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Mr. Nice! posted:I’m at 25 applications and half as many interviews. That's a really good rate for interviews. When I was on unemployment and required to track applications I was getting like a 2% response rate if that
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Sep 14, 2018 17:29
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SlyFrog posted:One of my favorites: for a while, we were not doing a very good job of letting associates know that they realistically would not be making partner. We also had an issue with staff attorneys and the like hanging around for a long time after it was clear that they were pretty much dead in the water. Essentially, no one wanted to tell them, and just sort of hoped that they would get the (entirely unstated) message and voluntarily leave on their own. Of course, they often didn't. Because they often did not have real options, and certainly nothing that paid a healthy six figures. Aren’t staff attorneys dead in the water by design since that takes them off partnership track?
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Sep 14, 2018 17:29
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Look Sir Droids posted:Aren’t staff attorneys dead in the water by design since that takes them off partnership track? At some firms a good staff attorney can make the jump to associate. But yeah usually if a staff attorney is no longer needed they're fired, not paid to do nothing and hope the shame of getting free money causes them to quit. Why the gently caress would you ever think that would work: maybe they start interviewing elsewhere because they sense their job is not secure but they're not gonna quit.
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Sep 14, 2018 17:32
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I’m also in a smaller pop area than chicago so there are significantly less number of jobs. Based on the few jobs where I know people on the inside, I’m competing with 5-12 other people for each job I apply. At least the legal clinic will give me the fees if I end up taking them to trial. I honestly believe they’ll just settle with the veteran right away rather than risk having to pay me. In which case I think the clinic will still give me an hourly rate since there won’t be any fees awarded.
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Sep 14, 2018 17:33
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evilweasel posted:At some firms a good staff attorney can make the jump to associate. But yeah usually if a staff attorney is no longer needed they're fired, not paid to do nothing and hope the shame of getting free money causes them to quit. Why the gently caress would you ever think that would work: maybe they start interviewing elsewhere because they sense their job is not secure but they're not gonna quit. The firm I was at had people go from Associate to Staff. One went from associate to staff back to associate. Then they renamed Staff Attorneys to “Senior Attorney”. Several partners went to Of Counsel. I didn’t keep close enough track to tell if those people got shitcanned relatively soon after.
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Sep 14, 2018 18:08
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These title sequences are weird Can it just be three seniorities of associate followed by three seniorities of partner + managing for either to define the managing function?
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Sep 14, 2018 18:24
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Alexeythegreat posted:These title sequences are weird it usually is just (maybe junior) associate, senior associate, partner (maybe junior and regular partner), kind of like you describe The other titles, like staff attorney, as to shame people into quitting or leaving, or calling them Of Counsel so everyone is aware they didn't make partner. Gotta make sure everyone knows where you stand in the pecking order
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Sep 14, 2018 18:28
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Alexeythegreat posted:These title sequences are weird that's basically what it is. there are "class years" which set your pay and your billing rate. but when people are discussing what kind of associate you need, it's senior/midlevel/junior, where everyone knows that the seniors are expected to be able to run the case while the partners golf, the midlevels are expected to be competent and useful help to the midlevels, and the juniors are expected to do the drudgery work while they become competent with partners, there's "income" partners (partners in name only, still employees, gotta show they can bring in business if they want to be equity partners), "equity" partners (actually have equity in the firm) and then there are various titles that equity partners can have to indicate internal power and management responsibility outside that, there's staff attorneys (like associates, but no chance of making partner) and counsel (basically a senior associate who is unlikely to make partner but is worth keeping around)
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Sep 14, 2018 18:31
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Oh, I know what these titles are. Everybody have gone through great pain of translating "associate" because it has no translation in Russian. I had to spend a very significant amount of time figuring these titles out back when. The general structure is the same, except that the title of counsel or of counsel isn't a thing of shame, and that there is no difference between equity and non-equity partners (virtually all law firms are LLCs because any other type of enterprise is impossible to run) The staff attorney is where it gets weird because what's the point in not just keeping them as associates
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Sep 14, 2018 18:47
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And to really clarify it there's some firms that have both "counsel," senior attorneys that are one of 1) in internal service positions (environmental, energy regulation, etc.) such that they don't have many external clients and won't make partner, 2) promoted associates who are being judged for entry into the partnership, or, less commonly, 3) partner-age and level attorneys that aren't interested in being a partner but still do good work, and then "of counsel," who are retired partners who no longer hold equity but still show up because they 1) have some clients still, 2) are the source of institutional knowledge (whether or not that goes beyond which filing cabinet from 1983 the document you need is in) or 3) don't know what to do besides show up to the office each day.
