Listening to Pandora in the car during my commute, I couldn't help but notice the recent promos for the new season of Suits, possibly second only to Legally Blonde in terms of making law seem like an awesome, prestigious, fast-paced PowerProfession.
Suits Promo
If only law was a fraction as interesting as that. I'm sure you've all seen this, but have a look at the little "What Kind of Lawyer Would You Be?" thing on the site - here.
Of course, in reality, most will end up as 'unemployed', 'suicidal', or 'hopelessly in debt'.
Back soon with something more substantial.
Suits Promo
If only law was a fraction as interesting as that. I'm sure you've all seen this, but have a look at the little "What Kind of Lawyer Would You Be?" thing on the site - here.
Of course, in reality, most will end up as 'unemployed', 'suicidal', or 'hopelessly in debt'.
Back soon with something more substantial.
I wish life was more like television. Women would always wear tight clothing and men would quickly resolve all of life's difficulties with powerful handguns.
ReplyDeleteAt least I'm not hopelessly in debt, just unemployed and suicidal.
ReplyDeleteClass A office space in a big city every lawyer has it. Beautiful YOUNG women. Drama. Handsome YOUNG men. Law is always like that. Everyone is beautiful or handsome. Everyone stays perpetually young. Become a lawyer and you will be just like these guys and gals on the show. Fountain of youth, beauty and an exciting career in a class A office space - for life.
ReplyDeleteAnd the halls of big urban law firms veritably teem with nobodies who got 140 on the LSAT. Just think: it can all be yours if you sign those loan docu—I mean, if you register today for the world-class legal education that we offer here at Florida Coastal! Act now and we'll throw in a genuine synthetic faux imitation quasi-leather briefcase that you can take to your corner office in Manhattan. Call now. Operators (from last year's graduating class, hired on a non-renewable nine-month contract) are standing by.
DeleteSomeone needs to make a dark comedy showing a more typical group of young law graduates. You can show them dealing with unemployment, horrible doc review jobs, underpaid temp positions with horrible bosses, ludicrously high student debt accumulating interest and penalty payments faster than they keep ahead of them, trying to negotiate labyrinthine IBR/PAYE rules. And maybe show one graduate who's "made it" with a BigLaw job - and that this has its own share of horrors.
ReplyDeleteyou just wrote "Learned Helplessness," the next Netflix Original.
DeleteWhat an honorable "profession," huh?!?!
ReplyDeleteSome of you miss the point. You are better off being unemployed and finding your way into a non-legal related career than entering this Narcissistic profession filled with terrible, unhappy people. You already have the JD and the debt. Don't compound your problems by actually becoming a practicing attorney.
ReplyDeleteOne thing Suits gets right is that the firm only hires from Harvard. Why kids think they can live the biglaw dream (which is a mirage anyways) by enrolling in a non-elite school is beyond me.
ReplyDeleteAnd only aristocrats from Harvard. Hayseeds need not apply.
DeleteToo true. And even then that promo is hilarious. A good buddy of mine who has an Ivy League JD didn't see the inside of a courtroom until his 4th year, and it was just a status conference where he announced his name, sat down, and STFU. I love this laughable notion of young lawyers running around doing important, scandalous things on big high stakes cases.
Delete"You better win this case," says one character in the promo. LOL! Yeah, young lawyer, you'd better draft really good research memos so your senior partners who are actually trying the case can win it!
"I'm going to learn how to be the best damn lawyer..." says the young associate elsewhere. LOL! At a biglaw firm? Have you lost your mind? You learn how to be a lawyer doing criminal defense work or as a DA. Douches billing 0.1 for each email they receive and send aren't "learning how to practice law."
Better call Saul.
ReplyDeleteThis is reality: $38,000 IF you are bilingual. This is a beginning teachers salary!
ReplyDeleteNo NYC or Brooklyn apartment for you. Mid NJ apartment with 1h30 commute.
Craigslist 3/08/14 NYC
Spanish OR Hebrew Speaking - Entry Level Attorney
compensation: $38,000
A growing down town law firm is looking for a smart and ambitious attorney.
Candidate must have the following skills:
1. Immigration law experience as an intern, paralegal OR associate attorney.
2. Fluency in Spanish OR Hebrew.
3. Great writing skills and quick learner.
Position will include, court appearances, drafting motions, filing papers in court, preparing and filing business and family immigration cases and dealing with removal and deportation matters. Other duties may be assigned from time to time.
What are those other duties? Mopping the floor?
DeleteThe typical baby-boomer response: "Take it! You'll gain experience and contacts that you can parlay into a much better job. Get over your sense of entitlement and start on the bottom rung, just as I did."
DeleteThis shitty job, however, is the bottom rung on a rickety one-rung ladder. The experience won't count for shit. At most the contacts—rich people from Latin America or occupied Palestine—might be useful for finding work in some other field.
