The “Top 14″ Get a Taste of the Toilet!
Our pals at the venerable “Grey Lady” today featured an article that we here at Big Debt found especially provocative. Perhaps those august muckrakers at the Times are regular readers of our humble little blog? Here’s a link to today’s piece, titled “Downturn Dims Prospects Even at Top Law Schools”:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/26/business/26lawyers.html?_r=2&hpw
Of course, our freinds at Above the Law have been following this story for months, as they point out here:
http://abovethelaw.com/2009/08/lame_nyt_article_on_legal_job_market.php
And now the WSJ Law Blog responds with a similar story:
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2009/08/26/with-biglaw-jobs-drying-up-help-us-help-julia/
Pass the Kleenex, U Penn! Cry us a river, Columbia! Though we take no delight in crass schadenfreude , it is worth pointing out that those outside the Top 14 schools have been experiencing the “downturn” in legal hiring since about 1985. I found this quote from a current NYU 2-L quite telling:
“You almost bank on the big firms hiring you because they’re really the only ones who can help you pay your debt,” he said, his mind already skipping forward to a situation he didn’t choose to articulate. “Quite frankly it would be an absolute disaster. I don’t know what I’d do.”
Since you’re obviously at a loss for words, allow us here at Big Debt to flesh-out your future: Welcome to reality, comrade. You’re barreling head-on into the Stalag 17 of temporary doc review hell! Welcome to $28 an hour straight time, along with cockroach infested basements and retina-burning hours of staring mindlessly into a computer screen. Did I mention the complete lack of health insurance? The lying, pimp-daddy temp agencies who skim 20% of your paycheck each week, cut rates and overtime mid-project, and do everything short of fellatio to keep the sociopathic, money-grubbing Biglaw partners happy at all costs?
Yes. This; my friend, is “what we do” for a living here at Big Debt. The absolute disaster that you try to “avoid imagining” is the stark reality that many of us 2nd tier grads have been living in for years. Scant media attention has been paid to us, and few barrels of ink have yet been drained writing of our plight. But that doesn’t make it any less real, or any less painful.
Like you, we once harbored hopes of a decent (and; dare we write, successful) life. We took out the same loans, paid the same tuition, and studied the same casebooks. Yet for us, scolding rather than sympathy was the usual reception we encountered when experiencing your current situation: “You should’ve studied harder for the LSATs,” said the experts. “You should’ve known all second-tier schools lie about placement” cried the career-services crew. “You should’ve gone to a Top 14,” said the recruiters.
Unlike today’s elite crew, we alone bore the blame for our sorry lot in life. No “economic downturns” came to our defense, no “transformative structural changes” could be indicted for our struggles. Nope. We did it the old fashioned way. We just plain fucked up. As George Carlin once quipped, “they call it the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.” Yes indeed. We believed “it” in spades. Hook, line and sinker, we swallowed the law school bait that bar admission was a fast-track to an upper-class lifestyle. Or at least, we erroneously assumed, a bulwark against desperation and abject poverty. We were wrong on both counts. Subtract four-digit monthly student loan payments from the $45 K a year most shitlaw firms pay (or the temp agency $28 an hour gigs) and you’ll soon find a crowd of well-educated food stamp recipients. This was of course of no journalistic consequence when the Seton Hall and Brooklyn Law mouth-breathers of the world experienced it, but a brand-new narrative naturally ensues when the Top 14 crowd end up angling for spots in the breadline.
Funny how things work out, isn’t it? As Bob Dylan wrote in Like a Rolling Stone:
“Now you don’t talk so loud. Now you don’t seem so proud. About having to be scrounging your next meal”
With the shine on those fancy degrees fading to rust and Biglaw collectively shitting their gold-plated diapers, you “gunners” have every right to be pissed off. We know we would be.
And no, we’re not without sympathy. After all, you can draw considerable pride from what you’ve already accomplished. You aced the LSAT’s, no? You were one of the chosen few able to correctly seat the orange spaceman next to the red alien on alternate Tuesdays while sticking the left-handed Vulcan in the gun turret on those clever “logic games,” right? You doggedly bit down and memorized those “rule against perpetuities” puzzles where the 84 year old fertile octogenarian was artificially inseminated by a donkey and left her half-human heirs a springing executory interest in a life estate, yes?
C’mon now, we know damn well you did. Fess up! You’ve already earned that goddamned 160 K, by Gosh, and now the Biglaw boys don’t want to pay up! Like Clark Grizzwold arriving at Wally World, you’ve endured a hard-fought voyage only to hear a laughing plastic automaton tell you the trip was all for naught.
Of course, all is not lost. There’s always the trusty small firm “fallbacks” if document review isn’t your bag, as we’ve pointed out here amply in the posts below. Of course, you’ll only be earning $115,000 a year less than what the AmLaw 250 crew pays, but remember that you’re “building experience,” as the old saw goes.
I hope you can survive on 45 K a year with those hefty loans, since that’s what most shit-law “firms” pay today here in NYC. Unfortunately, Sallie Mae and your landlord might not accept the much-ballyhooed small-law “experience points” in lieu of student loan or rent payments. They both have a nasty habit of actually asking for cash.
