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Never asked for the OP update before, but change my Class of 2008 blurb to "Graduate of Minnesota. Was at a big Minneapolis firm, laid off after 1 year, now hopelessly unemployable"
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May 7, 2010 00:46
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BigHead posted:Also, I told my parents the reason I wasn't walking at graduation was "gently caress these dickheads who want to charge me $200 for walking, law school is already a scam I'm not letting them milk me for more." What the hell are they doing? I think about 90-95% of my class walked, and we weren't charged extra as far as I can recall (UMN '08).
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May 8, 2010 06:15
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Blakkout posted:The only thing better than celebrating the end of the year with finals, is celebrating the end of finals with a two week journal petition. I think this is "soul crushing" to a T. Blakkout, you're at U. Minn, right? While the typing and bluebooking is unavoidably sucky, I found that reading the source materials, developing arguments, and editing the paper is a lot less soul-crushing when you're sitting by Lake Calhoun, ogling joggers and seeing the sun. If you want any advice, let me know. I wrote on and later graded petitions.
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May 9, 2010 18:53
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I know the ITC ratcheted up requirements midway through a job announcement. When I applied I was theoretically qualified through experience, now when I check the USAJobs entry, it looks like I missed that by a year.
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May 9, 2010 19:52
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pigz posted:A quick question. So I'm a year away from finishing up my BS in my math, and I'm considering law school. I'll get it out the way and say I've always dreamed of winding up working 100 hours a week, having my wife leave me and living the glorious lovely life of a lawyer. Largely hopeless. I had a similar situation (repeating classes to up the school GPA, getting my poo poo together, trending up in a tough subject), but my LSDAS GPA was still sub-3.0 and my mid-170s LSAT didn't get me a T14 when I applied.
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May 14, 2010 01:07
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Duper posted:gently caress this hope-extinguishing thread. I will get into HLS. So? I had one of those coveted big-firm jobs. I was super busy for a good portion of my time there, and actually made my billable target 10 months into the year. It was miserable, but that's the trade-off you make and I accepted that. Then the client that was responsible for 85% of my billables got pissed at something someone else screwed up, stopped giving us work, and 2 months after that I was canned for a bunch of "performance issues" that had never been mentioned to me before. Today is the 6-month anniversary of when I found out I was getting canned. Since then, my credentials that managed to get me that job and my experience at the firm has led to all of three interviews and no offers. Even if you are one of the lucky successful ones, all it does is put you in a position for assholes to run your life, then ruin your career.
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May 17, 2010 15:45
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More job hunting fun: I just got dinged from a federal government job because of a "lack of experience on a law review or journal of international trade." I was an editor on my law review, a fact that appeared on my resume, and I detailed my experience there in my KSA responses. They haven't responded to my attempt to bring this to their attention.
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May 18, 2010 19:52
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evilweasel posted:what practice group is this and how do I get it It's not just the practice group, but the particulars of a practice group and your role within it. While I was employed, I had an experience similar to HooKar's boyfriend: I was able to bill most of my time, and generally work consistent hours. I was in IP litigation, working on large-budget cases mainly as a tech geek. I'd sometimes have crazy swings, mostly when doing odds-and-ends projects between big cases, or around the big deadlines in the big cases, but when mostly working on just one big case at a time it was usually easy to make hours on a reasonable schedule because many of my projects were "spend 150 hours next month teaching yourself quantum mechanics" or "review these reams of prior art by next Wednesday". Man do I miss it. Note: even within a practice group, go off of materials from the specific person you're working for every time. I have been yelled at for using one partner's forms on a project for another partner, despite the fact that the materials I was recycling were from the most similar case law-wise and a much bigger case in terms of dollars and importance.
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May 25, 2010 02:49
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JudicialRestraints posted:There are no jobs in those areas. If you are studying philosophy of law it means you have already given up on your degree and are planning on blowing 200k. Have fun with that. In better times, those classes meant "I'm a 3L with an offer, I don't give a gently caress about practical applications."
