Sackboy wrote: ↑Thu Jul 23, 2020 4:11 pm
bdiggity18 wrote: ↑Thu Jul 23, 2020 3:46 pm
Everyone's interested in something. What I was interested in led me to appreciate things like Scalia's thoughtfully constructed but personally biased opinion regarding the common usage of 'keep and bear' on DC v Heller, and this history of property right/land use and social control.
I think you're being called out for a few reasons.
First, actual lawyers and law students on TLS rarely ever talk about how they "appreciate things like Scalia's thoughtfully constructed but personally biased opinion regarding the common usage of 'keep and bear.'"
Second, you seem to understand the number of hours, but you seem to fail to appreciate the quality of those hours. In many jobs, you can use rehearsed pitches or let muscle memory take over. Proofreading 12 hours a day for commas and then getting a snarky email that makes you feel like your credibility as a "quality associate" is undermined in the partner's eyes (aka the person who feeds you) for missing something mundane is a different kind of mental exercise. You never get to just turn your mind off. Also, the freedom to set your own hours is severely limited, and your days can blow up in a moments notice. I've had to cancel vacation several times while practicing in biglaw, and it's not uncommon. The partners are usually apologetic, but it still sucks to not just be able to go "I'm done for today" without the fear of earning some invisible demerit for it that might cost you your job at a review in six months for "not being a team player." The fact that small things can feel like they are going to cripple your career at a firm (or actually cripple it) is what makes the hours brutal.
Third, I don't think anyone here (I'll be honest I skimmed most of the posts) said anything about needing to be the top 10% at ND/WUSTL to get biglaw. That'd be very uncharacteristic of this forum. We do, however, have a memory that stretches back many years when the last recession hit and 20% of ND/WUSTL students were getting Biglaw jobs instead of the 50-60% in a good economy. That's why we criticize anyone focusing on the current year's numbers. They can turn on a dime, unlike T13 schools, which have historically seen far less of a hit during the recession. These schools are also placing people at the same place in their class as a T13 school in considerably worse firms. A median student at WashU might land St. Louis "biglaw" which will show up as biglaw in the statistics, but they get paid $130k with an incredibly compressed salary; meanwhile, a Cornell student at median probably lands at a V50 making $190k and lockstepping their way to $340k. The latter group also has far better exit options. We're not bad at math. We're just not bad at logic.
yeah, timeline and admissions and potential to get the job from OCI etc is a big deal but in the end it's not the question i was asking about, if I'm deadset on biglaw and nothing pans out OCI i have a strong network as mentioned.
if we get back to the initial post i was asking about how much time lawyers spend writing per day, the content/tedium of the writing. if we want to get down to details, the particulars of the practice groups would be nice. I'm aware that appellate and scotus lawyers write the most. Let's talk, healthcare, ERISA, trade secrets, antitrust, debt finance, etc. How much time reviewing language, producing memo's or drafts per day? Excel modeling? You know, all those lawyery things beyond fantasizing about a life that doesn't so closely resemble your own.
We've talked on call and how troublesome the hours are etc. I get that very clearly, now to the other parts of the question if we may.
not terribly interested in how people feel about the state of the legal market from 10 years ago, or even 5 years from now, but I understand, everyone has trauma, gotta get that shit off your chest.