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Government lifer or Immigration Law Mogul

Post by Anonymous User » Sun Nov 01, 2015 7:10 pm

Hi.

Ok so the name of the thread is a little extreme but I am trying to figure out what direction I head in post graduation. I am a 2L at a TTT that places well in the large metropolitan area. I love the idea of going local prosecutor -> fed prosecutor -> local judge as I have really good connections to the local prosecutor's office and am pretty sure I'll get a job offer after graduation (interned there in UG and 1L summer and planning to do a clinical there also have been told by senior ADAs I shouldn't have a problem getting a job).

But I also have this dream of mine of opening my own firm shortly after passing the bar. The firm would specialize in crim defense, personal injury and immigration law. I have an interesting set up with the immigration law area in my locality also. I am bi-lingual and have a connection to a large Hispanic supermarket (think Latin Costco) and am thinking of opening a kiosk to do document review work for flat fees at a high volume. This supermarket pays someone $10/hr to assist the immigrant population (very large in this area) fill out money orders. Evidently, many of these unassimilated immigrants won't know how to fill out simple legal forms (like a lease w/o getting totally screwed) much less their immigration papers so I was thinking I can do that for the mass migrant population for $30-$70 a form (or something to that effect) at a high volume. Eventually this practice will grow and also include legal services to the community as a whole.

Is this idea of mine crazy or may I be on to something here? Is it worth giving up being a government lifer and the sweet benefits/security it comes with? (Especially considering I'll be about $110k in debt and can't take advantage of PSLF if I don't work in gov. Wife also has a state job, makes around $70k/yr and can put me on her health insurance for what it's worth) I know I may be getting ahead of myself but thinking of this is a great way to procrastinate finals study ☺

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Re: Government lifer or Immigration Law Mogul

Post by Clemenceau » Sun Nov 01, 2015 7:26 pm

Anonymous User wrote:I'll be about $110k in debt and can't take advantage of PSLF if I don't work in gov.
Hmm

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Re: Government lifer or Immigration Law Mogul

Post by Anonymous User » Sun Nov 01, 2015 8:20 pm

Clemenceau wrote:
Anonymous User wrote:I'll be about $110k in debt and can't take advantage of PSLF if I don't work in gov.
Hmm
What do you mean?

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Re: Government lifer or Immigration Law Mogul

Post by Anonymous User » Tue Nov 03, 2015 12:10 am

Anyone?

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Re: Government lifer or Immigration Law Mogul

Post by North » Tue Nov 03, 2015 3:36 am

With over $100,000 in debt you should do everything you can to get that ADA job (FYI connections like yours frequently fail to produce actual job offers, despite your certainty that you've got it in the bag). You can set up a kiosk at the discount bodega to do high volume doc review for immigrants if you still think that's a good idea after you have some actual experience and are financially stable.

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Re: Government lifer or Immigration Law Mogul

Post by MyNameIsFlynn! » Tue Nov 03, 2015 1:09 pm

Anonymous User wrote:Anyone?
Cart way in front of horse. ADA hiring is unpredictable even with good connections. Wrt hanging a shingle, what do you know about solo practice? Do you have any meaningful experience in any of these areas (or will you by the time you set up shop)? Your business model in particular seems destined to fail

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Re: Government lifer or Immigration Law Mogul

Post by Anonymous User » Tue Nov 03, 2015 3:37 pm

MyNameIsFlynn! wrote:
Anonymous User wrote:Anyone?
Cart way in front of horse. ADA hiring is unpredictable even with good connections. Wrt hanging a shingle, what do you know about solo practice? Do you have any meaningful experience in any of these areas (or will you by the time you set up shop)? Your business model in particular seems destined to fail
My backup option if the DAs doesn't work out is to work at small firm before opening my own practice. Surely, the trial experience that I'll gain doing the clinic will make me attractive to crim defense, personal injury firms no?

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Re: Government lifer or Immigration Law Mogul

Post by Tanicius » Tue Nov 03, 2015 3:51 pm

I do genuinely think that immigration law tailored to Spanish-speaking clients is a super under-saturated market right now. It's probably also rather under-capitalized. Not a lot of people do it. The people who start businesses doing it now stand to make a lot of money if they can figure out good business models now, before more people get in on it.

