<p>How big is the chip on your shoulders? BigLaw limits your career options? All the while doing personal injury at a 2 men shop is the road to riches?</p>
<p>Biglaw, especially from the transactional side, opens numerous, exclusive doors that wouldn’t open otherwise. I know several people who started in Biglaw and lateraled out to I-banking, sales (finance at bulge bracket), business development at F500, private equity, in-house M&A attorney positions at F500, etc after 3-4 year stint at Biglaw. These lucrative, high-end options wouldn’t be attainable for anyone with a “trial” experience you speak of.</p>
<p>Certain industries, such as business (finance) and law (Biglaw) are all about credibility. Going to a top school, having top grades, and having top notch Biglaw on your resume are all great stepping stones to a successful career. Don’t kid yourself that a “trial” lawyer or whatever doing personal injury or divorce settlement gives you any sort of career advantage over Biglaw. In all seriousness, if anything, it is nothing but a severe disadvantage.</p>
<p>No, what trial law does is allows a talented individual to work for something which he might actually be passionate about instead of just being a working drone, one of a dozen, working on the same mindless project year after year. There is more to life than that in my opinion. You couldn’t pay me enough to do that drudgery kind of work. You know, although good trial lawyers can easily make millions a year while working for themselves, after a few hundred thousand, those extra dollars don’t mean a whole lot when looking at the totality of the circumstances. In your myopic mindsets, its all about money. I suggest if you live and work in Manhattan where your self-worth is measured by the amount of your income and nothing else, I suppose Big Law is a good way to go. I have no Chip on my shoulder. I have been far more successful than I ever thought possible when I graduated from law school. And I did it My Way.</p>
<p>The article by the Federal Judge I posted was interesting. Did you read it? Does he also not know what he was talking about? After he worked as a clerk for the SCOTUS, he chose to work for a smaller big law firm, and guess what he did . . . . . hundreds of cases defending the clergy from sexual abuse lawsuits. He also worked on the Exxon Valedez case. How is that any different from what any other trial lawyer does, either on the defense or the prosecution side of the equation? Of course with his pedigree, he got a professorship and then a Federal Judgeship. But being appointed a Federal Judge does not require an Ivy League education or Big Law experience. It requires competence, integrity, reputation and political know-how.</p>
<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>NYU"Lawyer" - first, you are not a lawyer; you are a law student with (IIRC) zero years of work experience. (I will also point out that NY licensing rules prevent you from becoming licensed in the state if you have held yourself out to the public as an attorney with a NY license.)</p>
<p>Second, to say that someone who spends his or her day practicing law is not a lawyer because that person does estate planning, divorces, or any other myriad of things - wow. What jaw-dropping arrogance. That’s like saying that an internist isn’t a doctor. </p>
<p>I was arguing with a law student? Thanks, I assumed based on his arrogance he was a partner in a big firm in NYC. If I knew he was merely a know nothing law student, I wouldn’t have wasted my time. But his opinion is interesting nonetheless. It shows how little these guys know about practicing law or what they are about to get themselves into if they go with Big Law, how easily duped they are and how quick they are to sell their souls. It also shows the type of personalities that are attracted to Big Law . . . I can honestly say that I have regretted quite a few of my decisions over the years, but not going Big Law was never one of them.</p>
<p>How about you get over yourself. I noticed how, just because you are like 10 years older, you immediately discount all my inputs due to ‘lack of experience’ or ‘being just a law student’.</p>
<p>You’d be surprised how, in many industries and for a large chunk of employers, raw intelligence + pedigree + talent + networking/ interviewing skills absolutely trump any ‘real life work experience’ you so dearly speak of. Many elite employers, Biglaw included, could care less about anyone’s 5 year ‘work experience’ doing some crap personal injury law. </p>
<p>Thanks, I do know how Biglaw works, since I interviewed for 50+ of them and know many who work in BigLaw. Not to mention, I actually do/did lots of research on the career of my choice before committing to law school.</p>
<p>Lastly, my intent of the post you referred to was to highlight the fact that just because how people in different professional circles call themselves the same job title, it doesn’t mean that we all have same jobs. As far as I know, I know people who run janitorial services call themselves “Consultants”, while people at McKinsey or Bain call themselves “Consultants”. The same goes for “lawyers”. Not all ‘lawyers’ are the same; depending on the employer, they do completely different work, serve completely different client base, and have completely different long term career trajectory, etc.</p>
<p>David, I don’t think anybody (well, other than that one guy) is arguing that you’re wrong about the virtues of your sort of practice compared to so-called “biglaw.” There’s a lot of great reasons to prefer the kind of practice you talk about (although there are some reasons to go the other way as well).</p>
<p>My point of disagreement is simple: your practice is ALSO really freaking hard to get into these days.</p>
<p>You can’t advise law students to go to law school and, if they strike out at OCI, to “just” go to a small firm, or hang out their own shingle, and promise them their debt problems will be fixed because it’s easier to make money doing that. It’s a road that requires a lot of things to go right – probably even more than Biglaw requires – and I think, ironically, you’re underestimating your own business talents when you tell us that pretty much anybody can do it.</p>
