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the milk machine posted:Not that everyone should run out and go to law school over it, but practicing in a firm isn't (necessarily) THAT bad... Counter point: I'm taking the month of August off, paid.
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Mar 29, 2014 21:15
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nm posted:Counter point: I'm taking the month of August off, paid. Counter-counter point - so am I. (I just have to make up the 170 hours for it during the other 11 months.)
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Mar 29, 2014 21:28
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Kalman posted:Counter-counter point - so am I. You can do that within the policies of the firm. However, in a big firm is it not possible that this vacation could hurt your chances of making partner? As in going off the radar for a month could take you out of the loop on important deals/cases and make people think that you can't handle the 24/7 work lifestyle required to advance? I imagine that is not an issue in government.
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Mar 30, 2014 08:37
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Swingline posted:You can do that within the policies of the firm. However, in a big firm is it not possible that this vacation could hurt your chances of making partner? As in going off the radar for a month could take you out of the loop on important deals/cases and make people think that you can't handle the 24/7 work lifestyle required to advance? I imagine that is not an issue in government. I have found that the bigger problem is that in a larger firm, things simply do not "stop" to allow you to take long periods of time off. Deals don't wait for you, litigation does not pause for you to be gone a month, etc. In a federal setting, you simply have a built in mandate to say, "gently caress it, I'm leaving for two weeks for vacation." No one is going to fire you for that (assuming you took the appropriate steps in advance). There is no such thing in a private firm. If I tell my client or partner, "Hey, put your poo poo on hold, I'm going to be gone a month," they'll just find someone else, and there is a fairly good chance they won't be coming back to you when you return. Both clients and partners are control freaks. They masturbate to you being miserable, and it bothers them if you try to assert a zone of control yourself.
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Mar 30, 2014 17:52
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I disagree. They get pissy if you tell them "leaving for a month" the day before you do it. If you tell them "next year I am going to take August off" they're okay with it and you won't get blowback. You do have to schedule appropriately - litigation has dead periods, at least, and they're usually predictable far in advance. Might get a couple emails during vacation but overall it is doable, at least at my firm. Two week vacations are trivial to plan and very common here - a month is the outer limit and takes a little more effort, but people do it. (Also, you shouldn't plan your life on what will help you make partner, because you probably won't make it anyway.)
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Mar 30, 2014 18:22
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I don't mind if outside counsel wants to go off the grid for a while so long as I know about it and can plan for it. It's just a matter of communication.
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Mar 30, 2014 18:35
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Kalman posted:I disagree. They get pissy if you tell them "leaving for a month" the day before you do it. If you tell them "next year I am going to take August off" they're okay with it and you won't get blowback. You do have to schedule appropriately - litigation has dead periods, at least, and they're usually predictable far in advance. Might get a couple emails during vacation but overall it is doable, at least at my firm. Two week vacations are trivial to plan and very common here - a month is the outer limit and takes a little more effort, but people do it. Hey Kal-Train, sorry, I'm gonna need you to cancel that vacation, our client's new Skip-It prototype disemboweled a little boy and now we need you to find some dirt on his family, hope you can reschedule, Kal-Train! MoFauxHawk fucked around with this message at 20:22 on Mar 30, 2014 |
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Mar 30, 2014 20:19
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I prefer just randomly taking 1-2 days off throughout the year to taking a big long vacation. People just assume you're in deps/meetings/seminars and there's no need to clear anything with some sociopathic rear end in a top hat partner I guess that wouldn't work if you wanted to go to Italy or something, but gently caress you if you're rich enough to take real vacations
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Mar 30, 2014 22:14
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Weekends are my only vacations
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Mar 31, 2014 01:30
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Phil Moscowitz posted:Weekends are my only vacations I work Sundays too. 
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Mar 31, 2014 01:59
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I loving love working for the state. Planning vacations is trivially easy, and there isn't even an outside risk of it hurting my career advancement.
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Mar 31, 2014 21:49
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mulls posted:I loving love working for the state. Planning vacations is trivially easy, and there isn't even an outside risk of it hurting my career advancement. Soothing Vapors fucked around with this message at 23:32 on Mar 31, 2014 |
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Mar 31, 2014 23:25
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Soothing Vapors posted:Plus, now that they're loading food stamps onto debit cards, being poor isn't even embarrassing! Buying all the fresh seafood.