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May 25, 2010 05:29
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Special A posted:1) I'm an URM This will come down to the value of URM status. As a white dude with a 175 and a 2.9 GPA at another good engineering program, my best offer was UMN + $ in 2005, shut out by T14. They have to report UGPA to US News, so it matters as much as the LSAT, and the difficulty of the degree is treated more like a (largely worthless) soft factor. Edit: \/ In addition to the above bit about difficulty not mattering, relation to "law stuff" like textual analysis doesn't matter either. Major is part of "everything else" on the OP Venn Diagram. OptimistPrime fucked around with this message at 05:07 on Jun 2, 2010 |
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Jun 2, 2010 04:52
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Special A posted:I know everyone loves hating on applying to law school, but can't we answer the questions too? Eh, sort of. There are a couple backgrounds that are particularly in demand - EE (any level) and PhD level biotech. Also, UG grades and prior work experience matter. IP firms definitely held my UGPA and kind of niche major (BME) against me for patent prosecution positions. Non-EE/biotech backgrounds sort of open doors, but not to the extent you may believe. Not sure how the different backgrounds affect law school performance; I doubt they do, but that's totally anecdotal.
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Jun 2, 2010 05:23
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Special A posted:Are you doing IP now? If so, how difficult would you say it took you to find a job? I'm a laid off IP litigator. Been looking for a job for the last 6 months, looking at both prosecution and litigation, and it's pretty terrible. I'm in MN and a member of that bar, so it somewhat limits my options but also makes my BME degree a bit more valuable; still, I haven't had more than a couple leads going at the same time since getting canned last November. Getting my previous job wasn't that hard; I got it through 3L OCI. This was in 2007, and my particular firm had just snagged a huge case and was developing a new client. When that client stopped working with the firm, so did I.
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Jun 2, 2010 05:51
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diospadre posted:I'm curious, why are electrical engineers always mentioned as being in demand? Is there just a shortage of them? It's a combination of rarity, the type of work they can do, and the relative volumes of available business. Firms can throw anyone with a registration number onto simple mechanical applications, but they're less willing to let some random ME run with an application directed to wireless networking technologies. EEs are employable before they go to law school, so there is some rarity in terms of supply, but more of the rarity is due to demand; electronics are one of the most frequently litigated areas and an area where there's a lot of patent prosecution business (and their background matters). Compared to the number of, say, medical device or chemical process patents, there's a ton of electronics patents being filed.
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Jun 2, 2010 14:38
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Math was way too tough to ever deal with again, but my engineering background will allow me to easily enter the lucrative and interesting field of patent law!
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Jun 3, 2010 23:23
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quotison posted:More bar exam chat: How much preparing do you really need to do for the MPT? I'm taking New York, so we have one and it is worth 10% of your score. Barbri has assigned us like four practice MPTs so far, and I think I get the general gist of the thing by now. The MPT is so loving easy that you shouldn't waste much time on it. If you've done 4 practice ones, you should be set.
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Jun 7, 2010 01:13
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I just got a call for a job interview while at another job interview.  Fortunately I remembered to turn off my phone during the interview.Hopefully I can rejoin the world of the miserable (but paid) soon.
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Jun 11, 2010 16:45
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No jobs, die alone, read the OP. I will not allow myself to be trolled any further.
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Jun 14, 2010 19:05
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MayakovskyMarmite posted:Also, we did some interviewing recently. For the love of god have at least three GOOD questions pre-loaded. We ask the same drat questions and get the same mealy-mouthed answers. What are some examples of good questions? This is an area where I worry I may fall flat as an interviewee, so I appreciate any tips to really up that part of my interview game.
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Jun 16, 2010 02:45
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If Ersatz is still reading this, they started putting up postings for GS-9 level patent examiners on USAJobs. So far they have Electrical/Computer and Biomedical Engineering positions. SV: The TTT Biglaw gimmick would also wonderfully troll the unemployed T1 grads, as a side benefit.
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Jun 17, 2010 15:50
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Kase Im Licht posted:I really suck at selling myself. Even slightly exaggerating qualifications makes me uncomfortable and I start imagining that I'll be called on it an interview and be run out of the office with an angry mob behind me. Stupid parents. It's only a problem if you lie. You're not doing that. You aren't even exaggerating. You're taking your experiences and framing them in a way that shows employers the value you can deliver. Someone paid you to click through those documents. Think about why they paid you, and the value you added to the project. It may be tough (I know it is for me, my layoff and the job search has kind of beaten me down at points and I'm not a bubbling font of confidence anyways), but think of yourself as a valuable commodity, and put together a resume describing that value.
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Jun 18, 2010 00:39
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Baruch Obamawitz posted:One week until $2500 bonus! Then another $2500 bonus next month! Then a $5000 bonus in two months! Nice. Hey, do you know anything about Examiner hiring through the "experienced attorneys" initiative? It's been a long-rear end time since my interview and my status is still "referred to selecting official" so I'm assuming I got dinged for whatever reason, but it is the Federal Government and up until the interview they were good about keeping me updated.
