3L with firm job. thinking of dropping out. Forum

[patogordo]

i'm also HIGHLY skeptical that being a junior associate in ERISA is appreciably different than being a junior associate in any other field

[Tiago Splitter]

i'm also HIGHLY skeptical that being a junior associate in ERISA is appreciably different than being a junior associate in any other field

It's not. At most V100 firms it's corporate but without the signature pages.

[gnuwheels]

I'm gonna go ahead and disagree with most of the posters. I don't know why everyone seems to think OP's woes will be easier once he starts at a firm.

i'm also HIGHLY skeptical that being a junior associate in ERISA is appreciably different than being a junior associate in any other field

It's not. At most V100 firms it's corporate but without the signature pages.

Maybe so, but that doesn't mean that will be a factor for lateral purposes. The lateral market is relatively robust, but still very competitive. For an opening in corporate at a different firm, OP will be going up against dozens of lawyers with better grades and who actually have experience in corporate. No way they're going to take the kid with only ERISA experience. As someone else said, the transactional ship has sailed.

Also, OP is bottom 10%? No matter what experience they get in ERISA, someone with those grades likely won't be able to lateral. Again, think of the competition.

So where does that leave OP? Joining a practice group he/she hates a firm he/she hates, with no other options. They should pay 20K for that?

[patogordo]

no, you're right, 20k for a law degree and a year of fucking around getting paid to take the bar and then applying for other jobs either in law or adjacent fields while getting paid 160k/yr to work a job that you might hate but can't be too stressed about because you can quit at any time and have no debt is a terrible proposition. definitely drop out now.

[mw115]

You mind telling us why you think you don't want to do ERISA?

I mean, maybe you have good reasons, but it's one of the most interesting areas of law that is also pretty maleable in terms of what you actually do...

[baal hadad]

You mind telling us why you think you don't want to do ERISA?

I mean, maybe you have good reasons, but it's one of the most interesting areas of law that is also pretty maleable in terms of what you actually do...

Honestly I do litigation and erisa is pretty interesting to me, from what I know of it

[forty-two]

Also: yes, i DO want to be a lawyer and I would love to do transactional work but that ship has sailed. its looking like ERISA or a different career.

Why on earth would you think these are your only options? I highly doubt you'd stay at your first job out of law school for life. If you do want to be a lawyer, I'd recommend starting at your firm, getting a little experience, paying off your small loan ASAP, and then looking for another job. You also seem to have a very narrow view of what jobs you could get and what type of career you could have. There's more to being a lawyer than biglaw. There are other places you can work that you might like better.

So, if you want to be a lawyer, graduate and become a lawyer. And remember that there is life after your first job after law school. If you still hate practicing law after a few years, you can always change careers. But dropping out now would leave you with a resume gap that would be difficult to explain.

Good luck

[mr.hands]

Where'd you get the idea that a 3.4 is bottom 10%? At UVA it's top half and they have a lot of grade inflation....

[FSK]

OP, you should obviously finish it out. But since you already have this offer in hand, figure out what your next move is going to be, and prepper thy anus for it now.

Do you want to move into a non-law field? Take classes from your schools business school, get involved with the consulting club, etc. Or take the GMAT to demonstrate you remember what a number is.

Same goes for whatever else you might be interested in.

[TheSpanishMain]

It seems like you really want to drop out and you're putting your thumb on that side of the scale pretty heavily. Some guy told you that once you do ERISA it's hard to move out of it, and for some reason you're treating that as the immutable decree of the universe. Ditto only paying off 4k in your first year. What? You can pay off way more than that. And if you don't go into the job projecting an "I don't want to be here" attitude, you may even find that you hate it less than you thought you would.

Anyway, my advice is to finish your degree. Even if you end up making a career switch in a few years, it'll be a lot more palatable to potential employers than you trying to explain why you dropped out of law school 5/6ths of the way done.

[kalvano]

You're not going to learn enough about ERISA in one to two years that you'll be locked into that for life. Your first year or two as a lawyer is learning not screw up basic lawyerly things mainly, and learning a specialty secondarily. If you try and lateral out in a year or two, you won't be locked into ERISA forever. You'll likely have to do some ERISA work at the new firm, but you can say that you want to do different work coming in and branch out more.

If you're doing ERISA at year five, then you're likely going to be an ERISA lawyer.