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Apr 1, 2014 00:32
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Kalman posted:I disagree. They get pissy if you tell them "leaving for a month" the day before you do it. If you tell them "next year I am going to take August off" they're okay with it and you won't get blowback. You do have to schedule appropriately - litigation has dead periods, at least, and they're usually predictable far in advance. Might get a couple emails during vacation but overall it is doable, at least at my firm. Two week vacations are trivial to plan and very common here - a month is the outer limit and takes a little more effort, but people do it.
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Apr 1, 2014 00:52
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Why is a longer vacation easier to arrange coverage for? Just because it's more of an imposition to mess with?
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Apr 1, 2014 02:25
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Kalman posted:I disagree. They get pissy if you tell them "leaving for a month" the day before you do it. This is a good read on how to do a serious vacation for professionals w/ real obligations: http://www.danah.org/EmailSabbatical.html Arcturas posted:Why is a longer vacation easier to arrange coverage for? Just because it's more of an imposition to mess with? In my experience - because they just don't put you on the project, as opposed to trying to put you on for two weeks then having someone else cover for two weeks and then put you back on and make up lost ground.
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Apr 1, 2014 02:28
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Petey posted:This is a good read on how to do a serious vacation for professionals w/ real obligations: http://www.danah.org/EmailSabbatical.html Yeah, boyd's summary is pretty good. The "delete all email" doesn't work for non-academics, but the key points (plan ahead, tell everyone ahead of time) are there. And for larger scale projects that are going to run multiple years, unless that period is a critical one (expert reports, trial, etc.), then they'll still staff you on it, because you'll be around for the majority of the project. It's mostly that for a short vacation it's not really worth bringing someone new in, while if you're going to be gone for a month it's easier to justify. (Though usually the existing case staff will cover it while you're gone to the extent your role needs coverage.). I've definitely been staffed on things where the partners knew I'd be out on vacation before they brought me in - as long as you are clear about when you'll be gone, no one is going to get pissed. If you miss something, it'll be because a critical date is in the middle of your vacation, not because you're taking one. But critical dates don't show up that often, at least in litigation - lots of dead time to take your vacations in.
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Apr 1, 2014 03:13
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Arcturas posted:Why is a longer vacation easier to arrange coverage for? Just because it's more of an imposition to mess with?
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Apr 1, 2014 04:49
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As a solo, you get all the unpaid vacation time you can handle!
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Apr 1, 2014 04:52
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I'm just returning from a week of paid vacation. I turned my emails off and told my secretary to text me if anyone was looking for me. But this is dead time in all my litigation, so no one probably noticed.
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Apr 1, 2014 16:27
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woozle wuzzle posted:As a solo, you get all the unpaid vacation time you can handle! I take a vacation everyday from midnight to 6:30am!!! It's so nice to get away.
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Apr 1, 2014 17:45
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Roger_Mudd posted:I take a vacation everyday from midnight to 6:30am!!! It's so nice to get away. I think the way to be happy in Biglaw is to get a spouse and have kids and then think of every day as a relaxing vacation from your family
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Apr 1, 2014 18:42
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Any advice for younger sibling that got average LSAT scores but seems set on the transfer to a better school plan? I'm sort of trying to convince her to stick with her current paralegal job since it has a good environment and also room for promotion since the firm is expanding fairly well.
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Apr 2, 2014 02:23
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To take the LSAT again. If she can't improve that with studying what exactly does she think she'll improve on during her first year?
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Apr 2, 2014 03:36
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evilweasel posted:To take the LSAT again. If she can't improve that with studying what exactly does she think she'll improve on during her first year? She already tried taking it another time and even after taking one of those prep courses could only get a average score.
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Apr 2, 2014 04:13
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etalian posted:She already tried taking it another time and even after taking one of those prep courses could only get a average score. If she can't get better with study and work, she probably shouldn't go to law school.
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Apr 2, 2014 04:25
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etalian posted:Any advice for younger sibling that got average LSAT scores but seems set on the transfer to a better school plan? Is her boyfriend pretending to be a lawyer?
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Apr 2, 2014 04:26
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You should tell her to get Litt up.
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Apr 2, 2014 04:40
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etalian posted:transfer to a better school plan The transfer up plan only works if she aces her first semester. In other words: she has to be a god-damned genius, which she isn't, so it won't.
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Apr 2, 2014 04:42
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The Warszawa posted:You should tell her to get Litt up. 
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Apr 2, 2014 04:43
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etalian posted:She already tried taking it another time and even after taking one of those prep courses could only get a average score. How does she think she's going to beat out the class of people who mostly were able to get the score she did with less work?
