There's still time to withdraw, 0Ls Forum

[Johann]

Law as a profession, and to a greater extent law school itself, seems quite a bit like one great (and prestigious) penis measuring competition.

Generally, law is a collection of people that previously lost round 1 of the penis measuring competition and got into law to redeem themselves in round 2. If they lose this round, it will be widely accepted they have the world's smallest penis.

[JCougar]

Law as a profession, and to a greater extent law school itself, seems quite a bit like one great (and prestigious) penis measuring competition.

It's sort of like this, but they don't care about the actual size of your penis...they care about how big you brag it to be.

[FSK]

My life to have found TLS one year earlier. I'm in an OK place, but I'd be doing so much better had I had this advice.

[JCougar]

More importantly, your aggregate grades probably do reflect at least some kind of effective work ethic and familiarity with the material. The people in my class who got top 10% are undoubtedly smarter and/or much harder working than I am, and I don't have a problem with the fact that they are rewarded for that in their job prospects. The real problem is how someone slightly below median is treated like a pariah -- that's total bogus.

I do think that there is some rough correlation, obviously. I mean, at every school there's a few people that just won't do the work or don't care. And there's some that are both brilliant and study 8 hours per day.

But the problem is that Biglaw cutoffs at most schools don't really treat grades as a "rough" measure. They treat grades as the bible...as the only thing that matters. And unless you go to like a T10 school, the cutoffs are so high that you can be completely boned by random noise and intervening variables. In the top 10% at my school, there certainly was a lot of super-impressive smart people that always had a well thought-out response when called on in class, and that had great work ethic, but there was at least an equal number of top 10%ers that provided long-winded yet substance-less responses high on rhetoric but low on analytic value. I don't know that this ratio, anecdotally, was any different from the people that finished at median or anywhere else. But yeah, there was also a small group that really just didn't GAF, and I'm sure their exams were of lesser quality.

Also, a lot of professors made "model answers" available after the exams. Content-wise, I really didn't see much difference between a median exam and the model answers--except for the model answers had a lot more words and BS rhetoric.

[sighsigh]

Just another reason to withdraw:

http://money.cnn.com/2014/07/15/pf/jobs ... ?iid=HP_LN

What I'm surprised about is that while the overall median is 62k, the law firm median is 95k. I always thought it was the legions of sh*tlaw firms mainly pulling down the median, but it seems that perhaps it's actually the government/PI/clerkship jobs. http://www.nalp.org/2013_selected_pr

[JCougar]

Just another reason to withdraw:

http://money.cnn.com/2014/07/15/pf/jobs ... ?iid=HP_LN

What I'm surprised about is that while the overall median is 62k, the law firm median is 95k. I always thought it was the legions of sh*tlaw firms pulling down the median, but it seems that perhaps it's actually the government/PI/clerkship jobs that are pulling it down. http://www.nalp.org/2013_selected_pr

I don't know of any government/PI/clerkship jobs that pay nearly that high. Almost all of those jobs pay $60K or less.

The only jobs I know of that pay like $90K are regional Biglaw in medium-sized cities (like Indianapolis, Louisville, or non Atlanta cities in the South)--or some business consulting jobs.

The thing is, it's probably not safe to trust those numbers. Very close to 100% of the jobs that pay over $90K recruit at OCI, and virtually all of the jobs available outside of OCI pay $60K or less. The only thing I can think of that falls between the modes is certain FedGov positions and the very rare midlaw firm that hires a recent grad--and consulting. The chance of the median falling on $90K seems pretty low to me. I would think that that salary median is probably skewed by the fact that most people that get Shitlaw jobs are probably too pissed off or ashamed to report their salary to anyone. There's something like 5,000 (??) Biglaw jobs out there every year, and there's maybe another 1,000 other jobs that pay a decent salary between Fedgov, consulting, and boutique/midlaw. For $90K to be a median for law firms, there'd have to be only about 6,000 other people getting shitlaw for a total of 12,000 law firm jobs...but we know that the number of bar passage required jobs out there is supposedly more than twice that according to the law schools. The ABA's statistics suggest that there's got to be close to 3 shitlaw jobs for every Biglaw one if 26,000 people are getting actual lawyer jobs and you account for the small percent that get government/PI.