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Jun 18, 2010 04:11
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Baruch Obamawitz posted:oh just gently caress it, every specific-purpose software is just an algorithm, which is per se abstract, which also clearly only suited for the use for which it is claimed, thereby preempting every other use because there are no other uses Abstract idea patents: the new obscenity. Edit: GOD DAMMIT... just got shot down by the best prospect to come along in my now 8 months of job-hunting. I'm completely loving doomed. OptimistPrime fucked around with this message at 19:58 on Jun 28, 2010 |
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Jun 28, 2010 19:20
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Apparently firms only behave honorably when it fucks me over. Place I interviewed at decided to hire a guy whose offer they had previously pulled back in 09. I know the kid, and I know I'm a significantly better candidate on all the objective factors (he's a nice guy and all but gently caress him, I need a job). Hell, my contact at the firm who passed along my resume thought this former summer was a terrible fuckwit. And now I remain jobless and he starts in a week. And JudicialRestraints, how the gently caress does one "explicitly violate" Rule 403? You can disagree with his views on 403 issues, but it's pretty drat hard for the judge to exceed his discretion there.
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Jun 30, 2010 05:02
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SWATJester posted:It's p. nerdy when people work hard and get grades only to find out there are no jobs and they're unemployed This. I was a gunner douche that did well in the best law school in his market, was a law review editor, and then worked 1 year at the biggest firm in town before getting canned because my group lost the client responsible for 85% of my billable work. Now I'm an unemployable bum. And I'm probably not even the worst case of good grades + hard work = nothing in the thread.
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Jul 13, 2010 13:49
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The Arsteia posted:hey petey i transferred to the university of minnesota. did i tell you that If you need to know anything about UMN, um, some of my former profs are still there...
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Jul 14, 2010 00:26
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Baruch Obamawitz posted:Who cares? That's not the standard for whether something is prior art: it's merely "person wrote a thing." If person wrote a thing over one year before filing, 102(b) bar, the end. Right but that's not the use he was discussing. It probably needed more context but I got the sense that the wikipedia cite was to describe some technical background concept or establish a device using particular method of operation or something. Plus it means their associate spent 5 minutes googling it instead of 10 hours looking it up in an obscure treatise, way too efficient to be good lawyering on a large (and I'm assuming high-budget) patent case.
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Jul 16, 2010 17:12
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evilweasel posted:To be honest, I hadn't really thought of that. The other thing is to remember that things change. Now that poo poo has hit the fan and is slowly pulling back together, it's easier to gauge how a firm will react, but when I chose a place, I did it based on their perceived "humanity" and didn't mind that their prestige was confined to one region. Now I'm laid off in a slow market, and the only firm on my resume has a name most coastal people can't pronounce, let alone recognize. OptimistPrime fucked around with this message at 19:53 on Jul 16, 2010 |
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Jul 16, 2010 19:47
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BarBri practice MBE vquestions are the scared straight program of bar prep. Hopefully being experienced and jaded hasn't left me unprepared for the NY bar next week. As I was attempting to fly to NY to see family and take the NY bar, I ran into several travelers with siblings or children considering law school, and the person sitting next to me on one flight was a solo. Sadly, I didn't get to crush the hopes of any "0-L's" directly, but hopefully people share the message of "don't go no jobs die alone."
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Jul 24, 2010 03:43
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J Miracle posted:Got an interview with a state SC justice in September...if you disagree vehemently with every opinion you've ever read from a judge, should you: Two of my friends, who are both very liberal, were MN Supreme Court clerks for a rather conservative justice. It'll obviously depend on the judge, but I don't think they need or necessarily want people who agree with them on every point; I'd guess B is your best bet. I can check with one of my friends in the next couple days and see what his input is. And I know it's a job when many have no jobs and are dying alone (myself included), but do you want to work closely with a judge who would only hire a bootlicking toady?
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Aug 5, 2010 17:35
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Elotana posted:If someone asks me the stairs question I generally put on a poker face, that masonic poo poo is lame as hell One time I was early to a bar review outing and while waiting for some of my law school friends to arrive, a random person came up to me and asked if I had stairs in my house. Law students: we wait for one another awkwardly, looking like goons.
