My Little Commentary on the Law Market (and non-Biglaw Jobs) Forum

[Anonymous User]

TLS does a great job at one noble task: knocking special snowflakes out of the sky so that they can melt on the ground with the rest of us jaded lawyers.

That's admirable and warranted, but it's not a panacea. Part of the problem is that I woke up from my law-school induced slumber a few months back and realized, suddenly, that I'm not jaded. I graduated law school 3-5 years ago (vague for anon), jaded as shit all the way from my 1L year to my 2nd year in practice. When I woke up, I realized that I liked it. Yeah fuck me, but I like practicing law. (I thought only the sociopaths and phonies claimed to like practicing law?) Yeah, I slack-assed my way through school en route to what turned out to be a lucrative practice of pretending to be a lawyer, all the while bracing myself for the overhand right of suckiness, inevitably to be thrown by this soul-rendering profession, that would leave me in a crumpled heap of tears and broken dreams, tongue stuck in cheek, on the floor of my modest condo waiting for Chinese delivery.

This website is really skewed toward T-14 schools, and I think that also skews the overall tone. Most lawyers in the country neither attended a T-14 nor practice at a large law firm. In my case, I was accepted into a couple T-14's but did not attend one. I listened to TLS and went strong regional T1 w/that full scholarship money. I ended up in flyover country: think U. of Minnesota or Emory or Wash U. Separated from biglaw, I thought: How can I separate myself even more? So let's say I ended up at a firm in Woodstock, GA or Chesterfield, MO or Edina, MN. Upstate NY or Gary, Indiana or Boise, Idaho. It doesn't really matter.

There is good work to be done out here. If you can crack the code of nepotism and navigate your way through which firms are good and which are shitlaw sweatshops (granted, that's at least 80% of them), you can make a hell of a living and spend almost all of your dinners and weekends with your family and friends. Of course, you have to be good and profitable and personable. Is this the forgotten reality of practicing law? Is the law market like democracy where we get the officials / market that we deserve? Are law students "electing" to throw themselves into biglaw positions for money and prestige, bypassing the other perfectly-reasonable options, suiting up for OCI in denial that other jobs exist while volunteering for big city waterboarding at a nice paycheck?

My flamesuit is on, but understand that I'm not denying the power of student loan debt and exit options. I'm just questioning whether going to biglaw is, for at least some people, an exercise in timidity. Conservatism. Safety. You don't have to go out and prove anything to get paid. You can rest on the laurels of past accomplishments (academic record, OCI, callback performance) and ride those to good money. The psychology of this is interesting to me. How many law grads are truly, honestly looking for a job at a firm where they can advance their careers based on their abilities as a lawyer? How many are willing to take that risk? How many want to do that, at heart, but are scared? Is biglaw preying on the risk-averse nature of law students saddled with debt and using that to extort labor that creates partner profit (the answer is yes), and if so, is that something that at least some confident law students can reject? Can more do so, and should they?

The biglaw machine doesn't function without willing participants. I'm not judging the decisions of those participants, but questioning whether they have made a decision that involves full evaluation of the market and an appropriate level of self-confidence and perspective. Feel free to flame, just don't give me shit about "unicorn jobs." Lucrative non-biglaw jobs are not unicorn jobs; most people just don't even try to find them. Just trying to provide a different perspective.

[zombie mcavoy]

Tag

[baal hadad]

Boise, Utah

lol

[BigZuck]

Tag

[Manteca]

[Bildungsroman]

That's a long post without a point-identifying intro. Can you give me a one-sentence thesis?

[los blancos]

I don't really disagree with much of what you're saying, but this paragraph...

How many law grads are truly, honestly looking for a job at a firm where they can advance their careers based on their abilities as a lawyer? How many are willing to take that risk? How many want to do that, at heart, but are scared? Is biglaw preying on the risk-averse nature of law students saddled with debt and using that to extort labor that creates partner profit (the answer is yes), and if so, is that something that at least some confident law students can reject? Can more do so, and should they?

... makes me think the whole thing might be flame.

Like especially the bolded, with its assumption that one's "abilities" have much at all to do with making a living in private practice. In smaller firms, particularly, it's all about being a schmooze and knowing people so you can keep the lights on. In fact, I'd argue that biglaw might actually give people who want to make a living based on their "abilities" a better shot at doing so.

[Anonymous User]

I don't really disagree with much of what you're saying, but this paragraph...

How many law grads are truly, honestly looking for a job at a firm where they can advance their careers based on their abilities as a lawyer? How many are willing to take that risk? How many want to do that, at heart, but are scared? Is biglaw preying on the risk-averse nature of law students saddled with debt and using that to extort labor that creates partner profit (the answer is yes), and if so, is that something that at least some confident law students can reject? Can more do so, and should they?

