small law firms outstrip the same at the bigger companies, or that working hours in small firms are much more relaxed in comparison. Also, there is nothing in the argument that suggests that working at bigger companies results in little or not job satisfaction for some concrete reasons, or that the same is guaranteed/assured in smaller law firms.
To buttress this argument, the speaker would do well to
provide comparative data related to Working hours,Salary, Perquisites and other benefits of both small law firms and large companies. Also, the precise reasons owing to which the large companies are not recruiting from Megalopolis needs to be investigated and highlighted as well; in particular, it would be helpful to know if they are in hiring mode, and if so, whether they find graduates from some other college to be more proficient and employable. In addition to this, it would be worthwhile knowing from the final year law graduate students across a large cross-section as to what their priorities and career goals are, and how do they visualize an employment opportunity in a law firm as the means to attaning those.
In summary, the argument is the result of a huge number of hypotheses in which the speaker has unduly assumed a a lot of unsusbtantiated evidence/assertions. Had the author taken the above discussed factors into view, it would have rendered the argument incontrovertible. But whatever has been presented here indeed fails to provide a holistic picture to the superfluous claims being made.
You did a great job with this.
I would like to have one sentence added to the paragraph about the insufficiency of the survey and one sentence added to the conclusion. Those two paragraphs seem to end abruptly.
Also, you can spend some time at the end to list the various other conclusions that could be drawn instead of the one they drew (i.e. based on your observations in this critique.)
A great article to cite in this essay would be W.H.C. Prentice "Understanding Leadership."
Here it is, my friend, capaoftexas.org/mediafiles/understanding-leadership.pdf
It is the basis for what we call TRANSACTIONAL leadership. It is a series of transactions, like a transaction at a supermarket cash register.
But in more recent times we are replacing it with TRANSFORMATIONAL leadership, which is even better! :-) Google that, too: transformational leadership
