On this site, we address the lack of jobs out there in the market for newly minted attorneys. But, what about the people who get one of the attorney jobs that are actually out there? Is the work environment for an attorney worth risking financial ruin? Not by a long shot. Attorneys are among the unhappiest people, as measured by job satisfaction surveys. I recently ran across a couple of different posts: one by an associate at a large firm, another who took jobs with small firms. As you will see, neither job scenario is appealing at all.
The large firm associate's day can only be described as hectic. The busy day for this associate is a continuous fire drill, comprised of client created emergencies. The most galling part of it is that the attorney spends almost 21 hours in one day at the office. When a person always works at least 13 hours a day, 7 days a week, that $150,000 starting salary suddenly doesn't look that great. The attorney ostensibly accepts a work schedule that would be unacceptable to most normal people because he has huge loan payments that need to be paid off so he can move on to something more satisfying. The Biglaw job essentially becomes a way for the associate to erase the huge financial mistake he has made by going to law school in the first place. Is an "education" that is so useless and financially burdensome that it forces graduates to take jobs that with this much stress really worth it? Oh, and if you are laid off, you have a black mark against you that makes it much harder for you to find another Biglaw position.
If you are unable to get the brass ring that is a Biglaw job, things are even worse. Not only do you have to put up with a schedule that can rival the Biglaw associate's, you have to do it for a lot less money. This person had a couple of terrible jobs that are representative of what to expect if you are unable to break into a mid to large size firm (Note: there is a lot more in this article I will discuss at a future date). His first job was at a firm that "ran through associates like tissue paper". I unfortunately also worked at such a firm. The partners had no interest in developing anyone or providing the training law schools expect firms to give new graduates. They simply hired whoever would work for the least money and let them go if things didn't work out. There were so many people out there that their ad would always get tons of resume submissions. The second job this person took required him to work for free as an "intern" for three months. After that, he made $1,000 per month for three months before getting a raise to a $2,000 per month salary.
I unfortunately also have experience with this. My first job out of law school was with an attorney who agreed to hire me for $400 per week plus 20% of any fees received from cases that settled or that we won. This was reduced to $300 per week one day after my boss expressed surprise that I expected the $400 per week. He swore up and down that he had said $300 per week. Not wanting to rock the boat, I agreed to the reduced amount. I eventually ended up leaving after five months when no case monies were coming in and I was forced to ask my parents to loan me gas money so I could drive to the office. This was in 2004, so I can only imagine what indignities law graduates are having to put up with now.
For most people, the law is a terrible choice. I do everything I can to discourage people I meet who want to go to law school because it seems "interesting". Still, some fail to heed my advice and still go. The fight is not over until our message is known to everyone and the ScamDeans and ScamProfs are forced to discount their services to what they are actually worth.
Here is an online income calculator, and you can see how close a gross income of 2K a month is to earning a minimum wage:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.calculator.net/take-home-pay-calculator.html
At last. Analysis that goes beyond law school. Thank God. And beyond the search for a clerkship or first job.
ReplyDeleteThe career prospects for this profession have always been less than promoted by the schools and the media. The trajectory of the profession has been downward for many years.
Nice article.
This type of information needs to made available to potential students and their parents.
Outside and Beyond the law school scam.
As much as Biglaw associates work, I think that many solos out there sometimes approach their hours, and for far less pay and job security. And many times the actual timing makes it worse.
ReplyDeleteIf you are a Biglaw associate pulling an all-nighter, at least you can plan around that. If you are a solo getting a call at 3:30 am from a client's family about how he's back in jail and they need help bonding him out, you still have to make the docket call by 9.
Further to that point, the biglaw associate knows the exact amount of the paycheck he will be getting on Friday, the solo does not.
DeleteFor the last two weeks I have been trying to get a routine triple-net commercial lease for a small building done with a two lawyer firm that represents the tenant. But one of their partners is out on medical leave and rather than refer a single stinking residential closing out and let $500.00 leave their office the remaining partner is trying to do everything. It's that bad in small firms now. Fight for every dime. Twenty years ago an associate of mine went to cover a motion in a semi-rural part of our state. While waiting for court to open she overheard two older solos talking about how it wasn't like the old days anymore, when you only really had to work three days a week.
ReplyDeleteThat's terrible..
