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Arcturas posted:I’m not even convinced anything about what they are doing is particularly scummy or unethical. Annoying, sure. But there’s zero reason to believe that if the partners wrote down their time and billed those hours that more dollars would go into the associates pockets instead of the partners pockets. At least the partners are bringing in business. I've been at firms with various partners who either only brought in subrogation work that only worked on a high file volume basis (with all the perverse work churning incentives that got forced on the associates as a result) or partners who were piggybacking on an actual rainmaker's business book and basically fighting with the associates for their hours to get counted as billables that could get passed on to the client. The best environments I've experienced personally and that I've heard from friends were at practices where the partners were judged by hours spent on business and relationship maintenance work and higher level legal work rather than the sheer amount of hours they spend on any particular case.
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Feb 24, 2021 15:26
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eviltastic posted:We shall not be seeing the celebrity trial of the century yet. I feel like we really don't need anything after the UK libel dispute between Johnny Depp and the Sun.
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Feb 24, 2021 18:25
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Based on a few conversations I've had with friends who are partners, I hear law firms have been getting aggressive about recruiting new attorneys again. The snobbery and bias against people from "low" tier firms or who might have been laid off before is still there, but jobs are out there. I feel bad for everyone who graduated between 2009 and 2016 or so. Law firms are often so stuck up they just will just keep chasing after the same people rather than try to look outside a set checklist.
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Jan 21, 2022 02:54
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https://twitter.com/saraaaaajean/status/1490876166571687936 https://twitter.com/saraaaaajean/status/1491048847183065093 Are expectations in law school different now? I don't know why this ended up on my Twitter feed but it's getting a lot of replies. At my school, you couldn't say you "landed" big law until you got a 2nd year summer associate offer. Our journal tryouts were during the 1st year second semester, so we couldn't coast unless you had somehow had a dream first semester. And even then, who knows how your second semester might go? I guess it all worked out for this woman, but her details sound weird and I just find it a weird thing to me to claim that journals mean nothing. If nothing else, it helps demonstrate subject matter interest, right? Or has the law job recruiting landscape really changed since I graduated in the mid-00s? I got too psychologically burned out to deal with the law school moot court competition, which only opened up the beginning of your second year. I think that got held against me and I wish I had just half-assed it enough to put in a bad memo. (A classmate of mine during the first stage of oral arguments said "the defense concedes" and just walked out.) Eric Cantonese fucked around with this message at 20:18 on Feb 8, 2022 |
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Feb 8, 2022 20:16
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Well, it sounds like life turned out okay for me. I was on 2 journals, but they didn't have note requirements and just asked us to cite check and edit articles. I thought it was a good way to learn about subjects I liked and I ended up on an editorial board of an entertainment and sports law journal doing web and organizational stuff. The articles were pretty concrete and related to current concerns. I guess it was okay that I didn't end up on the more prestigious journals like the International Law or Tax Law ones. I was amazed at how badly (or incompletely) written the articles submitted for publishing were, though. Pook Good Mook posted:When I'm asked about it by current students I tell them they are massive wastes of time and unless you are convinced that it will be the deal-maker getting a job, don't waste your time and focus on trial ad or moot court where the skills are at least transferable. Moot cout doesn't mean much for people who really don't want to be in court. There were a lot of people at my school who were trying to avoid litigation like the plague.
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Feb 8, 2022 21:33
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Is it common in law schools to allow people to "grade on" to law review without doing the journal tryout? That seems like another reason to put up with the BS of it because it's an extra marker to the oh-so-hardworking-and-imaginative law firm HR recruiter that you're one of the best from your class (when law school is at its most competitive).Vox Nihili posted:Page 55 here is maybe the best source. It states that she passed after opening up her own law firm. That's brutal. Pook Good Mook posted:I'm sure in her final moments she wished she could have billed just one more hour and regretted those times she chose her family over her "great" and"fulfilling" work. Maybe she felt like she was getting enough money to help provide for her family? A lot of the big firm attorneys I know are, for better or for worse, basically doing this for others and also locked into those proverbial golden handcuffs. Plus, some law school tuitions are so high that digging yourself out of the resulting student debtload is greatly helped by some time at a high pay sweatshop.
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Feb 11, 2022 15:52
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I found practicing law to be much more rewarding than law school. I think I really hated law school.
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Feb 18, 2022 03:02
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There are times I wonder if I should have gone into estate planning. https://twitter.com/Gwen_Axe/status/1506328013767598088
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Mar 23, 2022 16:23
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Residency Evil posted:Hey law thread goons. As I'm writing this expert witness report, is there a "reasonable" range for how much time these should take? I have a stopwatch with me and I'm starting/stopping it as I go and get up to go to the bathroom/etc. I reviewed about 3000 pages of documents for this (most of them useless), and I imagine this report/summary will end up being 3-5 pages or so. Your client didn't ask you for a budget ahead of time? I don't think there's a "reasonable" range since you're supposed to be learning about a new factual situation and going through lots of new documents. It also sounds like you've been pretty sharp about timekeeping so you're really doing everything you need to do. The money is their problem to bring up. How much would you bill if you wrote a similar research memo as a regular lawyer for a client? That might be a good frame of reference if you're feeling self-conscious about it.
