Clothing Drive for Law Students

I try not to cover the same topics as Above the Law.  Even though I used to read it religiously while employed with Big Law, I don't anymore and I'd like to think that we have different readers.  However, I think this little story deserves coverage.
Duquesne is having a clothing drive for 1Ls, because the can't afford to dress professionally--which is probably Step 1 in nailing the interview.

The Duquesne University School of Law is holding a Professional Clothing Drive for Law Students.

We are accepting gently worn professional clothing* for 1st Year Law Students preparing for the Oral Argument Program in the spring and all Law Students preparing for job and internship interviews.

Clothing can be dropped off at the Main Office of the Law School between the hours of 8:30 am and 8:00 pm (Monday through Friday) and
9:00 am to 12:00 pm (On select Saturdays please call for dates). A receipt will be provided for your tax-deductible donation.

* We are accepting business suits for women and men as well as shoes, ties, belts and accessories.

Of course, you probably know where I'm going with this.  This needs to be extended to lawyers.  I go to the Courthouse nearly every day and attorneys dress like... well, like poor people.  Yes, there are those that foolishly spend their money on designer suits.  However, there are many more that throw an old sports jacket over a pair of slacks and call it a suit.  Their shoes are old and cracked and falling apart.  If they even bother to have dress shoes  Many more don sneakers or flip flops--well, the women certainly do.  Don't let me get started on the women.  There is no suit requirement for the women--it seems.  In the summer, female attorneys would go to court in sundresses and a cardigan.  Sometimes sans cardigan and bra.  Some looked like they are going to the park to sun themselves after court after the status conference.  I dress like an idiot in court because my clothes, knowing that I have no means to replace them, now have holes all over them.  It's ridiculous. I spent good money on these clothes when I was employed--why are they falling apart now?
So, anyone on board?  Let's ask the financial industry with their generous bonuses (due to our fucking TARP money) to donate their Hugo Boss suits to the impoverished legal industry. I would get in line for a couple of suits.  Would you?

I'm Poor, You're Poor, Everybody's Poor, Poor!!!!

Yes.  We are gaining in numbers.  Whoops. I guess that doesn't help us.  The Poverty Rate rose to 14.3%, the highest since 1994.  How horrid.  And when I say 'poverty,' I mean pooooooor as dirt;
"For a single adult in 2009, the poverty line was $10,830 in pretax cash income; for a family of four, $22,050."  That is really poor.  I actually don't think I qualify, but we'll see when I do my quarterly taxes at the end of this month. I always seem to think I did better than I actually did.

It seems that this number could have been so much worse.  Thank God for mom and dad:

And the numbers could have climbed higher: One way embattled Americans have gotten by is sharing homes with siblings, parents or even nonrelatives, sometimes resulting in overused couches and frayed nerves but holding down the rise in the national poverty rate, according to the report.

So, what's the REAL poverty rate?  Why do I always have to ask these questions for the retards over at the New York Times. I'd like to see the stats on how many able bodied people are couch surfing and what the real poverty rate is based on that number.  God, must I do everything?  And they make the story even more bland by noting that those poverty stricken by the recession are the usual suspects:

Dr. Smeeding said it seemed almost certain that poverty would further rise this year. He noted that the increase in unemployment and poverty had been concentrated among young adults without college educations and their children, and that these people remained at the end of the line in their search for work.

We're in the front of the line, I suppose.  So, they go into several heart wrenching stories of uneducated folks with babies that are forced to move in with relatives to weather the financial storm.  I would rather read about people like BL1y who no one would have ever thought would be living below the poverty line.  Oh yah, he doesn't count because his parents are working.

But the situation would be more bleak but for unemployment benefits and, at the same time, it's not as bleak as we thought because of certain benefits that come with living in this Great Country of ours:

If food-stamp benefits and low-income tax credits were included as income, close to 8 million of those labeled as poor in the report would instead be just above the poverty line, the Census report estimated. At the same time, a person who starts a job and receives the earned income tax credit could have new work-related expenses like transportation and child care. Unemployment benefits, which are considered cash income and included in the calculations, helped keep 3 million families above the line last year, the report said, with temporary extensions and higher payments helping all the more.

So, once again, a half ass story from an ass clown publication.  Try and publish a real story, New York Times!

Thanks for the tip, BIDER Reader.

Not the Most Sympathetic Character--But She Did Everything Right.

I'm not a huge fan of people in the educational industrial complex, but Demosthenes of America forwarded me this article that was right on point for BIDER readers and my general feeling regarding the big(ger) divide between rich and poor.  Not to mention the big nose dive that so many of us have taken since the recession--into the deep end of poverty.  Maria Ortiz, a bilingual Ph.D. who has never had to search for a job until January of 2009:

After working and teaching in California for 20 years, Ortiz was recruited in 2007 for a highly specialized job at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She left her stable situation to take a chance on a new program she believed in, but the program folded due to budget cuts less than two years later in January 2009, right in the middle of the recession.

Ortiz frantically applied for jobs for the next 18 months, running through all $15,000 of her savings, exhausting all 99 weeks of unemployment benefits and eventually having to draw from Social Security and accept financial aid from her local church congregation to help pay the rent. 