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Apr 2, 2014 12:48
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Personally, I think the LSAT is a predictor of nothing. Never once in law school or the practice of law did I have to figure out who would sit next to whom at a table. But schools need something to use to figure out who to let in. I had an average LSAT and graduated near the top of my class. Yes, you could argue I went to a TTT, but that's only because my score was lower. I was a good student and that wouldn't have changed at a better school, although I acknowledge the competition might have been better. That said, I never took an LSAT course and just winged it. So if a person's score didn't change after taking a prep course, that might be cause for concern.
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Apr 2, 2014 15:06
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quepasa18 posted:Personally, I think the LSAT is a predictor of nothing. At the risk of defending the LSAT, what the gently caress? It's not intended to test if you'll be a good student.
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Apr 2, 2014 15:21
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There is a large possibly that she will go to law school, incur massive debt, graduate, be unable to find work, be over qualified for her old paralegal job, and wind up earning less money as a solo family law attorney than she did as a paralegal. If that doesn't scare her, nothing will. Oh, and the transfer plan doesn't work for most people. I believe the op says don't plan to transfer unless you're 100 percent okay with your starter school. My transfer plan failed, but i liked my starter school anyway. Hot Dog Day #91 fucked around with this message at 15:50 on Apr 2, 2014 |
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Apr 2, 2014 15:47
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Two years ago I took the LSAT, got a pretty good score, and then thanks to you guys and your misery, used that just to make some cash as a tutor and get the hell out. So now I have a job that has nothing to do with law, and as such it exists and I don't hate doing it. You're doing the Lord's work in this thread.
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Apr 2, 2014 16:28
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evilweasel posted:How does she think she's going to beat out the class of people who mostly were able to get the score she did with less work? To be fair, I don't think your success during law school is directly tied to your LSAT score. Final exams and your preparation for them is quite a bit different than LSAT prep. I know friends that barely scraped by in school yet they started with solid scholarships due to their LSAT scores. That said, given the current job market for new attorneys, I'd be hesitant to look into law school unless you're looking at a good school with a reasonable scholarship (and you're willing to put in the effort to finish near the top of your class), and you're almost certainly not getting into a top school with a poor LSAT score. Even with a solid LSAT score it can be a big roll of the dice.
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Apr 2, 2014 18:50
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etalian posted:Any advice for younger sibling that got average LSAT scores but seems set on the transfer to a better school plan? Tell her that only the top ~5% of students at the end of the first year have an opportunity to transfer up. Then describe how at any mediocre school, there will be a significant number of people who actually did well in college and have good LSAT scores, and are attending that school on a large scholarship. Ask her how she intends to beat out all these people who are demonstrably better students than she is. Also, what's an "average" LSAT score to you? The actual "average" is around 150, and anyone scoring in that area after studying is in the "doomed from the start" category rather than the already unattractive "it's an absolute crapshoot" category.
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Apr 2, 2014 21:04
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bozwell posted:To be fair, I don't think your success during law school is directly tied to your LSAT score. Final exams and your preparation for them is quite a bit different than LSAT prep. I know friends that barely scraped by in school yet they started with solid scholarships due to their LSAT scores. Yeah she's pretty much at the point thinking the massive amounts of debt is worth following the "dream" and seems to think the transfer idea is surefire plan given how a lawyer at her firm made it work.
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Apr 3, 2014 04:30
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etalian posted:Yeah she's pretty much at the point thinking the massive amounts of debt is worth following the "dream" and seems to think the transfer idea is surefire plan given how a lawyer at her firm made it work. The problem is that for everyone that made it work, there's probably at least one person that it didn't work out so well for (probably more than 1:1). I graduated right after the economy tanked back in 2008 so I'm pretty familiar with graduating into a lovely job market. These days you're graduates are fighting a backlog of qualified graduates for the few good jobs that are out there and I know quite a few people that ended up with "lesser" jobs. That said, I'm not all gloom and doom on legal careers. I like my job, I like my firm and I'm glad I went to law school (a full-ride scholarship helped). I just think it's important that people realize they need to try and stack the odds in their favor. High LSAT scores, top schools, big scholarships - all of these things will help out more in the long-run than you might think. If you're coming into it with the deck stacked against you, you'll be fighting an uphill battle even if you excel in law school and, with enough debt, even if you land your dream job. To give you an idea, I have a friend that ran up more tuition debt than I have in my mortgage and yet his job prospects are quite poor. He hung out his own shingle and earns enough to get by, but he's going to have a hell of a time paying down that debt at his current income.
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Apr 3, 2014 05:34
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