I'd be a lot more cautious about doing document review. That sounds very risky, especially if you do it out of law school right away. Yes, it's true that that is a service that is needed. It's another question entirely whether you can get adequately compensated for doing essentially paralegal work, or for that matter whether it will ever lead to something better. It's not useful experience that you can use to get hired anywhere else when you're older, so you would have to be prepared to (a) be stuck doing it, and (b) not make a lot of money doing it. Choose wisely.

As for your other options, gun for that prosecutor job but don't get complacent. If you have connections at small firms, continue working them.
My backup option if the DAs doesn't work out is to work at small firm before opening my own practice. Surely, the trial experience that I'll gain doing the clinic will make me attractive to crim defense, personal injury firms no?
Do not mistake the attractiveness of your application with competitiveness. Most people applying to small firms have attractive resumes. Part of the problem our legal economy is dealing with these days is that there are so many people looking for work that employers become desensitized to the candidates. It is pretty good if you have "tried x number of trials to verdict" on your resume right out of law school, but never assume that that will be enough.

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Re: Government lifer or Immigration Law Mogul

Post by Anonymous User » Tue Nov 03, 2015 4:17 pm

accidentally anon'd

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Re: Government lifer or Immigration Law Mogul

Post by Tanicius » Tue Nov 03, 2015 5:44 pm

I'm going to come out and say this. And I'm going to make it a stand-alone post because it's important and people should consider copy-pasting this in similar threads in the future.

After practicing for almost a year and a half, here's my observations of most young private attorneys at small firms: It sucks. It's hard. Really, really hard. I'm a PD with a damn cushy job compared to them, and I bet I make more money than a lot of them. They're working for pennies on the dollar if they're getting mentored by a partner, which is the sacrifice they have to make if they want to work at a firm with an already-established source of clients. Alternatively, they're on their own, where it sucks more. The average salary for a private defense attorney in America is $45,000. The average. Half of them make that, or they make less.

At a small firm, it's hard as hell to keep your head above water. Let's discount the overhead, which some small firms are getting creative at eliminating with the use of digital technology. It's more the overhead. It's the fact that you're going to be driving to one of maybe 5 or 10 different courthouses every day. I'm a PD, and I go to the same courthouse -- hell, the same courtroom most of the time -- between 5 and 20 times a week. I'm working with the same prosecutors every week and no them on a first-name basis. I don't even need to own a fucking car but I own one anyway because it's convenient to drive places on weekends. The private under-30 crowd comes in, maybe one or two of them per day, different ones every day of the week, and they interact with my prosecutors maybe once or twice a month. They don't know them. Often they come into my downtown metro courtroom and ask me "Are you the prosecutor on this case?" Because they don't even know what the prosecutor looks like, just like they don't know who the prosecutor is in any of the other neighboring six courthouses. They don't know how to handle the prosecutors they're pitted against because they don't know that prosecutor's style or preference for negotiations or litigation. They get shittier deals than I do because they have a tenth of my caseload and don't know how to press or charm the prosecutors. They become visibly shocked when a prosecutor gets angry at them because they don't realize that their request is a no-no with that specific prosecutor, that they've just pressed that person's buttons.

They are often committing malpractice. Sometimes we'll hear a private on the record talking about the deal they've negotiated, and everybody in the room -- the judge, the PDs, the other prosecutors -- will exchange uncomfortable stares with each other. Like, this lawyer for real? Do they not realize this is a bullshit negotiation? Okay sir, if you insist... Now, me? I made those same mistakes in my first few months of practice, but I'm immune from a lawsuit because I'm a public defender. And I often didn't make those same mistakes, either, because I have an amazing team of co-workers and supervisors who train and mentor me. The private under-30 guys can actually get sued. They walk into court and agree to deals they don't recognize are abhorrent and even sometimes illegal under sentencing laws. The prosecutor greases their wheels and they walk back to their client with a grin thinking they just moved a mountain, when in reality they just got sold a bunch of snake oil by a more experienced prosecutor.