Also, I highly doubt the number of people doing PI straight out of law school that are even getting paid at all is over 50% total.

[JCougar]

This is a good reminder of what finding a job is going to be like if you strike out at OCI. It's a good time to post this, not just so 0Ls can be warned, but so 1Ls that haven't got any interviews can contemplate signing away another 2 years of their life and $150K in debt to a system that will be hell-bent on exploiting their desperation for 10, 20, 30 years into the future.

--LinkRemoved--

The solo practice pipedream is nothing new to us here at Big Debt, having wreaked its way through our document review projects for the better part of this decade. All us old time coders remember the so-called “solos” on project who were “just having a slow month” and ended up in the doc review gulag “for a short while.” Curiously, those “slow months” stretched into years as these folks popped up again and again on projects like those old character actors from the 1940s gangster movies. Like bad pennies, they were always back in Biglaw’s pocket sooner rather than later. It wasn’t by choice, either.

Armed with a flimsy stack of Vista-Print business cards and a “prestigious” midtown Manhattan mail-drop address, these usual suspects were always “open for business,” such as it were. You’d sometimes hear them on the phone in the vestibules, bickering over some rinky-dink traffic ticket or small-claims case. One particular guy nicknamed “ShitFingers” liked to operate his side practice via cellphone while dropping heat in the restroom stall, giving “toilet law” a literal dimension. His clients must have thought one of those Civil War re-enactments was going on while he discussed the retainer.

Later, you’d go to wipe and find he’d captioned draft briefs on the Charmin and hidden a stapler under the toilet tank. I often wondered why he didn’t just tape his law degree up in there alongside the stall’s graffiti. No one would’ve cared. This was, of course, in the SullCrom basement, down amid the boxes. Those were the days, young grasshoppers.

As mentioned supra, these “solos” had little more to show for their 7 year education than those pathetic Vista-Print cards. They were curious spectacles in themselves, these cards, featuring the obligatory “Esq” after the last name, coupled with the redundant “Attorney & Counsellor at Law” directly beneath in bold font. Sometimes they’d even slug it “The Law Office of Mr. Loser Solo, Esq, Attorney & Counsellor at Law, JD, LLM” and other such nonsense, as if listing every permutation of their “title” would somehow confer respect.

. . .

We’d rather not know. Here at Big Debt, we find these “solo law practice” pipedreams rather comical, and somewhat akin to delusions. To paraphrase Nietzsche, “if you stare too deeply into the monitor, the monitor will stare into you.” So it goes. As the SullCrom partner once told a peskily querying coder “We’re not paying you guys to think. Just click, and click fast. There’s too much fucking around down here.” Right after that, some old coder farted.

But we digress. Our first snowfall in NYC was just last week, yet shitlaw firms have been reporting severe, isolated blizzards since the 4th of July. This often culminates in the phenomenon known as a “white-out.” A white-out occurs when the quantity of incoming resumes exceeds the toner capacity of the fax machine.

Like hurricanes, scientists are studying the “life cycle” of the typical NYC whiteout. Its root causes, if you will. The “chain of events.” They tell us it all starts with a craigslist ad, calling for some no-fault/landlord tenant/personal injury/_________(insert shitlaw practice area here) associate, with 0-2 years experience. Usually the salary offered will be south of 40 K, but much “experience” is promised in lieu of monetary remuneration. Court appearances and depositions are often mentioned, as well as “motions.”

