Retirement from the Law at 26: True Story.

A Canadian Lawyer, Chris Graham, won the law school jackpot. He scored a Big Law Job as a Corporate Lawyer.  For the first few months, his position was admirable:

Ever leave a meeting at 2 p.m. and read about it on the New York Timeswebsite before dinner? (To be fair, this is more likely to happen when a major investment bank has recently declared bankruptcy.) Ever worked pro bono for hedge funds? Savour that for a moment. Then savour the case of champagne that arrives in your office when the project is finished. “Thanks for all your effort.”

Need to get documents to a client on short notice? “No problem. We'll send the corporate helicopter.” Just for documents.

That's exactly what many lemmings dream of when they enroll in law school.  But they don't realize the collateral damage that it causes:

That spring I found and lost a beautiful woman, then spent the summer thinking about what she had showed me about time, which turned out to be my side of the bargain with the firm. I get serious work and a generous salary; it gets my time, whenever it wants, as much as it wants.  

Yes.  Big Firm Life, lack thereof, is a tumultuous one.  Mr. Graham explains it beautifully.  Once you scored the job, your life is no longer linear.  It begins to have as many up and downs as the U.S. economy.  Sometimes you're working late into the night, and showing back up at 7:00 a.m. to "finish a deal."  Other times, you're twiddling your thumbs--terrified that you're never going to find enough work  to meet your billable hour requirements.  The unpredictability is agonizing:

Think of a graph showing your hours worked each day for a year. The regression line is not especially high, but the standard deviation is outrageous. That's life as a corporate lawyer.

For some people (perhaps many, judging by the number of corporate lawyers in the world), this sort of arrangement is fine. Standard. Life would be boring if you always knew what was coming.

It took a year to realize this is not me. Reacting to changing circumstances is one thing; being told how to react, and when to react, is another. My graph was a cardiogram, all heart attacks and comas. 

So this Canadian did what so many lawyers wish they could do.  He quit and went back to college to get a different B.A.   He went to Oxford, actually.  He majored in History and Politics so that he could do what he tried and failed to do in his limited free time--read and write.  It's funny because so many law students choose this very same major and find that it doesn't lead to gainful employment.  Maybe it doesn't lead to gainful employment when you already have loans for college?  But Mr. Graham had an advantageous position.  He used his BigLaw salary to save up for the additional schooling.  I suspect that he didn't have loans from law school either.  So, he was free to pursue intellectual satisfaction.  I hope he reads this post and corrects me if I'm wrong.

So, he retired from BigLaw at 26.  Lucky Canuck.  Good luck and a big thank you to him for putting out a realistic portrayal of life in BigLaw.

Leaving the Country Is Not a Desperate Act

I wanted to thank Angry Future Expat for playing Ann Landers to a BIDER reader (we'll call this person B.R.) who needed some advice on their loans and job prospects overseas. I sent the reader a response of my own in a private email, but I thought Angry Future Expat would have a better answer (he did) in response to the worst case scenario for not paying off private loans. I recommend stopping by and reading B.R.'s letter and AFEP's response.

AFEP is absolutely correct in that leaving the country is not a desperate act, but a smart one and, as AFEP said, " a profound and powerful act of civil disobedience". It is more than okay to feel angry about your current situation whether you are an unemployed recent graduate, a person laid off after years of loyalty and hard work to your former employer, someone drowning in student loan debt because you thought an education would open doors to something better than a minimum wage job, or the millions of people who are currently unemployed or losing business because of a man-made disaster like the Gulf Oil Spill. You have every right to not follow the status quo, say enough is enough, and just leave the abuse that our current system has inflicted upon you.

If B.R. decides to stay, at least understand and accept that your situation will likely not improve within the next decade. It is not due to any fault of your own, but because we are only at the beginning of a very long great depression and no one in the upper echelons of power cares about you or me to change the system that made them incredibly wealthy. Holding out hope for non-existent jobs or any loan forgiveness or economic assistance from corporatist-runned higher education system and government would be foolish. By reading our blogs and writing to me and AFEP that you aren't going to sit by another year unemployed after working your butt off for your BA and JD, you are doing something courageous. Something that most people in your situation havn't even considered. You are taking charge of your life and taking it wherever in the world you can find a livable wage, a lower cost of living, possibly a national health care system, and an escape from your own self-destruction forced upon you by people and corporations that could give a damn what happens to your life as long as your continue to benefit its coffers.