On the other hand (and this applies to the exact same people as the paragraph above) a lot of private solos are really, really smart. Which is an additional shame, because it doesn't get them very far. They're very smart, really! The stress and the pressure ensures it. They research shit late into the night well after I've gone off to office happy hour. Because they have to! They're coming up with new angles to reinvent the wheel and succeed on some constitutional challenge motion that the public defender office tried 20 years ago and didn't win on. They memorize their DWI statutes and prepare super complicated cross examinations of the highway trooper who performed the DWI stop. They get super specialized in DWI law, and pretty soon they're a legitimate expert on all things DWI-related. I've seen some true intellectualism by DWI lawyers under 30 years of age in my jurisdiction, and it is kind of cool to watch and listen to when they go through all these different strategies for helping their client get the best outcome possible. But at the end of the day, it's a mostly thankless job, because they're earning less money than the 45-year-old DWI vet who phones it in and charges his same $3,000 flat fee.

Throughout all of this, they're usually struggling financially, because it's hard as hell to get enough business to turn a good profit when you're new and most energized. By the time they're more experienced, they're clawing even harder at the doors to prosecutor and public defender offices because they want out bad. They're calling us up asking for tips for how to interview with our office.

Reality is, private defense is a business, first and foremost. You have to be good at the things that make it a business: generation of business, marketing, and client charm. If you don't love doing those things, well, I wouldn't say it's that difficult to break even. But I would say it'll prove next to impossible that you end up making a lot of money out of that adventure. You gotta be a passionate entrepreneur to succeed as a young-blood solo these days. It'll take a lot more than reading some sexy blog posts by the 1% of successful solos who struck it right out of the law school gate by designing their own personal firm apps or whatever those people do to drum up a ton of business.

Going solo out of law school is kind of comparable to going to a TTTT. Some people who go to un-ranked schools really fucking kill it and end up as millionaires, and a larger number do well enough and have good enough energy and social skills that they're able to network in some pretty comfortable, successful careers. But the vast majority will not enjoy either of those outcomes. Most private solos want to jump ship as soon as they can for a government job or a larger firm with steadier and better pay, but they can't. They get stuck in the rut, and suddenly it's 20 years later and they're still stuck in that same rut, and by now they've burned out and they have no more new cutting-edge legal theories to surprise a prosecutor with or any new technology strategy to make their advertising better than their competition. They fall back into the mold earning that $45k and they tell their kids not to go to law school.

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Re: Government lifer or Immigration Law Mogul

Post by North » Tue Nov 03, 2015 6:06 pm

Tanicius wrote:I'm going to come out and say this. And I'm going to make it a stand-alone post because it's important and people should consider copy-pasting this in similar threads in the future.

After practicing for almost a year and a half, here's my observations of most young private attorneys at small firms: It sucks. It's hard. Really, really hard. I'm a PD with a damn cushy job compared to them, and I bet I make more money than a lot of them. They're working for pennies on the dollar if they're getting mentored by a partner, which is the sacrifice they have to make if they want to work at a firm with an already-established source of clients. Alternatively, they're on their own, where it sucks more. The average salary for a private defense attorney in America is $45,000. The average. Half of them make that, or they make less.

At a small firm, it's hard as hell to keep your head above water. Let's discount the overhead, which some small firms are getting creative at eliminating with the use of digital technology. It's more the overhead. It's the fact that you're going to be driving to one of maybe 5 or 10 different courthouses every day. I'm a PD, and I go to the same courthouse -- hell, the same courtroom most of the time -- between 5 and 20 times a week. I'm working with the same prosecutors every week and no them on a first-name basis. I don't even need to own a fucking car but I own one anyway because it's convenient to drive places on weekends. The private under-30 crowd comes in, maybe one or two of them per day, different ones every day of the week, and they interact with my prosecutors maybe once or twice a month. They don't know them. Often they come into my downtown metro courtroom and ask me "Are you the prosecutor on this case?" Because they don't even know what the prosecutor looks like, just like they don't know who the prosecutor is in any of the other neighboring six courthouses. They don't know how to handle the prosecutors they're pitted against because they don't know that prosecutor's style or preference for negotiations or litigation. They get shittier deals than I do because they have a tenth of my caseload and don't know how to press or charm the prosecutors. They become visibly shocked when a prosecutor gets angry at them because they don't realize that their request is a no-no with that specific prosecutor, that they've just pressed that person's buttons.

