Unless the person has a concrete goals and displays true, dedicated intentions to do it, usually by past actions.

It's silly because at least 20% of the threads have some stupid 0L saying, "well I'm thinking PI" and then a bunch of idiots say take NYU over U of C with $$ because of an IBR that the person will fucking use. Why? Because they'll do OCI like everyone else.

.

Yeah, this shit has really pissed me off lately. Everyone that said they were going to do PI at my school is actually going to OCI. WTF? Why don't they all just admit upfront that they want firm jobs.

I think its a couple different causes:

People feel bad about selling out and wanna see PI cool
Some are pretending because they dont think they can get biglawl
Some sell out
Some do it for 1L summer and hate working with poors
It's a fuck tonne easier and they don't wanna be an unemployed 3L

I think you are definitely right. I just get mad when these people talk a big game about having such high moral goals and about saving the world. Yet they are willing to give that up for the chance to make money. At least I am up front about my big law aspirations.

I think the ABA should require all law school graduates to give 2-3 years of supervised P.I. service before they can work in firms. Under such a protocol, students could still sit for the bar but complete a required "residency" before being allowed to practice - as is the case with the two-year minimum residency requirement imposed on med school graduates.

For once, people who traditionally lack access to legal representation and the courts would have it, firms would not need to spend as much time training lawyers, and the process would weed out the suckers who don't really want to be lawyers.

Students who choose to work in underserved geographic areas (such as rural Arkansas, Compton or Houston's 3rd Ward) could be given special stipends or bonuses paid by the government upon completion. Veterans, reserves, graduates over the age of 40, and parents and spouses caring for relatives with special needs (i.e. disabled, terminally ill, autistic, etc.) could have their time shortened to one year or, in some cases, be exempt.

Wow. I really like this proposal.

Thanks!

Don't give me all of the credit for this one. It has been discussed by the ABA in some form or fashion before, and I think it will eventually become a reality. Even most firms are on board with it, because they don't want to pay associates large salaries to train and make errors. They are just trying to figure out how to implement it. The federal government, the ABA and state bars would need to address the logistics of paying salaries - guaranteeing that all law graduates would have jobs for at least two years after law school - and implementing licensing requirements, not to mention enforcement.

But it doesn't seem all that complicated does it? And it would help correct the employment issues in the legal field. It would benefit firms because lawyers working in firms would perceivably gain an appreciation for different kinds of people and issues, and it would impact for the better the way corporate law is practiced. Everybody would win.

I'd rather get 160K for the law version of residency AKA big law junior associateship.

-- (Obama Voter)

OL public interest person here. I get annoyed by this as well. Just for the record, I think you're right on why people say they'll do PI desertfox. I was volunteering once at the ACLU and a few different people there had the, "well you kind of have to sell out (their words), but you can do good pro bono work" attitude. I've had previous experience working with "the poors" and I'm in it for the long haul.

As for the PI requirement, I like some of it in theory, but I do wonder about the problem of some PI and government places just endlessly only taking on these residents and not hiring lawyers for actual careers. What do you think about that?

I lol'd at the thread title

I don't. Are you going to suspend my loan payments AND stop them from accruing interest during those 2-3 years while I'm making $35K a year (or whatever PI jobs pay)? For that matter, where are these courts and PI organizations going to get the money to fund this? From speaking with my friends who want to do PI, it seems like they don't have enough money to hire people who actually want to do PI as it is. Even if you do get funding and you do suspend the program, that means I'm going to earn about $250K to $375K less during my lifetime than I would have if I went right to work at a traditional firm (knock on wood) and did some pro bono work on the side. That's a big deal, especially if you're a student who has a family to support.

You mentioned weeding out "the suckers who don't really want to be lawyers"...what about those of us who do want to be lawyers but just have 0 interest in doing PI work? I have no interest in it, and I have done a decent amount of volunteer work in the past, including two years for an AmeriCorps program.

I think compulsory volunteer work programs can also do a disservice to organizations, because then volunteer work is seen (at least by some people) as something you "have" to do rather than as something you should want to do.

ETA: I see that you said some people could be exempt...that still doesn't seem fair. I guess I could get around this though by popping out a baby early than I planned to, like during 3L year. It would probably make more sense financially in the long run.

