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Lote posted:I thought Pittsburgh shipped out all its blue collar jobes, and it's an up and coming health/biotech hot spot. I grew up right near Carnegie Mellon and Pitt and it really is a nice place to live with the sorts of jobs you described, but it still has a very honest, blue collar feel and many neighborhoods are still rooted in a different time period. It makes for a pretty cool, quirky place if you ask me. I might as well say hey since I just started following this thread again. My wife started her 1L at a T14 this week after working in DC for three years in contracting. I remember reading the OP a long time ago when she was studying for the LSAT, figured I'd swing around again and see how all you bitter sons of bitches are doing. Anyone here have the law school spouse experience?
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Aug 22, 2012 04:15
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Pittsburgh is great. It is probably the most pleasant shithole I have ever lived in and I am genuinely pleased to have a job there. No one is cool, everything is cheap, the architecture and local culture (orchestra, theatres, museums) are actually solid, the hospital is stellar, and the terrain is sweet. There are some creepy places (think Easy Rider but with worse weather) but it's a diamond in the rough. And did I mention it's cheap? Oh man also the Bucs are a treasure.
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Aug 22, 2012 04:30
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BigHead posted:Hey cool you got another feature on ATL. :fistbump: Thank you. My OCI strategy this year is getting Above The Law to suggest that firms hire me. Hope it works......
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Aug 22, 2012 04:44
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nern posted:How on EARTH can what I am saying be construed as a position of entitlement? I truly think you are going to deeply regret going to law school. But we're not going to change your mind, so my advice is to go into law school thinking PRACTICAL. Throw your philosophical interests out the window. Your goal is to know what forms to fill out, where to find local answers, where to file what, etc. Take every opportunity to take courses from actual practicing attorneys, law clinic hours, and any real world interaction. Under no circumstance should you forego those opportunities for advanced theories of whatever bullshit, even if the topic seems interesting. Assume that you will learn near zero useful knowledge from law courses, and instead your goal is to somehow soak up enough of the profession to be a viable hire (or solo practitioner).
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Aug 22, 2012 04:56
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Slobjob Zizek posted:Doing a bit of googling has lead me to believe that most biglaw firms gross wayyyyy more than my government consulting firm, yet we hire AAs and public relations people to do poo poo like that. Are law firms run by greedy idiots? No clue what an AA is or why you would hire someone from public relations to educate people on the law, but yes, we gross way more than your government consulting firm and law firms are run by greedy idiots.
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Aug 22, 2012 05:16
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Sulecrist posted:Harvard is the top law school in the metropolitan area and western PA. (It isn't Yale bc no one from Yale has ever been between Chicago and the Susquehanna). Not even the top of the shitpile, because Cooley has that locked down.
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Aug 22, 2012 06:49
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nm posted:Seriously, a T2 school is never the top of anything. Hey, Cooley is apparently more highly ranked than pretty much everyone besides Yale and Stanford based on library square footage alone
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Aug 22, 2012 08:22
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Ironically, I know a recent Cooley grad in pittsburgh BIGLAW. She's an incredibly hateful person, though.
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Aug 22, 2012 12:18
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Kaysette posted:My wife started her 1L at a T14 this week after working in DC for three years in contracting. I'm sorry. Which one?
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Aug 22, 2012 13:41
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Incredulous Red posted:Hey, Cooley is apparently more highly ranked than pretty much everyone besides Yale and Stanford based on library square footage alone I took the MPRE and the girl sitting next to me had graduated from Cooley and was retaking.
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Aug 22, 2012 15:17
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So for those of you in BigLaw who actually enjoy it, what about it do you enjoy (besides the money)? What makes you actually want to get out of bed in the morning and go into work?
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Aug 22, 2012 15:34
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Clerkship interviews: literally 90% about baseball.SlyFrog posted:So for those of you in BigLaw who actually enjoy it, what about it do you enjoy (besides the money)? A desire to stamp one's boot on the human face forever and ever amen. Also acceptable: hahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahaha
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Aug 22, 2012 15:38
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SlyFrog posted:So for those of you in BigLaw who actually enjoy it, what about it do you enjoy (besides the money)? I like the money and I tend to be doing stuff I find interesting and I like the people I work with. I also haven't been here all that long, so that may change over time.