Only in times like these can you go from the person leaving cash in the alms dish at church to the person knocking on the Minister's door to ask for a handout.  It only took 18 months.  Now, she's needy and broke.

How many months are you away from seeking handouts?  I think, if I had 3 bad months, I would be screwed.  And that is downright likely to happen.  After all, many of my clients are financially strapped, unemployed, underemployed, etc.  That's the honest truth. I imagine that there are people who have nothing in the bank at all, that are 2 weeks away from being evicted or losing their car.  We are all closer to poverty than we'd like to believe.

When I saw a homeless person in the 80s, I would think "crazy."  When I saw a homeless person in the 90s, I would think "druggie."  Now, I'll think "PhD."

Ms. Ortiz reflects on her life by citing our favorite line here at BIDER:

"I cried the whole day on Monday," she told HuffPost. "It's painful. It's embarrassing. I worked so hard. I have all this experience and education. I was careful and prepared. I kept savings -- I did everything right. Why am I living on handouts? I always felt like there were needy people out there that needed the help more than I did, but now I am turning into one of those people. Look at this. This is how the middle class is evaporating."

The italics are mine of course.  That's right, Ms. Ortiz.  So did we.  We all know why she's not getting a job, by the way.  The Universities that should be knocking her door down, are hiring graduate students for pennies on the dollar, to teach the same classes Mr. Ortiz would like to teach.  She probably costs too much, or they think she'd expect to be paid much more than she's actually willing to accept.  At least the educational industrial complex is blind.  It screws us and screws its own.

In Pursuit of the Six Figure Salary

I am a child of immigrants, as were many of my friends.  We were middle class, in an affluent community.  My parents, along with most of my friends' parents, were immigrants and suffered and sacrificed to make sure that they bought homes in the right neighborhoods and sent their kids to college to pursue the American dream.  Our parents made sacrifices to provide us with the proper foundation to live a good life in this country.  They didn't think it would be nearly as hard for us.  After all, we were born here.  We were schooled here.  The world was our oyster.

When I was twelve, my girl friend and I were sitting around discussing our futures.  Yes, we were very serious children.  We both figured that we would be fine if we earned (with our husbands Prince Charming and James Bond) $100K+.  We thought we'd be comfortable.  We were smart and good in school, it should be attainable.  Hell, we ought to be able to earn $100K on our owns.

Well, I did earn $100K+ at some point.  And I'll tell you how I felt.  I didn't feel rich.  For the first time in my life, I felt comfortable.  I could save and I could spend. I always had money in the bank. I could buy every Gucci purse I desired, but I didn't need to.  I felt squarely middle class (remember that I live in New York City).

So, those days are over and I've plummeted to the lower five figures.  I am not sure yet, but I imagine I will earn $35K or $40K this year--if I'm lucky.  But I least I felt the luxury of the six figure salary at some point in my life.

On a weekly basis, I encounter at least 1 or 2 0Ls that I attempt to dissuade from attending law school.  I'm usually successful too.  How do I do it?  I focus on the bottom line: you will (most likely) not earn a $100K, or even close--when you graduate.  In fact, in all likelihood, you'll earn exactly what you earn now--or less.  I am very good with people and I'm very convincing. I tend to focus on this issue because I can see through all the bullshit about life long dreams of law school and the intellectual challenge and see that the 0L is simply not satisfied by the salaries offered to college graduates.  Most of these 0Ls have careers.  They are medical billers and park rangers and paralegals, and their salaries don't feel like enough.  I don't doubt that.  In their minds, they are intelligent people--why shouldn't they feel comfortable?  Why should they live paycheck to paycheck?  Law school is simply a way to boost your resume so that you earn more money, right? It's logical, right?

Well, BIDER readers know that a JD is the new BA.  Your salary won't jump up.  You may graduate from law school and land a job earning $40K, but you're $150K in debt and you're even worse off.  That's the cold, hard truth.

Salaries have been stagnant. We're earning what our parents earned 20 years ago, but life is infinitely more expensive.  There's no magic formula that will give you the lifestyle and salary that you (think you) deserve.  An education is certainly not the way to make large strides in your net worth.  It seems that there is no way to break the cycle of poverty (and trust me that you're poor if you're living from paycheck to paycheck)--outside of owning a company or inheriting wealth.  And our generation is not satisfied with being poor.  In a way, that's what caused the financial collapse of 2008.

I ran into this passage about the book Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists (by Raghuram Rajan) which explains my point exactly:

In a new book he is working on, entitled “Fault Lines,” Rajan argues that the initial causes of the breakdown were stagnant wages and rising inequality. With the purchasing power of many middle-class households lagging behind the cost of living, there was an urgent demand for credit. The financial industry, with encouragement from the government, responded by supplying home-equity loans, subprime mortgages, and auto loans. (Notwithstanding the government’s involvement, this is ultimately a traditional Chicago argument: in response to changing economic circumstances, the free market provided financial products that people wanted.) The side effects of unrestrained credit growth turned out to be devastating-a possibility that most economists had failed to consider.

We have always been a nation of consumers.  Now we're a nation of consumers with no money.  We're fastly becoming a third world nation, where there are only rich and poor people.  What rich people don't realize is that you can't live like a king among paupers without worrying about the paupers killing you and kidnapping your children for ransom.  That will be fun.