Mercenary, naive, arrogant applicants

Graduate School Law School
1

<p>I just need to vent. I've been lurking (sometimes posting) on this board, and have been reading the other law student boards and postings by applicants. It started out as curiosity about what my kid was going through.</p>

<p>What is missing completely is any true sense of the profession. </p>

<p>Applicants arrogantly assume that BigLaw is the only desirable job (even though they have no real understanding of the mind-numbing work performed as a lowly associate). Applicants arrogantly assume that T14 schools will guarantee them high paying jobs and high-level status in society, and students going to lower level schools are stupid and unlikely to succeed. There is little or no grasp of professional career development or professional ethics. It appears that these future lawyers believe they are guaranteed BigLaw, leading to either partnership or Fortune 10. </p>

<p>Instead of being the brightest and the best, entrusted with the laws of our country and the faith of their clients, the boards suggest that law school applicants are self-absorbed, greedy and self-congratulatory. One wonders how many personal statements from these applicants falsely claimed to have an interest in public service and true leadership. Questions about legal careers chorus "how much money can I make" and "how little can I work?" </p>

<p>The flames and exchanges on the other top web site for law applicants are shameful for future lawyers. Discussions about law schools focus on social life, scholarships, level of competition and whether BigLaw hires graduates, as opposed to any analysis of legal programs offered or level of scholarship. </p>

<p>OK, I understand that some of this is a function of maturity (although some of these applicants are nontraditional applicants who should know better). I understand that money is a big concern to students about to assume six-figure debt. I understand that postings are sometimes submitted without much thought.</p>

<p>Still, at the end of the day, I can't see myself ever wanting to hire/work with any of these arrogant ****ants. Surely other practicing lawyers will recognize phoniness and misplaced values, when these students actually interview for positions. </p>

<p>I hope they are not the future of our profession.</p>

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<p>I agree, I’ve been reading the other site as well just trying to help out my daughter who has applied this year. I keep asking her are you sure you want to do this. She has a different take on it and I think in the end will be okay but I do worry about her classmates. It a sad state when all they care about is the Big Law salary.</p>

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<p>Screw big law, I want to be the next Jack McCoy! <em>squeal</em></p>

<p>Ah, delusions of grandeur.</p>

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<p>I don’t believe today’s law school applicants are more naive, mercenary, or arrogant than my cohorts were when we were applying to law school three decades ago. I doubt that our sense of the profession was any more true when we were seeking admission to it than we find in today’s neophytes. The term “BigLaw” had yet to gain currency, but there a comparable desire to land jobs with employers who paid well. </p>

<p>For the good ones, time and experience will work their magic, and sand down their rough edges. It takes time in the practice of a profession to develop a true sense of it.</p>

<p>There have been major changes to the legal profession since I entered it:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>The pace of practice has quickened considerably, starting with the advent of the “FedEx” overnight service, the fax machine, and information technologies.</p></li>
<li><p>Today’s big law firms are far larger than the biggest firms of my salad days, thanks in large part to mergers of firms. This has led to a coursening of law firm culture, and a decline of collegiality. A partner in a firm with 600 partners won’t have even a nodding acquaintance with most of them. Their interactions have become more abstract, and more focused on the bottom line.</p></li>
<li><p>Because of their large class sizes and relatively low capital requirements, universities can actually make money from operating law schools. This has led to a significant increase in the number of law schools, and in the number of new lawyers, untethered to the demand in the marketplace for their services. This has led to a starker bifurcation of the profession between the haves and the have-nots, although that bifurcation is by no means new.</p></li>
</ol>

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<p>Greybeard: </p>

<p>I usually find myself agreeing with you more often than not, but I don’t agree that law school applicants were as mercenary, naive or arrogant 30 years ago. For one thing, the profession was esteemed more highly. Attorneys and other graduate degrees were rarer in a time where a much lower percentage of people even went to college, and accordingly received a higher level of respect. Many high-paying jobs were available to college graduates and industry offered high-paying jobs to those with high-school degrees, so the applicants who chose to study law were often inspired to invest in further education by an interest in government or community service. Lawyers didn’t advertise in the yellow pages (you’d see a discrete claim of specialization with client references in the back of Martindale). </p>