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Aug 22, 2012 15:44
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For anyone looking Monterey County Public Defender is hiring entry level. I've never seen them recruit for anyone without a few years experience in recent history. A pretty good gig,though you'd likely be working in Salinas or King City. Closes 9/21
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Aug 22, 2012 16:17
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evilweasel posted:I like the money and I tend to be doing stuff I find interesting and I like the people I work with. I also haven't been here all that long, so that may change over time. I want greater specificity though. What "stuff" do you find interesting? What's interesting about it? Why are you interested in it? For example, transactional attorneys - what do you find interesting about spending 12 hours of your day staring at pages of paper talking about the requirements for notification on an indemnification claim, response times to such notification, etc. What do you find interesting about reviewing your 100th confidentiality agreement, and playing "Does it have these five provisions," and cutting and pasting them back in. What do you find interesting about receiving a response to a Stock Purchase Agreement, where the opposing attorney rewrote the entire loving thing for no reason, and now you get to read 60 pages of mumbo-jumbo to figure out whether the poo poo he pointlessly rewrote (on a sentence by sentence level) is irritating but probably okay (because it is just a pointless difference in style) or is actually problematic (because he's trying to hide some stupid poo poo like a limitation on indemnification). I know I'm being negative, but right now I'm burnt out and can't figure out a hell of a lot that I do actually enjoy about my job other than money (and no, I'm not loving stupid, money is a big, big thing). I'm trying to re-energize and look at this from a different direction, because right now, I'm sick of staring at paper and picking nits, and I have been for at least a year or two. And before someone asks, no, telling myself that I could be homeless or working in a Peruvian copper mine, that so many people don't have any jobs, so I have it good, so suck it up and keep going, hasn't helped. I am, however, trying to figure out if I really do just hate this job, or if I would have this same reaction to any work that I'm forced to do for 8-12 hours per day (e.g. if I were crushing rock in the quarry, would I be saying, "WTF, this is boring, I just crushed rock yesterday, there's nothing interesting about this, etc.") Think of this as a "SlyFrog is trying not to break out the AR-15 and go apeshit on his co-workers" question. (No, I'm joking, I do not intend to break out the AR-15 and go apeshit on my co-workers. Probably.) SlyFrog fucked around with this message at 16:34 on Aug 22, 2012 |
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Aug 22, 2012 16:29
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SlyFrog posted:So for those of you in BigLaw who actually enjoy it, what about it do you enjoy (besides the money)?
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Aug 22, 2012 16:38
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gvibes posted:Frankly, the money is huge for me. Beyond that, I am generally happy when I feel challenged. Every new patent, every every new accused product, it's interesting to build the best non-infringement/infringement/validity/whatever position. Do you actually feel that challenge after many years? Do you not reach a stage where it feels like the "challenge" is actually a glorified cutting and pasting effort of copying your best stuff from prior work, with about 10% new work? Perhaps patent prosecution is very different - I admit I do not know that much about the area. What is "challenging" specifically? Do you like fiddling with and tweaking language to state painfully in twenty sentences what most human beings would have been able to intuit out of a much more simply written sentence, but for the fear of litigators trying to read stupid bullshit into everything?
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Aug 22, 2012 16:42
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The Warszawa posted:Clerkship interviews: literally 90% about baseball. True story, I got my 2L internship at a boutique midsize litigation firm downtown that I probably didn't deserve because the partner in charge of the law clerk program and I talked about the Astros for the whole interview because I commented on the great view of Minute Maid Park from his window.
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Aug 22, 2012 16:45
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Also, not trying to drift into e/n (or whatever the whiny forum is) and not trying to poo poo on answers (though I'm probably failing on the whiny part). Don't take my responses as criticism - just further discussion/elaboration.
