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shovelbum posted:I owe you guys so much for keeping me out of law school! Thank you Law School Megathread, you made a big and legit difference in my life. Now if I could get all these law schools to stop emailing me... What was it that made you change your mind? Glad you shook those "dreams" about becoming a lawyer with a lifetime of student loan debt around your neck.
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Nov 2, 2011 01:47
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| # ? Jun 8, 2024 20:24 |
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MaximumBob posted:How does it feel to be so wrong? 10-8 fucked around with this message at 02:38 on Nov 2, 2011 |
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Nov 2, 2011 02:35
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You might get an environment with people who wouldn't kill themselves but for how busy they are trying to bill more hours. But if they weren't so busy then they'd kill themselves after all? To answer your question I don't know.
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Nov 2, 2011 02:43
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gently caress yeah, I just passed the NY bar.
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Nov 2, 2011 05:11
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wootles, passed~
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Nov 2, 2011 05:31
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New York Bar? Give me something hard to pass. NEVER AGAIN
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Nov 2, 2011 06:35
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qwertyman posted:New York Bar? Give me something hard to pass. Never. Ever. Again. (I passed, it's pretty exciting.)
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Nov 2, 2011 06:46
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qwertyman posted:New York Bar? Give me something hard to pass.
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Nov 2, 2011 07:18
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http://www.justice.gov.mp/careers.aspx For all our recent bar passers: The Northern Mariana Islands is hiring a law clerk. I literally wish I knew this when I was filing innumerable clerkship apps. They have kinda big spiders, but otherwise they are awesome. Which is to say, they have kinda big spiders and therefore spiders are icky and gently caress spiders. Goddamnit, I blame nm for this ennui between arachnophobia and a clerkship opportunity. BigHead fucked around with this message at 07:56 on Nov 2, 2011 |
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Nov 2, 2011 07:50
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BigHead posted:http://www.justice.gov.mp/careers.aspx
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Nov 2, 2011 08:09
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Daviclond posted:So uh the OP makes a pretty damning case for staying the hell away from a law degree in the US, but would the same advice apply to the UK? I have a family member considering it as their degree and I'm not sure what approach to take to help him. To be clear, I don't necessarily mean talking him out of it, but I'm going to at least give a bit of lecturing on how he better be willing to work his rear end off. The position is much better in the UK in that one can do a law degree at undergraduate level and it'll cost you no more than any other degree. I know that people are moaning about the increase in tuition fees from ~£3000 to £9,000p/a but it won't cost you anything up front and there's no huge risk involved because the threshold to start paying it back has gone up (to about £21,000 I think? Which is a very low figure but if you don't find a job then you won't suddenly have your house repossessed or anything else that can happen in the US). I've gone into law with my degree so I can't give any first hand experience of how other employers in different fields see the degree but from my understanding it's regarded as a 'proper' degree and will get you a job ahead of someone with a degree in English or Philosophy (for example). If your family member actually wants to go into law with their degree then it might become a bit riskier. I don't know if they've thought ahead to whether they want to be a solicitor or go to the Bar but competition is pretty high. Again, no first hand experience of applying to solicitors' firms but your family member will need at least a 2.1 and if they plan to work in the City then ideally a 1st. The LPC (which one has to do after finishing a law degree in order to qualify as a solicitor) costs about £10,000 I think and will either need to be funded privately (ie with a normal loan rather than a snuggly nice low-risk government handout) or if one has got a training contract at a solicitors' firm then most will fund this. I've gone to the Bar and for that one has to do the BPTC. This costs between £12,000 and £15,000 depending on where one studies. There are no firms to fund this because life as a barrister means being self-employed. However, the Inns of Court (Inner Temple, Middle Temple, Lincoln's Inn and Gray's Inn) all provide scholarships for very promising applicants and as the recipient of a scholarship for the entirety of my course fees I can tell you that it's great fun and if your family member wants to go to the Bar and gets a scholarship then there's no real risk. The Bar is a LOT more competitive than applying to be a solicitor, however, and your family member will really need a 1st or to get a very good CV (ie winning lots of mooting competitions and anything else relevant eg negotiating etc) in order to have a chance. The statistics seem to change all the time but Lord Judge has thrown around a figure of 1 in 8 people who do the BPTC getting a pupillage (ie a year of training before being set loose as a self-employed practitioner - this is what essentially counts as 'the job' that people are applying for). Again though, applications are always a year in advance (for example I applied and had my interviews this year and will be starting my pupillage in October 2012 after I finish the course). In summary then: law is seen as a very respectable degree that will set anyone in good stead, but if one actually wants to go into the law professionally then it starts to get competitive so be good! dos4gw fucked around with this message at 09:35 on Nov 2, 2011 |