They are often committing malpractice. Sometimes we'll hear a private on the record talking about the deal they've negotiated, and everybody in the room -- the judge, the PDs, the other prosecutors -- will exchange uncomfortable stares with each other. Like, this lawyer for real? Do they not realize this is a bullshit negotiation? Okay sir, if you insist... Now, me? I made those same mistakes in my first few months of practice, but I'm immune from a lawsuit because I'm a public defender. And I often didn't make those same mistakes, either, because I have an amazing team of co-workers and supervisors who train and mentor me. The private under-30 guys can actually get sued. They walk into court and agree to deals they don't recognize are abhorrent and even sometimes illegal under sentencing laws. The prosecutor greases their wheels and they walk back to their client with a grin thinking they just moved a mountain, when in reality they just got sold a bunch of snake oil by a more experienced prosecutor.

On the other hand (and this applies to the exact same people as the paragraph above) a lot of private solos are really, really smart. Which is an additional shame, because it doesn't get them very far. They're very smart, really! The stress and the pressure ensures it. They research shit late into the night well after I've gone off to office happy hour. Because they have to! They're coming up with new angles to reinvent the wheel and succeed on some constitutional challenge motion that the public defender office tried 20 years ago and didn't win on. They memorize their DWI statutes and prepare super complicated cross examinations of the highway trooper who performed the DWI stop. They get super specialized in DWI law, and pretty soon they're a legitimate expert on all things DWI-related. I've seen some true intellectualism by DWI lawyers under 30 years of age in my jurisdiction, and it is kind of cool to watch and listen to when they go through all these different strategies for helping their client get the best outcome possible. But at the end of the day, it's a mostly thankless job, because they're earning less money than the 45-year-old DWI vet who phones it in and charges his same $3,000 flat fee.

Throughout all of this, they're usually struggling financially, because it's hard as hell to get enough business to turn a good profit when you're new and most energized. By the time they're more experienced, they're clawing even harder at the doors to prosecutor and public defender offices because they want out bad. They're calling us up asking for tips for how to interview with our office.

Reality is, private defense is a business, first and foremost. You have to be good at the things that make it a business: generation of business, marketing, and client charm. If you don't love doing those things, well, I wouldn't say it's that difficult to break even. But I would say it'll prove next to impossible that you end up making a lot of money out of that adventure. You gotta be a passionate entrepreneur to succeed as a young-blood solo these days. It'll take a lot more than reading some sexy blog posts by the 1% of successful solos who struck it right out of the law school gate by designing their own personal firm apps or whatever those people do to drum up a ton of business.

Going solo out of law school is kind of comparable to going to a TTTT. Some people who go to un-ranked schools really fucking kill it and end up as millionaires, and a larger number do well enough and have good enough energy and social skills that they're able to network in some pretty comfortable, successful careers. But the vast majority will not enjoy either of those outcomes. Most private solos want to jump ship as soon as they can for a government job or a larger firm with steadier and better pay, but they can't. They get stuck in the rut, and suddenly it's 20 years later and they're still stuck in that same rut, and by now they've burned out and they have no more new cutting-edge legal theories to surprise a prosecutor with or any new technology strategy to make their advertising better than their competition. They fall back into the mold earning that $45k and they tell their kids not to go to law school.
Good post.

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Re: Government lifer or Immigration Law Mogul

Post by Anonymous User » Tue Nov 03, 2015 11:48 pm

Tanicius wrote:I'm going to come out and say this. And I'm going to make it a stand-alone post because it's important and people should consider copy-pasting this in similar threads in the future.

After practicing for almost a year and a half, here's my observations of most young private attorneys at small firms: It sucks. It's hard. Really, really hard. I'm a PD with a damn cushy job compared to them, and I bet I make more money than a lot of them. They're working for pennies on the dollar if they're getting mentored by a partner, which is the sacrifice they have to make if they want to work at a firm with an already-established source of clients. Alternatively, they're on their own, where it sucks more. The average salary for a private defense attorney in America is $45,000. The average. Half of them make that, or they make less.

