<p>Potatopancakes, just out of curiosity, where do you hope to work after you graduate? Thank you for sharing!</p>
<p>Sally, I suggest you read:</p>
<p>[Being</a> a Happy, Healthy and Ethical Lawyer - AveryIndex](<a href=“NameBright - Domain Expired”>NameBright - Domain Expired)</p>
<p>It is lengthy and a little dated but it is spot on.</p>
<p>In the end, it is a question of quality of life above of all else. Everything I know and have heard from my “big law” friends leads me to believe that QOL is sorely missing in big law.</p>
<p>And for all of those partners making 7 figure salaries, how many associates and junior partners were exploited, used and abused and then discarded, especially in today’s legal environment? As for those who made it, at what cost? I can assure you that these people are far more important in their own minds because of their achievements than those of any others.</p>
<p>davidg, that link’s article was LONG! Very illuminating, however. </p>
<p>I will hopefully get some time to comment more! I have a quiz coming up and need to study. But this topic of firm culture is quite interesting!!!</p>
<p>The professor in that article does make it seem like you’re selling your soul when you join a biglaw firm, lol. At least it seems like a test of your soul!</p>
<p>“If you do good work, in whatever field you work, you will sooner rather than later have plenty of business.”</p>
<p>Wow, I don’t agree with that at all. It’s possible to be a terrific attorney who is terrible at attracting business. In fact, I think the majority of attorneys I’ve worked with fell into that category.</p>
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<p>Exactly. After a few years, the way up the career legal ladder is business development, aka sales.</p>
<p>It is very possible, and happens quite often, that a terrible attorney does a great marketing job and gets lots of business. But a terrific attorney, who does a terrific job, will sooner or later develop a reputation as a go to person. I know of few of these types, they make no effort to market their practices and yet still have more business than they can handle.</p>
<p>I think too many attorneys are scared to go out on their own because it is perceived as so difficult to make it. In my small town, it is the rare competent solo-practiioner . . or small man firm trial lawyer who is not making a very good living. Sure there are the alcoholics and drug abusers who will never make it, but they would never make it anywhere. At any rate, given the economy, many lawyers will have no choice but go it alone or very small if they want to practice law.</p>
<p>DavidG, it just doesn’t work that way with regard to rainmaking. More than anything, connections are the best way to get business. Also, in some practices insurance companies pay the bills and choice of law firm then has nothing to do with expertise. In larger firms, the billing attorney is not the responsible attorney, and many people don’t hang out a shingle because the cost of doing business and having malpractice insurance makes it cost prohibitive.</p>
<p>I’m jumping into this thread late, and I haven’t read the pages before, but I just want to say that BigLaw sounds absolutely miserable, no matter what the pay. </p>
<p>I am looking forward to being a father and a role model for my son, not some dad who buys my kids Porches because I can’t afford face time with them.</p>
<p>Is there any hope at landing some middle-ish job anymore? It just doesn’t look like it. The legal market is so saturated. Maybe I should just go to pharmacy school haha (just kidding)</p>
<p>I’m with Hanna and couldn’t disagree with Davidg more strongly. Solo practice for a newly minted attorney is a recipe for disaster. Huge debt from law school, with no idea how to practice law. This is the sort of terrible advice that supports kids attending tier 3 and 4 law schools with no realistic chance of getting a job anywhere. There is no market for new grads with no experience who are on their own-none. For every one that might make it, there are 100 who end up deeper in debt.
