Quotes of the Day (Updated)

The generation before me came to the conclusion I was worth the investment. Maybe my generation is a little too selfish.

- Minnesota Supreme Court Justice Paul H. Anderson who graduated in 1968 with no debt and a 1965 Mustang.

The more urgent question is: What do you tell people who are thinking about going to law school? I don't recommend it to people looking to make a lot of money. ... If you're not interested in helping people in some way or providing service to your clients, it's not for you.

- From the same Star Tribune article, law school shill Niels Schaumann, vice dean for faculty at third tier toilet William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota.

How about not recommending William Mitchell College of Law to anyone who wants to find a full-time job after spending $52,000 yearly tuition? That way, shills like Schaumann would no longer make an average of $104,832 yearly blaming unemployed graduates for being too greedy.

- HardKnocks from But I Did Everything Right! in response to Niels Schaumman's dishonest and shameful comment in the Star Tribune.


Update, May 30th: A William Mitchell College of Law graduate stopped by with the following comment below. Are you listening Schaumman and WMCL shills? This is one of your many graduates drowning in debt and working for $11 an hour doing temp work. What are you doing about it besides blaming them for being greedy or not hustling enough? How can you sleep at night knowing you make six-figures off the backs of your unemployed graduates and still have the audacity to ask them for contributions?? Thank you to the WMCL grad for stopping by and sharing your tragic story and pointing out that the job shortage is nothing new. It's just that the media is jumping on this story now that the top tier grads are suffering too.

Hope all of our readers are having a relaxing Memorial Day weekend. I'm back to helping out with the backyard BBQ.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for posting this article, Hardknocks. I am a WMCL grad - although I have pretty much severed all ties to that place after the Dean sent me a letter begging for MORE money AFTER I had already made a contribution and stated in his letter, "[Insert my name here], would you really be as far as you are today if not for your law degree?" As you can imagine, this irritated me to no end and I decided to never give one cent to that place again.

As for the gentleman featured in the story, I actually know him. Ironically, right after I graduated from WMCL with HONORS, I was working as a TEMP for $11/hour at the same place where he was working for the summer doing some humiliating clerical type of work. This was back in the early 2000's. He was going off to Korea to be with his girlfriend. Anyway, the reason I mention this is because there was a legal job shortage even back then, but nobody believed it. This is NOT new, people, so I don't understand why everybody acts like this all happened it the last 2 years. I have been out of school for almost 7 years, and a majority of my classmates are drowning in debt and working piddle a$$ jobs just to make ends meet and pay their student loans. It annoys me that suddenly now this is "news" - why wasn't it news seven years ago? Maybe some of these people wouldn't be in the shape they are in, if the media had listened or cared back then!

Racist Harvard Law Student Needs a History Lesson (Updated)

Those of you who read Above the Law or other law school scam sites have probably read about the Harvard Law School 3L who made this racist and sexist statement in an email that went viral:

I absolutely do not rule out the possibility that African Americans are, on average, genetically predisposed to be less intelligent. I could also obviously be convinced that by controlling for the right variables, we would see that they are, in fact, as intelligent as white people under the same circumstances. The fact is, some things are genetic. African Americans tend to have darker skin. Irish people are more likely to have red hair. (Now on to the more controversial:) Women tend to perform less well in math due at least in part to prenatal levels of testosterone, which also account for variations in mathematics performance within genders. This suggests to me that some part of intelligence is genetic, just like identical twins raised apart tend to have very similar IQs and just like I think my babies will be geniuses and beautiful individuals whether I raise them or give them to an orphanage in Nigeria. I don’t think it is that controversial of an opinion to say I think it is at least possible that African Americans are less intelligent on a genetic level, and I didn’t mean to shy away from that opinion at dinner.

I've read comments on other sites from people who are rightfully outraged and offended by this email. Let's not kid ourselves, whoever this person is got into Harvard for a reason and would fit right in Biglaw or another white-shoe firm. I've come across a fair amount of arrogant and tactless bigots and chauvinists in the law, so despite how it disgusts me to read these comments, I can't say I'm terribly surprised. The world of Mad Men still exists to a lesser extent only because people like the Harvard 3L face certain repercussions for being blunt about their real feelings about minorities and (other) women. She'll still have a much better chance of getting a six-figure job most of us so don't think this email going viral will in any way ruin her life in the privileged, upper class, and extremely narrow-minded world that ensured her a spot at Harvard. I'm fairly certain her admittance into Harvard had very little to do with her intelligence or world view.