... makes me think the whole thing might be flame.

Like especially the bolded, with its assumption that one's "abilities" have much at all to do with making a living in private practice. In smaller firms, particularly, it's all about being a schmooze and knowing people so you can keep the lights on. In fact, I'd argue that biglaw might actually give people who want to make a living based on their "abilities" a better shot at doing so.

OP here. It's not a flame, but I think it's reasonable for you to raise the question. I do suggest, however, that you might be overly cynical. I know plenty of small-firm schmoozers in the area who are seen as obnoxious blowhards. Schmoozing alone is not enough. People are people, and if anything, the subset of people in the flyover who are sophisticated enough to require complex legal services may be the hardest group of people to schmooze in the entire country. You have to bring something to the table, develop a reputation among other lawyers, judges, community stake-holders, etc. before you can be profitable. This isn't some "aw shucks he so nice" hayseed group of clients, and if that's what NYC lawyers think, they're drastically mistaken. If nothing else, these clients can see through bullshit by the time they say, "hi," and can identify incompetence almost as quickly. Of course, that synergizes with the question in the OP about whether a K-JD has the confidence to handle that.

[CanadianWolf]

What's sometimes forgotten on TLS is that if you can get a large scholarship to a law school that places well in your targeted geographic region, then you don't need a T-14 law school to get a biglaw job to pay back a huge student loan debt.

The obsession with the T-14 grew as the legal market became & remained depressed for several years & the only law schools with healthy placement statistics seemed to be the T-14.

Biglaw is not as attractive as it once was because partnership offers are rare &, if offered, are often watered-down non-equity partnerships. Seems like the average tenure in biglaw is about 7 years or less. And, according to many reports shared on TLS, often it's not a pleasant experience.

In short, no debt = freedom, but freedom without a job probably isn't a great experience either.

[Anonymous User]

That's a long post without a point-identifying intro. Can you give me a one-sentence thesis?

OP here.

No, you fucking millennial.

[El Pollito]

I don't really disagree with much of what you're saying, but this paragraph...

How many law grads are truly, honestly looking for a job at a firm where they can advance their careers based on their abilities as a lawyer? How many are willing to take that risk? How many want to do that, at heart, but are scared? Is biglaw preying on the risk-averse nature of law students saddled with debt and using that to extort labor that creates partner profit (the answer is yes), and if so, is that something that at least some confident law students can reject? Can more do so, and should they?

... makes me think the whole thing might be flame.

Like especially the bolded, with its assumption that one's "abilities" have much at all to do with making a living in private practice. In smaller firms, particularly, it's all about being a schmooze and knowing people so you can keep the lights on. In fact, I'd argue that biglaw might actually give people who want to make a living based on their "abilities" a better shot at doing so.

OP here. It's not a flame, but I think it's reasonable for you to raise the question. I do suggest, however, that you might be overly cynical. I know plenty of small-firm schmoozers in the area who are seen as obnoxious blowhards. Schmoozing alone is not enough. People are people, and if anything, the subset of people in the flyover who are sophisticated enough to require complex legal services may be the hardest group of people to schmooze in the entire country. You have to bring something to the table, develop a reputation among other lawyers, judges, community stake-holders, etc. before you can be profitable. This isn't some "aw shucks he so nice" hayseed group of clients, and if that's what NYC lawyers think, they're drastically mistaken. If nothing else, these clients can see through bullshit by the time they say, "hi," and can identify incompetence almost as quickly. Of course, that synergizes with the question in the OP about whether a K-JD has the confidence to handle that.

oh lol

[rpupkin]

You have to bring something to the table, develop a reputation among other lawyers, judges, community stake-holders, etc. before you can be profitable. This isn't some "aw shucks he so nice" hayseed group of clients, and if that's what NYC lawyers think, they're drastically mistaken.

oh lol

"You being from New York and aII, you might have the impression that Iaw is practiced with a degree of informality here. It isn't."

--Judge Chamberlain Haller, My Cousin Vinny

[los blancos]

I don't really disagree with much of what you're saying, but this paragraph...

How many law grads are truly, honestly looking for a job at a firm where they can advance their careers based on their abilities as a lawyer? How many are willing to take that risk? How many want to do that, at heart, but are scared? Is biglaw preying on the risk-averse nature of law students saddled with debt and using that to extort labor that creates partner profit (the answer is yes), and if so, is that something that at least some confident law students can reject? Can more do so, and should they?

... makes me think the whole thing might be flame.