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Sep 14, 2018 18:50
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Alexeythegreat posted:Oh, I know what these titles are. Everybody have gone through great pain of translating "associate" because it has no translation in Russian. I had to spend a very significant amount of time figuring these titles out back when. The general structure is the same, except that the title of counsel or of counsel isn't a thing of shame, and that there is no difference between equity and non-equity partners (virtually all law firms are LLCs because any other type of enterprise is impossible to run) staff attorneys get paid less, and it hurts recruiting to fire associates but it does not hurt recruiting to fire staff attorneys. if you keep an associate around for three years their salary goes up like 50%, staff attorneys probably start at half the salary of an associate and get raises of like 5% a year or something.
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Sep 14, 2018 18:54
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evilweasel posted:At some firms a good staff attorney can make the jump to associate. But yeah usually if a staff attorney is no longer needed they're fired, not paid to do nothing and hope the shame of getting free money causes them to quit. Why the gently caress would you ever think that would work: maybe they start interviewing elsewhere because they sense their job is not secure but they're not gonna quit. Do firms still have staff attorneys at this point? That seems like such a relic of the golden years before the financial crisis given all the outsourcing and discovery software shortcuts that are available now.
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Sep 14, 2018 19:09
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Sep 14, 2018 19:12
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Brony Car posted:Do firms still have staff attorneys at this point? That seems like such a relic of the golden years before the financial crisis given all the outsourcing and discovery software shortcuts that are available now. Some do, yes. One firm I used to work at tended to hire them when there was a lot of grunt work to go around and not enough junior associates for it because hiring a new junior associate to help with the grunt work is a big financial commitment that may not make sense. If you've got two years of a poo poo-ton of doc review for a major litigation, you may need extra hands on that but don't expect a meaningfully larger pipeline that would justify more associates. Plus you can bill out staff attorneys at lower rates to clients who won't pay for junior associate work rather than just eat the cost as a loss leader. There's still contract attorneys for the stuff like privilege review of millions of docs where it's going to be the sort of surge you can't handle in-house/clients won't pay for you to handle anymore.
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Sep 14, 2018 19:24
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My experience was staff attorneys were phased out and replaced with contract attorneys as needed. If a contract attorney did well, they got hired on. That only started happening a couple of years before I left and they had phased out the staff attorney title. Of Counsel seems to be different everywhere. My firm it was partners who didn’t want to try anymore or partner level lateral hires that didn’t want/merit partner responsibilities. I don’t recall senior associates being changed to Of Counsel. It was usually someone coming from an in-house position.
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Sep 14, 2018 19:55
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evilweasel posted:There's still contract attorneys for the stuff like privilege review of millions of docs where it's going to be the sort of surge you can't handle in-house/clients won't pay for you to handle anymore. I thought that labor market died out domestically because you could farm out privilege review to foreign attorneys. A firm I interviewed with was setting up an operation in the Philippines just for that purpose. And if you really had concerns about using foreign labor, you could still outsource to some place like Robert Half Legal to get a team of reviewers together and let the firm’s full associates or partners do the supervisong. From what I remember, though, the kind of wages/job security you could get from the work plummeted due to an oversupply of attorneys making them incredibly competitive. Anyways, I might be wrong. Maybe the full Lawyerpocalypse might not have arrived yet?
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Sep 14, 2018 20:01
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evilweasel posted:staff attorneys get paid less, and it hurts recruiting to fire associates but it does not hurt recruiting to fire staff attorneys. if you keep an associate around for three years their salary goes up like 50%, staff attorneys probably start at half the salary of an associate and get raises of like 5% a year or something. Ah, I see Then if your firm has a Moscow office that you will ever interact with, know that all their associates are actually staff attorneys
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Sep 14, 2018 20:06
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Brony Car posted:Do firms still have staff attorneys at this point? That seems like such a relic of the golden years before the financial crisis given all the outsourcing and discovery software shortcuts that are available now. They do. My office just hired one, for whatever reason. I think she just does NDAs or something.