<p>We went to law school at a time (60s and 70s) where public activism was more of a generational commitment. If someone was going to law school just for the big bucks, they would have been more reluctant to admit it publicly. Of course, we did not have the forums for publicly embarrasing admissions of self-interest, greed, stupidity, immaturity, lack of respect for others, and other faults that many applicants now appear unashamed to publish…maybe if we had access to anonymous bulletin boards on the Internet, applicants in the 60s and 70s would have felt more free to disclose our character weaknesses to the world. It’s very likely that we would have posted Facebook pictures that would now be coming back to haunt us. (I wonder how many gray-haired lawyers will admit to having streaking, weed-smoking or Civil Disobedience pictures in their college yearbooks…) </p>

<p>To spend a few minutes on your other notes, I don’t believe a faster or more complex practice means that lawyers are excused from acting professionally. After all, our forefathers practiced law without the telephone or Westlaw. We adjust. I’ve used carbon paper, liquid copiers, Xerox copiers, and electronic files without missing a beat. Technology is just another tool.</p>

<p>Likewise, the size of law firms doesn’t excuse individual lawyers from acting professionally although I concede that increasing overhead eventually can cause a firm’s culture to emphasize billability and work load over quality and professionalism. </p>

<p>I don’t believe that the quality of law schools is directly associated to the quality of the lawyers being produced, which was part of my underlying theme that heart of the profession is being missed. Going to Harvard, Yale, Columbia or Stanford as an exceptionally bright student doesn’t guarantee that you will become a good lawyer, especially if an applicant persists in being arrogant, injudicious when flaming other students going to law school (who will, in fact, be your opponents or compatriots someday…). Likewise, going to Cooley doesn’t mean that you will be a bad lawyer, especially if you are diligent, have good legal instincts and are able to show clients, Judges and peers that you know what you’re doing and won’t waste their time and money. </p>

<p>I’ve worked with a Harvard lawyer who was selected for layoff due to his awful personality. I worked with a NYU lawyer who was able to do wonderful research on esoteric legal issues that no client wanted to pay for (preserve me from lawyers who want to “make law,” please). I’ve met practicing lawyers who were unprepared, less than straight-forward with the Court, and so forth. I don’t know any lawyer who evaluates an opponent based on where they went to law school. As we all know, lawyers have drug, alcohol and marital problems which obviously can affect anyone from any school. The naive arrogance of applicants choosing schools and intending to study law based only on goals of Big Money and Big Law is astounding. </p>

<p>As you pointed out, time and practice may smooth away some of the rough edges. Law is a way of life, not just a job. If prospective lawyers view the law as a job instead of a profession, then they fail to understand this. This understanding should be part of applicants’ core belief system, not just something polished up for a personal statement.</p>

<p>Yeah, I know. Not only am I cranky, but I’m totally and ridiculously naive myself. (I’m surprised no one has asked me if I believe in Santa Claus too.) But I do practice what I preach, and believe that I’ve had a successful career as a result.</p>

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<p>Neonzeus,</p>

<p>I wasn’t suggesting that any of changes in the profession I discussed earlier excused anyone from acting professionally. I lament the decline of collegiality.</p>

<p>I don’t regret the coming of advertising to the legal profession. In the days when lawyers limited themselves to discreet announcements in Martindale-Hubbel, poor people had a much harder time finding lawyers to take their cases.</p>

<p>I’m in-house now, but had a practice for many years that was focused primarily on representing plaintiffs in personal injury cases. I was happy to advertise, not only in the Yellow Pages, but also on foreign-language television broadcasts. It was an efficient way to let potential clients know what services we offered, and that they could work with lawyers who spoke their language.</p>