Like especially the bolded, with its assumption that one's "abilities" have much at all to do with making a living in private practice. In smaller firms, particularly, it's all about being a schmooze and knowing people so you can keep the lights on. In fact, I'd argue that biglaw might actually give people who want to make a living based on their "abilities" a better shot at doing so.

OP here. It's not a flame, but I think it's reasonable for you to raise the question. I do suggest, however, that you might be overly cynical. I know plenty of small-firm schmoozers in the area who are seen as obnoxious blowhards. Schmoozing alone is not enough. People are people, and if anything, the subset of people in the flyover who are sophisticated enough to require complex legal services may be the hardest group of people to schmooze in the entire country. You have to bring something to the table, develop a reputation among other lawyers, judges, community stake-holders, etc. before you can be profitable. This isn't some "aw shucks he so nice" hayseed group of clients, and if that's what NYC lawyers think, they're drastically mistaken. If nothing else, these clients can see through bullshit by the time they say, "hi," and can identify incompetence almost as quickly. Of course, that synergizes with the question in the OP about whether a K-JD has the confidence to handle that.

I'm probably overly cynical to some degree because the very idea of business development gives me minor anxiety attacks, but I think the first bolded is problematic inasmuch as, at the places I think you're talking about, you really don't get much of an opportunity to bring anything to the table or develop a reputation before you're expected/need to start making real steps toward bringing in business. I don't know how many years you've been out of LS, but it is now, more than ever, the business of law as opposed to the practice of law.

Re: the second bolded - I get the inescapable feeling that the majority of clients, even fairly sophisticated ones, are pretty bad at determining who can actually practice law worth a damn and who is being made to look a hell of a lot better than s/he is thanks to a convenient midlevel associate.

(<---not an NYC lawyer and not really a biglawyer FWIW)

[los blancos]

What's sometimes forgotten on TLS is that if you can get a large scholarship to a law school that places well in your targeted geographic region, then you don't need a T-14 law school to get a biglaw job to pay back a huge student loan debt.

The obsession with the T-14 grew as the legal market became & remained depressed for several years & the only law schools with healthy placement statistics seemed to be the T-14.

Biglaw is not as attractive as it once was because partnership offers are rare &, if offered, are often watered-down non-equity partnerships. Seems like the average tenure in biglaw is about 7 years or less. And, according to many reports shared on TLS, often it's not a pleasant experience.

In short, no debt = freedom, but freedom without a job probably isn't a great experience either.

The bolded is a pretty big caveat to what you were saying earlier in that poast, no? Loan-induced indentured servitude might be the main reason folks seek out biglaw, but exit opps and the ability to put a recognizable name on the resume are probably just as important. Freedom really isn't freedom here.

[Cogburn87]

That's a long post without a point-identifying intro. Can you give me a one-sentence thesis?

OP here.

No, you fucking millennial.

What's ur xo moniker, brother?

[Anonymous User]

I think the first bolded is problematic inasmuch as, at the places I think you're talking about, you really don't get much of an opportunity to bring anything to the table or develop a reputation before you're expected/need to start making real steps toward bringing in business.

OP here. You're right in that you're expected to at least start bringing in business right away, simultaneous with developing a reputation. But fast forward two years, and the type of business is important in that you need to bring in more sophisticated work if you want to increase your billing rate / pay / partnership prospects. For example, it's ok if you spend your first year doing residential real estate closings, DUI defense, and whatever work partners hand down, but by year three you should have your own business / municipal clients along with at least one profitable niche practice area (guardianships, divorces, estate planning, whatever) for which people know your name and seek you out.

Re: the second bolded - I get the inescapable feeling that the majority of clients, even fairly sophisticated ones, are pretty bad at determining who can actually practice law worth a damn and who is being made to look a hell of a lot better than s/he is thanks to a convenient midlevel associate.

When the nature of the representation involves a lot of client contact, there isn't a lot of hiding behind midlevels. And sophisticated clients who talk to all of the major players in business and law in the area remain well-aware of attorney reputations.

I'm sure it varies by market, but there's no faking it in my market. The exception is nepotism--if you're the son or daughter of a prominent attorney, you can fake it on name alone, but even that only goes so far.

[Anonymous User]

I don't really disagree with much of what you're saying, but this paragraph...

How many law grads are truly, honestly looking for a job at a firm where they can advance their careers based on their abilities as a lawyer? How many are willing to take that risk? How many want to do that, at heart, but are scared? Is biglaw preying on the risk-averse nature of law students saddled with debt and using that to extort labor that creates partner profit (the answer is yes), and if so, is that something that at least some confident law students can reject? Can more do so, and should they?

... makes me think the whole thing might be flame.