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Mar 23, 2022 16:42
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D34THROW posted:Amanda pisses me off - I have a loving earring and my wife has multiple tattoos and piercings. gently caress, these ads take advantage of boomer chuds that fear anything that doesn't wear Dockers and button-downs. I don't know if this is just an easily co-opted template, but there are so many of these ads and they're all hilarious.    And by the looks of it, the life of a Boomer Chud is pretty miserable.
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Mar 23, 2022 18:57
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I don't know if this happened to you all after graduation and some of your classmates started making decent money and chasing other dreams, but for a couple of years I was getting constant messages from a classmate I didn't really know that well about investing in a New York City restaurant. In exchange for a measly $25,000+ investment, there were offers of special event booking privileges and what-not. I just Googled the place out of curiosity and it only lasted for a couple of years tops. Maybe not even a year. Meanwhile the guy was bragging on social media about his small firm getting mentioned in the DC version of Super Lawyers. I just felt like sharing this since "what else can I do with a law degree?" is the first question many law students and lawyers start asking almost immediately after their first real law job. Maybe you guys have happier stories about these escape routes, though. Eric Cantonese fucked around with this message at 15:58 on May 27, 2022 |
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May 27, 2022 15:53
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Toona the Cat posted:I've had the opposite experience. I didn't get licensed until I was 38 and on interviews I've been to, people seem to have been receptive to knowing I can work 40 hours a week regularly and know what its like to hold a job down. Mr. Nice! posted:All of mine wanted me to work 60+ hours a week and were looking for someone they could grind. Not a single place wanted me to work only 40 hours a week, even the state jobs. SlyFrog posted:I tend to worry about these things too much, but there is value in future proofing. An Oklahoma degree puts a ceiling on you to a greater degree than a Texas degree. I've always wondered what the happy medium was for being out of school before getting back into law school. I always felt at a disadvantage going almost straight through because I had a humanities BA and no real professional experience outside of some decent summer internships. My grades weren't stellar enough to make up for that but I was luckily at a decently ranked school so I guess it somehow all worked out. The people who were coming out of 2-3 years of consulting or i-banking stints seemed to have had the easiest time with fall 2L recruiting. Maybe it's just having the experience of getting into a money-oriented corporate workplace already? I figured at the time that I just didn't have a lot of the corporate/business experience to make me look like an attractive summer associate pick. (I was also incredibly unhappy at my law school so I'm tempted to wonder how much 2 years off and re-centering myself might have helped me get through the crab bucket parts of the experience better.) I never thought about how perhaps looking a bit too old might be a disadvantage. I figured most people just expected you to sacrifice your health and family life to the altar of the billable hour.
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Jul 6, 2022 03:31
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Sab0921 posted:Go to law school if you want. It's fun, What? Hieronymous Alloy posted:My old public defender's office was virtually always hiring. It wasn't quite anybody with a pulse and a law degree but if you told me it was anyone with a pulse, a law degree, and a willingness to talk about prison abolition in the interview, it wouldn't surprise me. Huh. I graduated during the GWB years and hiring had really contracted, so I remember PD gigs being very competitive. (I totally believe the low pay and burnout though.) When did you graduate? Eric Cantonese fucked around with this message at 20:59 on Dec 19, 2023 |
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Dec 19, 2023 20:57
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Do you know how much you would have to publish to get tenure? I don't know how academia works that well, so I've always wondered if there were actual metrics.
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Jan 10, 2024 19:48
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evilweasel posted:the stress of big law is overrated as long as you're not at, like, kirkland I don't know if it's "overrated" as much as a certain kind of stress. It's very competitive to get into big law and once people get that brass ring, they realize it can easily turn into a gilded cage. The work hours are bad, the partnership chances are low, but the prestige of the work and the (usual) quality of the mentors and colleagues can help you pave the way to other things a lot more easily than a non-biglaw firm. You don't even necessarily need to be in biglaw that long. It beats having to hang out your own shingle super early and take on dubious contingency fee or working at a low tier sweatshop and clawing your way out that way, but even though I wasn't at the nicest firm right after graduation, I also wasn't expected to work enough to get 2100-2300 undisputed billable hours either. The Dagda posted:I think only a couple of guys here work in big law but figured I'd ask this embarrassing question on this obscure corner of the internet: what are the prospects for someone to lateral into a big firm from public interest, with 10 years of experience as an attorney in nonprofits only? I went to a T5 law school but chose touchy feely law. My current job title is "legal director," I run a small nonprofit legal program. What kind of non-profit law do you do? I was just talking to someone who runs a family/divorce law firm for wealthy clients. Unfortunately for their clients (although fortunately for the firm), business is booming and she was talking about how challenging it was to find associates from suitable backgrounds. A lot of the usual law firm associates aren't really cut out for the work. Overall, I think you need to find a story you can relate with confidence about yourself. In my own path to a non-firm life, that was the main challenge. Everybody gets that people need better pay or better hours, but they don't want that to be the only reason you're around. Eric Cantonese fucked around with this message at 02:03 on Mar 25, 2024 |
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Mar 25, 2024 01:57
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