And again, “BigLaw” is only for the best of the best; if you don’t graduate from a top school with top grades, you’re not going to have to worry about ever working there(I didn’t and I didn’t).</p>
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<p>And you learned all of this from your friends? </p>
<p>Your sweeping generalizations aside, the fact remains that law school is incredibly expensive. For those aspiring law students who do not have parents willing to throw money at tuition, room, board, books, etc., a law school graduate is going to be left with a massive amount of student loans to pay. One of the only ways to comfortably pay these loans is to hope and pray that you can find a Biglaw job that pays $140k - $160k. </p>
<p>You may rant and reiterate what you’ve heard - heck, shout it from the rooftops - but the fact remains that paying off those student loans requires a high salary and whole lot of sweat, long hours and missed birthday parties.</p>
<p>Why do I get the idea I am arguing with a few lawyers who have no idea what it is like to work in the “real world”?, and who believe that only those lawyers who graduate at the top of the top schools are the only lawyers worth a damn?. Nobody HAS to go to a top law school that rapes the student financially. There are plenty of State Schools, like Temple in Philly or University of Florida that offer moderately priced, very decent legal educations. And yes, the goal in this environment should be to graduate with as little debt as possible. As far as going out on a your own right out of lawschool, no I wouldn’t recommend it. But working for a small firm for a moderate salary to learn the ropes should be very doable for most lawyers. I think law can be a great career and I would not dissuade somebody from going to law school just because there are too many lawyers and too few jobs. People who have the will and the tenacity will make their own way, and that way does not have to be the big firm way. There are other and maybe much better alternatives. Some of you obviously have no idea what I am talking about because your myopic viewpoints do not allow you to see the other side.</p>
<p>I’ve been practicing law for 30 years; you wouldn’t believe the number of unsolicited resumes I get. I’ve heard a lot of bad advice, but this wins the grand prize:
“I would not dissuade somebody from going to law school just because there are too many lawyers and too few jobs.” I’m guessing you didn’t notice, but people go to law school to get a job. And you mention Temple; per its website, of 319 graduates in last year’s class, 227 are employed in positions that require Bar admission(Temple also claims and overall employment rate of 92%-which includes 30 graduates hired by Temple(!)). So almost 30% of the employed graduates spent their money and got jobs for which they didn’t need the degree. From Temple’s website, estimated cost per year of attendance is $41,540(in state); non-resident is almost 55K. To take on over 100K in debt to not work as a lawyer-genuinely terrible advice. I for one have no idea what you’re talking about because your opinions have no basis in reality. Where are these “small firm” jobs where you “learn the ropes”? For Temple grads, clearly few and far between.</p>
<p>It always amazes me how people who have absolutely no actual connection to ‘biglaw’ can be so confident that they know exactly what not only the practice is like, but also what the lawyers themselves are like. I agree with crankyoldman that the quoted ‘advice’ above is not something that any prospective law applicant should pay any attention to, any.</p>
<p>I agree with alwaysamom and crankyoldman on this one. This won’t address BigLaw quality of life, but the other side of the coin as argued by Davidg. </p>
<p>My kid went to a state law school and still has a lot of debt. (None of you have mentioned income based repayments and President Obama’s loan forgiveness program, which will release my kid in 20 years whether he makes $1800 payments or $500 payments per month). Anyway, S was fortunate enough to find a job this summer with a small boutique firm. He’s already handling writing motions and hearings, has argued an appeal before an appellate court, and is actually working on a case that has made it into the national news. He’s lucky enough to be working with the owner of the firm, who is not only a nice guy but has been sending my kid to CLE all over the country to be trained in the firm’s specialty. (The specialty is not something that my kid had wanted, but obviously it’s something that he might now be doing in 20 years.) Is this customary? Not at all! Some of my kid’s friends from law school who graduated last May are still looking for work even as the 3Ls are breathing down their necks. Some of them are still trying to get volunteering positions to get into legal work, and are finding that legal aid and other agencies have so many volunteers they can’t use them all. Some of them found jobs with firms, and have been doing document discovery or writing memos in cubes for the last six months. Some are working with sole practitioners and learning only how to rely on form books. </p>
<p>While this is far afield from a thread on BigLaw, my point is that Davidg’s alternative of working for a small firm for a moderate salary is no longer easily doable for most grads anymore. Those jobs are also rare & far-between, aside from any financial considerations. Sure, some students will always find jobs and they aren’t always with BigLaw. My kid was in the middle of the pack of a good state law school, and got very, very lucky. If he was in college, I’d still be trying to talk him out of law school.</p>
<p>And for those who want to know, he responded to an ad. His cover letter was apparently what got him selected as one of 8 candidates who were interviewed. Supposedly he stood out in the interview, and hit it off both with the office staff and the partner. He moved to the firm’s city. Some of his friends refuse to consider relocation out of major cities or markets, which restricts their employment chances even further.</p>
<p>Just to reiterate how unusual this particular <10 lawyer firm is, when my kid argued his first appeal the entire firm (including the support staff) showed up to support him. I haven’t met the owner of the firm yet, but he’s clearly a heck of a guy.</p>
<p>"It always amazes me how people who have absolutely no actual connection to ‘biglaw’ can be so confident that they know exactly what not only the practice is like, but also what the lawyers themselves are like. I agree with crankyoldman that the quoted ‘advice’ above is not something that any prospective law applicant should pay any attention to, any. "</p>
<p>why would it amaze you? Why would you think lawyers working in big law were any different than lawyers anywhere else? Are you a lawyer? How could you possibly know what lawyers, such as myself, who have been trying cases for thirty years would know? </p>
<p>Cranky, on my end, I think you wrong for attempting to dissuade anybody away from law. People should be educated about what they are getting themselves into, but need to make their own decisions about which way to go. If a person wants to be a lawyer, they should be a lawyer. I will reiterate. Anybody with the will and the capability WILL be able to make a nice living in the law, sooner or later. This doom and gloom from you guys is over the top. I’m really surprised you are so negative and you think that others should learn from your negativity.</p>
<p>Davidg, you and I will disagree ad infinitum. First, I’m not preventing anyone from attending law school. This is an anonymous internet forum, so I’m not physically restraining anyone; if they listen, they listen; if not, they don’t. So they will be making their own decisions. And I think you wrong to give people false hope.
