Good news:
Some 120 Ethiopian-Israeli students are enrolled in law schools throughout the country…
More than 3,000 of the 95,000 Ethiopian-Israelis have academic degrees, while some 2,000 attend post-high school institutions.
Bad news:
However, job market figures remain gloomy. A Central Bureau of Statistics 2003 survey found 26 percent unemployment among Ethiopian immigrants, compared to 11 percent for the entire country. More than 90 percent of those working had blue-collar jobs.…
CBS has no data on the employment of Ethiopians with higher education, but recent studies have shown that most suitable job offers have come through affirmative action efforts. Director of the Israel Association for Ethiopian Jews, Batia Eyob, says that graduates have been employed in part-time jobs at low wages. The 1997 government decision that the Civil Service Commission would hire 17 Ethiopian graduates each year has not been implemented until now.
Nepotism:
Attorney Eyal Rozovsky of Haim Tzadok & Co. is among the only law offices trying to make that connection happen. Rozovsky thus far has trained six articled clerks. The latest one, Amira Amara, will start working there next week as a licensed lawyer.
Rozovsky believes the main thing keeping Ethiopians out of law firms is their lack of networking ability, since many veteran Israelis find work while still in law school due to their connections.
"The Ethiopians don't have a daddy who can pick up the phone to his buddy, a lawyer, and arrange an articled clerkship for him," he says.
Read it all here.