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Sep 14, 2018 20:12
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One of my friends is joining a smaller boutique firm with tech/IP clients and it seems like they're doing away with the traditional firm title hierarchy and just adding on people who they think will add value. My friend is really excited but I can't help but wonder what's going to happen when people start having differing ideas on questions like who was responsible for bringing in a client and who has ultimate decision-making/strategic authority.Look Sir Droids posted:My experience was staff attorneys were phased out and replaced with contract attorneys as needed. If a contract attorney did well, they got hired on. That only started happening a couple of years before I left and they had phased out the staff attorney title. I've seen senior associates get promoted to Of Counsel. Many of them took it as an unofficial instruction to leavesince it wasn't like they were walking around with "Don't Want to be Partner" signs taped to their shirts. It worked out for others though since they were starting families and not having partner responsibilities while still bringing in a decent income was the best of all possible outcomes for them. And "Of Counsel" also seems like a great place to put your socially awkward subject matter experts. I wonder if they still do that now or if my firm experience is already archaic. Alexeythegreat posted:Ah, I see As long as the partner in charge is giving the rest of the firm its cut and referring work to other branches of the firm, then it's all fine and dandy.
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Sep 14, 2018 20:15
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The best part about all of this for a lot of firms is how incredibly little the titles actually matter. For example, at my firm (not a partnership), if a "partner" was unproductive for a period of time, they'd just gently caress him at the pay table. We had certain partners who made less than starting associates. I would always ask, "Why do you care how little this guy works, when you can just hammer him at the pay table?" I would always get some type of grumpy response about overhead and available space and stupidity like that. When the reality is, I do not think we had any owner who was not at least covering his overhead, and we had excess space (which should have been cause for embarrassment, but hey, again, these people are not that smart). Law firm economics are fascinating, and I've found attorneys both spout misinformation and often grossly themselves misinformed as to basic financial matters. Yet they still opine on them like mad. I remember when I started, a number of partners honestly trying to tell me with a straight face that the firm "lost money" on associates. To this day, I genuinely think they believed that. They would literally assign the same overhead allocation to every attorney in the firm, but break down revenue on a per attorney basis. Yeah, you're "losing money" on me as an associate. Because you're measuring my individual revenue, and comparing it against an overhead allocation that includes the corner office partner with three times my office square footage, along with the hundreds of thousands of dollars he spends marketing on his clients, and the 15 administrative staff he insists on having because it makes his dick feel bigger. Just typing this makes me want to go back in time and choke those fuckers out.
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Sep 14, 2018 20:23
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My dad is "of counsel," has a book of business, gets his office and a parking space (important because it is a premo location), access to box seats, does very little work beyond client contact, and fucks off to Spain, England, or like South America for months at a time. He makes way more money than me.
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Sep 14, 2018 20:27
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Why aren't you working for him and inheriting the book
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Sep 14, 2018 20:50
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Probably has some self-respect. Weird, I know.
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Sep 14, 2018 22:03
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What thread is this again
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Sep 14, 2018 22:05
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Got saturday on call duty. Roll up to the cells and there is no one there for saturday court. So now im drinking coffee on government time in the unlikely event that someone gets arrested and processed in the next 45 minutes. 
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Sep 14, 2018 22:12
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At this stage im kinda hoping someone gets busted to give me something to do to be honest.
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Sep 14, 2018 22:57
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So what I'm hearing is that law firms are all run by salespeople which sounds like a recipe for employment hell and organizational dysfunction.
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Sep 15, 2018 02:53
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Munin posted:So what I'm hearing is that law firms are all run by salespeople which sounds like a recipe for employment hell and organizational dysfunction. It's worse - they're run by lawyers. The megafirms truly need professional management - I was at a V10 firm for 4 years (until last week!), the place minted money, but needed a real CEO more than anything.
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Sep 15, 2018 03:08
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The problem is people capable of being real CEO's - even those with law backgrounds - can make way more money elsewhere. Also, most ethics rules require top dog at law firms to be a lawyer.