<p>I think you misunderstand me Mike. I am not downplaying how difficult it might be to make a living practicing law, and I am not suggesting that people just go to law-school and they will make a good living. I see a large difference between the many people who go to law school because they have nothing better to do, or can’t get a job out of college, whatever and those who actually want to be lawyers. But I am a big believer that people need to follow their hearts. What I am suggesting is that if a person has always wanted to be a lawyer, and there are those of us out there, if we have the personality and temperament for it, that we should do it, regardless of the economic consequences of doing so. If you avoid doing what you want to do because of fear, you are sooner or later going to very much regret the same. And yes, I do believe that people who know they want to be lawyers and who do it the smart way, greatly increase their chances of success. For example, if you want to be a trial lawyer, you need to watch the masters at work, you need to try to get jobs with those masters and carry their briefcases. You need the hands on experience. If you work in a large firm and are pigeonholed in what you are doing, you are going to make it that much more difficult to break out of that mold in the future. I have two good friends who both went big law. One of them went classic. . top lawschool, Federal clerkship, Big Law, and now after eight years . . is told partnership is not in his future. So what is he doing now? Public Defender and he loves it. The other also went top lawschool, big law, justice department, general counsel and now is out on his own. I think the great chances are that most big firm lawyers sooner or later are going to end up as small company or small firm lawyers. My suggestion is to decide the type of law you want to practice, and unless you are dead set on the prestige but limited experience you will get working with big law, to bypass big law and learn how to do the job right early on. One caveat. I graduated law school with very little debt. I know today things are very different in the cost field. I’m glad I never had to deal with that and I think that people can still get great educations at the less expensive schools, although they won’t have that pedigree.</p>
<p>Believe me, I know how it feels to look back with regrets – thankfully I haven’t had to do so with career considerations.</p>
<p>But the problem is law school is so unbelievably expensive nowadays, from elite programs to state schools to unaccredited night programs. It’s easy to walk out with a ton of debt and no employment prospects. Going hundreds of thousands of dollars into debt while being unsure whether you’re even going to be employable on the other end is profoundly risky.</p>
<p>The problem isn’t (only) that folks are obsessed with the big white shoe finance firms. The problem is that litigation boutiques, small town practices, prosecution, public defense, social services, public interest – they’re ALL tremendously long odds right now. </p>
<p>It isn’t even a “fight” metaphor. It’s a board game, where some of it is skill, some of it is devotion, and an awful lot of it is luck. I know how important it is to follow your dreams, but to pay $160,000 for a ticket to that game… </p>
<p>… well, it’s really easy to ruin your life that way.</p>
<p>Thank you for reiterating your belief that non-BigLaw attorneys who have the temerity to call themselves lawyers are akin to janitors who call themselves consultants, or tellers who call themselves bankers. Good to know that I wasn’t taking your words out of context.</p>
<p>In your world, were one of my friends, a licensed attorney and SCOTUS clerk, to call himself a lawyer, it would be like a bank teller classing up the job by calling herself a banker. I’m sure the same applies to my cousin, who works in a mid-sized firm and has argued before SCOTUS. On a larger scale, your “logic” applies to any in-house counsel, ACLU attorney or other legal defense attorney, DOJ attorney, federal prosecutor, law professor who does groundbreaking pro bono work, judge, etc. </p>
<p>There is some interesting debate in the legal profession about using “lawyer” or “attorney” when one has a JD or a bar license, but is not part of the legal profession. However, no one believes that a person who practices law is not a lawyer because his firm isn’t big enough. There’s snobbery, and then there’s just being a damn fool.</p>
<p>“The problem isn’t (only) that folks are obsessed with the big white shoe finance firms. The problem is that litigation boutiques, small town practices, prosecution, public defense, social services, public interest – they’re ALL tremendously long odds right now.”</p>
<p>One version of loan repayment allows a person to discharge student loan debt after ten years of working in public service and making manageable payments along the way. This seriously and profoundly affects a person’s ability to get work in areas that qualify for such loan assistance. Sometime in 2004, I pointed out on CollegeConfidential that skyrocketing law school costs would necessarily mean that more lawyers would want to work in white-shoe firms, simply to pay off their debt. That is also happening: people who would normally be happy in a smaller firm are desperately trying to get into bigger firms that pay more money.</p>
<p>Related to the point about cost: there are a lot of really interesting things to do with a law degree, some of which are also profoundly influential; however, the pay is nothing to write home about. (As I point out to anyone who gets misty-eyed and idealistic, some of my policy work received national media attention, and another project that I worked on was hugely influential on a state level and involved fascinating con law issues, but the pay was less than what I made as an engineer.) If you’re lucky, you will get interesting work or remunerative work, almost never both; many JDs wind up with neither.</p>
<p>My problem is with davidg’s sweeping characterization of all Biglaw lawyers as career-limited, exploited, inexperienced (or at least, having only “useless” experience), lacking in talent, full of themselves, sociopaths. This description reeks of inexperience with the very thing criticized. </p>