But fear not: I’m sure you’ll love the world of personal injury practice so much that money and food will be but an afterthought. Nothing gets the old legal juices flowing like taking a deposition in the grungy basement of Diamond Court Reporting in the Bronx. Let me elaborate on a typical “premises case”: You’ll suffer for 3 hours in an unair-conditioned room the size of a broom closet while interrogating some violent crackhead about the puddle of urine he slipped on in a Gerard Avenue dive bar. You’ll show up in the kangaroo-court bullpens of Room 707 in Bronx Supreme and yell out the name of your fender-bender case until your hapless hung-over adversary locates you. Then you’ll together fill out a toilet-paper “stip,” get grouched at by a law clerk during your status conference, and hop back on the subway to your office, where you’ll spend the remainder of your “lifestyle” 11 hour workday cutting and pasting reams of boilerplate auto-accident discovery requests together. At the end of 12 months your bonus will be a Starbucks gift card and a pat on the proverbial backside.
“Way to go, champ,” said our first boss as we wandered off for the holidays. He had held our holiday party in the office, since the phones had to be manned when his 1-800-U-HURT-ME commercial ran during daytime interludes of the Jerry Springer Show. Between bites of pigs-in-a-blanket, I signed up a juicy supermarket trip n’ fall case with heavy neck injuries and a gentleman named “Respeckt” whose thumb was recently gnawed off by a crackhouse pit-bull.
Now the Top 14 crew can join us second-tiers in these festive celebrations! Goodbye SullCrom, hello slip n’ fall! As the old Toyota commercials used to shout: “Oh, what a feeling!”
Once again, we’ve digressed. But really, the Times article was pure drivel. We suppose it’s really not surprising, considering the source. Remember folks, this is the same newspaper that dispatches idiots like Thomas L. Friedman to bumble haplessly around the globe on a fat expense account like Chevy Chase in the those old Vacation movies (yes, we’re National Lampoons fans here). This journalistic “Clark Grizzwold” never saw a Bangalore call center or Mumbai doc review factory he didn’t get all ga-ga over. One wonders what those data entry drones and Dell support desk staffers thought of a curiously American spectacle like Mr. Freidman, with his 1970s porn star mustache and unctuous, shopworn platitudes. One can easily imagine the awkward exchanges between Mssr. Friedman and an LPO doc reviewer:
“Greetings, I’m Thomas L. Friedman from the New York Times newspaper. What’s your name?
“Patel Ganesh Mogambo.”
“And what are these documents you’re looking at here, Patel?”
“They are Global Bi-Lateral Broker-Dealer Sub-Agreements generated under your U.S.A. Corporate Paper-Churning Act of 1996, Subchapter VII(b)ii.”
“Wow, sounds amazing. How did these documents make it all the way to India?”
“Some wise American law firm called the DLA Piper sent them to my employer so that we could review them to see if the world “shall” appears on page 4354, paragraph 7(g)ii of all 127,390 duplicates”
“Sounds fascinating, Patel. And congratulations on joining the spiffy new ‘global economy.’ What were you doing just a few years ago?”
“I lived on a goat farm outside Delhi, and at night attended the Ravi Sankesh Bajar College of Laws and Animal Husbandry. I am told that your country has an equivalent institution, something called the ‘Seton Hall Law School’, correct?”
“That’s right. And if I may ask, how much do you earn a week here at this legal process outsourcer, Patel?”
“I am paid thirty rupees, which in your American treasure is about 48 cents.”
“Amazing. Here is an autographed copy of my new book ‘The World is Flat’. In it, I write about how wonderful it is that extremely wealthy Americans can shamelessly exploit members of the Third World like yourself and realize even more disgusting profits than ever dreamt possible, while simultaneously driving down wages and benefits for licensed American professionals.”
“Thank you so much Mister Freidman. I will treasure it always as a memento of our most pleasant exchange. By the way, when you get back to your USA can you tell David Hasslehoff hello for all of us? I grew up watching Knight Rider on BBC re-runs and hope to one day code enough documents to buy my village a talking Trans-Am like KITT.”
“Actually, that car wasn’t a “green vehicle,” Patel. In fact, KITT was what us enlightened NY Times reporters call a “gas-guzzler.” It was recently traded in under our country’s ‘Cash for Clunkers’ program and replaced with a Honda Prius who sadly can’t talk, but does get 65 miles to one gallon of gasoline! Do you know many ‘liters’ of fuel savings that is, per chance?”
“Go fuck yourself, Mister Freidman. You a bad, bad man. I have already exceeded my 90 second daily rest break and will be fired by the DLA Piper law firm if I don’t get 500 more batches completed by 4 o’clock in today’s PM.”
So it goes in Manhattan, it goes in Banglaore. You can change the country, but not the conditions. Beneath Cesar’s deep big sky, we all try to scratch our way ahead. The question is thus: Does the fault lie in our firms, or in ourselves?
Law is 4 Losers, 2009
August 26, 2009 at 1:45 pm
Brilliant. Looks like Thomas Friedman and Lisa Solomon have much in common.
August 26, 2009 at 2:10 pm
Well written! Love the response to the “I don’t know what I’d do” quote.
