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[A. Nony Mouse]

It took a very unnuanced (that's not a word btw) reading of my post to see that it was obviously a bit overkill. Individually, those elements have been stressed repeatedly but separately by different posters at different times and I don't believe them to be off base. My statement obviously took them as to exist all at once in one individual which is unlikely but theoretically possible based on reports about BigLaw.

The TLS circle jerk continues, though.

In truth, I'm worried about each of these elements if I do pursue BigLaw but I do not believe it to be likely that I will be negatively impacted by all of them - I just want to be prepared for each of them. That being said, I am worried that I might be relegating myself to a life surrounded by the likes of some of the people on here: dark, easily annoyed/irritated, quick to judge individuals who seem to have lost their sense of identity (and humor) outside of work (or reformed their sense of identity to only encompass their work) and find their last few breadcrumbs of self-importance in aggressively attacking dreaded 0Ls (who are obviously just idiotic welps that need intellectual beatings from the high and mighty TLSers). To all of you who work as associates now and hate your treatment, think: you're really not all that different - you've internalized the same hierarchical understanding of social relations and everyone beneath you must now be reminded of that regularly with snark, name-calling or whatever else you've learned on the job.

I don't think that's a law associate/lawyer thing. I think that's an internet forum regular v. newbie thing. People who've been on this site for a long time tend to see the same questions get asked again and again, and get snarky after giving the same answers a bunch of times. It may still be a character flaw, but it's a different one than what you've identified.

And to be fair, your portrait of what you might face in biglaw was fairly contentious in that it seemed to purposefully take the most exaggerated depiction of every possible ill - in doing so, it seemed to be challenging whether what the associates here describe is even real. So it's not surprising it got some pushback.

[iliketurtles123]

It took a very unnuanced (that's not a word btw) reading of my post to see that it was obviously a bit overkill. Individually, those elements have been stressed repeatedly but separately by different posters at different times and I don't believe them to be off base. My statement obviously took them as to exist all at once in one individual which is unlikely but theoretically possible based on reports about BigLaw.

The TLS circle jerk continues, though.

In truth, I'm worried about each of these elements if I do pursue BigLaw but I do not believe it to be likely that I will be negatively impacted by all of them - I just want to be prepared for each of them. That being said, I am worried that I might be relegating myself to a life surrounded by the likes of some of the people on here: dark, easily annoyed/irritated, quick to judge individuals who seem to have lost their sense of identity (and humor) outside of work (or reformed their sense of identity to only encompass their work) and find their last few breadcrumbs of self-importance in aggressively attacking dreaded 0Ls (who are obviously just idiotic welps that need intellectual beatings from the high and mighty TLSers). To all of you who work as associates now and hate your treatment, think: you're really not all that different - you've internalized the same hierarchical understanding of social relations and everyone beneath you must now be reminded of that regularly with snark, name-calling or whatever else you've learned on the job.

I don't think that's a law associate/lawyer thing. I think that's an internet forum regular v. newbie thing. People who've been on this site for a long time tend to see the same questions get asked again and again, and get snarky after giving the same answers a bunch of times. It may still be a character flaw, but it's a different one than what you've identified.

And to be fair, your portrait of what you might face in biglaw was fairly contentious in that it seemed to purposefully take the most exaggerated depiction of every possible ill - in doing so, it seemed to be challenging whether what the associates here describe is even real. So it's not surprising it got some pushback.

+1 this mostly is an internet thing.
People get snarky on the net so easily no matter what forum board you're on

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[thesealocust]

Can an individual gather enough from one post (a rather innocuous one at that) to know that an individual is an 'idiot'? Ad hominem is just the vestige of the weak and there's a lot of weakness here.

My modus operandi is to be nice at first and only to be confrontational/mean to those who deserve it (but to be sparing then too). Manners seems to be something most of these mongrels weren't raised with.

This post is beautiful.

You're going to have a tremendous TLS career, snowflake.

[A. Nony Mouse]

Calling a post idiotic isn't the same as calling the poster an idiot.

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[rayiner]

Your exaggerated post suggests you think we're not being serious. You're welcome to believe what you want to believe, but blaming us for offering the kind of insight we never had when we were in your position strikes me as ungrateful.

