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Just scanned the OPs looking for my name. I was not disappointed.
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Aug 8, 2018 01:35
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New thread looking cute feeling cute
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Aug 8, 2018 01:46
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reposting from old thread: There's an extra list tag just after the "getting that clerkship". The last paragraph of the "work for the feds?" quoted post is semi-duplicated. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 14:40 on Mar 18, 2019 |
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Aug 8, 2018 02:00
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GET MONEY, did you make your decision? We need fresh blood.
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Aug 8, 2018 02:15
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Excellent op all around, I approve of my description. It's basically non profit DV work so all the drama of family law without having to break client knees for money. Here is my quick and easy guide to working that non profit life: work for free for years and basically win the lotto in terms of random rear end connections at the CLEs.
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Aug 8, 2018 02:48
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If you want, I'm a white noise posting patent dork on the west coast working in house for big tech.
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Aug 8, 2018 03:19
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btw for the last threadcode:mastershakeman fucked around with this message at 03:23 on Aug 8, 2018 |
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Aug 8, 2018 03:20
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What’s your point hog-fucker
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Aug 8, 2018 03:22
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Phil Moscowitz posted:What’s your point hog-fucker a) stats matter b) i dont know whats with me and hogs i guess i like hogging? c) im glad im a superstar
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Aug 8, 2018 03:22
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stopped posting for 3 years, still in the top 10 get on my level you fuckin trash
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Aug 8, 2018 03:23
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mastershakeman posted:a) stats matter I just skimmed people’s posts in the thread, and you had like 45 pages worth and a very recent post about the difference between hog hunting and hogging. Congrats
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Aug 8, 2018 03:25
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Phil Moscowitz posted:I just skimmed people’s posts in the thread, and you had like 45 pages worth and a very recent post about the difference between hog hunting and hogging. Congrats hell yeah
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Aug 8, 2018 03:27
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mastershakeman posted:hell yeah I made it better
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Aug 8, 2018 03:29
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Amazing OP! I’m happy to answer questions people have about: - Moving to / practising in HK and China* (JD > LLM, don’t come here straight out of law school or come to law school here, practise a couple years in the US/UK first) - Working as a Private Equity lawyer, the upstream/downstream work etc** - Moving to a corporate as a non-lawyer - Legal tech stuff - Why many in house lawyers suck to work with and how to be a good cool one instead * Technically you won’t be practising local law you’ll be practising foreign law in the jurisdiction you qualified in. The difference can be surprisingly hard to see when eg local counsel gives you a data dump of local regulations instead of an answer to your question, and you have to somehow parse it for an impatient client. ** Requires a thick skin. I once got a by hand mark-up from a client who hadn’t bothered to read my covering email, and had scrawled “NO” on the draft so hard it had broken through the paper, next to a note saying “Do you even loving read what you are writing?” They went on to be a very loyal client, but never changed their characterful prose style.
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Aug 8, 2018 03:35
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My description in the OP is pretty much the best summary of my life I have ever seen. Go to law school, kids.
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Aug 8, 2018 03:42
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Beefeater1980 posted:Amazing OP! We are pretty US-heavy, please contribute. I assume you’re a UK lawyer?
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Aug 8, 2018 03:56
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Thanks for the effort, Phil, here's some charts and poo poo for the OP that you can toss in: Costs Law school is friggin' expensive. Tuition at private universities is up at $46k per year and public isn't much better coming in at $39k for non-residents. That's up about 24% since 2010.  Of course that doesn't count living expenses, which can be significant. Of the top 14 law schools, really only UMich, UVA, Duke, and Cornell are outside high cost of living areas. Have fun in Ithaca! Let's take a peak at a few top school's total cost for 3 years of attendance: And the lovely schools (not top 14) are just as happy to take your money! Let's look at some highlights!