[JuTMSY4]

1. my firm rescinds my offer before I start. end result: no job + 20K in debt.
2. my firm fires me within my first year. end result: no job + ~16K in debt.
3. my firm somehow does not fire me but i'm in ERISA for the rest of my legal career and miserable until find a new career. end result: job I hate + debt for about 4 years = 7 years of lost earnings in a potentially new career.

First - what would you do if you dropped out? I'd trade the 20k for a T10 JD even with no job lined up (assuming no UG debt). Maybe I'm dumb

Second - I don't get #3. when you say 7 years of lost earnings in a potentially new career, you really mean 5 right? Because you're already 2 years deep in LS and that's never coming back.

Third - ERISA seems like a great area to move to in house. My anecdotal (non law) experience is that ERISA lawyers are in demand there, so after a few years, you could be sitting pretty. Of course, if you hate ERISA, that's moot. But if you're aiming in house, it's not a bad option.

[thesealocust]

Go to the firm. Draw the salary but zero your ambitions - you know they don't want you already, so avoid work. Do well on work you get and keep a slightly open mind, but the second your boots hit the ground (fuck, maybe even before) call headhunters and/or start looking for other opportunities. People sometimes move surprisingly early to clerk, change substantive area of law, or change geographic location. I'd explore all of those if I were you.

Drawing a big firm salary will help you pay debts and get solvent. The firm will probably cover your bar expenses. Even a month at the firm is going to leave you in a good position relative to totally abandoning ship.

[RCinDNA]

I think you should finish your degree, and go to the firm for six months to a year, with the sole intent of finding another job in a practice area you are interested in. As a new attorney, with minimal debt, and one year of experience, you'd be in a much stronger position than most new grads TBQH.

You should consider posting this in the Legal Employment forum, btw.

[lapolicia]

You mind telling us why you think you don't want to do ERISA?

I mean, maybe you have good reasons, but it's one of the most interesting areas of law that is also pretty maleable in terms of what you actually do...

What amazing legal acts does OP imagine him/herself doing in corporate that he wouldn't be doing in ERISA in the first few years at a firm? A lot of ERISA is actually employee benefits in corporate transactions. It's also an area that generally has fewer hours and better exit options. Also, how do you have any real idea of what practice area you want before you've even started? Many of my friends who did corporate out of law school are now in the real estate group because there's more/better work, for example. They would've never imagined themselves doing real estate as 3Ls.

[Ohiobumpkin]

I'm pretty sure that if this thread had a poll with Drop Out Now vs Finish Up Your Degree, the latter would have 100%. I don't know how dropping out is even an option any rational person would be considering.

[gnuwheels]

I'm pretty sure that if this thread had a poll with Drop Out Now vs Finish Up Your Degree, the latter would have 100%. I don't know how dropping out is even an option any rational person would be considering.

There are definitely a few people on here including myself who think it might make sense to drop out.

Also many people seem to be distracted by the fact that ERISA is a highly desirable area. I wonder if the responses would be any different if OP was starting in insurance defense, structured finance, or some other much maligned area. I think the fact OP is confident he would find ERISA miserable isn't being given enough weight.

I agree that OP should post this in legal employment forum though.

[Hutz_and_Goodman]

Definitely stay. The degree is worth something whether you practice law or not. Also, recognize that not only does the economy suck but this will be a difficult thing to explain. I would never hire someone for any job if they told me that they spent 2.5 years in law school and then dropped out. That is such an insane decision I would assume that either they were thrown out (academic dishonesty or worse) or that they actually did leave, which tells me that they have poor judgment.

[AReasonableMan]

LOL. Sorry, I find it funny that you accepted the cold offer. That seems like it must have been a comedically awkward exchange.

If the reason you hate the prospect of practicing law is because going back to an office that didn't want you in a practice group you don't want seems awkward and depressing then you're not irrational for not liking how that future works.

But in the grand scheme of things, this is only temporary. By virtue of having this job versus two no offers you are likely to get some offer in a lower paying sector at some point. Your firm did you a solid in that they basically gave you a gateway to a career you otherwise probably wouldn't have had. So the question becomes if you like law generally, because this obviously is a temporary stint for you.

At this point, it's just a semester plus so if it's free i don't see the positive in walking away without a different job offer.