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Sep 15, 2018 03:22
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Brony Car posted:One of my friends is joining a smaller boutique firm with tech/IP clients and it seems like they're doing away with the traditional firm title hierarchy and just adding on people who they think will add value. My friend is really excited but I can't help but wonder what's going to happen when people start having differing ideas on questions like who was responsible for bringing in a client and who has ultimate decision-making/strategic authority
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Sep 15, 2018 04:21
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Whitlam posted:Got an interview for a grad lawyer position. I know I should be excited and happy but I feel like going to law school was a huge mistake. I mean, more than usual. Worst case scenario I stick it out for a year and gtfo, if I even get it which I might not, right? Come do desert law with me  Also yes mate, seriously all the time people do all the degrees, start work and then realise "poo poo I dont wanna do this at all". Try it, see how much you hate it and give your months notice and move on with your life. There are plenty of aussie law goons that moved on to public service jobs or whatever that are happy. Strangely not so many that are actual lawyers tho there are a few in this thread.
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Sep 15, 2018 08:04
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algebra testes posted:Come do desert law with me Funny you should say that, I did have the thought the other day of running away and starting a new life in Alice Springs. I'm honestly just surprised I got an interview at all - I did my application a few days before close, as I was racing out the door to something else, attached an incorrect version of my transcript with a fail (incorrectly) recorded, and have no extra-curriculars or anything like that. Having had a day to think about it I'm just going to wait and see if I actually get an offer before I worry about it. I think I was just in shock as much as anything else. My consolation is that my co-worker who I intensely dislike got an offer from them and I'd have been pissed if he got one and I didn't, just on principle. Plus, now I can say I have a 100% success rate of interviewing for graduate positions. Law school!
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Sep 15, 2018 09:07
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When I retire from the state in 22 years, I will likely join a large firm as of counsel. That's what all the old attorneys from my office do. I guess my 30 years of working with one agency make my rolodex valuable. I'll gladly let you pay me 200k a year to chat up my contacts and grease the wheels.
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Sep 15, 2018 14:13
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https://twitter.com/eorden/status/1040707834336423936 I'd love to see a ton of biglaw partners refuse to keep their mouths shut and go down on obstruction of justice
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Sep 15, 2018 14:37
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Hot Dog Day #91 posted:When I retire from the state in 22 years, I will likely join a large firm as of counsel. That's what all the old attorneys from my office do. When I retire I plan to not work at all. It's a big aspiration of mine.
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Sep 15, 2018 22:08
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Vox Nihili posted:When I retire I plan to not work at all. It's a big aspiration of mine. Yeah to me that’s the entire point. I don’t get these people who are like “I wouldn’t have anything to do if I retired.” I mean I get it if you are making boatloads of money still and the job isn’t as annoying because you are more senior or something. But I can’t imagine ever saying to myself when I’m 70, “Yeah I want to put on a suit and go sit in an office all day doing this crap.”
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Sep 15, 2018 22:29
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Vox Nihili posted:When I retire I plan to not work at all. It's a big aspiration of mine. Jay Cutler demonstrated this attitude incredibly well
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Sep 15, 2018 22:36
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I assume what HDD meant was Of Counsel that amounts to a salaried consultants position with the understanding you won’t work any more than you want to. If that’s the case, yeah I’d do that and take their money. I would not do anything where I was expected to sit in an office.
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Sep 15, 2018 22:40
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Phil Moscowitz posted:Yeah to me that’s the entire point. I don’t get these people who are like “I wouldn’t have anything to do if I retired.” I mean I get it if you are making boatloads of money still and the job isn’t as annoying because you are more senior or something. But I can’t imagine ever saying to myself when I’m 70, “Yeah I want to put on a suit and go sit in an office all day doing this crap.” Some people just don't know how to do nothing. My mom teaches a few days a week at some nature center and my dad beyond glad handing clients does volunteer work at legal aid a few days a week. But they can gently caress off whenever they want and do. They also both retired before 65. I plan on doing loving nothing when I retire at 60, but who knows. Look Sir Droids posted:I assume what HDD meant was Of Counsel that amounts to a salaried consultants position with the understanding you won’t work any more than you want to. If that’s the case, yeah I’d do that and take their money.
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Sep 15, 2018 22:41
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I am eligible to retire at 55. But if i wait until I'm 60 I get like 75% of my salary. Art 55 it's like 50%. If I leave the state at 55 and don't draw on my retirement until I'm 60, I get the 75%. So for those 5 years, I'd love an of counsel position where they pay me for my contacts. There is no chance that I'll be able to have the kind of retirement some of you are envisioning. But the pension will keep me out of the homeless shelter.
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Sep 16, 2018 00:09
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