Also you don't "lock in" prices or anything, so expect each year to cost 3% more than the last. And don't forget opportunity cost of 3 years of lost income and the 3 additional years of work experience you just tossed out. Law schools have generally been major revenue streams for universities. It's way cheaper to build classrooms and a library and admit a crap-ton of eager liberal arts majors than to build something actually useful like a laboratory and compete for actually skilled STEM majors. Never forget you're subsidizing all those people who in undergrad could actually do calculus. Debt Of course to finance all this people are going into massive amounts of debt. The AVERAGE graduate is in for more than $110,000 in debt and once including undergrad, amounts exceeding $200,000 or $300,000 with payments of over $4,000 per month are not unheard of.  Salaries Further, lawyers have an EXTREMELY bimodal salary range - the mean sounds OK, but looking at the graph it is clear that the mean means absolutely jack.  With the recent increases in BigLaw starting salaries (at some firms) to $190,000, this is only getting worse! Let's hear from James Leipold, the NALP executive director. "“After all of the publicity surrounding the move to $180,000, I fully expected to see the national median starting salary for law firms move upwards, but what the data reveal is that for the most part only the largest firms in the largest legal markets made that move, and while many offices are paying $180,000 to start, many are not. The result is upward movement in some law firm size bands while the national median has remained unchanged.” And that big ole bump over on the right? Who's in there? Pretty much just people from the top schools. According to USNews, only the top 35 schools have median salaries above $100,000 and things fall quickly from there. If you're outside the top 130 schools, median salary is under $50,000!!!  Trends Since 2014 Around 2014, word finally got out that law school is generally a bad idea, see infra, and applications started to decline. But the decline specifically came from the more qualified applicants. That's right, the smartest, most qualified people were deciding that law school is not worth it. LSAT scores have been in overall decline across the country and many schools are filling their seats with less qualified students (who are less likely to pass the bar) or are closing completely.  So if you're really considering this, you have to ask yourself, "If the most qualified people have decided not to do this, why should I? And here's a few good resources I found: Law School Transparency ABA Employment Outcomes Per School
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Aug 8, 2018 04:39
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Phil Moscowitz posted:We are pretty US-heavy, please contribute. I assume you’re a UK lawyer? Was English and Hong Kong qualified, no longer practising. History is: Qualified in London firm; Switched to NY firm in London on qualification, worked 2 years; Moved to HK with different NY firm and did 6 years; Quit law and joined one of the big legal vendors, did 4 years there in a variety of business roles including sales which was fun as hell; Now I’m at one of the Chinese tech unicorns in a pure business role, introduced by a former client. I get to use my old firm for investments sometimes, which is nice. I can do an effortpost on the HK legal market for foreign lawyers if anyone’s interested. Basically, there are still a few opportunities for non Chinese speakers but not so many as before - Singapore and Dubai are the expat lawyer destinations of choice these days for the most part.
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Aug 8, 2018 04:45
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Okay, here's the AusPost. Keep in mind I'm in Victoria, so there may be some minor differences between states, but I think it's fairly nationally consistent. Apologies for wordiness, and I can clarify anything people have more questions about. Fwiw, I'm about three weeks off completing my PLT. Tl;dr is university -> PLT/SLT -> admission. If you want to be a lawyer in Australia, your first step is to go to university. You can do law either undergrad (LLB) or postgrad (JD). The majority of people studying law as an undergrad do a double degree, where you study two degrees concurrently. Bachelor of Arts (I think it's called liberal arts in the US) and Bachelor of Laws is a really common combination, but other combinations exist. At my law school, the ratio was something like 30 students studying a single law degree, 120 studying double degrees. To apply to study law undergrad you don't need to take LSAT, your year 12 grades just have to be good enough that a university will make you an offer, same as any other course. If you want to study a JD, then you have to take the LSAT. Standard length for a full time LLB is four years, double degree is five, and a JD is three, although keep in mind that since it's postgrad, you've probably already spent three years at university. If you've made it this far and still want to practice law, your next step is to either complete your Practical Legal Training (PLT), after which you'll be awarded a Diploma of Legal Practice, or get hired as a graduate lawyer and complete supervised legal training (SLT). PLT takes around four months full-time or eight part-time, whereas SLT takes a minimum of 12 months. PLT is basically an additional course, whereas SLT is more like on-the-job training. While individual firms/lawyers might have a hiring preference for PLT vs SLT, in my experience there isn't an industry-wide perception of one being better than the other, especially after a few years of practice. The statistic I heard is that around 80% of people complete PLT while 20% do SLT. This is because a law firm might be able to take on 10 graduates per year, but a PLT provider can take as many students as they have the