By the way, "Great writing skills and quick learner" is there just for show. So is "smart and ambitious".
Even with a crappy apt in NJ and a soul draining commute, how the hell does one make ends meet in nyc with student loan payments on that salary? I guess Im lucky to have the bulk of my life behind me because it looks like the only way most people starting out as lawyers can make it is to have a wealthy spouse or parents to support them.
DeleteI used to have one of these jobs. It is soul crushing. had to get out. You just don't see a way forward after a while... everyday turns into the next day.
DeleteI'm the kind of lawyer who lives in fear that he'll be shown the door because his billables are too low.
ReplyDelete- One of the Lucky Ones
That was me for 5 years. And I was shown the door once. But if you've done biglaw for 4+ years, a lot of in house positions start opening. In house is very competitive, but recruiters will work with you. You are one of the lucky ones.
DeleteHuman beings can't tell the difference between TV/movies and reality. It's why Hollywood tries to change Americans' behavior by inserting their worldviews into plot lines, using sympathetic characters as carriers to smuggle ideas into their audiences' minds. TV/movies are far superior to logical argument in changing people's ideas and values.
ReplyDeleteIndeed, most people want to avoid reality (since it is so often unpleasant) in favor of false realities presented in TV/movies.
Logical arguments, facts, and figures are no match for Suits and Legally Blonde in the contest of ideas.
See the last chapter of Plato's Republic for further explanation. He got this dead right. He wanted to ban theater in his ideal republic, because it takes people away from reality.
People are not capable of critical thinking?
DeleteNot capable of critical thinking when it comes to TV/movies? See Law School Lemmings for tons of evidence that the answer is Yes.
DeleteCapable of critical thinking when it comes to TV/movies? See Law School Lemmings for tons of evidence that the answer is No.
Excellent - worthy of being a top post.
DeleteTwo small possible changes:
"Logical arguments, facts, and figures are no match for Suits and Legally Blonde in manipulating young peoples' minds."
or
"Logical arguments, facts, and figures are no match for Suits and Legally Blonde in the contest between reality and dreams/escapism."
If anyone had the misfortune to read Western New England School of Law Professor Rene Reich-Graefe's horrible law school promoting paper "Keep Calm and Carry On" that the Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics debased itself by publishing, here is a full and robust response: http://lawlemmings.tumblr.com/keepcalm
ReplyDeleteThanks for the heads-up about the G-town paper and the excellent response. I can't believe there are still "professionals" out there shilling for law schools.
DeleteIndeed, it's a good response to an unpaid commercial solicitation tricked out as scholarship. More, however, could have been said. For example, the shill who wrote that horrible copy denounces the critics for the allegedly incorrect assumption (which, incidentally, not one of us has ever made) "that all of the 132,757 J.D. graduates from U.S. law schools between 2010 and 2012 actually wanted to enter (and, if given the opportunity, would have entered) the legal profession and practice law in the United States", then proceeds to speak only of the jobs that some (not all) of those graduates from 2007 to 2011 (not 2010 to 2012) took after law school. As my LSAT pupils could tell you, what some people did does not indicate what they, never mind others, "wanted to" do. For example, I'm still unemployed months after graduation, but I certainly did want to practice law when I went to law school; I just wasn't given the chance. Obviously I didn't pour my time, money, and effort into the (misad)venture with a view to winding up unemployed.
DeleteWhere the hell were the editors? Georgetown may be struggling to stay in the third tier, but isn't there anyone at that journal with both the intelligence to detect the many flaws in Reich-Graefe's reasoning (so to speak) and the "Legal Ethics" to turn his dishonest paper down?
Folks, I am earning around 58,000 in Shanghai, China right. Yup, 58,000 is NOT a big sum of money as an annual salary in US. In fact, this salary will probably put me into poverty in big cities such as New York and San Francisco. But living in Shanghai, a city that also has a reputation of high living cost and has the same international status as New York and London, I am able to save over half of my salary despite dining out every single meal and rent a master room in a good area. And my salary is considered pretty high in Shanghai.
ReplyDeleteSo what’s point? The labor costs in US are simply TOO HIGH. Even like electricians and plumbers in New York earns more than me. You have to wonder why companies are outsourcing jobs to China and India like crazy. Hell, for 3000 RMB a month(500 US dollars), foreign companies can hire a local college who speaks excellent Mandarin, English, Japanese with no problem. Yet I am seeing American law school kids thinking he deserve like 160K upon graduation? Seriously, you kids have idea who are competing against right now. Chinese and Indian kids can deliver fine work products for companies just as you do, only for a much smaller paycheck and probably with better working ethics. I seriously
That house of cards you live in is built on American middle-class purchasing power, leveraged by mountains of debt. If and when that house of cards collapses, the giant sucking sound that follows will be the Chinese economy going down the drain. Better keep your pedicab skills sharp.
Delete