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Nov 2, 2011 09:30
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evilweasel posted:It sounds like you pretty solidly made up your mind already, but if you've ever been part of a badly run organization, or had a terrible boss, you should be aware of the value of effective management skills to an organization. At my biglaw firm, the HR department existed mostly to protect the jobs of the incompetent 50% of the support staff who wanted to play Solitaire and get in hair-pulling, pan-cubicle screaming matches with one another. If we'd had lawyers involved, we would have just fired the deadweight. Now, I'm not big on the whole firing people thing, so that should give you some idea of how useless some of them were. We also had firm management who were big on applying business management techniques, unfortunately this honestly didn't seem to translate to practice within the wider partnership (i.e. outside of the relevant committees and the official party line). Daviclond posted:So uh the OP makes a pretty damning case for staying the hell away from a law degree in the US, but would the same advice apply to the UK? I have a family member considering it as their degree and I'm not sure what approach to take to help him. To be clear, I don't necessarily mean talking him out of it, but I'm going to at least give a bit of lecturing on how he better be willing to work his rear end off. The debt burden is nothing like that in the US and our student loan debt is on superior terms anyway AFAIK (it came in after I finished my first degree), so right away it is a less lovely idea. We also have a variety of ways into the profession for solicitors, because we still basically have an apprenticeship system, albeit it's apprenticeship "plus" as you have the LPC etc. which ensures that there is a basis of legal knowledge to sit alongside whatever you learn during your training contract. Because we have this apprenticeship system, soliciting (titter) is more open in terms of allowing people to qualify at different stages in their lives/careers than law is in the US, where most students (exception, people with hard science PhDs who want to do patent work) at the top schools have basically jumped straight into a graduate course on the back of a good degree from a good university. I didn't do one and therefore this should be taken with a pinch of salt, but the necessity of securing a training contract means, I imagine, that when jobs are scarce connections are triply important. Especially in the regions, if the son or daughter of an important client or just the son or daughter of "someone" (MP, tycoon, rock star, Bedales alumnus etc) wants work, firms are more likely to look favourably on them. Does this apply to your relative? This can happen in the US of course, but firms do tend to hire on the basis of grades, grades, the name of your school and not loving up during your summer internship. Magic circle firms in this economy are probably looking for Oxbridge or something very close to it, perfect grades and the obligatory stick up the arse which shows you have the right attitude to work in a City firm. While it is a viable option as a general degree (unlike the JD, which is a vocational degree, and has no real application other than becoming a If your relative has the aptitude for it and wants to do something challenging requiring actual studying, I would have thought a hard science or medicine/vet medicine would be much better from a career or employable skills perspective. Law is better than a psychology degree, but not much better. Lawyering in this country is also a lot less interesting than it is in the US, since we still have a division between solicitors and the bar. Even if they aren't brilliant at it, American lawyers will have the prospect of dealing with some element of advocacy work during their careers should they wish to do so. For most solicitors, this will simply not be the case, rights of audience notwithstanding. This means it's a job that involves sitting at a desk and doing paperwork. And because barristers are primarily advocates, there is no substitute for the skillset of an advocate if you choose that path. AFAIK, you can't be a good barrister and a lovely trial lawyer, no matter how readable your written opinions are and how personable your clerk. If you are mediocre in front of a judge or simply can't acquire the particular mindset of a barrister, by which I mean understanding how and when arguments are actually presented and how the court will reason, you will not get far. Thanks to the impact of American TV lawyering, I don't think people appreciate precisely how bizarre argument even at the RCJ is. More generally, just as in the US, this is an exceptionally difficult market for law students. Our firm was recently recruiting and got some exceptionally qualified people looking who you wouldn't have expected to want a job outside of the environs of EC2. One of my wife's relatives went to a well-respected school, presents well and has the significant advantage(sadly, due to the composition of most partnerships) of being pretty and blonde, and she has ended up going to a high street firm for her training contract for want of anything better. The final thing I'd say about it as a career is that, as with the US, even if he gets a foot in the door, your relative will realise that he could have got much greater rewards for a lot less effort by becoming a banker, consultant or going into industry (in the approximate order) than by going into law. We're limited basically by the fact that unlike bankers or our clients in industry, the salary we command is based on the chargeable value of our labour rather than (as with capitalists or bankers, for example) the capital you have to play with. You simply don't get six-figure salaries without putting in the hours (and having the skills to back it up) and there are no £1m+ bonuses, let alone ones that come with Martini lunches and Friday afternoons at the pub.