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<p>Interesting discussion (for an older generation, anyway). There have been significant cultural shifts over the past twenty five years or so regarding the aims and goals of higher education. When asked what they hoped to get out of college, students thirty years ago said they wanted to excel in their field or make the world a better place. A minority said “to make a lot of money.” For today’s students that is the majority response, by a large margin. On the one hand, that seems a shame–there can be a deep satisfaction in learning that goes well beyond a merely utilitarian purpose. On the other hand, higher education is so expensive that young people face pressures few of us knew a generation ago. They really do need to make a lot of money to pay for the privilege of a college and graduate education.</p>

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<p>I think there is a lot of arrogance among the elite schools (in undergrad) and this carries over to applicants.</p>

<p>For me, money has to be important. My parents will have spent nearly 250,000 dollars on college over the last four years, which has led to a lot of loans. I want to pay these off for my parents, as they have given up a lot for me to go to college. Law school will ask me to take out another 100k in loans. Quite simply, big law is the only real option if I go to law school and would like to cover my parents debt in a reasonable amount of time. </p>

<p>The applicants may have changed, but the costs have skyrocketed.</p>

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<p>I thoroughly enjoyed reading this discussion as it is a reflection on how I approached my law school application process. Graduating from a mediocre college with a useless degree that would probably net me $35k/yr if I were to go into the workplace, I looked forward to law school as a way of getting that oh so highly prized $160k salaries. I applied to a number of law schools, got into many of them, and ended up going to a tier one school (albeit not a T14). I like the school, I like the classes, and my grades are good enough to get biglaw if the economy permits.</p>

<p>Except now when I talk to 3Ls who got no-offered their 2L summer, or those who had their offers revoked, or even those that had a full productive summer with a job awaiting them, I realize that maybe money really isn’t everything. These guys aren’t… well, happy. And I know the 60-hour workweeks aren’t conductive to family life either. So yeah, although I might consider doing a summer at a large firm next year, if the economy permits, I’m not sure if I would pursue it as a career, but I’ll keep my eyes open. Right now I’m more interested in federal work with more normal hours, even if it’s half the pay. </p>

<p>For the record, my personal statement falsely claimed to express an interest in public interest work. It’s no longer false, though. I do think that a lot of people choose biglaw because they want to make up for the cost of law school in some manner. I think in some ways though, the CCRA makes that point moot.</p>

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<p>There are so many elitists on this board who think the Ivy league is the only place to go to school to receive a quality education.
College is more about growing as a human being rather than just learning a curriculum. The college ‘experience’ is so important, and you draw on those experiences for the rest of your life.
It comes down to this: Those who think happiness will be derived from a large salary are sadly mistaken. Financial success is a small portion of the overall well being of a person.</p>

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<p>Neo
looks like you and my hubby went to law school during the same time period. 30 years ago, it was desirable to obtain employment in such areas as gov’t or agencies like Legal Aid. Of course my frame of reference is based on the socio-economic background of my group of friends- mostly middle class “kids” from NYC who were SUNY grads and went to such law schools as Brooklyn, Fordham, Buffalo and like institutions. It’s also based on the fact that hubby’s JD degree probably cost less than $10,000 or the equivalent of one year salary for a college grad back in the days. </p>

<p>It’s probable that graduates of the more elite institutions (even way back in the 60’s-70’s) had similar expectations of going into “big law” (or the "60’s equivalent) as today’s law grad- The opportunities and expectations of the Harvard/Stanford grad will always be vastly different than grads of more humble law schools.
But the real big difference between generations and today’s obsession to get admitted into a top school and go into Big Law may just boil down to the fact that many of today’s law school grads are going to be deeply in debt and may see big salaries as a way to get out of it.</p>

<p>are kids today more mercenary and arrogant today than 30 years ago?? I don’t see them responding differently than today’s parent.<br>
Just read the parents board- how many times do we see a posting from an 8th grade parent- asking what EC’s should my kid be involved with so they can get into HYP??
Haven’t we all become a bit more cynical and calculating?
Haven’t the Law Schools become more calculating too? It seems like they too are playing a game of trying to outdo one another and hold onto their place on the USNWR listing. Will UVA go past Mich in the rankings and will Duke go to the top 10? Seems like admission decisions are made with one eye on the rankings with the backgrounds and experience of the applicants becoming secondary.</p>