capacity for. My provider, the College of Law, says they've had 60,000 students over 40 years. After you've completed law school and PLT or SLT, your next step is to apply to the relevant legal admissions board. This is a pretty involved process, where you have to provide transcripts, proof of graduation, and make disclosures relating to your fitness to be admitted. The disclosures you have to make relate to legal issues you might have had (including parking fines and speeding tickets), and academic issues you might have had (including allegations of academic misconduct). Controversially, you also are asked to disclose mental health issues you have or might have had. As you can imagine, this is a pretty fraught issue, and the advice on if you should disclose and to what extent ranges from "disclose everything and do it in detail" to "gently caress them, don't say a thing". If you're found to be a "fit and proper person", that's pretty much it. You get your admission date, head along and get admitted at the Supreme Court (simplified Australian court hierarchy is Magistrates' Court -> County Court -> Supreme Court -> High Court), have your name added to the Australian Legal Profession Register, and you're a lawyer. Don't call yourself a lawyer before admission, it's technically an offence with fines and jail time. Also, if the disciplinary tribunal finds out you've done it, you're likely to be struck off. For those wondering about the Bar, well, solicitors don't take it here. That's reserved for Barristers, and is a whole other thing. edit: LSAT info Whitlam fucked around with this message at 05:19 on Aug 8, 2018 |
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Aug 8, 2018 04:56
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Vox Nihili posted:GET MONEY, did you make your decision? We need fresh blood. Accepted the US offer  but deferred a year to
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Aug 8, 2018 05:00
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Couple of bullet points about becoming a lawyer in Canada, I guess. I know there are other Canadian lawyers in here better positioned to actually talk about this. - You need a Bachelor's degree to apply to law school, unless your undergrad grade average is three digits before the decimal. Yes, these people exist, there were two in my year. Yes, this is why you will not be in the top 10% of your class. - The advice about US school entry, such as LSAT and GPA being Very Important is applicable to Canadian admissions. Don't be a lovely student. Toronto, McGill, Osgoode, UBC are considered top of the pack currently, with UVic and Queen's not far behind. - Don't go to a law school outside Canada unless you're planning on staying there. Really big-name schools like Yale or Oxford, maybe, but going anywhere else is probably just a signal you couldn't make it into a Canadian school. Our laws and especially our Constitution are nothing like the United States' or even most of the Commonwealth so you'll be at a distinct disadvantage when you come back. Law school here is way cheaper and if you can sleep in your parents' basement you might even get out with a debt level that will make our American compatriots weep with envy. - You will still graduate with some debt and a substance problem. - Quebecers should be familiar with the Civil Law system, probably, which means going to a Quebec law school. If you do this, you should probably speak Quebequois, or at least French. - Unlike the US, you have to write your bar exams (and associated Professional Legal Training course put on by your provincial Law Society), and article. Articling is like a one-year apprenticeship that follows law school, and you can't practice without completing your articles. You apply for them like jobs, you're hired for them like jobs, and there's no guarantee you get to stay on with your firm afterward. Ontario tried an alternate route from law school that didn't require articles because there weren't enough articling jobs available, but I think that's dead last I heard. - There are still not enough articling jobs available. You may have to convince two or more firms/lawyers to 'share' your articles, or work for peanuts. Or for free. - Do everything you can to get practical experience in law school. Clinic courses, student legal advice programs, whatever you can. Law school teaches you nothing about client interaction, file management, or the actual practice of law, so get your feet wet as soon as possible. I don't know what's on offer elsewhere, but UBC has a great student legal advice program and a bunch of clinics. I'm happy to answer questions about : opening a solo practice early in my career, and later working in panda law (non-profit feel-good law that makes no money). I will probably not be able to answer questions about working in a real firm. I am also incredibly lucky, so any/all of my advice may be totally useless if you are not at least as lucky as me. Also, don't go to law school. It's a terrible idea. Edit: Oh, that was timely. This Canadian up here, GET MONEY? He's making a mistake. Edit 2: Also if you want to get laughed at more for being a Canadian considering law school there is also a website for that purpose. The best thread it ever produced, however, will give you ungrateful 0Ls a perfect insight into crim defence work: http://lawstudents.ca/forums/topic/28005-what-lawyers-actually-do-day-to-day-cyoa/ LeschNyhan fucked around with this message at 05:17 on Aug 8, 2018 |
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Aug 8, 2018 05:10
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Ran into an acquaintance from law school a few weeks ago. Said he was "busy as hell, and couldn't stop to talk". Ran into him again and stopped to chat. I asked him, "hey, you still work for ICE?" and he cringed and said, "please don't say that out loud." They're probably hiring a lot, maybe even ALJs! Or not, hard to say what they're doing.