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Nov 2, 2011 13:21
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nm posted:California laughs at you and your pass rate over 50% (combined winter and summer). Hard? We think not. California literally lets anyone go take the bar exam.
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Nov 2, 2011 13:37
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Congrats to you NY passers.
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Nov 2, 2011 13:45
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goongrats NY folks
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Nov 2, 2011 14:13
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BigHead posted:http://www.justice.gov.mp/careers.aspx I just GISed mariana island spiders. Goddamn I guess there are some upsides to living in a frozen hellish wasteland that was never meant to supprt life
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Nov 2, 2011 14:14
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I was just cleaning up some old docs on my computer and I found an old SlyFrog Classic (tm) that I loved so much at the time I saved it to a word file in the interests of making the last page full of HR and SV posts a little less lovely, I share it with you scrubs now SlyFrog posted:I prefer to think of my wife as the ingenue in a Cthulhu novel - watching me undertake acts, study dark things, and truck with unspeakably black monsters that will eventually push me over the brink into insanity. On particularly savage days, she is a balm restoring some small bit of hope that I lost, but never enough.
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Nov 2, 2011 14:30
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HooKars posted:You're a 2L aren't you? Yes I'm a 2L and no, I didn't apply to any firms in NY/DC/Chi. My loan situation isn't too bad, it'd be 50k total if I stayed through. My parents said they'll pay my last year of tuition, so that knocks it down to ~25k if I stay. Edit: to be clear, it's not like I slacked and only applied to OCI firms. I applied to almost every firm in the Deep South with more than 10 attorneys -- although about 40% were fairly late applications. The main concern I have right now is whether I should keep applying to places or shift my attention to working on my comment and studying for exams. I'm so behind in everything right now. I'm waiting to hear back from one callback and I actually just got a callback this morning with a firm back home (regional biglaw). Government hiring doesn't exist and I have no interest in PI. The biggest issue is that my parents literally cannot comprehend that a law degree isn't particularly useful for business. Sure, some businessmen have law degrees, but ever heard of survivorship bias? Omerta fucked around with this message at 19:14 on Nov 2, 2011 |
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Nov 2, 2011 19:06
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Hoo boy. I've been hounding this one attorney for weeks at a crim defense firm. Call, call, call call call call call. He's apparently busy as hell but his friends that told me about him said they talked to him recently and told me to keep calling. I do. I finally get him on the phone and he asks me to send my resume because he wants to send it out to his friends Then he asks to meet with me so he'll know what kind of guy he's recommending. Ok, sure. I show up today in khakis and a button-down shirt and some nice shoes because this isn't a job interview-- it's a meet and greet. He gets pissed that I'm not wearing a suit, despite the fact that he's wearing jeans and a polo. "Where's your loving suit?" Facepalm.
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Nov 2, 2011 19:20
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gret posted:California literally lets anyone go take the bar exam.