I can see why it's a bad look for you going forward. In your situation, a job paying half as much for the same time commitment is probably preferable to a job where you are openly unwanted day in and day out. This likely impacts your self worth, how comfortable you are, etc. But if you manage to stick it out, a small law firm might see your top ten degree and the fact you're coming from XXX Big Law Firm as a steal for them. They don't know you are unwanted.

[Paul Campos]

OP, are you K-JD? Your financial calculations don't make any sense to me. You're asking whether it makes sense to borrow $20K at low to zero interest and invest six months to get a JD from a top ten law school (everything else is a sunk cost). Even if you had decided that you despised the very idea of being a lawyer this would still make sense as an investment, and I say this as someone who is extremely skeptical of claims that law degrees are "versatile." But you say you want to be a lawyer, just not an associate in an ERISA group at a big firm. Think of it this way: if you had no job offer at all, would you quit now? It seems you want to quit because you (sort of) have a job lined up that you don't want to take!

I can appreciate that you feel beat up by getting no-offered by one firm, cold-offered by another, and shut out at OCI. Still, the question is what to do going forward, and I don't get why the prospect of $20,000 in debt should be a significant calculation in a situation where you can almost certainly keep a $160,000 job for one year. Even assuming this job is in NYC, you'll have $8,000 a month in take-home, which means that if you live halfway frugally for six months that debt will be gone. Finally, I find it very hard to believe that 3.4 could be bottom 10% of the class or close to it anywhere, although I realize grade inflation has been rampant recently all over legal academia.

[AReasonableMan]

OP, are you K-JD? Your financial calculations don't make any sense to me. You're asking whether it makes sense to borrow $20K at low to zero interest and invest six months to get a JD from a top ten law school (everything else is a sunk cost). Even if you had decided that you despised the very idea of being a lawyer this would still make sense as an investment, and I say this as someone who is extremely skeptical of claims that law degrees are "versatile." But you say you want to be a lawyer, just not an associate in an ERISA group at a big firm. Think of it this way: if you had no job offer at all, would you quit now? It seems you want to quit because you (sort of) have a job lined up that you don't want to take!

I can appreciate that you feel beat up by getting no-offered by one firm, cold-offered by another, and shut out at OCI. Still, the question is what to do going forward, and I don't get why the prospect of $20,000 in debt should be a significant calculation in a situation where you can almost certainly keep a $160,000 job for one year. Even assuming this job is in NYC, you'll have $8,000 a month in take-home, which means that if you live halfway frugally for six months that debt will be gone. Finally, I find it very hard to believe that 3.4 could be bottom 10% of the class or close to it anywhere, although I realize grade inflation has been rampant recently all over legal academia.

Yeah, there's also some value to your career in being able to list that you were an attorney at a prestigious firm on your resume. Also, once you're there if you know what you did wrong and make yourself act differently then it's possible they won't fire you. Make yourself valuable to some of the ERISA partners by not being weird, and doing reliably good work.

[linairtes]

So it looks like staying might make sense, but it will be hard to swallow, and its going to be a tough way to be begin my career.

My main concern is that staying in school means I am committing to doing a pivot immediately when I start working, and I have been told that is going to be almost impossible, so in the end all I am doing is kicking the can down the road and getting older only to eventually make the same decision.

But maybe the pivot won't be as impossible as the lawyers I spoke to said. How do I move this thread to the employment area? Hopefully some practicing attorneys there would know more about that.

[jbagelboy]

So it looks like staying might make sense, but it will be hard to swallow, and its going to be a tough way to be begin my career.

My main concern is that staying in school means I am committing to doing a pivot immediately when I start working, and I have been told that is going to be almost impossible, so in the end all I am doing is kicking the can down the road and getting older only to eventually make the same decision.

But maybe the pivot won't be as impossible as the lawyers I spoke to said. How do I move this thread to the employment area? Hopefully some practicing attorneys there would know more about that.

the majority of the people who have posted responses in this thread are practicing attorneys

[lacrossebrother]

How firm is your job?

[fltanglab]

Honestly if I were in your position and your firm seems to not really like you anyway, I would continue looking for a job after accepting the offer. Just be discreet about it and don't tell the firm too late. I'd probably keep looking until the middle of the summer.

You are seriously being a negative Nancy about your situation. If you adopt a more positive attitude about job searching, you'll feel better about taking actual steps to make a job offer in a practice group you want happen.