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Aug 22, 2012 16:49
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SlyFrog posted:Do you actually feel that challenge after many years? Do you not reach a stage where it feels like the "challenge" is actually a glorified cutting and pasting effort of copying your best stuff from prior work, with about 10% new work? I do patent litigation, not patent prosecution. I would kill myself immediately if I had to prosecute full time. For me, I enjoy and feel challenged by: - diving into a patent and it prosecution history; - reviewing all sorts of prior art poo poo; - learning about the operation of accused products at a low level; - building claim constructions that are persuasively supported but also lead to infringement/non-infringement; - poking holes in the other sides infringement/invalidity positions; - dealing with experts, whether it be preparing our own reports, deposing the other sides' experts, or defending our own. I am in a position where I usually don't have to deal with discovery bullshit (other than in "small" cases with easy to deal with opposing counsel), so that's nice for me. If I was doing discovery all the time, I probably would not be as happy. e: I could just be an odd bird, I don't know. gvibes fucked around with this message at 06:19 on Jan 4, 2018 |
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Aug 22, 2012 16:53
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SlyFrog posted:I want greater specificity though. What "stuff" do you find interesting? What's interesting about it? Why are you interested in it? Mostly because it's generally new stuff I'm doing: I've been here just under a year. Virtually anything I get tasked on (since I've mostly avoided doc review) is something new that is interesting to figure out. Since it seems like your problem is "I've been doing the same thing too long" I've got nothing for you: I could easily see myself falling into that.
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Aug 22, 2012 17:26
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You're in lit, he's in transactional. It is a big difference. My dad has been doing complex civil lit for over 30 years and still finds it interesting. Apparently it actually gets more interesting as you go along because when you've built up a reputation you can pick and chose and give to boring cases to junior partners. I think civil is generally boring but his cases are interesting as hell. He had a case a few years ago involving casinos, the zetas, and the Mexican Supreme Court.
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Aug 22, 2012 17:28
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nm posted:You're in lit, he's in transactional. It is a big difference. I would add, it's not just that it is boring (or uninteresting). It is that it is both boring and high stakes. If you gently caress up, it's a huge loss for your client, potential malpractice claim, etc. So it is feeling more and more like being forced to do boring tasks that you aren't really motivated to focus hard on (because they're boring), but if you miss something (possibly something small or seemingly unimportant that later turns out to be big), you're hosed. Professional nitpicking where the cost of missing a nit can be a multimillion dollar lawsuit. That's what I'm trying to change. I need to re-energize myself somehow, because it is really getting to me.
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Aug 22, 2012 17:55
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SlyFrog posted:I would add, it's not just that it is boring (or uninteresting). It is that it is both boring and high stakes. If you gently caress up, it's a huge loss for your client, potential malpractice claim, etc. Go into slip & fall imo.
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Aug 22, 2012 18:04
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SlyFrog posted:I would add, it's not just that it is boring (or uninteresting). It is that it is both boring and high stakes. If you gently caress up, it's a huge loss for your client, potential malpractice claim, etc. It may very well just be that practicing law isn't for you. I had a big issue with being afraid that any little thing that I did wrong would be fatal to my career and it caused me to never feel certain about what I was doing. I liked the work itself, and I did transactional too, but it was just not something that was a good fit for me for a lot of reasons. I don't know that any amount of money would have changed that. Well, there is some amount I'm sure, but I was never going to get anywhere near that amount.
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Aug 22, 2012 18:07
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Dogen posted:True story, I got my 2L internship at a boutique midsize litigation firm downtown that I probably didn't deserve because the partner in charge of the law clerk program and I talked about the Astros for the whole interview because I commented on the great view of Minute Maid Park from his window. I try to emphasize how important a personality fit is to law school students\new attorneys when interviewing. Odds are if you are sitting in the chair someone has vetted your resume and given it the thumbs up, the bigger question is how well will you fit into the firm. I'd rather work with someone who I get along with than some girl-with-a-dragon-tattoo genius.