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Nov 2, 2011 19:40
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CaptainScraps posted:Ok, sure. I show up today in khakis and a button-down shirt and some nice shoes because this isn't a job interview-- it's a meet and greet. Show up to everything law related in a suit. Better for them to make fun of you for being overdressed than to get reamed for being under dressed. It's so easy for guys to dress down automatically. Just take off your jacket and voila! Maybe take off the tie if it's extra "casual".
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Nov 2, 2011 20:21
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Penguins Like Pies posted:Show up to everything law related in a suit. Better for them to make fun of you for being overdressed than to get reamed for being under dressed. I'm sorry Captain Scraps but I agree with penguins here. You should have been in a suit. I once went to an "informational" interview without a copy of my resume, on the same theory that it was a "meet and greet" and not an interview, and the first thing the interviewer asked for was my resume. When I didn't have it, he gave me a five minute lecture about how I need to bring my resume to every interview, informational or not, and the lack of a resume shows either ignorance or apathy. He was pretty annoyed with me. Looking back, I think he was annoyed because he couldn't use my resume as a conversation starter - he'd have to actually make conversation as though he were interested in talking to me like a human being.
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Nov 2, 2011 21:02
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entris posted:I'm sorry Captain Scraps but I agree with penguins here. You should have been in a suit. Weird. I got the advice not to wear a suit to informational interviews from this thread. I guess I'll start wearing suits to everything from now on.
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Nov 2, 2011 21:04
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CaptainScraps posted:Weird. I got the advice not to wear a suit to informational interviews from this thread. If I'm directly in touch with the person I'm meeting with, I ask since you never know how the person will respond. Anecdote: I went to lunch with two partners at a notoriously conservative Atlanta firm and asked if I should wear a suit beforehand. The partner (verbatim) said, "Don't be a loving human being and show up in a suit." Otherwise, presume suit since this guy was kind of off his rocker anyway. edit: in other news, I'm going to stay in law school. I like what I'm doing, I'm doing well, and I'm going to have a fairly small debt load after I graduate. Turns out parents will pay entirely for the last year, so it wouldn't make a difference. Unless I get a job at one of the few fulltime positions I applied to that start in January, then I'm staying. I'm still not sure if I want to go into business or not, but worst case scenario I'll go work at my parents' business. #whiteprivilege and I still love you Warsaza. Omerta fucked around with this message at 22:41 on Nov 2, 2011 |
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Nov 2, 2011 22:36
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Omerta posted:If I'm directly in touch with the person I'm meeting with, I ask since you never know how the person will respond. Anecdote: I went to lunch with two partners at a notoriously conservative Atlanta firm and asked if I should wear a suit beforehand. The partner (verbatim) said, "Don't be a loving human being and show up in a suit." The worst part is the way this is phrased. I'm wouldn't have been sure (but for the first sentence in the paragraph) whether he meant "don't wear a suit (like a human being would,)" or "don't be a human being. Instead, wear a suit." Probably would've shown up in a jacket and some jorts.
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Nov 2, 2011 22:44
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prussian advisor posted:The worst part is the way this is phrased. I'm wouldn't have been sure (but for the first sentence in the paragraph) whether he meant "don't wear a suit (like a human being would,)" or "don't be a human being. Instead, wear a suit." I know, you could tell by his tone what he meant though. Also, I don't know if this thread was posted here, but it's hilarious. "Landlord saw my penis: can I sue?" http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3444610
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Nov 2, 2011 22:59
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Soothing Vapors posted:I just GISed mariana island spiders. Goddamn I guess there are some upsides to living in a frozen hellish wasteland that was never meant to supprt life Meh, you only see one like once or twice a year, and usually the small juvenile variety. I've only seen about 5 face-huggers in the last 7 years. My cat killed one of them. Also, going to the CNMI is worse than unemployment.
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Nov 3, 2011 00:31
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Soothing Vapors posted:I was just cleaning up some old docs on my computer and I found an old SlyFrog Classic (tm) that I loved so much at the time I saved it to a word file
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Nov 3, 2011 01:19
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Abugadu posted:I've only seen about 5 face-huggers in the last 7 years. 10-8 posted:Can you please repost his (I think) post about Warhammer 40K? Yes, most beneficent one Slyfrog posted:Said partner at said Upper Midwest Biglaw firm has never, and will never, discuss anything remotely related to Warhammer 40k (which said partner has not played in some years) or any other games (computer and/or miniature and/or board related) with any of said partner's partners or associates.