Upon pressing the “post” button and placing the ad online, the white-out phenomenon unfolds. Within seconds, the telltale ring of the fax machine sounds thru the office as the resumes start shooting in. Building slowly, like a dynamo whirring up to speed, the ring soon blares into a continuous, screeching din like a submarine’s “torpedo” alarms in those old WWII movies. Upwards of 75 resumes a minute have been reported, and often the hapless secretaries are dispatched to find milk crates, empty wastebaskets, and other vessels to absorb this incoming resume avalanche.

But there’s no taming this feral beast. As the toner bleeds dry, the print becomes fainter and fainter, until the boldfaced “Cardozo Sports Law Journal” and “Top 46%” boldfaced type dissolves from a scream to a faint whisper. By the ten-minute mark, the fax machine pages emerge blank and unblemished, the shitlaw credentials unprinted. The toner is empty. Yet onward the onslaught continues, page upon empty page pouring into a vortex of abject nothingness. This heart of darkness is pure white.

(A nostalgic digression: Our old NYC personal injury firm was notoriously cheap, and bought those knockoff Canal Street toners that left your motions looking like a charcoal briquette had been rubbed across them. A judge once charitably compared them to cave paintings, and asked if I’d scrubbed a chimney with them).

If you strike out at OCI, which most of you will, you'll be spending the next 4-5 years of your life desperately searching for a full-time job, trying to figure out how to get your resume to stand out from the box of 5,000 submitted for a $40,000/year shitlaw position in the suburbs.

[jingosaur]

areyouinsame/bigdebtsmalllaw/skadden_farts/lawis4losers was the best. I hope he comes back to post more, but I heard he's done with law forever at this point.

[JCougar]

areyouinsame/bigdebtsmalllaw/skadden_farts/lawis4losers was the best. I hope he comes back to post more, but I heard he's done with law forever at this point.

He was the best because although his rhetoric and narrative would be slightly exaggerated, his stories were still far more accurate than the dreams in most 0L's heads, and 100 times more accurate than what law schools were (and still are) conveying.

A lot of talk lately has focused on the 25,000 yearly "full-time," JD-required jobs each year...and how graduating 38,000 JDs each year will suddenly make law into a "good" market. The problem with that is at least 15,000 of these jobs are unequivocally shitlaw jobs that pay you just enough rent to get a small, bug-infested apartment in the ghetto and spend 50% of your income just paying down the interest on your loan debt. I think 10,000 actual law jobs out there on a yearly basis is a very generous estimate of the number of jobs each year that actually pay you enough to pay off your loans. And this includes PSLF government and PI jobs...which rely on government bailouts of your debt to make law school a wise choice.

Some small law jobs can be fun and rewarding if you have no debt to pay off. Unless it's a slip n' fall mill or insurance defense, they can offer pretty decent hours and a middle class salary. But I also know small-firm lawyers making far less than six figures 20 years into practicing....and they still haven't paid off their loans.

This is why it will not be a good idea to go to law school until enrollment drops to something closer to 24,000 students per year...slightly lower than the number of jobs actually available, so that it will put pressure on legal employers to improve working conditions.

[BruceWayne]

Ha ha. Damn you people don't know how on point Cougar is. Everything he is saying is dead on with what I and many of those who graduated within the last few years will tell you.

3 things to really hone in on that he mentioned:

1) Once you miss the biglaw boat FROM A TOP 14 (or a top 10 or a CCN, maybe not HYS) you are in the SAME BOAT as "average" law grads. In fact, a lot of lower end entry level employers (i.e. the only ones who will even consider hiring you) are scared of you because they understand how mentally difficult it is to work those sorts of jobs when you are someone who pulled off getting into a law school of that level. Your main hope will be to bombard your home market because they at least recognize that you have a good chance of staying because you're from there, even if you did end up attending Michigan or whatever. This works a little bit better when you got a top school that is within your home region. But bottom line; once you miss that biglaw boat welcome to a crazy high chance of unemployed/underemployed hell--SCHOOL BE DAMNED.