At a small firm, it's hard as hell to keep your head above water. Let's discount the overhead, which some small firms are getting creative at eliminating with the use of digital technology. It's more the overhead. It's the fact that you're going to be driving to one of maybe 5 or 10 different courthouses every day. I'm a PD, and I go to the same courthouse -- hell, the same courtroom most of the time -- between 5 and 20 times a week. I'm working with the same prosecutors every week and no them on a first-name basis. I don't even need to own a fucking car but I own one anyway because it's convenient to drive places on weekends. The private under-30 crowd comes in, maybe one or two of them per day, different ones every day of the week, and they interact with my prosecutors maybe once or twice a month. They don't know them. Often they come into my downtown metro courtroom and ask me "Are you the prosecutor on this case?" Because they don't even know what the prosecutor looks like, just like they don't know who the prosecutor is in any of the other neighboring six courthouses. They don't know how to handle the prosecutors they're pitted against because they don't know that prosecutor's style or preference for negotiations or litigation. They get shittier deals than I do because they have a tenth of my caseload and don't know how to press or charm the prosecutors. They become visibly shocked when a prosecutor gets angry at them because they don't realize that their request is a no-no with that specific prosecutor, that they've just pressed that person's buttons.

They are often committing malpractice. Sometimes we'll hear a private on the record talking about the deal they've negotiated, and everybody in the room -- the judge, the PDs, the other prosecutors -- will exchange uncomfortable stares with each other. Like, this lawyer for real? Do they not realize this is a bullshit negotiation? Okay sir, if you insist... Now, me? I made those same mistakes in my first few months of practice, but I'm immune from a lawsuit because I'm a public defender. And I often didn't make those same mistakes, either, because I have an amazing team of co-workers and supervisors who train and mentor me. The private under-30 guys can actually get sued. They walk into court and agree to deals they don't recognize are abhorrent and even sometimes illegal under sentencing laws. The prosecutor greases their wheels and they walk back to their client with a grin thinking they just moved a mountain, when in reality they just got sold a bunch of snake oil by a more experienced prosecutor.

On the other hand (and this applies to the exact same people as the paragraph above) a lot of private solos are really, really smart. Which is an additional shame, because it doesn't get them very far. They're very smart, really! The stress and the pressure ensures it. They research shit late into the night well after I've gone off to office happy hour. Because they have to! They're coming up with new angles to reinvent the wheel and succeed on some constitutional challenge motion that the public defender office tried 20 years ago and didn't win on. They memorize their DWI statutes and prepare super complicated cross examinations of the highway trooper who performed the DWI stop. They get super specialized in DWI law, and pretty soon they're a legitimate expert on all things DWI-related. I've seen some true intellectualism by DWI lawyers under 30 years of age in my jurisdiction, and it is kind of cool to watch and listen to when they go through all these different strategies for helping their client get the best outcome possible. But at the end of the day, it's a mostly thankless job, because they're earning less money than the 45-year-old DWI vet who phones it in and charges his same $3,000 flat fee.

Throughout all of this, they're usually struggling financially, because it's hard as hell to get enough business to turn a good profit when you're new and most energized. By the time they're more experienced, they're clawing even harder at the doors to prosecutor and public defender offices because they want out bad. They're calling us up asking for tips for how to interview with our office.

Reality is, private defense is a business, first and foremost. You have to be good at the things that make it a business: generation of business, marketing, and client charm. If you don't love doing those things, well, I wouldn't say it's that difficult to break even. But I would say it'll prove next to impossible that you end up making a lot of money out of that adventure. You gotta be a passionate entrepreneur to succeed as a young-blood solo these days. It'll take a lot more than reading some sexy blog posts by the 1% of successful solos who struck it right out of the law school gate by designing their own personal firm apps or whatever those people do to drum up a ton of business.