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Aug 22, 2012 18:10
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HiddenReplaced posted:Go into slip & fall imo. Be sure to pick a catchy jingle and representative mascot when you do.
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Aug 22, 2012 18:11
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Dogen posted:True story, I got my 2L internship at a boutique midsize litigation firm downtown that I probably didn't deserve because the partner in charge of the law clerk program and I talked about the Astros for the whole interview because I commented on the great view of Minute Maid Park from his window. This happened to me, except it was the Pirates/PNC Park.
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Aug 22, 2012 18:14
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SlyFrog posted:I would add, it's not just that it is boring (or uninteresting). It is that it is both boring and high stakes. If you gently caress up, it's a huge loss for your client, potential malpractice claim, etc. If you think your job is boring you should get a different job
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Aug 22, 2012 18:38
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Sulecrist posted:Cooley Having browsed some law school forums, I see that "Cooley" is a frequent punchline and universally despised school. Can someone explain why this is to a neophyte like me?
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Aug 22, 2012 18:56
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gently caress I was going through resumes for our assistant job posting and there's a super-qualified US lawyer in there, with a decade of experience in defence and prosecution work south of the border. Applying for a secretarial job. How bad is the economy there 
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Aug 22, 2012 18:58
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Thesaurus posted:Having browsed some law school forums, I see that "Cooley" is a frequent punchline and universally despised school. http://www.cooley.edu/rankings/ (to spare you looking through their pdf: Cooley is second in the nation, beaten only by Harvard, according to the Cooley law school rankings) The real ratings: http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/thomas-m.-cooley-law-school-172477/overall-rankings (so crappy it doesn't even get a numerical ranking because those only go down to 145).
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Aug 22, 2012 19:13
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Thesaurus posted:Having browsed some law school forums, I see that "Cooley" is a frequent punchline and universally despised school. Cooley is ranked incredibly low by USNWR, yet it ranks second on its own special rankings system... Cooley will also admit basically anyone. Cooley is more than happy to take their money and then kick them out if they fail to pass a certain grade threshold. It has a terrible attrition rate. Cooley is basically looked down upon as a school for idiots who couldn't get into law school anywhere else, and a Cooley JD is basically good for being a solo practitioner and that's it.
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Aug 22, 2012 19:14
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Direwolf posted:If you think your job is boring you should get a different job Well, there is always that issue. I would prefer not to have to hunt for a new job in this horrific market (and at this point in my life, with a few kids and a wife to support). Unfortunately, in my day to day, repeatedly telling myself "You could be jobless and unable to find anything," has been unable to shut off my discontent. Which is why I'm looking for ways to reduce that discontent and re-energize while doing what I do.
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Aug 22, 2012 19:16
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There are inarguably worse law schools than Cooley out there, like the People's College of the Law, but Cooley just brings it on itself with the Cooley Rankings and its lawsuit vs the internet and its forty-seven campuses across Michigan
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Aug 22, 2012 19:20
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SlyFrog posted:Well, there is always that issue. I would prefer not to have to hunt for a new job in this horrific market (and at this point in my life, with a few kids and a wife to support). What parts of your job do you like now or liked in the past?
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Aug 22, 2012 19:22
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Soothing Vapors posted:There are inarguably worse law schools than Cooley out there, like the People's College of the Law, but Cooley just brings it on itself with the Cooley Rankings and its lawsuit vs the internet and its forty-seven campuses across Michigan I think their name is also just easier to drop in conversation. Very marketable name for referring to a definitive horrible law school.
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Aug 22, 2012 19:23
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SlyFrog posted:Well, there is always that issue. I would prefer not to have to hunt for a new job in this horrific market (and at this point in my life, with a few kids and a wife to support). Sounds like someone needs to hire a lawgoon associate to play 40k with in an empty conference room.
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Aug 22, 2012 19:27
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HiddenReplaced posted:Sounds like someone needs to hire a lawgoon associate to play 40k with in an empty conference room. In this economy, it'll probably be more like 30k...
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Aug 22, 2012 19:31
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I love hearing unhappy job stories. 
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