I want to go take my JD abroad and use it there Forum

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beepboopbeep

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Re: I want to go take my JD abroad and use it there

Post by beepboopbeep » Wed Sep 24, 2014 12:34 pm

sideroxylon wrote:We have similar experiences Regulus, I'm just less prone to self-aggrandizement.
lol at calling reg self-aggrandizing, especially after he shares one of the legendary spreadsheets. i like how you have "similar experiences" but all the concrete info you have is secondhand.

edit: lol at angry pms
Last edited by beepboopbeep on Wed Sep 24, 2014 12:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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sideroxylon

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Re: I want to go take my JD abroad and use it there

Post by sideroxylon » Wed Sep 24, 2014 12:40 pm

beepboopbeep wrote:
sideroxylon wrote:We have similar experiences Regulus, I'm just less prone to self-aggrandizement.
lol at calling reg self-aggrandizing, especially after he shares one of the legendary spreadsheets. i like how you have "similar experiences" but all the concrete info you have is secondhand.
I can't tell if you're just randomly indignant by proxy or just kinda slow.

I also worked in Japan during my 1L summer and interviewed with these firms. I also chose an American firm. Kinda implied by the things we were talking about. I'm sure Reg figured that out, because people generally don't talk about managing partners of those offices (Ted and Ken) without knowing something.

but yeah totally speculation, I mean things that I learned in direct conversation with attorneys in the market, NOT AT ALL RELIABLE

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beepboopbeep

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Re: I want to go take my JD abroad and use it there

Post by beepboopbeep » Wed Sep 24, 2014 12:46 pm

sideroxylon wrote:
beepboopbeep wrote:
sideroxylon wrote:We have similar experiences Regulus, I'm just less prone to self-aggrandizement.
lol at calling reg self-aggrandizing, especially after he shares one of the legendary spreadsheets. i like how you have "similar experiences" but all the concrete info you have is secondhand.
I can't tell if you're just randomly indignant by proxy or just kinda slow.

I also worked in Japan during my 1L summer and interviewed with these firms. I also chose an American firm. Kinda implied by the things we were talking about. I'm sure Reg figured that out, because people generally don't talk about managing partners of those offices (Ted and Ken) without knowing something.

but yeah totally speculation, I mean things that I learned in direct conversation with attorneys in the market, NOT AT ALL RELIABLE
lol

some attorneys told you their opinions and now you're a predictions expert going around threads and pronouncing the legal market in one of the biggest cities in the world "dead"

yet reg (of all tls poasters you could attack) is the self-aggrandizing one

maybe if you send another angry pm i'll stop making fun of you, that turned out well last time

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sideroxylon

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Re: I want to go take my JD abroad and use it there

Post by sideroxylon » Wed Sep 24, 2014 12:53 pm

The fact you feel the need to fight Reg's fight here is odd and telling to me. I'm glad y'all have TLS friends.

The market for US attorneys in Japan is very small. That's a fact. We're talking about satellite offices of major firms. MoFo has some consistent hiring, but they've moved to hiring from their 1L class. I think the number of entry-level hires that they've had (and they're the largest) has ranged from one to three in the past few years.

The self-aggrandizement is to have done the exact same things and think that you have the definitive answer and to bolster it with I WORKED THERE! Yes, so did I. So did many others. Reg and I can disagree about the health of the market and swap anecdotes (and we'd be able to say exactly which attorney at which firm said what) but we have different takes on it. Not really your fight though.

I could take just direct quotes from a Regulus text dump and explain why I think the market is dead.

Anyway, those are things I can discuss with Reg, not with random UChi student who got angry because someone disagreed with Regulus.

ETA: you can post the "angry PM" I mean, I said the exact same thing ITT because I thought the PM didn't send

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beepboopbeep

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Re: I want to go take my JD abroad and use it there

Post by beepboopbeep » Wed Sep 24, 2014 12:57 pm

sideroxylon wrote: Anyway, those are things I can discuss with Reg, not with random UChi student who got angry because someone disagreed with Regulus.
Oh I had beef before he even entered the thread (not that I know anything about tokyo). The douchiness just intensified. I had to intervene, as an American.

Y'know I accidentally deleted it, mind re-sending? I remember that it was different than the post, but not the exact words. If you can have that in my inbox before lunch, that'd be great.

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sideroxylon

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Re: I want to go take my JD abroad and use it there

Post by sideroxylon » Wed Sep 24, 2014 12:59 pm

beepboopbeep wrote:
sideroxylon wrote: Anyway, those are things I can discuss with Reg, not with random UChi student who got angry because someone disagreed with Regulus.
Oh I had beef before he even entered the thread (not that I know anything about tokyo). The douchiness just intensified. I had to intervene, as an American.
I feel this is a pretty emblematic UChi post, but please continue. Why did you need to intervene? You're just really fond of showing off your ignorance?

