Lawyer & Law School Megathread #12: Started Out Barrister, Ended Up Barista

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Business, Finance, and Careers > Lawyer & Law School Megathread #12: Started Out Barrister, Ended Up Barista

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Ani: Jun 15, 2001; illum non populi fasces, non purpura regum / flexit et infidos agitans discordia fratres

Aschlafly posted:

Little update from the last thread:

3.75/180 with three science majors, and I am officially... waitlisted at Harvard! Yay! I didn't really want to go very badly, anyway. I guess it's back to having panic attacks and figuring out what to do with my life!

That sucks. If it helps (it won't) your stats are straight-up better than mine on every metric.

# ¿ May 7, 2010 21:06

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# ¿ May 16, 2024 01:46

Ani: Jun 15, 2001; illum non populi fasces, non purpura regum / flexit et infidos agitans discordia fratres

I haven't posted in this thread in forever - I feel bad for abandoning it.

For anyone who's taken the NY bar, or the bar in general (and took BarBri) :

Which lectures are worth watching? If I have taken the class in law school, is it worthwhile to bother with the lectures?

Also, what's a good MBE score? Barbri says 126 or something is average, but I'm operating under the assumption that I won't know state law very well, since right now I don't know any of it - can a good MBE score make up for crappy essay performance?

# ¿ Jul 5, 2011 00:40

Ani: Jun 15, 2001; illum non populi fasces, non purpura regum / flexit et infidos agitans discordia fratres

HYS also give pretty good loan repayment assistance, so no one's actually forced into Biglaw.

# ¿ Jul 13, 2011 21:24

Ani: Jun 15, 2001; illum non populi fasces, non purpura regum / flexit et infidos agitans discordia fratres

The Warszawa posted:

The culture at Yale (and Harvard, from what I've heard) is insanely geared towards the wealthy elite in a way that doesn't seem replicated at non-HYS law schools. Moreover, it's geared towards family experience. I can count the number of students in my year who don't have lawyer family on one hand, and most of those are rather prestigious fuckers as well. Also, Harvard has a huge reputation for culturally pushing people into Biglaw, so I'm hesitant to say that "a majority want to work in big law, debt or no." 70% end up working in Biglaw, but that overlaps pretty significantly with the 70% who have debt (it's hard for it not to, considering that >70% of HLS students are in debt).

Don't know Yale, but this seems pretty wrong on most counts for Harvard:
- what do you mean by "geared to towards the wealthy elite?" It's not like we go yachting or anything.
- non-trivial number of really rich kids, but most people are standard upper-middle-class, just like everyone at a good undergrad.
- H pushes people into biglaw, it's true, but the ones who don't take it aren't usually the rich kids. Well, some don't, but it seems pretty orthogonal.

Re: good undergrads at HYS - obviously people feed from good undergrads (this is responding to someone else's comment), but that's at least partially because people at good undergrads (a) test well because they're selected for it and (b) grade inflate. I would estimate 50% ivy+ is about right for Harvard too.

# ¿ Jul 15, 2011 00:43

Ani: Jun 15, 2001; illum non populi fasces, non purpura regum / flexit et infidos agitans discordia fratres

The Warszawa posted:

That said, if I had said "URMs" instead of people of color it would have been almost accurate (it's really more like 8 Hispanics, 3 black students).

I don't think this is accurate (adjusting numbers upwards proportionately) for H. There's a pretty big boost to URM admissions, and they're definitely represented. I think my 80-person section was 10% black.

# ¿ Jul 16, 2011 03:45

Ani: Jun 15, 2001; illum non populi fasces, non purpura regum / flexit et infidos agitans discordia fratres

MoFauxHawk posted:

And URM is a debatable label because Mexicans and Puerto Ricans get a huge boost that rivals the boost African Americans and Native Americans get, but other latinos get a much smaller boost for law school admissions (which sucks for dirt poor mestizo Guatemalans and people like that).

Really? They don't seem to ask for much more than 'hispanic', so I figured it was all the same whether you were a dirt-poor Mexican or some Argentine Nazi.

# ¿ Jul 16, 2011 18:08

Ani: Jun 15, 2001; illum non populi fasces, non purpura regum / flexit et infidos agitans discordia fratres

MEET ME BY DUCKS posted:

aah. sounds like some TLSer was just bullshitting then, as they claimed a major reason to go to YLS over HLS is that law review membership is basically automatic. When in fact that sounds exactly like how HLS works.

Well, it's still probably easier. YLJ and HLR seem to have about the same number of people (HLR has 40 per year), but 300-odd people do the contest at Harvard. Your odds have to be a lot better at Yale.

quote:

Ah, I guess that's just Barbri lying to be scary again. They told us to make up a rule if we don't know it, but the implication was that we'd only get points for the stuff that matched the real rule. I'm glad structure factors in, because I can CIRAC like a motherfucker.

Thanks. I feel like their hiding the ball on that almost does more harm than good.