August 26, 2009 at 2:13 pm
Should have closed my office door before reading your latest, Law is 4 Losers! Just great stuff. Keep em coming.
August 26, 2009 at 2:18 pm
Love it. Absolutely love it.
It’s funny ‘cuz it’s true.
August 26, 2009 at 2:39 pm
In the game of musical chairs that is legal recruiting, the T14 students are always going to find a chair. The only issue is how comfortable that chair will be. It’s the toileteers that will be left standing. That the elites will have to stoop down and snatch up the handful of crap jobs that were available to everyone else is bad news for everyone.
August 26, 2009 at 2:43 pm
MOARMOARMOAR
August 26, 2009 at 2:43 pm
Actually, you can go to a Top 14 school and still end up being a coder.
One of the smartest doc reviewers I ever met was approximately last in his HLS class.
August 26, 2009 at 3:18 pm
Very insightful article. I’m very surprised that, over the years, they was no similar article in the NYT exposing the wretched and disdainful “professional” lives of numerous 2nd tiers. Document review and all the ills that are associated with it have been festering in the legal industry’s underbelly for over a decade, yet not one(I maybe wrong and would be delighted to be corrected) revealing article ever emerged from this “eminent” newspaper. As for the industry’s periodicals, I can’t recall having read an article of the sort. It took the emergence of blogs like this to truly “exposed”the Hades world of this profession. Now that those from the elite law schools have to face the infernos of unemployment and underemployment, The Times sees it as a newsworthy story. What an elitist newspaper! Keep up the good work.
August 26, 2009 at 4:04 pm
Without the insane credit bubble and the associated paperwork that it generated, these big law firms don’t have anywhere near the amount of work for new associates to do. New associates, after all, tend to do the grunt work at these firms. Furthermore, because of the back log of deferred associates, big law firms won’t need to hire much for the next couple of years.
In fact, I expect big law to shrink over the next few years and that will mean that unless you do well at a T14 or extremely well at a lower tier school, you will not work in big law.
The fact that the NYT has finally chimed in about how big of a scam law school is (except for those at elite school or very top of their class) is good news. Pretty soon everyone will know the score about law school. Those who still take out an insane amount of debt to law school will have no one to blame but themselves.
August 26, 2009 at 4:33 pm
I graduated from Top 14 in the mid 80s. The dean said in his welcoming address that we would all have jobs. He was lying. I took a contract position for $20K with no benefits that I supplemented by teaching paralegals. Five years later, having relocated and taken another bar, I just a small, shitlaw firm that eventually closed when the senior partner was disbarred. I had managed to leave by then, though, to be a municipal attorney, complete with benefits, woo-hoo. We managed to scrape together a few years of stability, but then our glorious leader got into a fight with the mayor and council, and the office was shut down. Out into the market, into the teeth of the dot-com bomb and 9/11. More contract work, more years lost.
I’ve informed my kids that, if they go anywhere near law, I’ll beat them with a pipe wrench.
August 29, 2009 at 1:09 am
“I’ve informed my kids that, if they go anywhere near law, I’ll beat them with a pipe wrench.”
Truer words never spoken.
August 26, 2009 at 5:25 pm
love it! excellent post, made my morning! please keep it up!
August 26, 2009 at 5:44 pm
Ha, ha, ha, ha, yet another fine piece of comic writing!!
August 26, 2009 at 6:06 pm
Another great job Scotty. Just don’t be so harsh on what was once the great safety valve and shitlaw escape hatch of doc review. Last year, when it still existed, I make $100K+ clicking and it was great. Now, for all but the very few A listers and big law throw outs, doc review is dead. But it was a great way to extract worthwhile profit out of a totally worthless profession. Shit law is to be avoided at all costs. Jesus, they want folks to work for free in shitlaw. What a joke. With no good doc review around there is no further reason to be in law at all for all but the Preferred, Protected and or Connected.
August 26, 2009 at 6:08 pm
good one right thurrrrrr
August 26, 2009 at 6:26 pm
“Like Clark Grizzwold arriving at Wally World, you’ve endured a hard-fought voyage only to hear a laughing plastic automaton tell you the trip was all for naught.”
LOL! This is how I felt exactly…graduated T10 and constant unemployment since law school. Thanks for this, it was hilarious.
August 26, 2009 at 6:51 pm
Very nicely written. Look on the bright side, though, now that all of the elites are getting screwed maybe we will get some real student loan relief.
August 26, 2009 at 7:59 pm
Brilliantly funny and insightful “commentaries” on the state of the law, circa 2009. I only fear that you will burn out and leave us without these tremendously entertaining rants.
August 26, 2009 at 8:09 pm
I like your articles, and I see your point–the whole bait and switch about a promising career. But I can’t help but wonder–what could you be if you applied yourself to something else? Business, or professional writing, or….a JD doesn’t mean you have to practice law, or whine about not being able to practice law forever. You can do something where your attention to detail, excellent grammar and writing skills, etc. would be valued and, more importantly, rewarded monetarily. There’s a way out…but you have to give up the dream of being an ESQ as your main profession. Thoughts?
August 28, 2009 at 4:38 pm
Oh MJ. It’s very sweet that you think it has never occurred to some poor sap working in doc review that maybe, by golly, some other non-law career might suit him just fine.