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Aug 8, 2018 05:50
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Scanned for my name - left off - please add me as disgruntled big law M&A associate.
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Aug 8, 2018 06:02
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I didn't go to law school and with this new version of the thread I'd like to thank y'all for always being here to remind me that I made the right decision.
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Aug 8, 2018 06:04
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sullat posted:Ran into an acquaintance from law school a few weeks ago. Said he was "busy as hell, and couldn't stop to talk". Ran into him again and stopped to chat. I asked him, "hey, you still work for ICE?" and he cringed and said, "please don't say that out loud." They're probably hiring a lot, maybe even ALJs! Or not, hard to say what they're doing.  Based on observation, being ICE's counsel in immigration court seems like a really lovely job unless you're a psycho. It's a huge volume of mundane paperwork, you can't exercise discretion in any case (according to them, only supervisors can), and you're usually in the position of railroading an unsophisticated pro se person for the civil violation of trying to make his family's life better.
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Aug 8, 2018 06:08
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mastershakeman posted:btw for the last thread gently caress ya, back of the human centipede.
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Aug 8, 2018 06:26
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I guess I should add some actual content - so here is what I consider to be the overview of the Houston big law market - it's long, meandering and not user friendly, just like all legal writing should be. If you don't give a poo poo about big law - skip it - if you're in big law in another city, I'd read - Houston is an interesting market right now - and it pays full Cravath/Milbank scale. Transactional Historically, Houston transactional work was always related to the energy industry (the attendant M&A, debt finance, cap markets, insurance, etc... were all in conjunction with the energy industry) and was relatively insular and home grown - this incredible article from 1973 gives a snapshot of what Houston big law was like through the late 2000's (with certain changes as we modernized from the 70's). It was dominated by Baker Botts, V&E, Fulbright & Jaworski (now Norton Rose Fulbright), Andrews Kurth (now Hunton Andrews Kurth) and Bracewell & Patterson (now just Bracewell after a brief stint as Bracewell & Giuliani (yes, that Giuliani). If you were from Harvard, Yale or Stanford and wanted to work in Houston, you went to Baker Botts or V&E and if you went to an elite Houston private school and were an SAE at UT you went to AK or Bracewell. Together - those firms represented the major energy firms in their transactional work. There was not a lot of movement between the firms and it was relatively frowned upon to switch from one to the other, it was indicative that something was wrong. The work was largely for major oil companies and banks that represent them (the big market upheaval was in the 1980s and 90s when banks began merging and consolidating - upending the structure described in the Texas Monthly article where the major firms had an associated bank - Bracewell got to be a major player by representing NY and European banks) Certain other firms attempted to break into the Houston market to varying levels of success - Weil Gotshal opened an office in conjunction with the Enron bankruptcy, but it had all but closed by 2013, Baker Mackenzie and DLA had outposts here because they have outposts everywhere and certain smaller regional firms established some litigation and minor transactional footholds here (Baker Hostetler, Akin Gump etc..), but by and large - Houston firms were where you had to be. A number of these firms tried opening offices by moving folks from their major hubs to Houston, but it never worked, because the city and the energy industry in general is so insular (it's basically that salsa commercial from the 90's where we hate everything from New York City and love everything from San Antonio, because despite never having been there, George Strait said he came up from San Antone that one time so it's cool). Latham & Watkins was the first to truly break this mold by coming in and poaching a number of partners from V&E and Baker Botts to build a Cap Markets based practice in Houston in conjunction with the MLP Boom that has been tremendously successful. Kirkland & Ellis followed, but poached partners from STB's Houston office and Baker Botts to build an M&A and bankruptcy practice that has now become the most successful firm in Houston. Others have replicated the