I don't know if it's fair to blame BarBri entirely for hiding the ball - I think the bigger problem is that states hide the ball on the essays. If they released the essay scores for passing students, I think BarBri would have a much better idea of what to tell us. It's not like they want to gently caress with us - for the MBE, where info on passing / good / bad scores is known pretty well, they give pretty good information about realistic targets and passing scores, and grade fairly.

# ¿ Jul 25, 2011 17:22

Ani: Jun 15, 2001; illum non populi fasces, non purpura regum / flexit et infidos agitans discordia fratres

prussian advisor posted:

Is anyone else taking a bar exam that has state multiple-choice questions? Or is it just Florida?

NY had 50. They sucked.

# ¿ Jul 27, 2011 02:33

Ani: Jun 15, 2001; illum non populi fasces, non purpura regum / flexit et infidos agitans discordia fratres

CaptainScraps posted:

I'm renaming the MBE to "Your 1L classes? Useless."

Seriously. Though I think part of that is because property / torts / Ks are just harder than the other MBE subjects.

# ¿ Jul 27, 2011 02:52

Ani: Jun 15, 2001; illum non populi fasces, non purpura regum / flexit et infidos agitans discordia fratres

MaximumBob posted:

Whatever happened to suitchat?

I'm going for a fitting for a bespoke suit tomorrow morning. Anything I need to be aware of or watchful for before I pull the trigger?

Ask if it's fully-canvassed. If it's not and you are paying more than a few hundred bucks, you're getting ripped off.

# ¿ Jul 29, 2011 02:55

Ani: Jun 15, 2001; illum non populi fasces, non purpura regum / flexit et infidos agitans discordia fratres

Blakkout posted:

I'm sensing a theme here.

It's good advice. I got wasted before the test and didn't study at all ... and I failed (by two points, but still).

Don't be me. I retook, having studied the night before and without getting drunk, and I did fine.

# ¿ Oct 26, 2011 03:51

Ani: Jun 15, 2001; illum non populi fasces, non purpura regum / flexit et infidos agitans discordia fratres

gently caress yeah, I just passed the NY bar.

# ¿ Nov 2, 2011 05:11

Ani: Jun 15, 2001; illum non populi fasces, non purpura regum / flexit et infidos agitans discordia fratres

Soylent Pudding posted:

Sup fellow law student who doesn't know what the gently caress in Secured Transactions.

You can get books of multiple choice questions for Article 9. I used http://www.lexisnexis.com/store/catalog/booktemplate/productdetail.jsp?pageName=relatedProducts&prodId=48383 but I imagine there are others. I didn't know sectrans at all, then I went through a couple hundred questions and I had it down cold.

# ¿ Nov 8, 2011 04:09

Ani: Jun 15, 2001; illum non populi fasces, non purpura regum / flexit et infidos agitans discordia fratres

Abu-Saleh posted:

As a college freshman, I am curious about your guys' opinion as to whether the job market would have gotten better by the time after I hypothetically enrolled in and graduated from a law school, which is at minimum 8 years from now. I'm taking pre-med courses right now, but lawyering sounds like an equally respectable, and potentially more lucrative field (it's not as of now, I understand).

One thing the current economic crisis has obscured is that the legal market for new graduates was really bad even before the housing bubble burst. While the economy was booming on excessing leverage, there was a lot of high-end corporate work, but even all that extra structured finance dealflow only helped graduates of the top 20-30 law schools or so; things were bad for most law graduates even then. In addition to the changing economy, the legal market is affected by longer-term structural trends:

Clients are becoming more cost-consciousness, forcing law firms to cut costs. This means, among other things, less lawyer staffing, and higher lawyer utilization (read: your hours will suck more should you get a job).
More and more legal work can be outsourced, and firms are doing it, whether to India, or to a contract firm in the US.
Technology is making the practice of law more efficient, and it will continue to do so for some time.

Meanwhile, the cost of legal education is increasing drastically. It's already a terrible financial move to attend all but a handful of schools, and I doubt there will be drastic educational reform in the next four years.

That said, it's hard to tell what will happen in even four years, let alone longer. I don't think it makes sense to take any specific steps towards law that would come at the cost of other options, but you don't need to worry about any of this until you are ready to apply to law school, which is in at least four years.

# ¿ Dec 3, 2011 02:08

Ani: Jun 15, 2001; illum non populi fasces, non purpura regum / flexit et infidos agitans discordia fratres

Question for all the big-firm or ex-big-firm lawgoons:

I started at a big firm in NYC a few months ago, in their corporate/transactional department, and I have just been offered a position in their Australian office. If I accept, I'd be leaving in the next few months, and I'd probably be there for two years.

I like New York, but I'm single, and I think it'd be fun to go abroad. The work in Australia seems to be a lot more securities work and a lot less M&A, but I'm fine with that. There is a non-trivial, but not huge, pay bump associated with going over.

Is going over a terrible idea for my career, assuming that I eventually want to make partner at a law firm (which I don't think I do, anyway). Is it a great idea?