What are YOUR thoughts on non-law jobs that alow one to make 4-figure monthly debt payments? Or how one would qualify for these jobs with a 3-year hole in one’s resume? Or whether non-legal employers even want the perceived cast offs of the legal profession? Particularly when a law degree is still widely seen as a license to print money?
You’re very sweet to want to help, but trust me, one’s options are rather limited when at least 20k of annual after-tax, take-home pay goes to debt servicers.
August 31, 2009 at 8:21 am
Well maybe, by golly, to use your phrase they should have done a bit of homework before borrowing so much money.
If you aren’t happy with doc review @ 30/hour try cleaning houses at 50 an hour. Hell, my maid gets $80… and she has no debt and a nice car.
August 26, 2009 at 8:46 pm
It’s good to see this article currently rest atop the ranking of the NYT’s most e-mailed.
The word is getting out, however slowly. Of course, all of the 1Ls at dumps like Drexel are more confidant than these T10 students.
August 26, 2009 at 8:53 pm
Oh man, that was hilarious! My friend is Indian and even he laughed at it all!! Very true…
August 26, 2009 at 9:04 pm
Please put up adwords or something so that you might get paid for your talents. You have enough experience in shitlaw to make your points. Now it is time to start reaping.
Remember, ATL was started by a YLS alum and has a HLS editor (plus a Duke girl). Your educational betters will eat your lunch here too if you don’t get proactive.
August 26, 2009 at 9:14 pm
Alas you are wrong about the poor economy-affected T14 grads – They will have a chance to join SullCrom et. al. after all! Don’t forget, Sullivan is an equal opportunity employer, and that means that even the most spurned and burned JD’s can reap just a smidge of the prestige that oozes out of the walls over there.
They can begin starting at the bottom, literally in the basement 1 or 2 levels below ground. There you can be tortured by depression and boredom – you’ll try to save money but in reality you will be strung out for months with minimal overtime, sent home at 7 or 8 pm while your egotistical staff attorney supervisors eat, sleep, laugh, fuck in the office and bill it up until 3:30am each day. You’ll get a literal taste of the BigLaw life to which you thought you were entitled. You can buy the same shitty food you would have bought as an associate, hell for dinner they will even give it to you for free! And depending on how much work your supervisors need to save for themselves, you might even get some weekend work or be able to work till 11pm, just like a real associate!
So don’t get to thinking there is no way for no-offered T14 grads to try on the whitest of the white shoes. Quite the opposite – firms like SullCrom and their feeder temp agency pimps (mostly madams, actually) will be glad to have you. You’ll just have to come in through the side door and wade through the shit floating in the basement.
August 26, 2009 at 10:05 pm
Great post and 100% accurate. However, I do not know what the point of the Thomas Friedman bit was for. You should delete that.
August 28, 2009 at 9:48 pm
Tom Friedman is brought up by this blogger because in “The World is Flat,” Friedman concludes that globalization (and outsourcing of jobs to India, etc.) is a good thing. The same way the ABA thinks outsourcing is “salutary” for our global economy. But here’s what I don’t get: Why didn’t the Times discuss outsourcing as one of the reasons why there are no legal jobs? The lack of jobs is not only because of the recession. And when is there going to be any digging around for what really motivated (?? $$$$ ??) the ABA authors of 08-451 to issue an opinion that has effectively doomed the future of law in the US?
August 26, 2009 at 10:08 pm
Forgot to add, I gave up on law after graduating a “Top Tier” school and trying to find a decent law job for 2 years.
I was once offered a job at a PI firm, but it was unpaid. The lawyer running the firm said “you eat what you kill” and the deal was that I kept 33% of whatever I brought in and settled with the insurance companies (no case ever went to actual trial). He even told me that he had his interns go knock on doors in the poor section of town to bring in clients. True story.
After that interview, I decided that I would rather shovel shit than be that type of lawyer and person.
August 26, 2009 at 10:39 pm
You know before being in all those movie-worthy trials. Edward Bennett Williams cut his teeth on premises liability cases. Maybe you should try to find some trip and fall cases to take for your own accountand head out to that basement to take those depos. You have to practice being a trial lawyer to be a trial lawyer..
August 29, 2009 at 1:14 am
I happen to know that L4L was a trial lawyer, an accomplished one, too, considering where he practiced. And I know the kind of people he worked for. The type that when you take a verdict for $50,000 demean you and ask “why not $75,000?” Even on the top of the pile of shit, you look down, and realize you’re on top of a pile of shit.
August 26, 2009 at 10:44 pm
There is a world of law practice that exists between the poles of biglaw and basement-dwelling contract work. There are many, many reputable mid-sized firms and boutiques in every market in this country. The attorneys at these firms may not make biglaw salaries, but they certainly do better than $45K. Also, many of these firms are engaged in interesting work for important clients. It’s not all med mal and personal injury. In this market, not everyone can work for Skadden. But that doesn’t mean that everyone not hired there will have to work for someone that advertises on daytime talk shows and chases ambulances. Look at smaller firms, and you can weather the economy making 80K and gaining experience. Stop whining. Start seeing the shades of grey. Find a solution. And if you can’t? Do something else for a couple of years.