Speaking of racism and sexism, I think it is important to remember those who have proven people like the Harvard 3L wrong time and again throughout history rather than focus on one ignorant Ivy League law student. One of those people is Dorothy Height who died last week at the age of 98. She was the president of the National Council of Negro Women for 41 years and fought against what she had called the "triple bind of racism, sexism and poverty" her entire life:

Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority Foundation, told The Times in an interview, "Dorothy understood from the beginning the importance of both the civil rights movement and the women's rights movement and how they're intertwined. She's always tried to keep people together and united."

The daughter of a nurse and a building contractor, Height was born March 24, 1912, in Richmond, Va., and grew up in Rankin, Pa., where she earned top grades in school.

After graduating from high school at 16, she was accepted to Barnard College in New York but was told she had to delay her entrance a year because the school had met its annual quota of two African American students.

Instead she entered New York University, which had no such quota. In four years she earned bachelor's and master's degrees in social work.

...

Under her leadership, the National Council of Negro Women offered job training, set up a school breakfast program in Mississippi, registered voters and pushed to ensure that African Americans were included in the census. In the 1980s, Height also led African American Women for Reproductive Rights, an abortion rights group.
....
Height retired from the YWCA in 1977 but continued to lead the National Council of Negro Women for two more decades. The council celebrated Height's birthday every year with an "Uncommon Height" gala fundraiser.

On her 90th birthday in 2002, well-wishers such as Oprah Winfrey and boxing promoter Don King helped raise $5million, enough to pay off the mortgage on the organization's national headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington.

In 2004, President Bush awarded Height the Congressional Gold Medal for her many decades of service. Inscribed on the medal is a classic Height quote: "We African American women seldom do just what we want to do, but always do what we have to do. I am grateful to have been in a time and place where I could be a part of what was needed."

UPDATE: H/T to the Jobless Juris Doctor for the update. Gawker has exposed the Harvard 3L as Stephanie Grace. She graduated from Princeton in 2007 with a degree in Sociology, is on Harvard Law Review, and will clerk for Ninth Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski, also known as the cow porn judge. More proof that idiots can get into Ivy League schools and have a successful legal career. Oh, what a world we live in.

Every Elite Group Needs a Bit of Propaganda to Entice the Masses.

The National Law Journal is a bloody rag, but I read it from time to time to keep up with the propaganda machine, aka The Legal Industrial Complex.


So, I was combing through it on-line and I came upon this disgusting article--most likely written to pump up the egos of everyone in the Good Ole Boy's club and to snag OLs into the machine.  Oh yah, a third purpose is to make lawyers who haven't made it, such as myself, feel like shit.  My comments are in purple below, and they are mostly addressed to the Venable Associate that wrote this dirty diaper of an article.


"Oh no!" My wife and I were just beginning a two-week vacation when she remembered the juror questionnaire. She had recently received the notice and, naturally, the deadline to respond fell right in the middle of our vacation. Intending to submit the questionnaire before leaving, she had taken the forms to her office, but forgotten to complete and mail them.

"Call your people and have them take care of it," I said.

"My people?" she replied.

This got me about one of the benefits of working in a big firm that I had been taking for granted. After several years of practice, there are a few dozen attorneys that I know well enough to call friends. They are the kind of friends that I would trust with my assets and the well-being of my family, the kind of people I would trust to sign my name with all the attendant repercussions. 


What about the associates that will step on you on their way up the the partnership totem pole?  Yes, there are those that you can trust, but unless your wife is a solo, I don't see how your esteemed associates at Venable are any more trustworthy--especially when they are constantly looking for ways to distinguish themselves from the crowd.  In all likelihood, if they were to do something for you, it's because you are never assigned to a case by your lonesome.  Instead, every case is given a  team of attorneys--all equally responsible to make sure things are done correctly. And if things are not done correctly, i.e. one attorney forgets to file the juror questionnaire, all of you will feel the wrath of the senior partner on the case.  Stop kidding yourself.  They are all operating in CYA (cover your ass) mode.  This is not a quality that is unique to big law or successful attorneys.  People are people, wherever they end up in life. 


