If Richard Feinstein, who heads the Bureau of Competition at the Federal Trade Commission, was applying for an entry-level position as a lawyer with the agency today, he said, “I probably couldn’t get a job here.”

He’s joking as he says it, but it also might be true. Not that Feinstein is a slouch — he earned his J.D. from prestigious Boston College Law School — it’s just that competition for legal jobs with the federal government has grown fiercer than ever.