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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.

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

Yeah, that's probably a better way of wording it. In light of continual 0L skepticism, though, it seemed sarcastic.

[ymmv]

I haven't committed to anything yet (in fact I'm reapplying next year in hopes of big $$$ or HYS with big grants) and it's not like I'm heading towards much atm anyway. This would be worst case scenario and was a bit dramatic but BigLaw does sound like this based on what most people on these forums say.

But it's fine. Call me an idiot. If it boosts your ego today from the pathetic place it must rest then I'm ok with that. I'm sure you have a miserable life as it is so you need to crush others to feel better about yourself and I pity you - so go ahead.

It took a very unnuanced reading of other posters threads to conclude what you did. And NYS is one of the most thoughtful and least snarky posters on here, so if he thinks it...

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.

This is mostly accurate, and your original "post of contention" was darkly funny in its way, but I don't know that you're accomplishing much by continuing this conversation into what is rapidly escalating into a flame war.

[worldtraveler]

I'm also just going to add that if you have a problem being around assholes or people who are kind of prickly, you are just going to run into that in the legal profession. It doesn't make that kind of behavior okay, but it definitely exists and you just have to deal. Very few lawyers are really just kind good hearted people, and even the ones who are tend to be rather snarky.

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[El Pollito]

So half the reading into my text was based around a stereotype of a group of people. 0Ls are now a whole group to be understood in a specific way and their actions and interactions are to be perceived through a particular lens. Hmm..replace 0L with any race, religion, gender, orientation, affiliation, physical characteristic, region or nationality and you - my friend- have a very bigoted idea there.

And you trolled too far.

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[A. Nony Mouse]

So half the reading into my text was based around a stereotype of a group of people. 0Ls are now a whole group to be understood in a specific way and their actions and interactions are to be perceived through a particular lens. Hmm..replace 0L with any race, religion, gender, orientation, affiliation, physical characteristic, region or nationality and you - my friend- have a very bigoted idea there.

No, not based on a stereotype of a group of people - at least, no more a stereotype than any you've created about non-0Ls. I meant that there has been an ongoing discussion here about biglaw and that people were responding to you in the context of that discussion. The threads and readers here overlap. You're clearly aware of that discussion because you said that the vacation issue was something still undeveloped.

[thesealocust]

Honesty Hour: OP - I started and/or joined the dogpile because you came across as somebody who would respond to it in a funny way. The longer this goes on, the more true and hilarious it becomes. And in the TLS echo chamber, it helps that (a) Bitter Lawyer Club hunts in packs and (b) 0L and law student personality types get predictable after the half decade mark or so.

Having said that, the topic (generally speaking, if not as presented) was a good one and the responses (prior to derailment) contain good info. As always, I strive to be helpful AND a jerk.

[RodneyRuxin]

So half the reading into my text was based around a stereotype of a group of people. 0Ls are now a whole group to be understood in a specific way and their actions and interactions are to be perceived through a particular lens. Hmm..replace 0L with any race, religion, gender, orientation, affiliation, physical characteristic, region or nationality and you - my friend- have a very bigoted idea there.

And you trolled too far.

Grouping people and imparting traits to them - particularly when you don't know them or the grouping is tentative - is bigoted. Period. Regardless as to whether the grouping is a laughable or a silly one. No it's not as bad as making judgments based on race or religion or gender or orientation - those have experienced systematic maltreatment - but it's still the initial problem: considering people as a mass rather than as individuals.

0Ls are a mass (a poorly treated, disliked, looked down upon mass btw) on this site. Interestingly enough, they represent the biggest raison d'être on this site so it's probably not in this sites best interests to confuse informing 0Ls with sh***ing all over them.

My problem with this argument is that everyone who makes fun of 0Ls WAS one at some point. That makes it fundamentally different and much less bigoted.

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[ScottRiqui]

How about ex-gays?

In the case of ex-anythings, you have to at least admit that they'd be arguing from a position of knowledge and experience.

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[ScottRiqui]

How about ex-gays?

In the case of ex-anythings, you have to at least admit that they'd be arguing from a position of knowledge and experience.

So what they say isn't bigoted?

Being something in the past=free ride?

I'm not saying that they're judgement-proof, or not assholes. But their experience does give them some credibility.

[ScottRiqui]

I would like to point out that 14% of respondents say that they take 'No' vacay in BigLaw.

TBF, how many of those 14% are only ~7 months into their legal career, and are more worried about getting their feet underneath themselves and making a good impression?

[RodneyRuxin]

How about ex-gays?

Still different. We are all on relatively equal paths, you're just earlier. We have all been there. We have experienced the anxiety, neuroticism, anxiousness, zealousness, you name it. It is over the top and silly--but it is understandable. It's okay to laugh at yourself sometimes. Everyone can look back at their 12 year old self and have a good chuckle about our worldview at the time.

Also your poll is dumb because anyone(even those not in big law) can respond with any answer they want and two of the options are complete jokes--but you know that.

Fwiw, trolling and being immature in general just makes you fit the stereotype that you're arguing against.

[lecsa]

You can take vacay, but you have to make up your hours later. It's not really much of a "vacay" at that point.

[Lincoln]

At my firm it varies how/when people take vacation. It's generally expected that you'll take some vacation, but as a junior you don't have much control over when. I have a big case that ends in a week, so I'm taking a week's vacation after that, but I've only taken one day since I started in September (including working Christmas Eve and NYE). Some people are nuts and don't take any vacation ever, but if you're not gunning for partner (or even if you are), there's no reason to do that to yourself. When we're on vacation we're generally left alone to the extent possible.

How far in advance did you know that the week you're planning on would be a good time to take vacation? Is it at all feasible to plan something a few months in advance, or is it more like "Hey, the week after next is looking pretty slack, guess I'll take some time off"?

This all depends. In my case, after my trial was over the schedule was set for post-trial briefing, so I decided to take a week after the last brief was due. So about 5 weeks in advance. Some people already had vacations booked prior to that but were allowed to take it because (1) they weren't one of the people who had the most institutional knowledge about the case and (2) we had enough people to handle it in their absence. But in the absence of (1) and (2) they may well have had to reschedule. Booking in advance is good because people will try to schedule around it if possible but you also risk something coming up between now and then that takes precedence.

You can take vacay, but you have to make up your hours later. It's not really much of a "vacay" at that point.

This may be true some places but it's certainly not at my firm. No one cares about my hours, and even if they did, I've billed enough for the year so I could take all my vacation and still comfortably meet any billables target.

[El Pollito]

You can take vacay, but you have to make up your hours later. It's not really much of a "vacay" at that point.

Why would anyone have to make up hours? If you're cutting it that close to minimum billables a vacation isn't the best idea.

[BaiAilian2013]

I would like to point out that 14% of respondents say that they take 'No' vacay in BigLaw.

And 31% of respondents said they add tiki torches to their cubicles or draw beaches at their desk, sooooo...

[First Offense]

How about ex-gays?

In the case of ex-anythings, you have to at least admit that they'd be arguing from a position of knowledge and experience.

So what they say isn't bigoted?

Being something in the past=free ride?

0L is not a suspect classification.