Like especially the bolded, with its assumption that one's "abilities" have much at all to do with making a living in private practice. In smaller firms, particularly, it's all about being a schmooze and knowing people so you can keep the lights on. In fact, I'd argue that biglaw might actually give people who want to make a living based on their "abilities" a better shot at doing so.

I can only speak to litigation, but at least in the tertiary market in which I worked, the way that one brought in business in litigation was by doing a kick-ass job with the opportunities one had. Of course, you need to get opportunities in the first place in order to make that work. At my firm, this basically came down to whether or not you quickly found a powerful partner who would give you chances to shine and give you credit for the work that was yours. If you did, firms that represented codefendants (or sometimes even plaintiffs) would start giving you a call if they were conflicted out of something, or hiring you as local counsel, or clients would start calling you directly. So it came down to a mix of luck and abilities.

For associates who had these opportunities and used them to show that they had the skills, it seemed like they had as good of exit options as any associates coming out of biglaw (and in the meantime they never got anywhere close to billing 2200 hours/year). For those who didn't have the chance or didn't do well with it, the exit options were probably a lot worse than biglaw.

[Dafaq]

....you can make a hell of a living and spend almost all of your dinners and weekends with your family and friends. Of course, you have to be good and profitable and personable.

When I look around my <100 attorney firm (large secondary metro) what I see are third years (and up) leaving at reasonable hours and having a rewarding life. If they were still working crazy hours and slammed every weekend (as I am) I‘d be greatly disheartened but it appears that splitting at 5PM and enjoying life isn’t that far down the road. Maybe I am a little more optimistic than most because of a generous scholarship and the firm partners are exceptional mentors plus I am assigned to cases I find fulfilling.

If the perspective of the OP is that all of this will work out nicely, I am on board.

[dgroom951]

If you can crack the code of nepotism and navigate your way through which firms are good and which are shitlaw sweatshops (granted, that's at least 80% of them) . . . .

Can you give us a little more on that?

(Great post, btw. Thanks.)

[Anonymous User]

I can only speak to litigation, but at least in the tertiary market in which I worked, the way that one brought in business in litigation was by doing a kick-ass job with the opportunities one had. Of course, you need to get opportunities in the first place in order to make that work. At my firm, this basically came down to whether or not you quickly found a powerful partner who would give you chances to shine and give you credit for the work that was yours. If you did, firms that represented codefendants (or sometimes even plaintiffs) would start giving you a call if they were conflicted out of something, or hiring you as local counsel, or clients would start calling you directly.

This. Plus if you get the reputation around the market as doing really good work, you're going to get calls from other places. The way it usually works is that a firm is trying to build a practice, it hires a lateral with a big book, or one of its home grown partners starts to have more clients and work than he can service, so they decide they need to hire someone at the senior associate or junior partner level who might not have the biggest book (or any book) but who knows what they're doing and can manage cases/deals independently. So they start asking their friends around town "hey, we're swamped, do you know anyone with a decade of experience plus or minus a few years doing X who's good?". Then their friends say "I worked with Jane Schmoe, she was really good, you might give her a call."

[AVBucks4239]

I can only speak to litigation, but at least in the tertiary market in which I worked, the way that one brought in business in litigation was by doing a kick-ass job with the opportunities one had. Of course, you need to get opportunities in the first place in order to make that work. At my firm, this basically came down to whether or not you quickly found a powerful partner who would give you chances to shine and give you credit for the work that was yours. If you did, firms that represented codefendants (or sometimes even plaintiffs) would start giving you a call if they were conflicted out of something, or hiring you as local counsel, or clients would start calling you directly.

This. Plus if you get the reputation around the market as doing really good work, you're going to get calls from other places. The way it usually works is that a firm is trying to build a practice, it hires a lateral with a big book, or one of its home grown partners starts to have more clients and work than he can service, so they decide they need to hire someone at the senior associate or junior partner level who might not have the biggest book (or any book) but who knows what they're doing and can manage cases/deals independently. So they start asking their friends around town "hey, we're swamped, do you know anyone with a decade of experience plus or minus a few years doing X who's good?". Then their friends say "I worked with Jane Schmoe, she was really good, you might give her a call."

Bolded is so incredibly important. If you get good at a particular practice area, word will spread and you will have a great book of business.

The two partners I work most closely with are some of the most anti-social guys I know and the furthest thing you can imagine from a "schmooz." But both did great work when they were younger and lateraled here to take over retiring guys' books of business. Now their books are even bigger. One pretty much represents every single school district in a tri-county area and the other does ERISA work for the 2-3 big insurance companies in town (I think ERISA is mind-numbing, but he's a rules-oriented guy and loves the predictability of it). Both have incredible books of business and did it by just being really damn good at their jobs.