<p>davidg, I am happy for you that you have had a fulfilling career trying cases for over 30 years, but please do not presume that those who choose a path different than yours are mostly awful for making that choice. As one who had to put myself through college and law school, I realize that there are those law school graduates who go to work at Biglaw merely as a means to pay off some pretty massive student loans. There are also those who go to work at Biglaw knowing that they will stay for only a few years to build their resumes and find later employment at other law firms, in house, at the AG’s office, in finance or elsewhere, and there are those who go to work at Biglaw because they want that kind of career. </p>
<p>Just as ariesathena is right to critique those who would disparage non-Biglaw lawyers, it is also rude and ignorant to besmirch the character and qualifications of all Biglaw attorneys.</p>
<p>Since a few people have mentioned income-based repayment of federal student loans, please note that the tax ramifications of the loan forgiveness can be massive. According to a December 2012 article in the NY Times, “For many people . . . the tax bill could be well into the five figures. And when it comes, you are supposed to pay in full, immediately.” I urge anyone considering utilizing this program (if it survives the coming federal budget negotiations) to go in with their eyes open. </p>
<p>In addition, this program and any federal loan forgiveness program apply to Federal Direct Student Loans (and Perkins loans, to the extent consolidated through a federal consolidation program) only. With the expense of law school far outstripping any federal loan resources, the private student loans, including loans available to parents, are not covered.</p>
<p>My understanding is that some public-interest law jobs offer entire forgiveness, no tax bill, after ten years; other plans offer forgiveness (with a tax bill) after twenty. This will radically change people’s preferences for working in the public sector.</p>
<p>But yes, the tax bill is huge, and it can very well mean that your kids don’t get to college because you went to law school. A bracing thought.</p>
<p>You’re absolutely right, ariesathena, and I think the jobs that offer such generous forgiveness may be more competitive than finding Biglaw jobs! </p>
<p>I think that the takeaway has to be that there is no easy road. Law school is expensive. If you need to take student loans in order to attend law school, then the paths you must choose among that will enable you to pay off your student loans are limited (even with loan forgiveness/deferral/reduced payment options). There is no guarantee that you will get one of those jobs, or that even if you do, that you will be able to make those onerous monthly payments that go on and on for years and years. </p>
<p>Not every student who goes to a T14 law school will have their choice among plum jobs, and not everyone who attends a lower ranked law school will find themselves without a job. That said, I beg everyone considering law school to go in with their eyes open. You will not always be the exception to the rule. Pay attention and ask difficult questions. </p>
<p>Do your research, and then do more. Trust your instincts (and question too-rosy-seeming job placement statistics from law schools). Ask to speak with the head of the career placement office - ask where graduates are working? Are they working in jobs that require a law degree? What percentage of students responded to the job placement surveys? Where are students working (geographically)? Who recruits on campus? </p>
<p>You are going to spend a heck of a lot of money on a law school education. The onus is on you to be a good consumer.</p>
<p>My kid is doing the income based repayment with forgiveness (20 years), and is aware of the potential tax consequences. My accountant ran some scenarios, and it looks like the tax bill could be about about the value of a very good car. It’s important to plan for, but it’s also not going to be so much that it would prevent him from sending his own kids to college. </p>
<p>I agree that it’s very good advice to keep in mind that it doesn’t apply to private loans, and with the warnings that debt burdens are more serious than many students realize. For example, student loans show up when someone is trying to qualify for a mortgage. A 26 year old may not think that’s a big deal, but combined with other debt it might be enough to delay a young family from getting their first home. </p>
<p>My kid gets called by undergrads every so often, who still think that law school is the path to riches and prestige. He’s gotten tired of telling them about the glut of lawyers, that salaries are dropping, etc. He’s telling them to do their own careful research, like SallyAwp has recommended. </p>
<p>However, smart, competitive students who have done well in undergraduate programs all believe that they will do very well in law school, that they interview extraordinarily well or have connections that will get them good jobs, that they need to become lawyers to make a difference to society, that they have a plan to enter a specialty that is not oversaturated, or that they will otherwise be the exception. Applications are down, but they haven’t disappeared…</p>
<p>“My problem is with davidg’s sweeping characterization of all Biglaw lawyers as career-limited, exploited, inexperienced (or at least, having only “useless” experience), lacking in talent, full of themselves, sociopaths. This description reeks of inexperience with the very thing criticized.”</p>
<p>Just look at NY Lawyer’s posts and you will recognize that some of these people are lacking in the Social IQ area. And I did not say these people are sociopaths. I said they serve sociopaths, whom I consider most of the heads of the big banks (investment and otherwise i.e., Goldman Sachs selling their own clients out while shorting what they promote . . or the banks making as much money as they could knowing the housing market would implode). </p>
<p>But let me clarify. If a person wants to make a very good salary and they need the security of that income as generated by their employer, and if they need the ego satisfaction of thinking they are among the best . . these people should go big law. If a person is a little bit of a maverick, a risk taker, has enough confidence in themselves, and especially if they want to make an impact on other people’s lives, they should not go big law. People need to size themselves up and decide what they want for themselves, like any other career.</p>
<p>What’s John Edwards got to do with this? The man was not perfect, but I’m not sure what he has to do with Big Law, other than he was far more successful than any big law lawyer couid dream about.</p>