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Nov 3, 2011 14:36
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Can you please post like hall of fame of funny posts from this thread I know you have them saved somewhere on that jizz-stained laptop of yours
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Nov 3, 2011 14:47
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Phil Moscowitz posted:Can you please post like hall of fame of funny posts from this thread
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Nov 3, 2011 15:36
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So what's the smartest way to deal with student loans v. long-term saving? If you are borrowing at 7% it seems prudent to forget about savings until that's gone, but what about 401K matching? Is it best to take advantage of the "free" money first and then focus the rest on principal repayment?
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Nov 3, 2011 16:23
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fougera posted:So what's the smartest way to deal with student loans v. long-term saving? If I was getting paid enough to cover my loans here's what I'd do: 1) save 6 month cushion while paying minimums 2) take free money in 401k 3) Pay off student loans
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Nov 3, 2011 16:27
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Roger_Mudd posted:If I was getting paid enough to cover my loans here's what I'd do: and by cushion you mean rent + insurance + food? The real challenge is living off of a small base in NYC. I really need a gf to move in with, splitting a studio would be mad cheap.
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Nov 3, 2011 16:39
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fougera posted:So what's the smartest way to deal with student loans v. long-term saving? This might be more appropriate to discuss in the retirement savings/investment thread (http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2892928); the best course of action is dependent on several factors, including your current income, tax bracket, age, whether your 401k has a match, credit card debt, student loan interest rates, risk tolerance, job stability, and more. Generally you always want to have a month+ savings to cover an emergency, and to contribute to whatever your 401k match is; even though your student loan interest is high at 7%, your 401k match is a guaranteed 50-100% return on investment. I would start contributing up to the match level immediately, because that's a use-it-or-lose-it proposition and you're not going to get a guaranteed 50% or 100% ROI anywhere else. With regard to the emergency fund, the metric I use is 8 months of bare minimum expenses (e.g., mortgage, utilities, taxes, groceries, gas, insurance), assuming I were cutting back on luxuries and eating ramen otherwise. Other than getting the 401k match being priority number one, everyone's situation is so unique that you're probably better off discussing in the thread directly related to savings/retirement planning where you can get more specific advice directly tailored to your situation. Edit: Also, judging from your post history you are a regular poster in the stock picking thread. You might want to stop day-trading until you have your basic savings/retirement planning under control. NJ Deac fucked around with this message at 17:04 on Nov 3, 2011 |
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Nov 3, 2011 16:58
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I really hope the MPRE is as easy as everyone says it is. I've done absolutely nothing, aside from reading through a commercial outline once.
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Nov 3, 2011 17:07
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Blakkout posted:I really hope the MPRE is as easy as everyone says it is. I've done absolutely nothing, aside from reading through a commercial outline once. The MPRE is pathetically easy but you do not want to take that poo poo twice. Look at some sample questions just to get a feel for it. I spent about 5-10 hours on it and have the handicap of being a total sociopath and passed by about 25 points. I think the sum of my studying efforts was reading through a commercial outline and maybe doing 50 practice questions to get a feel for them.
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Nov 3, 2011 17:24
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Blakkout posted:I really hope the MPRE is as easy as everyone says it is. I've done absolutely nothing, aside from reading through a commercial outline once. Watch the barbri video, take a test, done. A friend and I were trying to get the closest to 85 we could and I still overshot by 40 points. Then the other clerk in my office announced he got 85 on the dot was surprised when I congratulated him. Edit: Passed. Oh thank god. High five Roger. G-Mawwwwwww fucked around with this message at 19:27 on Nov 3, 2011 |
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Nov 3, 2011 18:30
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I r passed the bar! *high five back at ya Cpt. Scraps
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Nov 3, 2011 19:39
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| # ? Jun 8, 2024 20:24 |
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Congrats to all of you joining the rest of us successful bar exam takers this week! Now to find a job like the rest of us...
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