*advise 2009 grads to retrain to another field
*post how you are making 55k/yr as a garbageman after dropping out of highschool
*"third tier law grads get what they paid for"
You really should read that blog, especially the comments section. Some of these lawyers are getting paid 16 dollars an hour. There's just too many of them.
How many registered nurses, engineers, pilots, dentists, or MD's resort to begging for sub-poverty level shitjobs on craigslist just to eat? Make no mistake, the recent death of doc review was a watershed in this industry. The Seton Halls and Brooklyn Law Schools of the world have no where left to stick the hordes of angry, desperately indebted losers. Just think of the old days of the Hudson Newark ghetto gig, the Paul Weiss cockroach gulag, and the Vioxx petri dish. Those thousands of second-tier and lower grads who once clicked out semi-decent paychecks are now cast into the gutter with no worthwhile experience (and no jobs available even if they did have "experience"). Schools know that the jig is up: Joan King recently exited stage left and now the Valvoline Dean Pat Hobbs of Seton Hall is sucking around for the NJ AG job if his buddy Chris Christie wins the governor's race. No way these charlatans are sticking around for the coming meltdown. Like oil slicks, they'll wash up on some new beach in a few years with new scams and more insincere, fraudulent posturing.
Even better, in three short weeks the next gaggle of hapless lemmings will sweat thru the bar'zam in Albany and the old Javits Center, regurgitating the useless BarBri drivel on houseburning v. arson and 14th century property law like good little JD's. Then come August they'll burn in the summer heat of the worst legal job market (or job market period)in American history. Shit, both Hudson and De Novo are now only registering people with over a year of coding experience. Small firm insurance defense shitlaw "firms" are getting 100+ resumes for sub 40 K shitjobs that we know have no future anyway. As most veteran coders know, the "experience" card is an old shark's trick, designed to sucker newbie JD's into taking illegal-alien level wages with the empty promise of building "experience." Yet as most of us know, "experience" in insurance defense is like getting cooking experience from McDonald's: one may lateral to Burger King or Wendy's, but you sure ain't gonna be head chef at the Waldorf. Pushing bales of fender-bender shitpaper just leads to more crappy jobs pushing fender-bender shitpaper. Almost 5 years out of school, every friend I have in insurance defense has yet to see 75 K.
Maybe they can try the comical "alumni networking" events. Print a fresh batch of resumes off on that rich, creamy 80 lb cotton weave Staples resume paper, and shove them in the face of every gray-haired, drunken loser at the alumni cocktail hour. I went to one of these for Seton Hall back in 2005 and the assistant dean asked if I'd considered moving to the Midwest because "the NY and NJ markets are pretty saturated." I then asked her why Seton Hall operates a $43,000/yr private law school in NJ if the market has no jobs, and she excused herself to get another shrimp cocktail. Typical.
Posted 8/23/2009 8:38 pm
I have no sympathy for these idiots. as a paralegal, I see the doc review braceros come into the firm. I know what they're making. and it kills them that I have insurance and make 20k more a year than they do, despite their "jd". it's funny, they try to treat you like shit because you only went through the paralegal program, not the law school proper. so you tell the secretary of the partner that controls them like a fucking slave master. and she culls them. you don't even need the partner, just is exec assistant. I think on Monday I'll have one removed, just because I'm friendly with the witch.
Sandrene's AMISTAD ship will be arriving at Houston Port 10 a.m. Texas time. Unloading the Nigerian attorneys with their LLM's and New York Bar memberships, and Al Sharpton playbook of things to say if you're about to get fired. 2:45 PM
make sure you learn how to run copies and make really good coffee for the boss man! it worked for suntory!
also, you might want to moonlight as a garbageman or plumber. the experience will pay off in the form of higher earnings potential than you could get with a JD
Posted 8/24/2009 1:16 am
That blog is a pile of horseshit, dont believe everything you read as the truth. I'm going to believe that people finish law schoo, pass the bar and work for as low as $10/hr? Are you FUCKING KIDDING? Shit, any IT job in NYC (fucking rebooting servers) pays more than that.
Posted 8/24/2009 2:32 am
Yeah, I recall meeting a family friend eons ago who was a federal patent attorney. He made okay money, health insurance covered plus other benies, but I distinctly remember his telling me he really liked it because he never left later than 5 pm every day.
"At Paul Weiss, for example, they crammed 120 people into a basement room that NYC fire code rated for 80. This was in 2005. Like steerage passengers on the Titanic, we labored in the bowels of the building, right alongside the boilers and HVACequipment. Lacking air conditioning and adequate ventilation, many came down with colds that went untreated due to the lack of healthinsurance. A cockroach problem soon erupted due to the crumbs and food garbage strewn about the cellar floor, which was treated with multiple Raidroach fogger bombs. The morning after the exterminators finished, dead roaches littered our keyboards and even crawled, stunted but still living, from the floppy drives and servers!
We were paid $21 an hour, straight time, and required to work from 9 am to 11 pm seven days a week. Forbidden to use the firm’s lavish upstairs restrooms, they had all 120 of us split a pair of airplane sized-bathrooms that were on the Concourse level under the Rock Center, open to the public and a favorite bathing spot for the homeless. One affable homeless chap named “Bones” would use the lone toilet in there as a foot bidet, rinsing his diabetic ulcer in the excrement-caked shitpot and yelling “I’m in here motherfucker!”every time one of us coders needed to relieve himself. Most of us just went next door and used the Heartland Brewery’s bathroom (did I mention that restroom breaks of over six minutes had to be deducted from one’s timesheet? As a coder, bowel movements can quickly cut into the bottom line).
Paul Weiss also blocked the fire exits with box upon box of the corporate shit-paper that arrived daily by the truckload like grist to a mill. Had a fire broken out, we would no doubt have burned to death in a modern day Triangle Shirtwaist incident, engulfed in flames while helplessly beating on box-blocked doorways. To work there was to truly feel expendable, utterly worthless and really just downright sub-human. The partners should all be ashamed of themselves."
They don't know how to reboot servers. They don't know shit.
They spent 3 years in school learning how to fuck someone else over and there's no one left to fuck. And the corporate merger/housing bubble/wall street BS that created so much legal work is gone. There's just too many lawyers, there always was.
Elder law is where it's at. Keeping the feds away from Mom and Dad's money and sticking the government with the nursing home bills. Those people are doing great, at least the ones I know.
It used to be that being a paralegal was shit work. There's an actual job advertisement posted on that blog for paralegals where it says "paralegals only, no JD's need apply".
It was hard not posting "Walk it off, Atticus" to that.
There's still plenty of legal work to do, it's just already being done by seasoned lawyers. And there's still plenty of opportunity, but only for those that graduate from the top 12 or know how to market themselves.
The fact remains that the US - which has something like 5% of the worlds population - has over 50% of the worlds lawyers. My feeling is that we have had far too many lawyers for a very long time, and at some point the law of supply and demand would have to reassert itself.
I know one girl who had a decent marketing manager job. She ended up getting a MBA from some shit no name school. As soon as she finished that she went to law school full time. I think it was Kent in Chicago. Last I heard she was doing public law and had to have massive debts. I bet she regrets it too
