My Story Forum

[sadsituationJD]

Charming. You seem very well-informed about welfare, the United States, and low-income communities.

LOL at you little snot-nose ultra P.C. pre-law toddlers. I practiced personal injury law plaintiff side in NYC for the better part of 5 years. Go sit in the basement of Dietz Court Reporting on Gerard Ave near Yankee Stadium, listen in on a few depos, spend some time in Room 707 of Bronx Supreme (the PI/ID room), then come back and lecture everyone about how noble PI law is and how deserving these scammers and lowlifes are, milking their bogus injuries for enough money to pay off the crack dealer.

[hopin10]

Charming. You seem very well-informed about welfare, the United States, and low-income communities.

LOL at you little snot-nose ultra P.C. pre-law toddlers. I practiced personal injury law plaintiff side in NYC for the better part of 5 years. Go sit in the basement of Dietz Court Reporting on Gerard Ave near Yankee Stadium, listen in on a few depos, spend some time in Room 707 of Bronx Supreme (the PI/ID room), then come back and lecture everyone about how noble PI law is and how deserving these scammers and lowlifes are, milking their bogus injuries for enough money to pay off the crack dealer.

Never suggested PI or ID was "noble." Did suggest you're perpetuating dangerous stereotypes.

[stratocophic]

Thanks for the story OP, odd that you've had so much trouble. Everything I've heard says IP Lit is going gangbusters and grabbing all sorts of laterals right now. Cautionary tale about changing practice groups, maybe. Best of luck.

Special thanks to SSJD as well for never not delivering massive entertainment value.

[sadsituationJD]

Thanks for the story OP, odd that you've had so much trouble. Everything I've heard says IP Lit is going gangbusters and grabbing all sorts of laterals right now. Cautionary tale about changing practice groups, maybe.

I love all the shorthand geek slang like "IP lit" and other nonsense. Reminds me of when NYPD Blue hit the air in early 90s and everyone using "skels" and "meds" and pretending to be grizzled homicide detectives. It's even lamer when pre-laws throw these nerdy law terms around. Whether its IP or PI or ID or international space station sports law, at the end of the day it's all just boring, cut n' paste paper pushing, 80 to 90 hours a week. HTH.

[dresden doll]

I work in public interest and I actually love my job. Not all legal jobs consist of mindless paper-pushing.

[stratocophic]

Thanks for the story OP, odd that you've had so much trouble. Everything I've heard says IP Lit is going gangbusters and grabbing all sorts of laterals right now. Cautionary tale about changing practice groups, maybe.

I love all the shorthand geek slang like "IP lit" and other nonsense. Reminds me of when NYPD Blue hit the air in early 90s and everyone using "skels" and "meds" and pretending to be grizzled homicide detectives. It's even lamer when pre-laws throw these nerdy law terms around. Whether its IP or PI or ID or international space station sports law, at the end of the day it's all just boring, cut n' paste paper pushing, 80 to 90 hours a week. HTH.

160k paper pushing as a lawyer > 50k paper pushing as an engineer erry day of the week, weekends included.

Now if you'll 'scuse me, I need to get back to ensuring that I meet my "just don't fail" mandate.

[desertlaw]

When people say ID on this thread, do they also include medical malpractice defense for insurance companies?

[sadsituationJD]

When people say ID on this thread, do they also include medical malpractice defense for insurance companies?

Yup. Med mal is still ID, albeit a notch or two higher than ordinary ID like fender bender/trip n' fall. Most med mal ID lawyers are women for some reason, probably because lot of the cases are failure to diagnose breast cancer and other female issues. Sometimes they are actually MILF/cougar types. The hope is probably that a jury might pay more attention to them if they at least look halfway decent. Not much is really at stake though since those big "whopper" verdicts you read about in the subway ads always get reduced by 90+% post-verdict. Do you reallly think a shitlaw operation is going to make a 30 million fee off some knucklehead who had the wrong kidney removed or whatever? LOL. If that was the case then real law firms would be doing this garbage, not sleazy ambulance chasing shitlaw boiler rooms.

[JCougar]

One of my friend's dad is an ID lawyer. He basically started his own firm right out of law school. He lives comfortably in the upper middle class, has a huge home, five kids, etc. He owns like a 90% partnership stake in his firm, with two other guys at 5% each that basically do any work they can find/bring in, whether it be traffic tickets, etc. Works downtown. His work is probably boring as shit, but he certainly makes enough money to live comfortably.

Of course, he graduated law school in the early 70s with maybe three grand at most in college debt, so he could actually afford to start his own practice.

That's the real problem with law school these days. The vastly disparate outcomes have gotten more vastly disparate, and the debt basically crushes anyone's hopes of staking their own claim. How can you afford office space if your school loan payments are $2000/month? It's shameful and embarrassing that the ABA has let it come to this.

[jstr00az]

Not all doctors make bank either. I know doctors who can't retire (despite being late 60s early 70s) because they don't have enough money. there are no guarantees.