DeleteYou can't do that today. If a new grad tried to work 3 days a week today, he'd quickly find himself in default and likely homeless as well, absent not having any debt and coming from wealth with a sizable trust fund in tow.
Amazing post that summarizes all the big issues. Good for linking to future lemmings.
ReplyDeleteI worked in two law firms. Jumped ship and then got laid off - never earned more than 700 a week. I recently turned down a "job" at a law firm. Here were the terms: "We work 80 hours a week, and if you do a REALLY REALLY good job then the second year here we'll let you earn 35,000, but you really have to want it. You know, our former associate just wouldn't come in on Sundays so he never made it." So, I work in a factory and get actual paychecks at the end of the week. On weeks we work OT, I make more than I did as a lawyer. Why did I even bother with that stupid, worthless law degree....
ReplyDelete7:16, qutie frankly i believe you made this up. As bad as some lawyers are, as greedy, i have never known the biggest dirt bags to treat associates like this. Everybody really needs to use their critical reading skills before believing all of the garbage posted on scam blogs.
Delete9:03, I know of many cases where associates are treated even worse. Above the Law regularly posts outrageous job listings that ask attorneys to intern for free or work long hours for less money than one would make as the manager of a McDonalds.
DeleteAttorneys are automatically ethical just because they have to take the MPRE and have to follow some bogus standards made up by the ABA.
24 years here. Yep. Legal employers can and will mistreat you.
DeleteTo the lemmings out there,
ReplyDeleteYou are most likely not going to beat the tremendous odds. The schools have been pumping out roughly 44K grads for about 23K jobs requiring bar passage annually. Of that amount, a small fraction, i.e. 3K-4K, are Biglaw jobs. Those positions go to students who graduated from top 12 law schools or at the very top of their class from tier 2 schools.
Yet, you will be essentially required to incur an additional $90K-$170K in non-dischargeable debt, for *a chance* to enter this "profession." If you take 20 years to pay off your student loans, you will end up paying double what you originally took out, at the least.
If you want to be a dumbass and still enroll, then go ahead. It's your life. Just don't complain later that you were not warned. Don't get upset that you can't afford children or a house.
Great comment, Nando. As usual, you reduce a conflict of interests to the undeniable facts. Those numbers don't lie.
DeleteI hope your new, real, post-scam life is going well, especially for the holidays. All the best to your family.
In law practice, there are basically two scenarios that can describe almost all law firms at any moment in time, at least on the litigation side:
ReplyDelete1. Stressful and overburdened
2. Staining and starving for work
It shouldn't be that way, but it sure as hell seems like it.
Staining? Their underwear?
DeleteYou can choose to be a victim or not. Nobody need work more than five minutes in a job they despise. Walk out. Solo is simply not as bad as many of you make it seem. Its a world of difference when you work for yourself rathet than a dirt bag, big law or not.
ReplyDelete"solo is simply not as bad as many of you make it seem. Its a world of difference when you work for yourself rathet than a dirt bag, big law or not."
DeleteYeah, working as a solo (or a small shop) sure is "different." Can't argue with that. But in personal injury (at least the small law stuff), you're marching to the beat of the insurance companies. These days, they make sure everything is a drawn out, miserable process, even resolving the property damage portion of claims. Good faith offers are rare, even in clear liability cases, so you end up wasting time and money in litigation on cases that should really have settled short of litigation. Then you spend a bunch of your time protecting their subrogated interests (and the interests of providers), in exchange for a tiny reduction when cases settle. Profit margins on small PI cases are thin. Maybe other practice areas are better, but in PI "working for yourself" is overrated, and somewhat of a misnomer.
8:52, I strongly recommend you read "Con Law"'so last few chapters to get a true picture of how life is for new grads who try to go solo.
DeleteI agree insurance companies act with malice these days. They scrape the bottom of the barrel to find their adjusters. Maybe x lawyers?
DeleteHow much PI work is really out there? Not enough to feed huge numbers of lawyers. Mostly there are not all that many injured people who deserve money damages for their injuries. How many injured people like this do you know? Relying on insurance companies to cough up money so hordes of lawyers can eat. Well, that is a lot of wishful thinking. In fact pure fantasy.
DeleteEveryone can compete for the PI work, so there's work and recoveries for everybody, right???
DeleteEveryone can hope to be a BigLaw partner, so there's a career for everybody, right??
Everyone has a shot at the lottery.
Law feeds off this type of thinking.