Every 0L says that they know big law will be trying. But they say that because they know they have to say that. What they don't realize is that even one of those aspects of your exaggerated post being true can make doing the job for years miserable. When you're crying in your office because a senior associate threw you under the bus to a partner, it won't really help that the vacation policy turned out better than expected or that some of the people you work with are really cool.

It's like law exams. Every 0L regurgitates Getting to Maybe and says "I know that law exams are about arguing both sides." But until hey actually take an exam, they don't know what it really means. At the end of the day, lots of people who "know what they're getting into" do badly on exams. And nobody I know, people who were mostly folks who had work experience before law school, has ever said to me "this isn't as bad as I expected."

[Blindmelon]

I take vacations, but unless its a two weeks I'll be out of the country, I typically will have to do at least a few hours randomly because of some emergency that could have been prevented.

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[Theopliske8711]

Your op read as snide and sarcastic to pretty much everyone who read it. As result, you've spent an entire thread explaning yourself.

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[Theopliske8711]

We can't read the posts in the tone you intended.

Im not sure what the point of the thread was. You could have easily asked the Q in one of the many threads we currently have on the issue of big law life.

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[A. Nony Mouse]

If you want to get into reader response criticism: You can't expect your thread to be read in a vacuum. Given the widespread 0L skepticism that biglaw can really be that bad, and the recent raging debates about this issue, your post came across as likewise skeptical, not simply asking a question.

Also, you're kind of getting over the top here.

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[IAFG]

I mostly don't hate my job, and sometimes really like it. What I've been trying to do the past couple months is correct some of the misconceptions I think my classmates and I had about firm life. But the picture I am trying to paint is a lot more nuanced than jswright seems to be picking up on.

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[A. Nony Mouse]

If you want to get into reader response criticism: You can't expect your thread to be read in a vacuum. Given the widespread 0L skepticism that biglaw can really be that bad, and the recent raging debates about this issue, your post came across as likewise skeptical, not simply asking a question.

Also, you're kind of getting over the top here.

So you're admitting that you've/others have assumed a great deal in my post. Good.

No, I'm pointing out that the author doesn't have control over how a post is read, and if a number of people all read the post the same way, the author needs to consider that maybe they didn't make themselves clear.

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[A. Nony Mouse]

True. My current expectations of BigLaw are pretty much 80 hours of work per week/7days a week for 365 days a year for 3 to 5 years (if I'm lucky) whereupon I will be unceremoniously drop-kicked and forced to find a much lower paying job while I live off of cat food to assist in servicing my loans. When I get my one date night per six month window with my bf I will be on the phone the entire time. I will be fat/have lost all of my fitness gains (I'm a gym fanatic) from a very irregular sleeping/working out schedule too. I will strangely have time to post on TLS tho but that is from mysterious minutes between the soul crushing monotony. Everyone will talk down to me constantly/be generally rude individuals and all passions/hobbies I have will quickly be extinguished as my personality and habits are irreversibly altered. That's about it.

Look, ^this is clearly not serious. That doesn't mean it came across as light-hearted rather than as making fun of current associates' descriptions of biglaw.

[worldtraveler]

True. My current expectations of BigLaw are pretty much 80 hours of work per week/7days a week for 365 days a year for 3 to 5 years (if I'm lucky) whereupon I will be unceremoniously drop-kicked and forced to find a much lower paying job while I live off of cat food to assist in servicing my loans. When I get my one date night per six month window with my bf I will be on the phone the entire time. I will be fat/have lost all of my fitness gains (I'm a gym fanatic) from a very irregular sleeping/working out schedule too. I will strangely have time to post on TLS tho but that is from mysterious minutes between the soul crushing monotony. Everyone will talk down to me constantly/be generally rude individuals and all passions/hobbies I have will quickly be extinguished as my personality and habits are irreversibly altered. That's about it.

Look, ^this is clearly not serious. That doesn't mean it came across as light-hearted rather than as making fun of current associates' descriptions of biglaw.

I took it that they didn't quite believe descriptions a lot of posters are giving about big law.