Give us all a break with the law vs. medicine nonsense. In terms of income, lay prestige, and all around "coolness," medicine blows law clear out of the water. That's because med schools have real standards and, gasp!- pre-requisites like ORGANIC CHEM, PHYSICS, CALCULUS- you know, the 'hard' classes. Guess what else- you have to literally ACE these toughies plus kill the MCAT, and you still might not get into an US AMA school even then. Even the CAribbean schools are pretty fussy compared to a laughingstock TTTToilet like 'Bozo or NYLS or Cooley.

Comparing something truly difficult and prestigious with nonsense gibberish like UCC 2-207 and the Rule Against Perpetuities and other legalese pigslop is absurd. Any mouth breather can drool on the LSAT, get into lawschool somewhere, and pass the bar. Hence supply of lawyers=limitless whereas supply of doctors= very scarce.

Absolutely. Hear hear. Doctors do things that 300 years ago would've been considered witchcraft. Lawyers do the same shit they've always done - it's just that a whole monopoly has grown up around "the law" requiring 3 years of education and the passing of a bar. That's only about 90 years old.

[jstr00az]

As it turns out, you've learned that "billing" 2400 hours is actually kind of worthless. Someone else brought the money in. You just worked the case. Practicing law is not hard at all. And your skills are pretty thin by way of the things that actually make money.

It turned out that for about 20 years, there was a lot of extra money kicking around. You were able to feast off that. But all along you failed to understand what it was you did that actually ADDED VALUE. Working long hours and being a striver does not necessarily ADD VALUE.

Now, note well, I am not saying that the people who brought in the business necessarily ADDED VALUE to society. They probably didn't. But they did ADD VALUE to the firm in that they got the dollars rolling in. And to the extent that the firm "earned" money, it was because of them, not you.

You - and anyone reading this - have got to figure out how you're going to ADD VALUE - either in a general sense to society, or in a specific sense, to basically make a living.

There's nothing wrong with doing Insurance Defense, and the people who are able to land the contracts with insurance firms make good money. The people who work those contracts do not, comparatively, make good money.

That is the same phenomenon you experienced working in IP law: The partners who landed the business made good money. You, comparatively, did not - $200k is nice and all, but you were a cog in the IP wheel, making a cog's inflated salary because at the time we were in a bubble.

The wheel just got a lot smaller, and the cogs are making a lot less. People pooh-poohing insurance defense must not like to eat.

[jstr00az]

Thanks for the story OP, odd that you've had so much trouble. Everything I've heard says IP Lit is going gangbusters and grabbing all sorts of laterals right now. Cautionary tale about changing practice groups, maybe.

I love all the shorthand geek slang like "IP lit" and other nonsense. Reminds me of when NYPD Blue hit the air in early 90s and everyone using "skels" and "meds" and pretending to be grizzled homicide detectives. It's even lamer when pre-laws throw these nerdy law terms around. Whether its IP or PI or ID or international space station sports law, at the end of the day it's all just boring, cut n' paste paper pushing, 80 to 90 hours a week. HTH.

Exactly.

"laterals" "practice groups"... whatever dude. You misunderstand the practice of law, which is to say it is like Groundhog Day. The same old shit, every day. If your goal is to "practice law" as part of a "litigation group" in BigLaw, you better understand that you are a cog in the wheel, and unless you are one of the truly fortunate/lucky/well-connected who learned how to bring business into the firm, you are effectively a tiny little rudderless boat subject to the same problems as the OP.

[jstr00az]

and now is rocking a 160k starting salary.

You realize that less than 10% of people who go to law school obtain this outcome, right? And the ones that do don't last very long.

It's not that you can't make a good living in law...it's that the career outcomes are so disparate given people with the exact same degree and alma mater go in completely different directions based on a few percentage points of GPA. It's an "all or nothing" risk.

Even if that PhD can't find a job (and I do acknowledge that academia is terrible right now), they're not shouldering an insane amount of debt. They could go wait tables and not have their credit ruined, and when they did find a decent job, they could actually buy a house instead of paying off a mountain of debt for 20 years.

I realize that less than 10% make biglaw. I was just trying to point out how the law school grass field can look to a struggling PhD or a struggling MBA. My whole point is not that law is better... but that such comparisons are near meaningless because plenty of PhD or MBAs have been screwed in this economy. Other than medicine (and there is risk here also), everything else carries a heavy risk.

So if you realize that less than 10 percent make 160k, what is the attraction? How is that any better than what someone does in Academia or Business. If you get a tenure track position at a decent university, you are in the top 10 percent.

Obviously if you're a struggling law student, dreaming about how nice it would be to follow your dream and have a tenure track English Lit job in academia is.... dreaming. Or dreaming about how nice it would be to get a MBA and get a nice middle-manager position at some big corporation is... dreaming. Or dreaming about how you could win the lottery is.... dreaming.

What ARE you talking about? And isn't this how you ended up as a law student in the first place, dreaming about how nice it would be to be in other fields?

[Borg]

I feel bad for you OP, but I think you're way off base in terms of what happens to b school grads. There is no field that is protected - good people get fired all the time in every line of work except medicine now. The bankers and consultants are no safer than associates.

I just can't imagine that these doc review jobs are really all that are available to you. There has to be some alternative, don't give up hope.