2) Being "smart" and especially working "hard" are not good proxies of how well you will do in law school or your chances of avoiding the bottom of the class. In fact that mindset is very dangerous because, as Cougar PERFECTLY articulated, a lot of what leads to good grades is tied to things that don't necessarily align 1:1 with those two things. His comment about length may sound crazy but it's so true it's not even funny. Some people type up exams so long in such a short amount of time that I'd have to call it, at best, a gift and at worst I'd say that there's some funny business going on sometimes.

3) Going back to 1, once you fall below a big firm's GPA cutoff your resume GOES STRAIGHT INTO THE TRASH. This is something that is NOT said enough on here. There is no "impressing them in an interview" or using your "amazing" softs to get a callback. People do not understand that these big firms treat, as Cougar said, class rank/GPA like evangelical Christians treat the Bible--as infallible. You don't get to impress them with anything if you don't meet the GPA cutoff because your resume goes straight into the Kohler and you never even get to step foot in front of them. I remember meeting with alums in person who couldn't believe I was struggling with getting big firm jobs; but then saw my grades and were like "yeah you have to get in front of someone; if you don't it's just going to be over for the most part". But these firms have a weeding out process whereby your transcript sorts things out for them. The only difference that going to a top 14 makes with this equation is that the GPA line shifts from say, top 10 percent to top 1/3 etc. Whether you are below the cutoff with Penn on your resume instead of Emory doesn't make a difference.

[moonman157]

Ha ha. Damn you people don't know how on point Cougar is. Everything he is saying is dead on with what I and many of those who graduated within the last few years will tell you.

3 things to really hone in on that he mentioned:

1) Once you miss the biglaw boat FROM A TOP 14 (or a top 10 or a CCN, maybe not HYS) you are in the SAME BOAT as "average" law grads. In fact, a lot of lower end entry level employers (i.e. the only ones who will even consider hiring you) are scared of you because they understand how mentally difficult it is to work those sorts of jobs when you are someone who pulled off getting into a law school of that level. Your main hope will be to bombard your home market because they at least recognize that you have a good chance of staying because you're from there, even if you did end up attending Michigan or whatever. This works a little bit better when you got a top school that is within your home region. But bottom line; once you miss that biglaw boat welcome to a crazy high chance of unemployed/underemployed hell--SCHOOL BE DAMNED.

2) Being "smart" and especially working "hard" are not good proxies of how well you will do in law school or your chances of avoiding the bottom of the class. In fact that mindset is very dangerous because, as Cougar PERFECTLY articulated, a lot of what leads to good grades is tied to things that don't necessarily align 1:1 with those two things. His comment about length may sound crazy but it's so true it's not even funny. Some people type up exams so long in such a short amount of time that I'd have to call it, at best, a gift and at worst I'd say that there's some funny business going on sometimes.

3) Going back to 1, once you fall below a big firm's GPA cutoff your resume GOES STRAIGHT INTO THE TRASH. This is something that is NOT said enough on here. There is no "impressing them in an interview" or using your "amazing" softs to get a callback. People do not understand that these big firms treat, as Cougar said, class rank/GPA like evangelical Christians treat the Bible--as infallible. You don't get to impress them with anything if you don't meet the GPA cutoff because your resume goes straight into the Kohler and you never even get to step foot in front of them. I remember meeting with alums in person who couldn't believe I was struggling with getting big firm jobs; but then saw my grades and were like "yeah you have to get in front of someone; if you don't it's just going to be over for the most part". But these firms have a weeding out process whereby your transcript sorts things out for them. The only difference that going to a top 14 makes with this equation is that the GPA line shifts from say, top 10 percent to top 1/3 etc. Whether you are below the cutoff with Penn on your resume instead of Emory doesn't make a difference.

Unless you're on significant scholarship, is there any sense in not dropping out of a T14 if your plan was biglaw and you strike out at OCI?

[JCougar]

Unless you're on significant scholarship, is there any sense in not dropping out of a T14 if your plan was biglaw and you strike out at OCI?