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Re: I want to go take my JD abroad and use it there

Post by beepboopbeep » Wed Sep 24, 2014 1:03 pm

sideroxylon wrote:
beepboopbeep wrote:
sideroxylon wrote: Anyway, those are things I can discuss with Reg, not with random UChi student who got angry because someone disagreed with Regulus.
Oh I had beef before he even entered the thread (not that I know anything about tokyo). The douchiness just intensified. I had to intervene, as an American.
I feel this is a pretty emblematic UChi post, but please continue. Why did you need to intervene? You're just really fond of showing off your ignorance?
I'm mostly continuing so IRL chicago friends can lol at these posts. Gonna have to break it off soon to do some work. Been fun.

No I know nothing about tokyo. Not hiding my ignorance at all. There's just a difference in usefulness between "this market is dead and no one should work there lol" and "here's how the tokyo market works, here are the issues with going straight there, here's a useful spreadsheet about tokyo offices" that you don't seem to be grasping. Like - there's a reason random poster thanked one party to this discussion and not the other.

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Re: I want to go take my JD abroad and use it there

Post by sideroxylon » Wed Sep 24, 2014 1:10 pm

beepboopbeep wrote:
sideroxylon wrote:
beepboopbeep wrote:
sideroxylon wrote: Anyway, those are things I can discuss with Reg, not with random UChi student who got angry because someone disagreed with Regulus.
Oh I had beef before he even entered the thread (not that I know anything about tokyo). The douchiness just intensified. I had to intervene, as an American.
I feel this is a pretty emblematic UChi post, but please continue. Why did you need to intervene? You're just really fond of showing off your ignorance?
I'm mostly continuing so IRL chicago friends can lol at these posts.

No I know nothing about tokyo. There's just a difference in usefulness between "this market is dead and no one should work there lol" and "here's how the tokyo market works, here are the issues with going straight there, here's a useful spreadsheet about tokyo offices" that you don't seem to be grasping. Like - there's a reason random poster thanked one party to this discussion and not the other.
and I'm not denying that what Regulus posted was helpful

It's just also things that any 1L interested in it will know. Maybe this will help, though I'm not sure UChi people will totally grasp it:

Sometimes when a teacher asked you a question in school, other people knew the answer. You don't need to raise your hand every time you know the answer. You especially don't need to raise your hand and say "oh, also, here's more stuff!!"

OP posted about three markets. OP is also apparently a 2L who won't get biglaw. There aren't that many jobs for American lawyers in Tokyo, and it is very very unlikely that someone would move from something other than biglaw to biglaw in Tokyo. Moreover, if you looked at the number of jobs in Tokyo today and compared it to ten years ago, you'd see a marked decline. Attorneys in Tokyo will comment on that. (ask Reg if you want UChi confirmation) American firms have pulled out of Tokyo for greener pastures in HK/Singapore.

Anyway, the point is that the short answer to the question is pretty much "lol, there are very few jobs in Tokyo, it's a TTT in decline, and you won't work there." We don't need to get into our personal experiences or talk about Ted Paradise's 和紙 card with his food dislikes on it to get there. We don't need to talk about 外弁 to get there. We just need to get to "no, you probably shouldn't go."

I sincerely hope this helps, but expect it won't.

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Re: I want to go take my JD abroad and use it there

Post by beepboopbeep » Wed Sep 24, 2014 1:13 pm

sideroxylon wrote:
beepboopbeep wrote: I'm mostly continuing so IRL chicago friends can lol at these posts.

No I know nothing about tokyo. There's just a difference in usefulness between "this market is dead and no one should work there lol" and "here's how the tokyo market works, here are the issues with going straight there, here's a useful spreadsheet about tokyo offices" that you don't seem to be grasping. Like - there's a reason random poster thanked one party to this discussion and not the other.
and I'm not denying that what Regulus posted was helpful

It's just also things that any 1L interested in it will know. Maybe this will help, though I'm not sure UChi people will totally grasp it:

Sometimes when a teacher asked you a question in school, other people knew the answer. You don't need to raise your hand every time you know the answer. You especially don't need to raise your hand and say "oh, also, here's more stuff!!"

OP posted about three markets. OP is also apparently a 2L who won't get biglaw. There aren't that many jobs for American lawyers in Tokyo, and it is very very unlikely that someone would move from something other than biglaw to biglaw in Tokyo. Moreover, if you looked at the number of jobs in Tokyo today and compared it to ten years ago, you'd see a marked decline. Attorneys in Tokyo will comment on that. (ask Reg if you want UChi confirmation) American firms have pulled out of Tokyo for greener pastures in HK/Singapore.

Anyway, the point is that the short answer to the question is pretty much "lol, there are very few jobs in Tokyo, it's a TTT in decline, and you won't work there." We don't need to get into our personal experiences or talk about Ted Paradise's 和紙 card with his food dislikes on it to get there. We don't need to talk about 外弁 to get there. We just need to get to "no, you probably shouldn't go."