August 28, 2009 at 4:47 pm
The “world of law” between big law and shit law is definitely out there. Unfortunately, it is stocked almost completely by big-law cast offs. They do not want recent grads, particularly the undistinguished. Since the majority of every law class will always be in the “bottom” 80 percent, that leaves a LOT of people out in the cold.
If people could stop looking at this as a profession, and start seeing it as a captive market for loan servicers, the true brilliance of the last 20 years of legal education in this country will become apparent. A lot of people are suffering, but a lot more got paid. School administrators, private lenders and loan servicers who lent money guaranteed by the government with no limits on interest or terms? They owned this country, and no one caught on to the scam until the t-14 grads were caught in the trap, too.
August 26, 2009 at 11:24 pm
Hilarious – Lost the plot once it got onto Thomas F. – But Hilarious till there
August 26, 2009 at 11:48 pm
I graduated from CLS (Crooklyn Law School). At the commencement speech, the dean said: “now you will never have to do manual labor again.” Thanks, Dean Wexler, but it would be nice to have some work to begin with. I worked for shitlaw firms for a few years with almost no salary and no health benefits. It’s not a happy place to be. I was lucky to get decent-paying small firm work after that, followed by a government job. When I got health insurance I almost cried with joy.
August 27, 2009 at 2:41 am
As hilarious as it is heart-wrenching, this completely says it all. I can’t believe law schools get away with putting people $150-200,000 in debt. I spent the summer at the DA’s office and had a good time joking with the court-appointed misdemeanor-level defense attorneys. Evidently, where I was, Legal Aid was reserved for defendants charged with felonies. If the charge was reduced to a misdemeanor, the court did a raffle to pick the off-the-street defense attorney to take the case on the tax-payers’ dime.
These defense attorneys were bitterly, wickedly funny. They talked about the crushing debt, the broke clients, the tiny independent offices they set up above pizza shop storefronts. They snarked about hustling for paying cases and showing up to court for handouts through the raffle when they (frequently) came up short on cash.
It’s the kind of real-world stuff they never tell you in the law school prospectus or at your career counseling sessions.
August 27, 2009 at 2:55 am
Too funny and true! It’s ludicrous that the NYT writes an article when a few elite law grads can’t find jobs. Meanwhile, in the rest of the legal industry…
Just goes to show you who the media is really looking out for. If you happen to be a small time nobody in Anywhere, USA, expect to be scorned if you fall on hard times.
August 27, 2009 at 3:44 am
[...] via Big Debt, Small Law [...]
August 27, 2009 at 3:49 am
If you do poorly on the LSAT, don’t go to law school. If you end up going to a non T-14 anyway, be prepared to suffer. The math is simple.
August 27, 2009 at 6:20 am
One of my fellow denizens of doomers.us posted a link to your blog in response to the NYT article. ROFL! Glad I found you. You’re now bookmarked in a prominent place. Love the writing style and the incisive commentary. BTW, took the LSAT in 04 and decided to go a different direction (special education), and have never been happier that I rejected law as a career. I’ll look forward to your future posts.
August 27, 2009 at 8:52 am
Once upon a time
you dressed so fine
You threw the Third tier bums a dime
in your prime,
didn’t you?
People’d call, say,
“Beware T14 grad, you’re bound to fall”
You thought they were all
kiddin’ you
You used to
laugh about
All the doc reviewers
hangin’ out
Now you don’t
talk so loud
Now you don’t
seem so proud
About having to be temping
for your next meal.
How does it feel?
How does it feel?
To be without Biglaw
Like a third tier grad
Like a rolling stone?
You’ve gone to the finest school all right, Miss HYS
But you know you only used to get
juiced in it
And nobody has ever taught you how to live out on the street
And now you’re gonna have to get
used to it
You said you’d never
compromise
With L4L, but now you
realize
He’s not buying any
law school lies
As you stare into the vacuum
of his eyes
And say,
do you want to
make a deal?
How does it feel?
Aw, how it feel?
August 27, 2009 at 11:40 am
L4Losers – another great post (Thomas Friendman bit went on a bit but great post)
unperson above – hilarious!!!
August 27, 2009 at 11:47 am
Hehe, love all the toileteers here praising the writing. A tip: writing that vindicates your childish grudges against people who outperformed you at every juncture is not by that fact alone “great.”
August 27, 2009 at 1:05 pm
As the profession collapses around us, we have the ABA and state and city bar associations doing “Diversity Workshops”, “Women in the Law luncheons” and other dinners for ‘distinguished Judges/Biglaw Partners/pro bono attorney’ where a bunch of Biglaw assholes turn up to get their photo taken for the glossy Bar magazine to show how much they care about it.
August 27, 2009 at 2:03 pm
i see your sitte it is very good man ok ok
August 27, 2009 at 2:30 pm
No, the Thomas L. Friedman bit was dead on. L4L, definitely leave this part in!
August 27, 2009 at 2:37 pm
Yep, typical response by ABA+Lawyers unions, crap on endlessly about ‘gender equality’ and ‘pro bono’ (why can’t these pompous morons ever just use the word ‘free’?)