I came across a magnificent and profound piece of writing by blogger Arthur Silber. His post, appropriately titled "Memo to the Victims: You Yourselves Will Pay for the Crimes of the Ruling Class", mainly addresses the Gulf Coast oil spill victims, but I think it applies to every single one of us. Especially for the scambloggers who have been met with some derision and scorn. As long as the ridicule and criticism comes from the powers that be and their apologists who make their six or seven-figure salary off the backs of millions of unsuspecting young people, we're doing something right. I've quoted much of Silber's post below, but I recommend reading the entire thing and forwarding it to anyone you know who has been affected by the Gulf oil spill, which is pretty much all of us. Ask yourself if this is the way you want to live and if not what are you going to do about it to break the goddamned rules, as Silber says. Only your life and happiness are at stake.

As more and more people are now acknowledging -- and I think they are entirely correct and, if anything, still underestimating what will be the ultimate costs of this calamity -- the damage caused by the catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico will most likely be felt for several decades at least. The economic costs forbid accurate projection at this point; that might not be an altogether regrettable result, for a fuller version of the truth might well be so horrifying that it would induce paralysis of both thought and action. The human costs -- the livelihoods destroyed, the families subjected to unendurable stress and most probably similarly destroyed in very large numbers, the hopes and dreams put on indefinite hold, only to be surrendered in their totality in time -- prohibit contemplation.

One aspect of the profoundly evil system that has been destroying us for over a hundred years -- and make no mistake, it is deeply evil in design, intent and effect, if by evil we designate those actions which destroy the very possibility of thriving life -- is especially awful. The authoritarian-corporatist-militarist system victimizes untold millions of individual human beings, as well as many other forms of life as we see again today, both here and abroad. That would be a momentous evil in itself, but this particular evil is unsatisfied with only this first form of destruction.

Thus, the victims are targeted a second time, and they are forced to become collaborators in their own destruction. It is crucial to understand that these two forms of destruction are not separate manifestations of separate evils. They are the consequences of the same evil, and the two forms of lingering torture and death (psychologically at a minimum, and frequently existentially as well) are part of one overall design. I've discussed certain cultural-psychological manifestations of this dynamic in a number of essays. For an introduction to this analytic approach, I would recommend one article in particular: "Let the Victims Speak." As I stated at the outset of that essay, the nature and operation of this dynamic are very complex; it took me a few decades to appreciate its character. If the subject interests you, I therefore suggest a reading of the earlier article in its entirety.
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You may be grievously harmed and even permanently damaged by the actions of those who hold unanswerable power -- but you may only speak about this evil and its effects within the very narrow limits set by those who would destroy you. If you are killed, the identical prohibitions apply to those who still manage to survive and who would protest the unforgivable crime committed against you. In this manner, the complacency and comfort of those who possess immense power and wealth are underwritten by the silence forced upon their victims. The victims may speak and even protest, but only within severely circumscribed limits, and only so long as their rulers are not made to feel too uncomfortable, or too guilty. Anything which approaches too close to the truth is strictly forbidden.

This is the system of government carefully erected and fortified in the United States over the last century. In the last several decades, it has been made impregnable and unassailable. If you tell the full truth or even approach it, you are consigned to the void beyond the most distant borders of permissible debate.

I consider this only a start at the task of understanding this pattern and its operations; time and health permitting, I will address these complicated matters in more detail in the future. But I now want you to consider another aspect of this collaboration in their own destruction forced upon the victims.

The pattern is the same: the victims are forced to participate in their own destruction. If you participate in our authoritarian-corporatist-militarist system in any significant way, there is no way of escaping this dilemma. I repeat the point for emphasis: this is the way the system was designed. The events of the last decade in particular and the events of today -- the acceptance of torture as a "normal" method of state- and warcraft, endless criminal wars of aggression, genocide, the funneling of vast amounts of wealth from defenseless "ordinary" citizens to the already engorged ruling class, the destruction of the Gulf and a huge additional number of lives -- are not aberrations, the result of the system having gone awry. This is what the system is designed to do. Most people recoil from evil of this magnitude; they refuse to identify and accept the system for what it is. They still seek to "reform" or "save" it. In other words: they themselves seek rationalizations and justification for their continuing collaboration. The ruling class is many things: avaricious, consumed by lust for power and control, heedless and uncaring of the immense destruction they cause, provided the destruction never touches their lives. But the ruling class is emphatically not stupid. To state what would be painfully obvious, if only so many people were not so wedded to denial: they constitute the ruling class, and you do not. And they counted on your reluctance or outright refusal to identify their evil. They knew they could depend on your continued collaboration in your own drawn-out torture and death.
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I'm forced to admit that, if one were to consider this system from the perspective of its greatest beneficiaries, it is a goddamned beautiful thing. It is elegant. The government takes gobs of money from taxpayers, it shovels huge amounts of that money to already enormously powerful companies, those companies then provide services essential to the government's unending campaigns of widespread destruction and death -- and in the necessary course of providing those services, the companies themselves commit numerous "egregious" and "willful" violations of health and safety requirements (all documented by Turse), and the companies thus inflict enormous suffering on some of the same taxpayers.