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Aug 6, 2010 04:47
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JudicialRestraints posted:if I am freely bleeding from my ankle/calf it will just prove to the hiring partners how badass I am, right? The hiring partners will see it as a sign of weakness, and potential disease. Your presence, your aura should be enough to cause the squirrel to retreat in terror from your legal magnificence. Also they wouldn't want you transmitting the plague to their office.
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Aug 16, 2010 17:29
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I'm rejoining the ranks of the employed. Got an in-house gig evaluating patent portfolios and developing IP strategies for a manufacturing company. Now I get to spend the time between today and my start date drunk off my rear end, in my underwear, playing Xbox. Unfortunately, I'll have to actually show up to work after that.
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Sep 1, 2010 06:26
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Linguica posted:Yeah when I was on law review I quickly grew disillusioned when I realized that the citechecking bitch work entirely consisted of "is this in the proper Bluebook format / does the cited article say what the citation says it says?" and nothing about "is the cited article actually correct or verifiable?" A law review article could have nothing but citations to timecube.com and as long as it followed BB 11.1(f)(ii) or whatever it would be completely above board as far as any law review is concerned. If you really want to lose all faith in legal education, review incoming article submissions. I did that for my law review and holy poo poo, people write some awful, useless, stupid articles.
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Sep 2, 2010 22:43
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gvibes posted:I'm in IP, and its 2100 like everyone else. I used to be in biglaw IP litigation and at a "nice Midwestern firm" where the listed requirement was 1800 hours, they sat us down on day one and said "you bill 2000" Also, hours in prosecution are brutal in their own way because of how tightly budgeted most applications are. OptimistPrime fucked around with this message at 23:54 on Oct 4, 2010 |
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Oct 4, 2010 23:50
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Wando posted:My friend and I are both Graduate students in EE. For the past week he's been pushing to go to Law school to be a IP lawyer. I've shown him this thread and he still feels it's a good idea to go to law school since you can make >150K a year if admitted to T14 schools. EE is the most desired tech background other than maybe a biotech PhD. So that's a plus. However: Those high-paying biglaw jobs? Not so good for the lifestyle if you're busy, and not going to last if you're not. On top of that, patent prosecution, his most likely path, is so soul-crushingly boring that my friends in prosecution are desperately trying to lateral. Career trajectories can be weird, even if you get a job out of law school - for example, I got canned by my biglaw firm when they screwed things up with a client responsible for 85% of my billables. I eventually found something in-house, but it'll likely never lead back to a big firm because it's somewhat non-standard, and it's unlikely I'll make as much as I used to for a long, long time. Even in ideal conditions, I would likely have left the firm after 4-5 years, so it's a limited period of that big firm income, too. And that's 150k of debt, plus 3 years of lost wages to potentially become less marketable, depending on his current options.
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Nov 3, 2010 00:46
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oh hey a law school colleague of mine got her letter to the NYT published: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/01/opinion/l01workers.html?_r=1&ref=opinion
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Nov 3, 2010 01:22
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Alright, help me law thread: I'm registered in Minnesota. I took the NY bar this summer while job-hunting, but in the meantime I got an in-house gig up here. I'm still open to the idea of moving around and have family in NY I'd kind of like to be closer to, but I'm no longer looking all that actively, and am pretty happy with my current gig and staying in Minnesota. Worth it to get admitted in NY? Assume my current employer would not pay for registration, bar dues, or any NY CLE needs that couldn't get knocked off through my CLEs in MN.
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Nov 6, 2010 00:06
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Save me jeebus posted:Wait. You have a job in one state but you want to get barred in another because you are "open to moving around"? Edit: apparently I can't read either, ignore. OptimistPrime fucked around with this message at 02:41 on Nov 6, 2010 |
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Nov 6, 2010 02:37
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scribe jones posted:US v Lucite Ball containing Lunar Material is still the best Thirty-three Eclectus Parrots would like a word with you.
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Nov 9, 2010 05:42
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NJ Deac posted:After taking and passing the exam using a prep course, I'm going to half agree with you. In retrospect, I definitely don't feel I got $2500 worth of value out of the PLI prep course - that was a ripoff. For the price, I was expecting something at least as well put together as Barbri, which the PLI course definitely was not. On the bright side, the firm will be kicking back the cost of the prep course, so I don't really have much to complain about here. See if your state gives CLE credit for Patent Bar prep. Many do, and that makes the $$ and time almost worthwhile despite the Patent Bar being a test of reading comprehension and google-fu that does not require such extensive preparation.
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Dec 20, 2010 23:49
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