I'm sure this would be very high on the priority list of the ABA.

Agree.

Um. No.

You basically just explained most of the things that make medical residency so difficult. 200K in debt with 3-7 years of residency at 40K per year. Loans NOT deferred unless you qualify for economic hardship, which is limited to 3 years. Federal govt funds a large portion of the training through Medicare funding (so, actually, the public pays for it through their taxes) and the rest comes from the academic training centers. Most patients are low income, uninsured, indigent patients as a requirement by the feds. But, the upsides are multifold. For society, we all benefit from a large perpetual cohort of physicians to care for them in hospitals and clinics throughout the country. For practices, who don't have to pay to train physicians, which would cost a ton and the "education" would not be standardized to ensure comprehensive training. Afterall, if you were to undergo a residency-type training program as a newly minted lawyer, you would likely learn a TON because the educational programs would be designed to give you a breadth of experiences and likely give you MUCH more supervised autonomy than many newly minted lawyers currently get. And, thus, trainees also benefit from the residency training despite the financial downsides. I can't imagine how many diagnoses I would have missed or screwed up without 3 years of residency training. Sure, I would have started making more money from the get-go but my confidence would have been much lower and the pressure would have been much higher. Of course, there are things about medicine that are not similar to law... like, you can kill someone with a poor decision in medicine. But, you can really screw up someone's life in the law with a poor decision... so, it still matters. I love the above proposal! Though, I can tell you , I would NOT be going back to law school right now if I knew I would have to go through another EFFING residency program afterward! That is FOR SURE! So, I am thankful the above proposal will not apply to me.

Again, you want to force law students to work at a low paying job for 3 years. Because it will help society that they are providing expensive services without being properly compensated.

I have a much better idea. Why don't we just take a random 20% of the population, and make them and their kids slaves. This will help society, since we will be able to get expensive services from them without compensating them. The 80% of the population will be much better off.
In fact, why make it random? We don't want to just do a lottery. So we can choose a discrete group of people.
How about all the doctors? No, they'll just stop being doctors.
How about all the engineers? no, they'll stop being engineers
So it should probably be race based, and that way it will also be easier to identify them if they run away. This is a great idea. I'm astounded we haven't thought of this yet. I bet the ABA will be all over it, after I write my student note advocating it.

The worst part is that so many good PI jobs are most attainable through doing 2-5 years of biglaw first.

Also, fuck the "residency" idea. Working with poors would only help general litigators. It would do nothing to show the commitment or improve the skills of M&A, capital markets, securities, IP, corporate bankruptcy or real estate lawyers (and I am sure I am forgetting dozens of practice areas).

Lol. Just because lawyers charge a lot doesn't make the services inherently expensive.

I didn't claim I wanted PI, but I split firm, PI 1L summer and can see why people would claim to want PI and then switch after doing it-- it is really crappy, hard, thankless work. I don't think any 1Ls, having done even the worst Big law (large M&A Deals or patent prosecution) and the best PI would choose PI. Big law may not be as interesting as death penalty defense, but PI leaves you with a scraping the bottom of the barrel feel after your indigent client makes some classless remark about your efforts or you have to deal with some self righteous local prosecutor who reminds you of the meat head who pantsed you in 8th grade. Peoplevwho actually want PI and follow through with it are amazing people. Everyone else should. Try it and then soapbox about it.

Do you have any idea how expensive Westlaw/Lexis actually are?

Also, it is appropriate to consider the cost of training when considering the cost of providing the service. 3 years of professional school (opportunity cost + tuition + interest) amortized over a career is still a significant cost. Add in CLEs, etc.

The fact that many lawyers are low-paid does not mean that the services they are providing are not "inherently expensive"; it means either (i) the lawyer isn't "breaking even" when he provides that service; or (ii) the psychic benefits of "doing good" are assigned a certain value that makes up for the financial difference. If you force people to do pro bono, the psychic benefit = near $0.

The fact that some states have mandatory pro bono requirements is already ridiculous. 3 years? lol.

Or you could be the self righteous local prosecutor, and pants people.

Considering all the strip searches and so on that prosecutor indirectly (and justifiably, for the most part) cause, this is pretty spot-on.