But your advice about “will” and “capability” is patent nonsense. Plenty of good people are facing ruinous debt because they can’t find jobs as lawyers. You supply no evidence to support your opinions, and what you do mention(Temple Law School) undermines your argument.<br>
FACT: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. the USA cranks out approximately 45,000 JDs per year; it estimates there are 22,000 jobs per year that require a JD. That’s a lot of people with a mountain of debt-on top of undergraduate debt-with a degree they can’t use and don’t need.
FACT: There are new lawyers across the US working for free; for example, the US Attorney’s offices in several districts now have “special” AUSAs who work for free, receive no benefits, and must commit to stay in the "job for a year. And the job postings make clear that if you take one of these jobs, you get no priority in hiring if a real job opens. These are bar admitted law graduate positions.<br>
And just take a look at all the blogs on document review jobs-and these jobs get plenty of applicants.
It’s an incredibly tough job market-it’s best applicants know this before they commit to spending 50-70K for three years on a degree that may or may not be marketable.</p>
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<p>Are you serious. Comparing Biglaw attorneys to personal injury, insurance defense, or divorce settlement “attorneys” working at 2-3 people shop is like comparing Investment bankers at bulge bracket banks to bank tellers at retail bank branches. Yeah, both groups go by the title “lawyer”, just like how both I-bankers and bank tellers call themselves “bankers”, but the career outlook, compensation, nature of work, client base, the caliber of coworkers, etc between the two groups couldn’t be any more different.</p>
<p>Re your claim that you can make more dough opening your own shop as opposed to starting out in Biglaw with ‘less stress’, I am sure that is possible in theory, but as others pointed out, the odds are stacked against you to make it big that way. </p>
<p>Case in point, my friend’s dad owns a retail insurance shop selling insurance to residential customers. He didn’t even go to college. Yet, he makes like 800k a year. What you are basically implying is that we people shouldn’t care about going to high ranked schools and landing high paying career jobs at all; just start your own business and make more money that way. You’d think a success story like this is more the rarity rather than the norm. Not everyone (I think most people, in fact) is cut out for a career in entrepreneurship.</p>
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<p>This is likely a source of the disagreement. I have been a legal recruiter for over 20 years and if I weren’t living it, no one would be able to convince me about the state of the legal job market.</p>
<p>No, what I am implying NY Lawyer is that NY Lawyers ARE NOTHING special except in their own minds. What I am saying is that if they go into BIG LAW they limit their options because their experience will be severely limited. Yea they get the big bucks, but then when they end up out the door, after being exploited by their partners, they really have nothing to fall back on but useless experience in the world of real lawyers and an ivy league pedigree which means nothing when it comes to ability and talent. And clearly from a post such as yours, while working those 80 hour weeks, they also get to work with people who are completely full of themselves. Wow what a deal. Where do I sign up? To me, being a lawyer does not mean working 80 hours a week serving corporate masters who are sociopaths. To me being a lawyer means being a TRIAL LAWYER and promoting the interests of individuals against those very sociopaths you serve. Just a different philosophy. And when it comes to trial ability, there people in my town who could out try the best “big firm” lawyer any day of the week. I’ve seen you guys come down to our town and leave with tails between your legs. Maybe you are right. Maybe there is no comparison.</p>