model, but not to the level of success of K&E and Latham. Sidley has a strong office in Houston. Orrick, Gibson Dunn, Shearman and Sterling and White & Case have recently opened up offices to varying levels of success but basically based on the same model of poaching partners from the established Houston firms. As you might imagine, this growth of national firms in Houston has come at the expense of the old line Houston firms - Andrews Kurth all but collapsed and was bought out by Hunton & Williams, Fulbright merged with Norton Rose to become NRF and is basically a non-factor, Baker Botts has lost an enormous number of partners to Latham, K&E and Gibson (I'm not sure they have an actual upstream practice anymore, the recent BHP sale notwithstanding)and Bracewell is seemingly on very shaky ground. V&E is the only Texas firm left that is on equal footing with Latham and K&E and those three are the dominant players in the transactional market. The reason for the shift is the entry of Private Equity. It was often too risky for PE shops to enter the energy field with its arcane land rules presided over by high school educated land-men who could tell you after you just spent a billion dollars that you don't actually own anything until oil became crazy expensive in the 2010-2014 time frame. That brought the bulge bracket PE firms into the energy space for the first time and they were more comfortable using counsel they were familiar with (STB, Kirkland, Latham) than the Houston firms that had been doing this type of work (except for VE - which made a concerted effort to become the preeminent energy PE firm through the 2000s) - additionally, the price of oil collapsed in late 2014 putting actual oil companies in a precarious position where they were basically frozen in place, trying to stave off bankruptcy. PE firms had a ton of dry powder as they raised energy funds in the 2012-14 time frame and had capital to buy assets from struggling strategics. Because of all the new entrants to the market, the lateral market (between Houston firms and for folks moving from out of state to Houston) is loving insane right now - there are six figure signing bonuses for 2nd and 3rd year associates because warm bodies are needed - so if you're in NYC or DC or SF and you're sick of that poo poo, come down to Houston, get a loving huge signing bonus, use it to buy a house you could never afford in Manhattan and do the lord's work - help private equity funds buy fracking assets. TL;DR - V&E, Kirkland and Latham now dominate the Houston transactional market - the Texas firms are still there but struggling. Private equity is the huge market disruptor of the last 5 years. Litigation Who cares - litigation is boring and dumb. If you want to be a litigator in Houston, don't do it at a big firm, go to one of the elite boutiques (Susman, Yetter Coleman, Beck Redden AZA). At a big firm, you're a doc review monkey, at the the boutiques, you can like...learn to be a lawyer. Sab0921 fucked around with this message at 07:09 on Aug 8, 2018 |
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Aug 8, 2018 07:02
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mastershakeman posted:a) stats matter Who are you? Also, ar has more.posts than sv, surprising. Also, go to law school, esp a ttt because I'm loving bored beyond planning.my next 3 vacations (work for california, I now exceed 5 weeks of vacation). GET MONEY posted:Accepted the US offer Any Canadian lawgoons to help me smuggle brother's pepperoni in from nova scotia? I'm almost out of my stash I brought back. As a vonus, smuggling pepperoni gives you a lot of jokes and that's even before you move on to trailer park boys nm fucked around with this message at 07:13 on Aug 8, 2018 |
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Aug 8, 2018 07:06
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Whew, i’m juuuuust lovely enough at shitposting to avoid the OP.  Also, maybe there should be some bar exam info on the first page,. Pretty big rite of passage that gets talked about on the reg, and i just want another opportunity to brag about buying the old books off ebay instead of paying for barbri. Edit: maybe another thing to discuss early on in this thread is which law school courses are actually useful when practicing law years later and/or most worth devoting attention to in the moment. 1L legal research and writing is, despite being graded pass/fail, probably number 1 by a wide margin. Unamuno fucked around with this message at 07:54 on Aug 8, 2018 |
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Aug 8, 2018 07:31
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mastershakeman posted:btw for the last thread congrats to discendo "not a lawyer" "low-tier vox" Vox for achieving The Devil's Number
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Aug 8, 2018 08:28