[Stevoman]

My flamesuit is on, but understand that I'm not denying the power of student loan debt and exit options. I'm just questioning whether going to biglaw is, for at least some people, an exercise in timidity. Conservatism. Safety. You don't have to go out and prove anything to get paid. You can rest on the laurels of past accomplishments (academic record, OCI, callback performance) and ride those to good money. The psychology of this is interesting to me. How many law grads are truly, honestly looking for a job at a firm where they can advance their careers based on their abilities as a lawyer? How many are willing to take that risk? How many want to do that, at heart, but are scared? Is biglaw preying on the risk-averse nature of law students saddled with debt and using that to extort labor that creates partner profit (the answer is yes), and if so, is that something that at least some confident law students can reject? Can more do so, and should they?

It's simpler than that. Look, the simple reality is that most of the kids on this board are going to law school because they have nothing else going for them. They are 22-year-old K-JDs who majored in underwater basket-weaving and have $50k in student loans from that degree. Killing the LSAT, going to a T14, and getting a biglaw job is their way out. They have to go to a T14 because without that credential they will not otherwise get a job. And of course, going to that T14 results in them racking up another $200k in student loans. The only way to pay off those kind of student loans is a biglaw job.

It's a vicious cycle. They need to go to a T14 so they can get that biglaw job. But they need a biglaw job to pay for their T14. And they do this because the choice is either go back to school, or get a minimum wage job and move in with their parents.

That is why TLS is so skewed towards "T14 and biglaw or bust!"

[Other25BeforeYou]

My flamesuit is on, but understand that I'm not denying the power of student loan debt and exit options. I'm just questioning whether going to biglaw is, for at least some people, an exercise in timidity. Conservatism. Safety. You don't have to go out and prove anything to get paid. You can rest on the laurels of past accomplishments (academic record, OCI, callback performance) and ride those to good money. The psychology of this is interesting to me. How many law grads are truly, honestly looking for a job at a firm where they can advance their careers based on their abilities as a lawyer? How many are willing to take that risk? How many want to do that, at heart, but are scared? Is biglaw preying on the risk-averse nature of law students saddled with debt and using that to extort labor that creates partner profit (the answer is yes), and if so, is that something that at least some confident law students can reject? Can more do so, and should they?

It's simpler than that. Look, the simple reality is that most of the kids on this board are going to law school because they have nothing else going for them. They are 22-year-old K-JDs who majored in underwater basket-weaving and have $50k in student loans from that degree. Killing the LSAT, going to a T14, and getting a biglaw job is their way out. They have to go to a T14 because without that credential they will not otherwise get a job. And of course, going to that T14 results in them racking up another $200k in student loans. The only way to pay off those kind of student loans is a biglaw job.

It's a vicious cycle. They need to go to a T14 so they can get that biglaw job. But they need a biglaw job to pay for their T14. And they do this because the choice is either go back to school, or get a minimum wage job and move in with their parents.

That is why TLS is so skewed towards "T14 and biglaw or bust!"

The vast majority of my law school friends were not K-JD and had other things going for them (PhDs and/or solid careers) but wanted to become lawyers, and a large percentage also took full rides to law school and didn't have much in the way of debt. Literally all but two of them went to biglaw, and now three years later they have all stayed there. It's hardly just those who have to pay off enormous debt or those who didn't have other things going for them that end up in biglaw.

[Anonymous User]

OP here. Yeah, I know a lot of biglaw associates who come from wealthy families, have long work histories, or otherwise likely have other career options aside from biglaw. Let's face it, as much as the universities would love to claim otherwise, a hell of a lot of people who attend Ivy League law schools come from money. Another posted in another thread said he thinks about half of his biglaw colleagues are from very wealthy families, and that makes sense.

There's something else at work when it comes to figuring out why these people pick biglaw than money / student loans.

[catinthewall]

I tend to agree with OP.

Based on the standard TLS mindset, I did this entirely wrong. Looking back, TLS would have told me to retake the LSAT and gone to a T14 (I ended up taking a full scholarship to a T1). After doing reasonably well my first year, TLS would have told me to participate in OCI (I completely blew off OCI, and ended up receiving seven offers for 2L summer).

Granted, I did some things right according to TLS: made law review, landed a federal clerkship, etc. However, I still feel like an outsider on here because I chose a different path.

I'm heading to a permanent position in BigFed after my clerkship, and I have zero debt. After reading on here about how miserable some people are in BigLaw but feel tied to it because of their student loan debt, I often ask why I still feel like TLS would frown upon my decisions.

It's weird.