Then, in a display of our rulers' magnificently bountiful kindness and thoughtfulness, some of those injuries -- just some of them, for how can many of the victims ever be made close to whole again in any meaningful way? -- will be compensated, using a small portion of the huge wealth made possible by the taxpayers in the first instance.

As I say: elegant.

And this is merely one example, if an especially heinous one, from one industry. How many times in how many industries is this identical pattern repeated every single bloody and blood-filled day? Countless times, in countless industries.

This is what the system is designed to do. It does it with astonishing efficiency. Short of civil disobedience on a huge, unrelenting scale, that is, short of widespread, unceasing non-cooperation, the system will continue for the foreseeable future, probably in roughly its current form for the rest of your life. There is no sign that non-cooperation on the required scale will occur or is even being contemplated, except by a few outliers like me. And, possibly, like a few of you.

So what are you going to do? Scream at the injustice? Yell about the monstrous evil being committed every hour of every day? Write another blog post? I do not exempt myself from the all-encompassing irony which now consumes us, amidst the rising torrent of blood.

But: Withdraw your support, if you choose to. Disobey. Break the goddamned rules. Do not cooperate. If a sufficient number of people chose that course, change might begin.

Consider it. I suppose not all that much is at stake -- only your soul, and your happiness.

This Lemming Knows What He's Talking About...

I ran across this gem in my morning surf.  It's a somewhat realistic critique of law school, as put forth by a 3L.  My points are in red.

Opinion
Law School Rewarding, But Tough
January 29, 2010 - 2:27am
By Benjamin Keep

As the recession lingers and law school applications skyrocket, applicants should pause to consider just what sort of beast law school is. Out of all graduate school options, law school seems like the cheap and effective one. Most Ph.D. programs require significant years of work that result in a modest salary in research, administration or private practice; medical school offers a significant salary at roughly the same time investment, but at a considerably higher cost; but law school offers both a short time investment with a high earning potential (though usually at the cost of significant student loans). Perhaps the law school J.D. competes only with the MBA in its perceived payoff. Yet both have come under attack as being ineffective and superfluous as investment banks and large law firms continue to hemorrhage employees.  But I say, why must one go to graduate school at all? Plumbers, Electricians, HVAC installers all seem to earn a good living.  And I think, as far as graduate degrees go, that it's probably more expensive than many more practical graduate degrees--such as Masters of Social Work or Physician's Assistant School. However, he claims, the distinction lies in that you have higher earning potential. This is arguable at best. Many attorneys never get out of the high 5 figure salary.  And many lawyers these days cannot even land a job and are working for free (i.e. for the experience). 

Law school is an easy target, in part because it pursues ambiguous goals. Law school promises both to be undergraduate-plus — a teaching environment that emphasizes analytical reasoning, problem-solving, and intellectual rigor — and a professional school, where students learn the suite of researching, writing and advocacy skills that effective lawyers use. The J.D. is somewhat of an anomaly: academics disagree as to whether the degree is doctorate-level or not. Law School is a refuge for those that are not ready to enter the real world.  Why wouldn't someone be ready, you ask?  Perhaps because they picked the wrong undergrad degree, 'wrong' being defined as a degree based on curiosity rather than practicality.  Others are not ready to work because they need more or a different college experience.  This is where Law School comes in handy.  People get wasted and act stupid for an additional three years, under the guise of obtaining a questionable doctorate level degree. 

Members of journals are generally required to write a small, thesis-length piece (called a note) during their second year, but the length and depth cannot compare to a dissertation, and students write most notes without significant faculty supervision. The vast majority of these notes are dropped after they have been written, left unpublished and unpursued. In addition, a significant number of students decline the journal application process in the first place.  I don't think that anyone LOVES the journal experience, but it's a necessity if you want to land a BigLaw job right after law school--if there are any jobs to be had.  Generally, it's a hamster wheel for law students. You don't know enough about anything as a law student to write a legitimate note--that will be recognized in any field.  But I think that BigLaw values the fact that you can produce high volumes of writing under the pressue of a deadline.  To that end, it is necessary to show you are up for it.  The people that decline to write on are too busy with the college experience to be bothered, or did not have sufficient attorney influence to realize that it's something they should be doing. 