Nine words say it all..."For most people, the law is a terrible choice."
ReplyDeleteAfter more than 20 years in this business, including a few biglaw firms (as a result of mergers, partners moving for more money, partners getting kicked out, firms going bankrupt, etc.) I can say that life in a biglaw firm is terrible for most people, and there is no job security for anyone, even the managing partner, as there are often "revolts" ousting management. There are a lot of malignant personalities in biglaw firms, and a lot of "tribal wars" within the ranks. Being in the wrong group at the wrong time through no fault of your own can put you on the street, unemployed.
ReplyDeleteI graduated over 20 years ago with 63K in debt from law school, graduate school and undergraduate school. I had no idea the lawyering business was what it is. I learned the hard way. My first job was working for an abusive, greedy ***** that no one else wanted to work with. He refused to show or teach me anything and expected that I knew everything and could advise clients fresh out of law school. I lasted 18 months and was able to go to another biglaw firm. I paid off my student debt within 36 months eating the specials from the supermarket and living in a not so nice apartment counting every penny. I bought my freedom back after having fallen for this law school scam ASAP. So, you see, law school and the debt incurred ruined or negatively impacted a total of 6 years of my life right there.
I checked the state bar roster yesterday....less than half of my colleagues from the last 20 years are still working in the lawyering business according to my calculations, including partners, and including partners who once offered me a job or who hired me once. Nearly everyone still working has had multiple jobs...many had to move around the country to get a job, many have had one or more, sometimes long, periods of unemployment, and on and on.
I consider that law had a very negative impact on my life. I left good career prospects in another field to pile on more debt for a degree that truly was nearly useless (and what I did learn, I could have learned in a few months if the whole process wasn't drawn out over 3 years), believing the lies printed in the glossy law school brochures. I reflect back now and see all the negative effects that mistake has had on my life: I, like most lawyers, have become increasingly cynical at least in part because I was scammed in a major, life altering way by a law school complex that exists purely for profit and sustains itself by hiding the real truth; I, like most lawyers, have remained insecure and financially conservative because I am part of a business for which there is no job security (and I do mean none past a few months into the future); I have uprooted my life on multiple occassions disrupting friendships, sense of community and networks, to work basically like a migrant worker chasing a job. Does that sound like a description of what anyone would reasonably consider a "profession"?
Great comment, sad story. Thanks for sharing and warning.
DeleteThe mistake you made was not, after some experience, starting your own practice. Virtually everyone I know ends up working for themselves sooner or later. The problem then is you are kind of rooted in place. Once you start your practice, it is very difficult to just get up and go. Of course starting a practice today may not be nearly as easy as it would have been twenty years ago.
ReplyDelete"When you lose and fail, it is understandable. When you win and fail, that brings madness."
ReplyDeleteEven a greasy spoon restaurant and a movie theater have seating capacities which limit the number of participants.
ReplyDeleteThe failure of the bar to police itself and control its numbers has destabilized the whole profession and created a now insurmountable problem.
Even if the law school game results in a seat in a firm, it will be a miserable and short experience. It used to be that was the point at which you started your own practice. But that was 20 years ago. Today, the market has as much need for another small firm as much as a fish needs a bicycle.
The number of new medical students remains steady at about 20000 every year. In (large) part this is due to financial and logistical constraints (you need a teaching hospital near a med school, you can't just pack the lecture halls full of warm bodies because they need cadavers to cut up, and doctors can only haul so many med students along on their rounds), but probably in some part due to the responsible attitude of the AMA and med schools not to turn med schools into profit-making diploma mills and the decision to produce only as many doctors as can get work.
DeleteAbout 90% of med schools get residencies every year. The other 10% go back into the pool and try again next year.
Imagine what it would be like if they spat out 45000 new grads every year, most with $150-250k debt, and then blamed them for not finding jobs, or spouted nonsense about "MD Advantage" and how they should stop complaining and "pick themselves up". All hell would break loose.
Thank you. For this post. Exactly right.
DeleteAlso see 8:33 PM:
"People entering law school don't get that the job market for lawyers is pyramidal- it gets tighter as a lawyer ages. Very few lawyers get to work a career in full time permanent lawyer jobs. The odds are less than 25% of working as a lawyer on a full time permanent basis to within 15 years of hitting Social Security retirement age.
Without long term employment data the scam continues to ruin lives even at the top of the profession."