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Discendo Vox posted:reposting from old thread: Hey, don't worry buddy. I just have a Masters too (of law though). I like your posts. That was a great op, fantastic in fact. Though I do love that everyone in the old thread started immediately suggesting revisions like they were emailing a first year assosciate. You got me pegged for sure, but in case someone should ever want actual advice relating to norwegian law, law school and practicing law as a mid-small independent attourney I have a specialty in crim law and human rights but mostly do specialty crim defender, municipal law litigation and complaints, property, private claims and just sometimes random poo poo the others won't do. I'm great at random poo poo. Also I moonlight as a realtor sometimes, because I can. Nice piece of fish fucked around with this message at 09:27 on Aug 8, 2018 |
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Aug 8, 2018 08:56
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I'd do an effortpost about Russian law market but honestly all you need to know is that Russia is a loving lie and there is only Moscow (I don't work in Moscow because I couldn't afford rent if I were to move to Moscow) and the best salary you can expect for the first couple of years out of law school is maybe 60k rubles/month, which would translate roughly to about 30k$/year in NYC, making "okay work expects me to wear a suit what the gently caress do I buy a suit with" an actual problem that exists among junior lawyers. That's the best case scenario, too Also, all contracts and disputes involving any significant amounts of Russian money are subject to English law and the jurisdiction of English courts anyway nutri_void fucked around with this message at 10:15 on Aug 8, 2018 |
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Aug 8, 2018 10:11
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Beefeater1980 posted:Now I’m at one of the Chinese tech unicorns in a pure business role, introduced by a former client. I get to use my old firm for investments sometimes, which is nice. jesus christ i hope youre not one of the people i have to interact with
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Aug 8, 2018 10:11
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GET MONEY posted:Accepted the US offer lol i didnt realize any competitive institutions still allowed deferrals, i guess it's a buyers' market again
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Aug 8, 2018 10:12
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in two (2) years i will reveal my practice area. prepare your disgust.
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Aug 8, 2018 10:15
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Vox Nihili posted:in two (2) years i will reveal my practice area. prepare your disgust. Asbestos defense?
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Aug 8, 2018 12:17
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Vox Nihili posted:jesus christ i hope youre not one of the people i have to interact with Doubt it unless we knew each other already before I left law, and I think I know all the lawgoons here in HK/BJ.
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Aug 8, 2018 12:54
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Vox Nihili posted:jesus christ i hope youre not one of the people i have to interact with Aren't you a specialist? Come on now - you know the specialists don't get to interact with humans Sab0921 fucked around with this message at 13:31 on Aug 8, 2018 |
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Aug 8, 2018 13:28
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I saw a post about "auto admit" and horrible incel racism at the very end of the last thread, and now I'm intrigued.Sab0921 posted:If you make a new thread - just have one link to Auto Admit and let people see the racist incel underbelly that makes up the majority of the legal profession, pin it and close it - no one will ever become a lawyer after that and we will have done our duty to protect the children from attorneys. Vox Nihili posted:in two (2) years i will reveal my practice area. prepare your disgust. That's pretty opimistic, Mr. Manafort. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 14:05 on Aug 8, 2018 |
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Aug 8, 2018 14:02
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Discendo Vox posted:I saw a post about "auto admit" and horrible incel racism at the very end of the last thread, and now I'm intrigued. Autoadmit aka xoxohth was at one time a very popular lawchat forum filled with desperate misogynistic incel strivers obsessed with vault rankings, prestige and "owning libtards" It's still there but it's now a shadow of its former self, much like these very forums
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Aug 8, 2018 14:15
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