All this garbage is to make themselves feel better, and cover themselves in sanctimonious glory. None of these morons have experienced REAL shitlaw – a room full of screaming legal aid clients down to their last syringe or REAL pressure.
Meanwhile the vast majority of the profession goes to hell in a handbasket.
August 27, 2009 at 4:27 pm
As a graduate of a top-25 law school four years ago with a successful-so-far legal career, I recognize that, when it comes to the purgatory of contract attorney work, “there but for the grace of God go I.” I was blind going in to law school that that’s what a lot of lawyers get stuck doing. But I now know many, many smart and talented people who, through no fault of their own, have gotten stuck in doc review and cannot get out. When people ask me whether they should go to law school, I definitely give it to them straight. (None of the crap people told me.)
August 27, 2009 at 5:24 pm
Anyone who thinks the only practice options are huge law firms or tiny firms doing PI work for crackheads is a moron. The vast majority of lawyers don’t do either. I have no sympathy for anyone, top law school or not, who thinks their career is over simply because they have been passed over by the Skadden Arps of the world. There are plenty of other ways to make a good living as a lawyer.
August 28, 2009 at 5:07 pm
There are? Details please!
PS- don’t forget everyone who graduated after 1996 has to cover a 4-figure loan payment each month.
August 29, 2009 at 1:18 am
Yes, Paul, please, enlighten us… let me guess… you handle real estate? divorce law? work as in-house counsel? please, tell us!
I think you’re correct that most lawyers don’t do PI or Biglaw… most don’t practice. And they’re the ones not in TTT debt, so they can afford to get out.
August 27, 2009 at 5:26 pm
I’m staying in law school. Most of the members of my family would give their own lives to be promoted to the level of being treated like a slave. As bad as the law industry sounds, your worst description of it is hog heaven compared to the factory work the rest of my family endures.
August 27, 2009 at 5:31 pm
Hey Skadden, here’s a really good thread for you to see. Look at all the TLS Lemmings trolling their future practice area. They really have no idea that they’ll be begging for this in 3 years.
http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=50145
August 28, 2009 at 12:12 am
[...] The Top 14 Get a Taste of the Toilet! Our pals at the venerable “Grey Lady” today featured an article that we here at Big Debt found especially [...] [...]
August 28, 2009 at 3:42 am
I’m with Brandon. I’m at a top-tier school, and even if I don’t get some high-rolling job out of school, it’s a hell of a lot better than doing manual labor in 100+ degree heat like my dad.
August 28, 2009 at 10:37 am
Looks as if law school graduates on this side of the Atlantic aren’t immune from document review hell either… http://bit.ly/13YyXN – Law School debts over here don’t tend to be as crippling, but still – £9 an hour isn’t going to buy you much in London!
August 28, 2009 at 3:50 pm
For 99% of law students, the alternative to professional school isn’t digging ditches in 100 degree heat or working in a sweatshop in chinatown. Most law students (especially at decent schools) have the credentials and drive to do other worthwhile things with their lives. But since starting salaries for non-engineering or finance majors hover in the 35k to 40k range, these students get seduced by the prospect of $80k-100k jobs that law school literature would lead you to believe get handed out to every Brooklyn and Seton Hall student at graduation. These same students are then shocked and angry when they graduate from law school three years later with tons of debt and less income potential than their friends that went straight into the workforce after college.
August 28, 2009 at 11:24 pm
The problem with your statement is that you believe the liberal arts undergrad kool-aid just as readily as you believe (or used to believe) the law school kool-aid. A non-engineering and non-finance ugrad degree (let’s just call this liberal arts for simplicity sake) does NOT average 35k-40k starting out. I’m not saying they’ll come out into poverty (though some do), but the average is way lower than that. We’re talking 25k, 30 if you go to a decent school. Of course, your Harvard-Yale-Princeton people will do decent even if they’re liberal arts. But you can’t use them as a barometer for people who go to “decent” schools. Decent is like SUNY Bing.
August 29, 2009 at 5:04 am
I graduated from SUNY Binghamton and then went to a local NYC law school.
While I am proud of my BA (came out w/ less than 12K debt), I remember the highest paying job offer as a Political Science major was a paltry $32K/year at some marketing company. I interviewed for paralegal positions also which all paid 30-40K. A few friends of mine that had liberal arts majors from Binghamton also faced 25K starting salaries because the demand for educated college grads is very low. My Binghamton classmates worked right next to Dartmouth grads at NYC companies making 30K/yr.
I chucked it all to attend law school, thankfully keeping my loan debt levels low by living w my parents at home – but it was depressing to see many small firms only offering 45-55K to me and my fellow Hofstra Law grads only a few years ago. To be fair, it is really horrible how law schools are charging tuition 3x the rate of inflation. That is really the source of the problem here, not the legal profession. Law schools and the ABA need to be held accountable for the problems they are causing..
August 29, 2009 at 11:31 am
I agree with your premise, which is that the stats being pushed out to the media with respect to how much $$ college grads earn are just as bogus as the law school stats.
HOWEVER, the main point of the poster you replied to is that law school grads in general have the drive and ambition to succeed and therefore would have made a decent living without going to law school.