Imagine if that were true for doctors. That they couldn't work a full career, as happens with many attorneys.
People compare lawyers to doctors all the time. Perhaps there was some semblance of parity in the Old Days. But certainly not now. Most lawyers are strictly lower-middle class to poor. The great majority, in fact.
"Most lawyers are strictly lower-middle class to poor. The great majority, in fact."
DeleteAmen to that. Five years later, most of my fellow law school class graduates are in the lower class financially, and by lower class, I mean earning barely above poverty level in the US. Since only 29% of my classmates became paid lawyers (gotta love those third tier law schools out making a handsome profit!), the rest of us were left to fend for themselves. Some graduates ended up working in retail for less than $10 an hour. One graduate I know worked as a security guard - another works as an office manager. Another currently tries to scrape together a living as a law clerk for 20 hours a week - no benefits, holidays, or anything, and she has to beg for $15 an hour in California. (By beg, I mean that she has been told by the attorneys she works for that a no new attorney is worth more than $15 an hour and did I mention that she has been licensed for 5 years now?)
Me? I ended up in a whole different career altogether, but because I tried for so long to make a living in the legal field (interning for free, of course), I am just now starting out at the bottom of my new career (translation: making $14,000 a year take home pay, part-time.) I am sure things will get better for me in a few years as I continue to gain skills in the new field, but there is no doubt that I lost a lot of valuable years going to law school learning completely unnecessary skills.
There is no reason a person with the intellect to pass the bar cannot do better than security guard or minimum wage..in a jd type job or not. Heck, sell insurance if you have to..unless your personality makes you an outcast.
Delete6:20 AM here again:
DeleteThis is the Real World. She has been told that no new attorney - "new" with 5 years of experience under her belt - is worth more than $15 / hr.
Her employers can get away with screwing her financially because, guess what? There's another $100++ in line waiting to take her place if she doesn't like it, and by "like" I mean STFU, do the work, and take your few shekels every 2 weeks. And they surely begrudge paying her THAT much, in their eyes.
UPS drivers make that, with high school degrees. Just one example.
Do you see doctors after they complete their residencies getting exploited by their peers like that? No, you do not. But since law is such a "noble profession", hey.. Fuck you Prole. The established attorneys know it's a seller's market out there and they exploit it to the fullest. Thank you ABA and the law schools for the oversupply.
You did the right thing leaving the field. You'll move up. But as you say, it's years wasted for a return you could have had absent the law degree, the time, and the debt.
"Most lawyers are strictly lower-middle class to poor....."
DeleteAnd trending downwards. That's the thing, folks. YEARS of overproduction of attorneys, coupled with the slow long-term contraction of the market, has led to this situation.
The multitude of people who are already in the mudpit are more than sufficient to fulfill the country's legal needs until 2030, and they will experience a shrinking income each year they continue to practice, and will work free-lance until they drop. They won't be happy and they won't consider themselves successful by their own standards. They won't share with you. They can't.
There's NO room left for anyone wishing to literally make a dollar. No, it's not "highly competitive," "challenging," or even "cut-throat." It's filled way beyond capacity.
The mere existence of a law school prospectus for a Class of 2017 --without the express disclaimer, "This degree is one in liberal arts and has no immediate employment application; worse, the public's antipathy towards lawyers means the degree may preclude employment opportunities"-- is disingenuous.
Amen
Delete@ 6:20 AM here again.
Delete"There's NO room left for anyone wishing to literally make a dollar. No, it's not "highly competitive," "challenging," or even "cut-throat." It's filled way beyond capacity.
The mere existence of a law school prospectus for a Class of 2017 --without the express disclaimer, "This degree is one in liberal arts and has no immediate employment application; worse, the public's antipathy towards lawyers means the degree may preclude employment opportunities"-- is disingenuous."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nailed it.
Take a look at this, it's worth a read. And apply the sentiment to academia and academics:
http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/21/but-not-so-much-for-the-rest/
Do you really want to feed the schools and the greedy professors? They are the ones who'll be living in those $2m brownstones while you, the neo-serf graduate, have massive debt and live in a 3-story walkup, if you're lucky, and barely make enough to get by and pay on IBR.
The attitude, as I recall, was the worst. And still is the worst by the looks of the shameless, sorry and pathetic responses and excuses these professors gin up for still attending law school. They have the entirety of the money by 3L, 2S so they basically give you your walking papers and send you on your way. Their lives go on as they were. While yours changes significantly.