[Wakelaw15]

would be nice to hear a positive update from OP, maybe one of the offers came through...?

[stratocophic]

Thanks for the story OP, odd that you've had so much trouble. Everything I've heard says IP Lit is going gangbusters and grabbing all sorts of laterals right now. Cautionary tale about changing practice groups, maybe.

I love all the shorthand geek slang like "IP lit" and other nonsense. Reminds me of when NYPD Blue hit the air in early 90s and everyone using "skels" and "meds" and pretending to be grizzled homicide detectives. It's even lamer when pre-laws throw these nerdy law terms around. Whether its IP or PI or ID or international space station sports law, at the end of the day it's all just boring, cut n' paste paper pushing, 80 to 90 hours a week. HTH.

Exactly.

"laterals" "practice groups"... whatever dude. You misunderstand the practice of law, which is to say it is like Groundhog Day. The same old shit, every day. If your goal is to "practice law" as part of a "litigation group" in BigLaw, you better understand that you are a cog in the wheel, and unless you are one of the truly fortunate/lucky/well-connected who learned how to bring business into the firm, you are effectively a tiny little rudderless boat subject to the same problems as the OP.

And you apparently misunderstand my last sentence. If, on the other hand, you did understand it but simply failed to find any connection between 1) the fact that Biglaw minions are cogs and 2) the potential consequences of an old cog intentionally distancing itself from the characteristics that make an older, more expensive cog more valuable than a younger, cheaper cog to the wheel that serves the "truly fortunate," well then I might have some career advice for you as well friend

[dingbat]

at the end of the day it's all just boring, cut n' paste paper pushing, 80 to 90 hours a week. HTH.

Every time I see you make this claim, I think you're retarded. If you think it's boring, go do something else. If you don't like the time commitment, go do something else. If you think all law is is cut n' paste, you have a very narrow view and I feel sorry for whatever shit job you got stuck with, but then I think that with the comprehension you've shown, you probably ended up with the job that's right for you

[Agent]

Calling flame on this thread—I don't think we'll hear back from OP unless they want to stir things up. But at least they started a helpful discussion.

would be nice to hear a positive update from OP, maybe one of the offers came through...?

[JCougar]

at the end of the day it's all just boring, cut n' paste paper pushing, 80 to 90 hours a week. HTH.

Every time I see you make this claim, I think you're retarded. If you think it's boring, go do something else. If you don't like the time commitment, go do something else. If you think all law is is cut n' paste, you have a very narrow view and I feel sorry for whatever shit job you got stuck with, but then I think that with the comprehension you've shown, you probably ended up with the job that's right for you

I think law is a lot more cut n' paste than a lot of TLSers think.

Most of the cases firms handle are the same stuff over and over with different facts, and they obviously keep soft copies of their old cases on file. If you get to write anything up, you'll be looking at old motions and briefs and cutting and pasting standards of review, similar sections, etc. No need to re-invent the wheel. Just change the names of the parties and the facts, and file something.

If you work in a specialized field of law, you'll get enough cases in that field where you just have the same "issues" over and over again. Even biglaw does this to some extent.

[Buck.Shot]

I thus decided that it was time for a change, and made a lateral move to a group at [Firm X] that appeared to have potential as an up-and-comer.

You done fucked up.

[warandpeace]

thanks for sharing the story OP, hope it was cathartic. Question, sorry if it's ignorant, but can you apply for teaching positions? have you considered freelance work in other fields? etc? what are your reasons against these thoughts if it's been considered? thanks again.

btw can i ask what your gpa was in ls?

[Sheffield]

I realize that less than 10% make biglaw.

Not exactly. When you research the T-10/14 what you find is that +60% of grads end up with large firms. . . figure all around $160K. Plus, during your first two/three summers you earn +10K a month for 3 months. What other profession gives you that kind of immediate return for your efforts?

FWIW: Another +10% receive with Federal Courtships.

[bk1]

I realize that less than 10% make biglaw.

Not exactly. When you research the T-10/14 what you find is that +60% of grads end up with large firms. . . figure all around $160K. Plus, during your first two/three summers you earn +10K a month for 3 months. What other profession gives you that kind of immediate return for your efforts?

FWIW: Another +10% receive with Federal Courtships.

He's talking about overall, not just the T14.

[Anonymous User]

I realize that less than 10% make biglaw.

Not exactly. When you research the T-10/14 what you find is that +60% of grads end up with large firms. . . figure all around $160K. Plus, during your first two/three summers you earn +10K a month for 3 months. What other profession gives you that kind of immediate return for your efforts?

FWIW: Another +10% receive with Federal Courtships.

Is this true? In my experience at Columbia/NYU, something like two-thirds of students end up with either a market-paying job or an AIII clerkship, but my understanding is that at some of the lower-ranked T14, the odds are much worse.

Also, very few folks get a biglaw SA 1L year (less than 10%) and almost noone does one 3L year (you do get a bar stipend, but that's obviously less than $30K), so you realistically only get one summer of making bank during law school.

[Anonymous User]

Edit: Nvm, was able to google the answer to my question. sorry.