I sincerely hope this helps, but expect it won't.
Yea that's a totally fair post. Glad we got somewhere productive. That's all I'm looking for dog.

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sideroxylon

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Re: I want to go take my JD abroad and use it there

Post by sideroxylon » Wed Sep 24, 2014 1:14 pm

:roll:

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Re: I want to go take my JD abroad and use it there

Post by AReasonableMan » Wed Sep 24, 2014 1:23 pm

I think most people have family in the country they go to. Your value in Tokyo is the ability to understand a Japanese client's business and issues in offering some asset on the American exchange or a dispute arising in a US court, and apply American law to them. It's not that American law students are somehow better, and that the poor Japanese are incapable of resolving disputes without the brave and handsome but brilliant Yankee lawyers coming to the rescue.

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Re: I want to go take my JD abroad and use it there

Post by ozymandius » Wed Sep 24, 2014 9:49 pm

I regret that I wasn't around to participate in this, um, heated discussion. To be clear, for those who want to consider the source, I'm a mid-level associate working in Tokyo now (and permanently).

Tokyo isn't dead. It just isn't--the idea that "pretty soon it'll be just MoFo and SullCrom" is silly. There will always be a small but sustainable Tokyo legal market because firms want offices there for business development purposes, even if the offices themselves aren't profit centers. That does mean that partnership chances can be pretty weak in Tokyo, and that starting your career in Tokyo is frequently a bad idea not least because there can be a dearth of learning opportunities for young associates (this is particularly true in M&A and capital markets--less true in projects or disputes). On the other hand, it's much less "up or out" than a market like New York--if you're useful and want to live in Tokyo making $300k a year, you can pretty much stick around forever as an associate.

To be honest, I think that sideroxylon's perceptions are probably shaded by Skadden, which has been struggling badly recently. Whole practice areas there have been deep-sixed, and the office is a shell of its former self. That doesn't mean Tokyo is dead--that office was always a bit weird, and it was heavily focused on practice areas that, well, aren't flourishing anymore.

The bottom line is that making partner in Tokyo at a big firm is difficult, but it's also difficult to do that in New York, or DC, or whatever other major U.S. market you might compare it to. Perhaps it is axiomatic to say, but it bears repeating here: deciding where to live and work based on percentage point differences in partnership chances is not a good way to approach the issue. To some, living in Tokyo might not be appealing, I guess, but for me, and for many others I know, it beats the shit out of living in one of the strong U.S. legal markets.

Final question, if anyone is still reading this thread: when were you two summers in Tokyo? It could be that your differing perceptions of the health of the market are simply a function of having been here at different times. Optimism has waxed and waned as of late, but, in the here and now, things are looking pretty decent.

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Re: I want to go take my JD abroad and use it there

Post by ghostowl » Fri Sep 26, 2014 12:59 am

Regulas, great as always :D

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Re: I want to go take my JD abroad and use it there

Post by clin29 » Wed Jul 29, 2015 2:14 pm

tag.

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Re: I want to go take my JD abroad and use it there

Post by hala92 » Sat Aug 05, 2017 12:54 pm

ozymandius wrote:I regret that I wasn't around to participate in this, um, heated discussion. To be clear, for those who want to consider the source, I'm a mid-level associate working in Tokyo now (and permanently).

Tokyo isn't dead. It just isn't--the idea that "pretty soon it'll be just MoFo and SullCrom" is silly. There will always be a small but sustainable Tokyo legal market because firms want offices there for business development purposes, even if the offices themselves aren't profit centers. That does mean that partnership chances can be pretty weak in Tokyo, and that starting your career in Tokyo is frequently a bad idea not least because there can be a dearth of learning opportunities for young associates (this is particularly true in M&A and capital markets--less true in projects or disputes). On the other hand, it's much less "up or out" than a market like New York--if you're useful and want to live in Tokyo making $300k a year, you can pretty much stick around forever as an associate.

To be honest, I think that sideroxylon's perceptions are probably shaded by Skadden, which has been struggling badly recently. Whole practice areas there have been deep-sixed, and the office is a shell of its former self. That doesn't mean Tokyo is dead--that office was always a bit weird, and it was heavily focused on practice areas that, well, aren't flourishing anymore.

The bottom line is that making partner in Tokyo at a big firm is difficult, but it's also difficult to do that in New York, or DC, or whatever other major U.S. market you might compare it to. Perhaps it is axiomatic to say, but it bears repeating here: deciding where to live and work based on percentage point differences in partnership chances is not a good way to approach the issue. To some, living in Tokyo might not be appealing, I guess, but for me, and for many others I know, it beats the shit out of living in one of the strong U.S. legal markets.

Final question, if anyone is still reading this thread: when were you two summers in Tokyo? It could be that your differing perceptions of the health of the market are simply a function of having been here at different times. Optimism has waxed and waned as of late, but, in the here and now, things are looking pretty decent.
Would like to know more about Skadden Tokyo. Thank you!

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