It's like, "HA HA! We fooled you! Bu-Bye!"
"P.S. -- No Refunds."
They couldn't care less about the outcomes of their students. And now we have 15 - count 'em, 15 - separate decisions that shield the law schools from liability of students they have defrauded. But law is a "noble profession", right??
Did anyone really expect the courts to side with the students?
So, along with what 2:35 PM and others above and below have written, think before you leap, Lemmings. Once you sign on the dotted line, things will change for you. And odds are very much that this change will not be for the better.
6:20 should write for this blog
DeletePeople entering law school don't get that the job market for lawyers is pyramidal- it gets tighter as a lawyer ages. Very few lawyers get to work a career in full time permanent lawyer jobs. The odds are less than 25% of working as a lawyer on a full time permanent basis to within 15 years of hitting Social Security retirement age.
ReplyDeleteWithout long term employment data the scam continues to ruin lives even at the top of the profession.
I remember talking to the career placement director at my T2 back in '92 after I had realized some of what is now published about the pyramid scheme that law firms are. I asked "What about the long term job situation and salaries?" to which she responded quickly and bitingly "Oh, we don't keep that data." At least some percentage of law faculty and law school deans do know that it is unrealistic to expect a long term career as a practicing lawyer. They, in their own self interest like to hide that fact to keep the student loan money rolling in.
DeleteI don't know what you're talking about. I'm a 12 year lawyer. Not only do I have a career I'm very satisfied with, but I know only a single classmate from law school who has dropped out of the profession in the years since then. And that was because she married some filthy rich dude and moved to another state.
DeleteWell, the attorney life may be tough. But the law professor life is a breeze. Some professors even get to watch movies and call that research!
ReplyDeleteIf you guys had just been smarter and worked harder, you all could have become law professors. Why didn't you do that? There must be something really wrong with you.
Come to Louisiana. No lawyer suffering here like the rest of the country
ReplyDeleteSay what?
Deletehttp://www.lstscorereports.com/?r=la
Doesn't look graduates from its law schools are having that great a time of it.
The profession has obviously exploded. Actually... it's not been a profession for some time. Lawyers won the constitutional right to advertise and legal education is available to all who ask ... yet is priced on the old 'professional' model at today's prices. That 2008 'crash' thing only hastened an impending crash.
ReplyDeleteA perfect storm. Blame those who saw lgeal education as profit-making diploma mills.
The sad thing is that young people (who are otherwise tech saavy and up to date) still see law as the lucrative old profession and think it is prestigious.
Unfortunately, to those in the know, the law-school bound student is anything but a smart, aggressive go-getter. Rather, s/he is a lazy daydreamer who hasn't bothered and kept up to date and still listens to parents' fairy tales.
Hopefully, this country will never again have 30,000 law school graduates per year.
If the number of new graduates remains below 30,000 per year for some time, then improved job prospects could improve the general quality of law students.
DeleteHopefully, this country will never again have an attorney who can't read or think at an adult level, who can't write or speak clearly and concisely, who doesn't understand basic financial concepts, who thinks it's reasonable to pay $50,000 a year to listen to ignorant and desperate blowhards, etc....
Unfortunately as long the federal government continues to throw Stafford and GradPlus loans at anyone with a pulse there is probably a floor on the number of suckers who will continue to line up for law school. Probably 30k-40k. I can't see it falling below there.
DeleteLook at the Law School Lemmings site... These guys have no excuses. Many people are telling them law school is a bad investment, but they refuse to believe it. Its like how people continue to fall for slightly more outright scams (e.g. Nigerian 419 scams) even though they should know better.
30000 law grads per year all paying $150k to "professors" is still a crime.
DeleteWe need at most 20000 law grads, and those grads need to pay $10k per year at most.
We need to end the greedy snouts of professors gorging themselves in the trough of student loan money. That disgusting profession needs to be taken down a few notches.
There's a propaganda campaign for law schools in the form of utterly unrealistic TV shows portraying lawyers as rich, secure, and winning cases in front of the Supreme Court on a regular basis.
DeleteWith that campaign on, lemmings choose to believe the TV over these strange blogs that contradict its authoritative messages.
Why don't the mega firms just hire more people at fixed salaries (50-80k) without constantly firing them? Wouldn't they then be able to do all this crazy work some of the links detail? Why do law firms need to hire a handful of elite grads at 150k per year and constantly fire them? Why not get rid of the ridiculous partner track for most hires?