<p>I am a bit heartened this year- it looks like schools are beginning to look at GPA’s a bit more closely, and a 174 LSAT with a sub par 3.0 is no longer an automatic admittance into a T-14. I really am hoping law schools are beginning to take a more holistic approach to admission and not make their placement on USNWR their # 1 concern.</p>

<p>even my own kid who is probably leaning towards union/employment law, might want to work for a couple of years in “biglaw/big salary” environment so she could pay off debt as quickly as possible. And then have the freedom to get on with her life and do what she wants to do-
It’s an interesting time for all!</p>

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<p>Good topic, Neonzeus.</p>

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<p>I think this is the source of much of the problems with the legal profession. When there are so many lawyers being produced it leads to many of the unpleasant side-effects as described by others in this thread.</p>

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<p>I’m heartened by the responses to my posting. Frankly, I expected to be flamed by the HY/T14/T1 contingent. </p>

<p>My response to the claim that there are too many lawyers is that I acknowledge that there are certainly are too many BigLaw lawyers, wannabee BigLaw lawyers, and lawyers in certain cities like NYC, Boston and Chicago. Yes, it’s a lot harder for a student from a lower tier school to break into those markets, the cost of living is higher, and the quality of life for a young lawyer even with a six-figure salary to pay student loans is not particularly good.</p>

<p>I do not believe, however, that there are too many good small town or Rust Belt lawyers, lawyers who represent families when their kid gets a DWI or they need help with Grandma’s estate, lawyers able to assist a family understand farm subsidies, or lawyers able to help the new small-business owner with incorporation at a reasonable cost. Admittedly, these lawyers are unlikely to net anything close to six figure salaries. After student loan payments, there might not be much left over. Big-law doesn’t have a large presence in the rust belt, farming belt, or the small towns of America. It’s another form of arrogance to assume that the quality of life or the practice of law outside of major cities is so poor that young lawyers who choose it are lower-tier people too. </p>

<p>When considering career development and the profession, the full range of possible professional services should be carefullly weighed…not just the job that will provide the biggest financial return. Whether from a T14 or a T4 school, the lawyer who just wants “BigLaw” without considering what he or she would actually be working on, is totally missing the point. That applicant may pick a career path based on money only, and find himself working on a corporate merger at 2:00a.m. in ten years wondering what happened to his life. The applicant who pursues BigLaw as the only reasonable goal could find herself working a small firm in ten years, feeling like a failure because she didn’t get offered a partnership from BigLaw and didn’t find that expected Fortune 10 job. The applicant who assumed the T14 degree was a guarantee of success could be teaching business law to undergrads in 10-years, wondering what happened to his dream of being the next Clarence Darrow. The arrogant applicant who assumes that a top-school is stepping stone to a Judicial appointment might be a Small Claims Court Judge in 20-years, angry and frustrated that this is as close as she is going to get to a higher Bench. </p>

<p>Yes, there are many, many students who will actually find career satisfaction at BigLaw, or who will find their dream jobs only as a result of T14 opportunities. There are applicants who want to work at the jobs in my examples, and would find those jobs to be very fulfilling. There are certainly many applicants who will become BigLaw partners, Judges and Professors of Law.</p>

<p>My condemnation is reserved for the applicants who denegrate the profession and other applicants by valuing the legal profession only by measures of BigLaw, Big Money, or law school ratings, and who are also so presumptuous and naive as to assume that they will find their paths easy JUST because they were admitted to an elite school. Whew. I did it again. Sorry. Can you imagine my poor kid, who gets to hear me all the time?</p>

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<p>All I have to say is, well, I have to put food on my table, and practicing law is a good way to do it.</p>

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<p>Well, futurenyu, I am fairly interested in business… and I am grinning a bearing my MBA program, of which I have finished 24 of 42 credits.
You are going to go through a 80+ credit, 3 to 4 year program just to put food on the table? Unless you love it, not only will you get sick of studying it, you will hate yourself for doing it.
Believe me… Money isn’t everything. Life is too short not to love what you do.</p>