And of course for many of them, it would have been better if they had never even gone to college.
August 31, 2009 at 11:27 am
Although I agree that a BA is worthless and earns poverty wages for many (if not most), I have a problem with the rest of your post. The alternative to a JD isn’t just no JD. There are plenty of things that kids with a worthless BA can do. There are many masters programs: from teaching to accounting and many others. Many of those programs will have grads earning a decent wage upon graduation, and in the case of teaching, the masters is free in some states. The problem with getting a JD is that it piles on the debt and precludes one from changing professions easily.
So let’s not make this an argument about JD vs. nothing at all, because that’s not at all what the options are.
August 31, 2009 at 1:08 pm
I’m in new york city, so there may be some selection bias among my friends. But at 30 years old, half my friends are liberal arts grads who have 9 years of experience and now make between 50 and 100K (and a few make a lot more). It’s not a ton of money, but it’s about the same as what most lawyers from non-elite law schools make at this age, especially when you figure in the loan payments. The other thing to consider is that every lawyer I know hate’s their job. None of my non-law friends really mind their jobs. Working sucks for everyone, but legal work is a special kind of suck.
August 29, 2009 at 3:00 pm
It’s hard to argue with the notion that college for the masses is an unmitigated disaster. There isn’t enough money/resources to pay for everyone’s education. The result is that we are funneling young people through undergraduate schools with life hobbling non-dischargeable loans. What other nation on earth starts their young people out with massive debt? This does not even include credit cards, which are another huge problem.
The massive expansion of private schools built off the back of loan debt is yet another bubble waiting to pop. We need to have more people attending community colleges and vocational schools.
It’s not the Harvard or Yales of the world that present the problem. It’s the crummy third or fourth tier private schools that are unspeakably raking in millions off the backs of unemployables. Sound familiar? The TTT model is not a cash cow for law schools it applies across the educational spectrum.
If we are going to nationalize an industry, far better to take over the educational industry than health care.
August 31, 2009 at 8:27 pm
Actually, we should nationalize both.
But it’s good to have you on board with at least one comrade.
September 2, 2009 at 3:02 pm
I don’t think the problem is, “college for the masses.”
The problem is:
- the government is paying private corporations to make loans, and guaranteeing these loans.
- the government is asking nothing in return, apparently expecting the free market to sort itself out.
- the students must then repay the PRIVATE company for the government’s largesse.
It’s the same problem we have with defense contractors. People expect the private actors to be more efficient than the government, but by using government money to support private actors, we create an unregulated monopoly instead of a free market system. There are no xhecks. There is no loan shopping.
Schools have been able to raise tuition at an incredible rate, lenders enjoy special status and risk-free business (loans are repaid by the government, and students don’t have many options) Then it’s all repaid by the students. It’s brilliant. Sick, but really brilliant.
September 8, 2009 at 10:18 pm
Actually, yes, in the richest nation in the world, there is enough money to pay for everyone’s education. We are certainly not poorer than European countries that do so, and to look at the amount spent on the military and illegal, useless wars, clearly we could have that money. Further, it is privitization that has driven tuition costs up so much; when the government paid for most college education, it was cheap; wages were also higher across the board, and rents were lower.
August 29, 2009 at 9:58 pm
There simply is an overabundance of lawyers in this nation. There are 1.14 million lawyers living in a country of 305 million people. Do we really need 1 lawyer for every 267 people?! There is not enough PAID legal work to satisfy those with law degrees, let alone the 50,000 fresh JDs that graduate from law school every year.
Again, law school is designed to benefit law profs, administrators, and provide a cash cow to the larger universities. The oversupply of attorneys also helps corporations, BigLaw, and wealthy individuals keep their costs down. Why the hell else would the ABA allow more law schools to be built? – they can do the math and they know the reality. These pigs simply do not give a shit about law students, starving solo practitioners, and small law offices.
August 29, 2009 at 11:45 pm
Please write a post about sending the FTC after TTT’s for deceptive advertising in their brochures and career/salary stats.
September 1, 2009 at 1:21 am
I have a BA in a liberal arts field, a master’s from NYU, and a JD. I am licensed in two states. A BA and a master’s from NYU NEVER got me an offer for a full-time paying job with benefits in NYC or elsewhere. I worked contract jobs, secretary jobs and mall jobs for seven years with a BA and master’s from NYU. I went to law school in hopes of getting a full-time, paying job with benefits. I had no dreams of LA Law. Nothing has changed–no new job opps have opened for me. The only change is now I owe more in student loan debt and can no longer survive on the mall and secretary jobs I could survive on before law school. I have friends who are massage therapists and nurses who didn’t get bachelor’s degrees or higher education and who own homes and have stability. Now that I have gone through this, I can’t advocate that anyone get higher education. So far, none of my degrees have enabled me to survive in this world.
September 2, 2009 at 3:07 am
Lawyer, are you serious? Maybe the reason you are perpetually unemployed is due to your attitude and not your degrees. A degree alone isn’t supposed to get you a job – its a combination of your skills, what you have taken from that education, your personality, work ethic, drive, ambition and desire to be gainfully employed in your choice of profession,.