There's still the possibility of BigFed, but they prefer a more well-rounded resume. Work experience helps more with this than it does with Biglaw. And a lot of the most desirable BigFed jobs nowadays still have GPA cutoffs anyways.

There's two different reasons you can strike out at OCI: 1) you had the grades to get non-lottery interviews, but you either a) bid on the wrong city, or b) just had bad interviews; and 2) you just didn't get any interviews.

If the reason you struck out is #2, and you have no desire or credentials to do BigFed, I would strongly advise you to drop out. If the reason you struck out is #1, you might still have a shot through mass-mailing and 3L OCI. But you have to remember that only a few people from each school will actually get Biglaw jobs through these avenues.

[twenty]

But you have to remember that only a few people from each school will actually get Biglaw jobs through these avenues.

I don't know if "a few" would constitute 11% here, but nevertheless, why would you drop out when you're doomed to PAYE + tax bomb no matter what you do?

[withoutapaddle]

A little crazy that law tuition costs more than a 5 bedroom house in most cities in the south

[pancakes3]

The loan amounts are absurd but what makes it a scam is the interest rate.

[JCougar]

But you have to remember that only a few people from each school will actually get Biglaw jobs through these avenues.

I don't know if "a few" would constitute 11% here, but nevertheless, why would you drop out when you're doomed to PAYE + tax bomb no matter what you do?

Edit: misread linked thread

The first caveat is that's 11% of all people that got jobs with firms of 50 people or more (not the entire class), but that only equates to maybe 6% of the class or so. The second caveat is that 50+ attorneys is the most generous cutoff for Biglaw that I've ever seen. It would be interesting to know how many of those mass mailings were successful with firms between 50 and 100 attorneys. The ABA's cutoff that people use to measure Biglaw is 100 attorneys. But the NLJ 250 is closer to 150 attorneys. I would think that the smaller the firm, the more likely they would be to be open to hiring people from mass mail.

What I'd really like to know is how many of those people that were successful had good enough grades to get interviews in the first place...but simply struck out in interviewing. I do not know a single person that isn't doing patent law that was able to obtain Biglaw while being below the GPA cutoff.

Anyway, I would never tell anyone not to mass mail. You absolutely have to have an "all of the above" strategy if you miss out at OCI (unless you probably wisely drop out). But it's nearly useless for people with GPAs above Biglaw cutoffs to apply to Biglaw firms.

[Paul Campos]

People to listen to, scale of 1 to 100:

Recent law grads: 100

Non-recent law grads: 50

3Ls: 20

2Ls: 10

1Ls: 1

0Ls, non-lawyer family and friends, pre-law advisors: -10,000

[twenty]

But it's nearly useless for people with GPAs above Biglaw cutoffs.

I understand the rest of your post, but I was slightly confused by this -- wouldn't it be more helpful if you had a GPA above biglaw cutoffs? Mailing firms/offices that don't show up at your school seems like unquestioningly TCR.

[JCougar]

But it's nearly useless for people with GPAs above Biglaw cutoffs.

I understand the rest of your post, but I was slightly confused by this -- wouldn't it be more helpful if you had a GPA above biglaw cutoffs? Mailing firms/offices that don't show up at your school seems like unquestioningly TCR.

Yeah, that was a typo. I meant below.

[A. Nony Mouse]

But you have to remember that only a few people from each school will actually get Biglaw jobs through these avenues.

I don't know if "a few" would constitute 11% here, but nevertheless, why would you drop out when you're doomed to PAYE + tax bomb no matter what you do?

I mean, the idea is that you'd drop out after OCI, so while you might have debt, that's still a lot less debt than if you keep going for another 2 years. I'd rather be on PAYE + tax bomb for $70k than $200k.