ReplyDeleteAny lawyers out there who could answer this?
Because the only real value anyone has in a law firm is their ability to bring in clients. When they hire an associate they are gambling that their work product will be up to big law snuff and that they will be able to generate a book of business. Worker bees are a dime a dozen. There are plenty of unemployed lawyers from T14 schools who could not generate a book of business, and there are some TTT grads who have done very well because they could.
Delete5:36 answered why the long partner track. As to why they pay new associates so much, I think its probably purely for prestige. Its an example of conspicuous consumption, a signalling mechanism.
DeleteBiglaw firms pay high salaries in order to attract graduates from top ranked law schools, who are needed for marketing purposes. Clients don't know or care how often associates like these are fired. And firms tend to be run, as mentioned above, by people with serious personality disorders and emotional defects, so associates are at the complete mercy of these psychopaths.
DeleteSmall firms have a different dynamic but similar result. They don't need pedigree for marketing purposes. They literally only need warm bodies. The partners have their core base of clients, from whom they can generate comfortable profits indefinitely. Associates fit into this equation only for the purpose of supplying labor services. They are 100 percent expendable.
Wow! A lawyer who tells the truth about a career in the law?
ReplyDeleteI agree with this young lawyer. I have about 27 years in the trenches as a lawyer who has tried a good number of cases and has taken a case through the US Supreme Court and ended up winning it!
Please understand this simple maxim, you are not paid on your prior successes as a lawyer. You are paid on your ability to generate future business, whether you have to steal, mislead, pilfer or cajol that business over the threshold. The wealthiest lawyers have mastered the majority of those skills.
I must say my dear mentor warned me about all this, but not in detail... otherwise I would have chosen differently.
If you are young and coming out of undergrad school, please do yourself and your future loved ones (spouse, children etc.) a genuine and ever-lasting favor to pursue something else besides a law degree.
To put it into simple, practical, economic terms there is a present glut of about 250,000 - 400,000 law school grads. And the average lawyer is working about 9 years LONGER than his predecessor just 20 years ago! So attrition in the industry is much slower and much less frequent as it was just one generation ago. Therefore, it follows that there will be a glut of lawyers for the next 25- 40 years, without any new law school grads!
That profound over-supply of LICENSED LAWYERS is like a 1,000 foot-deep chasm that must be leapt by you every month. Through natural laws of supply and demand, it will drive wages to super-low levels. New lawyer expectations that were errantly based on prior lawyer revenues, price-fixing and cronyism, and were once optimistically pointed to the moon, will soon realistically dropping off the cliff. But you are not the comic book “Roadrunner”, you newbies will drop fast and hit hard. Poof!
If you doubt the accuracy of my advice, please read "The Lawyer Bubble" by Stephen Harper. Then practice law in the trenches of the real-life litigation and revenue drivers of law firms for almost three decades, at the very top of the industry, to understand the truth in what I suggest.
If you value a quality life, based around a wholesome family life and a satisfaction in a job well-done, please consider redirecting your thinking to some things that are more pointed toward technology and/or helping people with non-law expertise.
The satisfaction you will gain by avoiding the now unrealistic career in the law, will be very well worth the ability to not have a ton of bricks of student loan debt on your back every month for FOREVER (non-dischargeable and follows you for LIFE). BTW, Barack Obama did not pay off his law school debt until AFTER he was elected President!
By avoiding lawyering as an intended vocation, your quality of life will be higher and you will make a better spouse and mother/father without the stress of debt holding you or your family from enjoying life. Your work hours will also probably be much less too, as the work schedules of new lawyers are characteristically brutal…for the first TWO DECADES! (The kids will be out of high school before you get to go to their sporting events. So you will wait another 7 years to go to the events of your grandkids since you missed all of the events of your children. ~ “Sorry, sweety. I wish I could come to your state-championship contest, but we are out to trial again and you know that means I have to work Saturday and Sunday too. Sorry. I will make it up to you some day.” Pleas know that “some day” NEVER comes.
Please remember these simple words of wisdom that hold true to the assumption that a career as a lawyer, in a glutted market is not prudent for those who aspire to a quality of life above that of an indentured servant. "All that glitters is not golden."
Good Luck! From a concerned lawyer litigator and truth advocate.