You sound unfocused and over-entitled. You could be owning a home and have stability even with your JD but its not anyone else’s fault that you were unable to use the education and skills you learned in law school and your externships to apply that in your real life. Did you ever try to become a solo practitioner? Ever try to work your way up at a law firm? Stop blaming your education and look deeper. Plenty of lawyers out there have as much debt as you or more, and are doing just fine. I am one of them, in fact,. I have 110K in educational debt that includes a MA in Philosophy and a JD from a school ranked 25-50. But I am working as a lawyer at a mid sized firm and enjoy what I do. I started at a crappy salary and worked my way up over the years to a respectable $110K salary. It took a lot of work, but I did it. Maybe you should look deep inside yourselves and ask yourselves who really failed here – YOU, not the institutions that provided you with the tools to ply your trade.
September 1, 2009 at 1:43 am
Scott:
Your next entry should probably address the actual lies and manipulation of statistics re: lawyer salaries as per National Jurist and other law school publications.
I read a recent artciel in the National Jurist that completely infiuriated me. It stated that the average median STARTING salaries for graduates of Seton Hall, Cardozo, NYLS, Hofstra, Brooklyn were all in the $77K range and above. This is a flat out lie. Check out the web site for National Jurist and look at their back issues – particularly the Cover Issue that says “How Much Will You Earn”. I would post the link/URL but I think you can find it easily if you just google the Magazine and then look at their Archives section for back issues (each magazine can be viewed online as if you were looking at the Print edition).
There is a LOT of material inside that magazine that is flat out false. It sugar coats a lot of the dismal reality that faces newly admitted lawyers today, such as ousourcing (hardly ever discussed in that magazine, which is geared toward law students), the over supply of lawyers and flat demand for lawyers, including the increased automation of legal services that are putting solos out of business (ie legalzoom.com). All of their articles are nohting but mouthpieces for law school administrators and law school Deans to justify their existence. Seriously, there is SOO much material there you would have a field day.
I look forward to reading your next blog including your analysis and research of how the legal profession has changed in the past 5-10 years and how this changing landscape will affect the practice of law. We all agree with the kernels of truth in your prior entries, but now I am hungry to read actual hard core analysis using the data that is actually in print so we can material to affect change and imbue upon our state leaders to increase pressure on the ABA to STOP ACCREDITING more toilet law schools and stop outsourcing doc review jobs to India!!
I eagerly await your next post!
September 1, 2009 at 2:40 am
There are only 14 law firms in the United States worth working at. If you don’t work for one of them, you will be a contract coder. No legal work of any importance is done anywhere else.
If you work for a midsized law firm or smaller, you are not worth the time of day. People at midsized law firms always make less money than their biglaw counterparts. There are no midsized firms where anyone is making $1 million.
All biglaw partners make $2 million or more. There are no biglaw firms where most partners make $300k. None at all.
There are no corporate jobs worth having.
The Vault prestige index is very important to lawyers. If your firm isn’t on the Vault prestige index, you will be looked down upon by your peers.
Everything above is 100% true. Really!
September 1, 2009 at 12:37 pm
you have some really good posts here. Im going to spend the next few days reading them. i love your writing style and I’m really happy to visited your blog. keep those posts coming
September 2, 2009 at 3:48 am
Legal work is very boring. I’m glad I got out of law. I took a pay cut, but my hours are better and I actually look forward to going to work. I mean, really, who wants to have a job where all you do is legal research and memorandum writing? Yes, that was my biglaw experience.
Before you say anything, I also went to a smaller law firm before I got out of law altogether. I don’t see what the buzz is about…being a lawyer sucks.
September 2, 2009 at 3:19 pm
Meanwhile, CUNY Law, arguably the lowest ranked law school in NYC…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_University_of_New_York_School_of_Law
Quick before it goes away!
“In these tough economic times, it is very difficult for CUNY Law graduates to find legal employment. The class of 2008 statistics have never been published on the CUNY Law website and the career services office has been suggesting that class of 2009 graduates accept non-legal employment until the economy recovers.”
See:
http://www.law.cuny.edu/career/Statistics.html
September 4, 2009 at 7:31 pm
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September 22, 2009 at 4:21 am
I really liked your perspective! look forward to more insightful info.
September 22, 2009 at 8:01 pm
I’m sitting in my shit job small firm DYING laughing at this post! You are hilarious and dead-on accurate! So funny that not being able to find a job after law school didn’t become a travesty until the top tier grads were effected.
November 11, 2009 at 9:31 am
Except the difference between you and the kids now falling short from the T14 is that they are smarter, better students. And in the long run, they’re going to do better than TTT grads. Why? Because they deserve it.
November 16, 2009 at 6:32 pm
I don’t understand why everyone is so shocked that an incredibly expensive education from a mediocre school in a hyper competitive field could be a recipe disaster. It’s like people think they are entitled to a good salary just because they attended law school. If you didn’t understand the risks of making a huge investment in a poorly ranked school you should have done the research, and if you did understand then your naive for thinking you were such a beautifully unique snowflake that it wouldn’t happen to you. Don’t be bitter, your joy in other people’s failure is sickening.
January 21, 2010 at 2:43 am
That must be the hardest I have ever laughed while reading a law blog. Or should I have been crying?