[sighsigh]

I would think that that salary median is probably skewed by the fact that most people that get Shitlaw jobs are probably too pissed off or ashamed to report their salary to anyone. There's something like 5,000 (??) Biglaw jobs out there every year, and there's maybe another 1,000 other jobs that pay a decent salary between Fedgov, consulting, and boutique/midlaw. For $90K to be a median for law firms, there'd have to be only about 6,000 other people getting shitlaw for a total of 12,000 law firm jobs...but we know that the number of bar passage required jobs out there is supposedly more than twice that according to the law schools. The ABA's statistics suggest that there's got to be close to 3 shitlaw jobs for every Biglaw one if 26,000 people are getting actual lawyer jobs and you account for the small percent that get government/PI.

It's possible. However, the NALP c/o 2013 salary stats are pretty comprehensive. 21.5k full-time long-term salaries are reported (http://www.nalp.org/class_of_2013_bimodal_salary_curve). 25.8k of the c/o 2013 landed full-time long-term legal jobs. (http://www.lawschooltransparency.com/re ... ?show=2013) Assuming very few people who landed non-legal jobs reported their salaries (a reasonable assumption, since they would be almost universally bad outcomes), there are 4.3k people with full-time long-term legal jobs who didn't report their salaries. I agree that most of them are probably working low-paying private sector jobs (aka sh*tlaw). I don't know how much these salaries, if they were added to the pool, would reduce the law firm salary median from 95k though.

[JCougar]

Stories of T10 graduates in document review...as reported by the doc reviewers themselves:

http://www.jdunderground.com/all/thread ... ost1026306

It's not that unusual actually in NYC. I've worked with tons of ex-biglaw associates, harvard, yale, columbia and NYU law grads. Even the top schools require you to have some people skills....it's not just intelligence that makes a good big firm lawyer. Plus people burn out and fall into doc review. Firms also like to hire laterals who have jobs, so if you were laid off, good luck finding another associate gig without serious luck and effort.

I'm on a project with contract attys from Harvard, Yale, UChicago, and Stanford, among others. The one from Stanford went clerkship->biglaw->doc review by choice. All the others went like biglaw->biglaw-> doc review either by misadventure or otherwise. Zero are on the mommy track.

By misadventure I mean "hated biglaw and left without another job, figuring, hey, Harvard Law School, but then didn't get another real job."

More at the link.

If you think sticker at even a T6 is anywhere near a safe bet, you should think again.

[star fox]

Stories of T10 graduates in document review...as reported by the doc reviewers themselves:

http://www.jdunderground.com/all/thread ... ost1026306

It's not that unusual actually in NYC. I've worked with tons of ex-biglaw associates, harvard, yale, columbia and NYU law grads. Even the top schools require you to have some people skills....it's not just intelligence that makes a good big firm lawyer. Plus people burn out and fall into doc review. Firms also like to hire laterals who have jobs, so if you were laid off, good luck finding another associate gig without serious luck and effort.

I'm on a project with contract attys from Harvard, Yale, UChicago, and Stanford, among others. The one from Stanford went clerkship->biglaw->doc review by choice. All the others went like biglaw->biglaw-> doc review either by misadventure or otherwise. Zero are on the mommy track.

By misadventure I mean "hated biglaw and left without another job, figuring, hey, Harvard Law School, but then didn't get another real job."

More at the link.

If you think sticker at even a T6 is anywhere near a safe bet, you should think again.

Sticker anywhere seems like a bad idea. Even if you win, you'll just be working a ton just to see all your disposable income go to debt repayments. A lot of work to get back to where you were when you started (0).

[JCougar]

Sticker anywhere seems like a bad idea. Even if you win, you'll just be working a ton just to see all your disposable income go to debt repayments. A lot of work to get back to where you were when you started (0).

This is why I don't blame anyone for turning down HYS for a full scholarship elsewhere.

[crazycanuck]

Sticker anywhere seems like a bad idea. Even if you win, you'll just be working a ton just to see all your disposable income go to debt repayments. A lot of work to get back to where you were when you started (0).

This is why I don't blame anyone for turning down HYS for a full scholarship elsewhere.

you also have literally zero options. you must do biglaw even if you hate it and hope last enough years to pay down enough to take a lower paying job.