I started to think through the people in my firm that I know and trust. As I thought through the list, I realized that I had not known some of them for long. It was not the length of the friendships that made them reliable. It was that they were attorneys with three common qualities: they were meticulously honest, generous, and responsible.

Obviously, honesty is a trait expected of everyone, attorneys and non-attorneys alike. But for attorneys, honesty is more than a virtue; it is a professional qualification. There are professional rules of conduct addressing honesty, and all of the oaths of admission that I have taken have addressed it in one way or another. Perhaps then it is no surprise that the people I work with are meticulously honest. 


Oh yah, sure... attorneys are more honest than most.  That's why Mark Drier, founder of Drier LLP, and probably a millionaire several times over, created a Ponzi scheme that would have been the main news if Bernie Madoff didn't create a bigger one.  I'm not going to say that lawyers are more likely to be crooks than other people--but to say that you and your associates in BigLaw are MORE honest than most because of oaths and bullshit is just that, BULLSHIT.  I'm wondering if you're trying to fix our BAD reputation, or trying to distinguish the Good Ole Boys from the shyster solos.  Why would you even write this nonsense down and publish it, like it's fact. It's not.  BigLaw attorneys are just as conniving and greedy as the soloshit lawyers.  They just have the resources to not get caught.

So what about generosity?

Law firms are among the largest contributors to various charitable causes, and pro bono work is only one way in which attorneys are generous to society at large. Within the firm, there is also a wealth of generosity on an interpersonal level. Hardly a week goes by where one coworker or another does not offer to buy me lunch, or vice versa. Even more compelling is the overarching generosity with time. Despite high billing requirements and the pressures of large firm life, I have rarely been turned away when seeking help or advice from another. 


Haven't you heard of tax breaks based on charitable contribution?  Are you seriously trying to say that BigLaw gives out of the goodness of their hearts.  BULLSHIT.  Also, if you seek out advice and it is freely given, it's because all of the attorneys at the firm are responsible for getting this right.  If the firm doesn't, it won't get paid.

Which brings me to responsibility.

Naturally, it takes a certain level of responsibility to make it through college and law school with the level of performance required to get a job in a large firm. Meeting the demands of large firm clients requires even more responsibility – with time, money, and deadlines – if an attorney is simply to survive. This makes a big firm attorney the perfect friend to have when you need to be confident that something will get done – such as a fax response to a juror questionnaire.

Twice in the last week I have forgotten an important document related to personal business outside the office. Each time, I have been relieved to know that I had people I could trust to go through my personal documents, whom I knew would take the time to do it simply because I had asked them to, and whom I could rely on to send it to me quickly, just as they had promised. 


I think this little nugget was put in here to make all of the lemming think that those who don't succeed in law school are irresponsible people.  That's not true.  Most, if not all, of law students were always responsible good students and they falsely assume that this trend will continue in law school.  And the flunkies of law school don't change once they get there.  They are still responsible.  They are still attending class.  They are still doing the the assignments.  They are still studying.  However, they fail despite all of that.  It's a crap shoot.  I would argue, at least in my law school, that the best students weren't more responsible than the others.  Sometimes, they were more underhanded.  Books would be missing from the Library Shelf when you needed them for the ONE MEMO that you draft first semester.  These same Law School superstars would lie and say things like, "I haven't even opened a book yet" to throw off the others and make them think it's too early to be studying for finals.  I had an awful experience once where this BITCH frenemy called me and said she wanted to study with me at Borders. I told her that's fine, but I am studying Property and I'm not prepared to talk to her about Constitutional Law.  So, she could sit there and study ConLaw, but don't distract me by talking about it.  What did she do?  She sat there and quizzed me for hours on ConLaw to make herself feel better about all that she studied and to distract me from studying for my intended subject.  Is that responsible, or is that strategic??

It's easy to take something for granted when we have never known it to be any other way. For my part, I'm glad that my wife's comment prompted me to stop and take the time to appreciate how fortunate I am to be surrounded not only by professional colleagues, but also by trusted friends. 


Life must be great on top, huh?  My point is, after reading this article, don't think that you belong in big law if you are honest, generous and responsible.  It means nothing.  I am all of those things and I'm unemployed.