Law school doesn’t strictly impart attorney skills either. Only one required course teaches the fundamentals of legal practice (“lawyering” or “legal research and writing”); the vast majority of other classes are substantive or exploratory in nature. Law School fails miserably at preparing one to practice the law.  This is definitely true.  And I'm sure that legal research and writing could be taught on the job--so it's arguable that the entire 3 years is a worthless waste of time if you actually want to practice law.  If you really want to be a lawyer, after high school--take BARBRI and sit for the Cali Bar. You will owe nearly nothing and be in the same place as most Law School Grads in terms of having NO IDEA what the hell you're doing.

However valuable the Socratic method is as a teaching tool, its justification as preparation for judicial inquiry can fall flat, particularly when most lawyers, even those practicing litigation, never see the inside of a courtroom. Law school graduates exit with principles, not rules. No law student leaves school knowing what the law is, rather, they all leave with a toolbox for thinking about legal questions. It's funny that this is mentioned. I thought that appearing before a judge would be like the Socratic Method--but it wasn't.  Generally, no one was harder on me with questioning than my Civ Pro Professor.  She was a royal bitch. I've argued cases at the Appellate Division, I've argued motions in Supreme Court, Superior  Court, Civil Court, I've had trials. I've never had any issues answering the Judge's questions to his satisfaction. I find Judges to be agreeable people.  Maybe the Socratic Method helped, but I think I would be just as good on my feet had I went straight to court after college. I think you either have it or you don't. 

After passing the bar, lawyers specialize and largely ignore the law in the areas they don’t practice. Students learn the most about law at their firms, in their clinics and at their internships.

Law school is schizophrenic in a more abstract way as well. The rigor that makes law school appealing also burdens the experience with an insistent linearity. Most law students are over-achieving type-A personalities, helping to make the environment one that cultivates lawyerly attributes: an exhaustive work ethic, a detail-oriented approach and an obsessive nature. The timeline and pace of the lifestyle leaves little time for exploration, and less for reflection.

The popular conception that law students go on to pursue a diverse range of different jobs is true. But it’s not true in the way most think. The law touches a lot of things: governance, business, social relations, international relations, technology — but despite the diverse contexts, the purpose of law schools is to create prestigious lawyers. How would this kid know? He's completely wrong.  People have a very hard time entering other fields, even fields they know that they can master or have daily contact with through the law, because non-legal employers are reluctant to hire lawyers.  They think you will leave them for more pay.  The reason why the pay is so low, is because they don't hire you and put you in upper management.  Non-legal employers hire you for entry level positions earning 40K+.  Essentially, they hire you for jobs you could have gotten three years prior--right out of college.  That makes Law School worth it, right?  And with all of the loans you have pulled out, you need to earn more than $40K to survive.  I find it funny that a 3L can speak to this when he has yet to hunt for a non-lawyer job. I speak from experience.  I got this very same offer two weeks ago from company.  Mind you, I'm nearly a decade out.

To pursue a career in public interest, teaching, management, policy or administration requires considerable job search fortitude. You will be swimming against a tide of processes created to transition law students into lawyers.  I don't understand what the "tide of processes," but I will say that these jobs are the most sought after in the age of deferrment. As you know, entire first year classes of BigLaw have been deferred indefinitely and given stipends conditioned upon practicing public interest.  So, these jobs--which are low paying--are hard to get unless you're in the top 5% at Harvard or Yale.  Prestige has become the new form of currency.

The popular perception of legal work can also be quite different from the reality. Very few legal jobs require covert investigations, in-court turnabouts, and flashes of genius. Most require patient document review, extensive computer research and copious editing. Law students must keep their career goals in mind throughout the training process to effectively transition into a successful, happy career.  Doc Review!!! Don't I know it!

To those who are applying to law school this season: good luck.

Benjamin Keep, a third-year law student at Cornell, administers Barely Legal, a column featuring a rotating cast of law students that appears alternate Fridays this semester. He may be reached at bkeep@cornellsun.com

Well, as far as lemmings go, he is extremely enlightened.  Good luck out there, in the wasteland!