Going solo out of law school is kind of comparable to going to a TTTT. Some people who go to un-ranked schools really fucking kill it and end up as millionaires, and a larger number do well enough and have good enough energy and social skills that they're able to network in some pretty comfortable, successful careers. But the vast majority will not enjoy either of those outcomes. Most private solos want to jump ship as soon as they can for a government job or a larger firm with steadier and better pay, but they can't. They get stuck in the rut, and suddenly it's 20 years later and they're still stuck in that same rut, and by now they've burned out and they have no more new cutting-edge legal theories to surprise a prosecutor with or any new technology strategy to make their advertising better than their competition. They fall back into the mold earning that $45k and they tell their kids not to go to law school.
Wow. Thanks for this. So I guess you're leaning towards "Government lifer" over "Immigration Law Mogul"

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Re: Government lifer or Immigration Law Mogul

Post by Anonymous User » Tue Nov 03, 2015 11:51 pm

Another business idea I had was: buying cheap real estate (as in old nursery homes) and making it into a drug treatment center. I would borrow the funds as an S-Corp from a bank to get started buying up property. Treatment centers have been popping up all over the place in my large metro area.

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Re: Government lifer or Immigration Law Mogul

Post by JusticeJackson » Wed Nov 04, 2015 4:02 am

.
Last edited by JusticeJackson on Tue Nov 10, 2015 2:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Government lifer or Immigration Law Mogul

Post by Anonymous User » Wed Nov 04, 2015 7:09 am

Anonymous User wrote:Another business idea I had was: buying cheap real estate (as in old nursery homes) and making it into a drug treatment center. I would borrow the funds as an S-Corp from a bank to get started buying up property. Treatment centers have been popping up all over the place in my large metro area.
Just an FYI entrepreneurial life normally sucks and chances of success are very, very low. Success for an entrepreneur today is actually making a living and putting food on the table. People have to stop fantasizing that they will be the next Zuckerberg or Larry page.

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Re: Government lifer or Immigration Law Mogul

Post by Anonymous User » Fri Nov 06, 2015 9:48 am

Anonymous User wrote:
Anonymous User wrote:Another business idea I had was: buying cheap real estate (as in old nursery homes) and making it into a drug treatment center. I would borrow the funds as an S-Corp from a bank to get started buying up property. Treatment centers have been popping up all over the place in my large metro area.
Just an FYI entrepreneurial life normally sucks and chances of success are very, very low. Success for an entrepreneur today is actually making a living and putting food on the table. People have to stop fantasizing that they will be the next Zuckerberg or Larry page.
Does it really though? I thought the best thing about being your own boss is making a living on your own terms? Does anyone think "Immigration Law Mogul" is a good idea?

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Re: Government lifer or Immigration Law Mogul

Post by A. Nony Mouse » Fri Nov 06, 2015 10:48 am

I think there's a dire need for good immigration services, but the people who need them most generally don't have money to pay, whereas the people who can pay can probably already find representation. Keep in mind that there's no right to a free attorney in immigration proceedings, so while you could get court appointments to do criminal immigration cases, I would imagine that for actual immigration stuff you'd have to rely on client payments.

I don't know a lot about business models, but I do share Tanicius' concern about high volume/doing paralegal stuff.

Re entrepreneurship, I have never wanted to work for myself, ever, because I value security and safety over control. And being in complete control over your schedule etc is overrated. There are definitely people for whom the opposite is true. That doesn't mean it's always a bad idea, but it's still very very hard, and I think people either love it or hate it.

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Re: Government lifer or Immigration Law Mogul

Post by JusticeJackson » Fri Nov 06, 2015 7:48 pm

.
Last edited by JusticeJackson on Tue Nov 10, 2015 2:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Government lifer or Immigration Law Mogul

Post by Anonymous User » Sun Nov 08, 2015 3:45 pm

OP here.

Thanks for the responses. I think Government lifer is the more suitable path for me considering I'm quite the family man whereas if I went with the #MogulLife I'd probably be consumed with just keeping my head above (financial) water when I could be making the same salary or more (when u factor in benefits) and have a lot more free time on my hands to take the kids to a ball game or something. My wife has a pretty well paying job so if I supplement that gov lifer salary with hers we can earn a pretty solid living and I'll be on a more stable path to achieving my dream of becoming a judge for my hometown. Thanks again for the responses and please let me know if u think my logic is flawed in this post.

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