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<p>I have a couple of thoughts on this topic.</p>

<p>First, to neonzeus’s point, </p>

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<p>For attorneys like me, who put themselves through college and then through law school, addressing the problem of how to make student loan payments while paying rent, eating and keeping the phone and heat turned on is the very first thing we must consider when looking for employment. BIGLAW is often the only way (and certainly was for me the only way) to make ends meet. Whether working in BIGLAW is an ultimate goal or a stepping stone to other things, it is not a terribly bad place to begin a career. In my first few years in BIGLAW, I worked on cutting edge matters that often landed on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, I worked with some of the leading thinkers in the area of M&A, securities and corporate governance (and much of what is learned in the first few years of practice is undoubtedly learned by observing how the best lawyers around do what they do successfully), and I was mentored and guided by some brilliant corporate lawyers who I still turn to today when I need a sounding board for an idea. </p>

<p>What price did I pay? I had absolutely no life. I typically worked 7 days a week, including holidays, and I was on call at all times. Clients demand no less these days. When someone mentioned FedEx and faxes earlier, they were absolutely correct – these technologies changed the face of legal practice. When they first became prevalent, every document and every brief could be turned and returned to the client overnight. I made many trips to the main FedEx office in NYC to catch that last departing truck at 11 p.m.! Now, with e-mail, and documents that are attached, there is not even tolerance by clients for overnight. Every demand is expected to be met instantaneously. </p>

<p>Second, I don’t necessarily find that new lawyers entering BIGLAW these days are arrogant; however, it drives me and my colleagues absolutely BATTY that these young lawyers expect to make the big bucks but also expect to go home in time for dinner with their girlfriends or birthday parties with their fraternity brothers. That’s just not the way that it works, and particularly now, in this economy, those attorneys are the first ones losing their jobs. If you want to make the big bucks, you have to be willing to make the sacrifices. That’s all. If you want more work/life balance on your own terms, take a different job. Go to a smaller city. Make less money. The reality is always going to be that if you are in your mid-twenties and making $160,000 per year with no experience whatsoever, your law firm expects to own you. </p>

<p>Dinner with your girlfriend on Valentine’s Day? You had better stand ready to cancel if you get a call asking (and by that, I mean demanding) that you work. Going on a long-planned vacation? You had better have found a colleague to cover your matters full stop while you’re away, and you must leave your full contact information for every leg of your trip with your administrative assistant (who, by the way, you share with 3-5 other attorneys). You will likely be getting calls and faxes while you are away. Yes, it is possible that you will be asked (and again, by that I mean told) to postpone your vacation. I would suggest that you always buy trip insurance. Grandmother died? Take a day and please go and see your family. You should find someone to cover for you while you are gone, and you should plan on getting back to the office immediately thereafter. Your wife is in labor? Finish what you are doing at work, then the law firm will send you in a car straight to the hospital to meet her there. Let her deliver the baby, head home and shower, and then it’s back to the office for you. Can you take paternity leave? Sure, but don’t be surprised if your colleagues and superiors think less of your career prospects for it. </p>

<p>I’m just telling it like it is. Big salaries come at a big cost.</p>

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<p>Don’t pretend for a second that lawyers of your generation are on average, any less greedy than the applicants applying for Law school these days. There is a reason Lawyers have a reputation for being narcissistic, anal scumbags and this stereotype sure as heck wasn’t conceived of recently, it’s been around for years. So don’t worry about how the older generation of lawyers will perceive the younger generation of applicants in a few years - hey, I’m sure those kids will fit right in. :)</p>

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<p>sallyawp, your description of BIGLAW is very accurate. There is no such thing as easy money in law.</p>

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<p>To whom are you speaking? Who is the “your” in your allegation? Calling someone who you don’t know narcissistic and a scumbag is a pretty nasty allegation.</p>

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<p>Those who go into biglaw as a lowly associate will soon be humbled by the work, hours, and status along with the chances of actually making it up that system.</p>