# ¿ Dec 13, 2011 19:43

Ani: Jun 15, 2001; illum non populi fasces, non purpura regum / flexit et infidos agitans discordia fratres

Thanks for the Australia advice, everyone. The one thing that skeeves me out a bit is that the Australian office is apparently desperate for bodies (or they wouldn't be trying to hard-sell me, someone with only three months' experience) - I want to figure out why it's so hard for them to entice people, because I would think a lot of young and single associates would want to spend a year or two in Australia.

# ¿ Dec 14, 2011 15:11

Ani: Jun 15, 2001; illum non populi fasces, non purpura regum / flexit et infidos agitans discordia fratres

nm posted:

Where in oz? Big difference between Melbourne and Darwin or even Perth.
I would assume sydney or melbourne, but who knows?

It's probably Melbourne, but we also have a very small Sydney office, so there's some chance it could be that. To the extent I have a choice I think I'd prefer Melbourne, but either way I think it'd be pretty cool.

# ¿ Dec 14, 2011 22:04

Ani: Jun 15, 2001; illum non populi fasces, non purpura regum / flexit et infidos agitans discordia fratres

The Warszawa posted:

Also the ATL comments are chock full of enough crazy racism and other bigotries that, more than this thread, make me wonder what profession I'm getting myself into.

Do you read xoxo? If you don't, start reading it, and remember that many lawyers enjoy spending all day posting racial slurs in all caps on a message board.

# ¿ Jan 11, 2012 19:30

Ani: Jun 15, 2001; illum non populi fasces, non purpura regum / flexit et infidos agitans discordia fratres

HiddenReplaced posted:

Why the gently caress can't partners use "track changes" on their loving computers?

YOUR CHICKEN SCRATCH NOTES ON MY GOD drat MOTION MEAN ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO ME.

It's way easier to do a hand markup than track changes, especially if you're going to be printing things out to read in the first place (which you will if they're long documents).

# ¿ Feb 10, 2012 15:43

Ani: Jun 15, 2001; illum non populi fasces, non purpura regum / flexit et infidos agitans discordia fratres

HiddenReplaced posted:

The most ridiculous part of your reply is where you suggest that the partners are going to actually print out things on their own.

If you're going to have things printed out for you, I should have said, though for a short document, if you have a printer in your office, it's easier to print it yourself than to have your secretary do it.

It really is easier doing a hand markup; when I'm marking things up, I prefer to do it also. If you're fixing commas it is about the same, but if you want to say that a sentence or paragraph isn't very clear, it's easier to circle and write "reword" or something.

# ¿ Feb 10, 2012 16:57

Ani: Jun 15, 2001; illum non populi fasces, non purpura regum / flexit et infidos agitans discordia fratres

Roger_Mudd posted:

The thing I've never understood, if your going over the document, why not just add the loving commas yourself (not you directly). I understand handing it back to the associate if something needs rewording but I don't get handing a document back to an associate for minor punctuation or formatting changes.

The only rational I can find is that the normal process is more inefficient thus producing more billables.

If you're looking at a editable version on your computer and the only mistakes are commas and other trivialities, you'll just fix it. In most cases this is what I've seen even pretty senior people do. But if you are reviewing a document, you generally expect there to be multiple issues, so you start out with a printed version. As you go through the printout, you'll mark every mistake you find, whether it is minor or major. Sometimes commas will be the only thing, but usually not.

# ¿ Feb 10, 2012 20:28

Ani: Jun 15, 2001; illum non populi fasces, non purpura regum / flexit et infidos agitans discordia fratres

MoFauxHawk posted:

I know you're joking, but never. Don't refer to yourself as esquire even if you're a lawyer, eww.

If you are a lawyer it can be useful to use Esq. sometimes just to make clear that someone is a lawyer. E.g., "Notice shall be sent to XYZ Corporation, Attn: Joe McDouche, Esq."

# ¿ Feb 11, 2012 23:02

Ani: Jun 15, 2001; illum non populi fasces, non purpura regum / flexit et infidos agitans discordia fratres

MoFauxHawk posted:

But if you're instructing somebody to send something "Attn: Joe McDouche, Esq.", it's a third person address.

Oops, you said refer to yourself. I think it might still be useful if you for whatever reason want to make clear you are a lawyer in some professional context; I can't think of when this would come up, but I'm sure it does.

# ¿ Feb 12, 2012 01:11

Ani: Jun 15, 2001; illum non populi fasces, non purpura regum / flexit et infidos agitans discordia fratres

Ersatz posted:

The Oxford comma: the best comma.

My firm doesn't use it. It's really annoying.

# ¿ Feb 16, 2012 00:03

Ani: Jun 15, 2001; illum non populi fasces, non purpura regum / flexit et infidos agitans discordia fratres

MechaFrogzilla posted:

Ohhhh god you guys made me so loving hungry. I wish I were in SF right now, I'd head down to El Farelito this goddamn minute.

Instead, I'm in NYC, and nothing I've had out here can really compare. Anybody have a lead on a good burrito out here?

No idea if it's authentic, but LES Taqueria (at Houston St. and Orchard St.) is really great and pretty cheap.

# ¿ Feb 24, 2012 17:20

Ani: Jun 15, 2001; illum non populi fasces, non purpura regum / flexit et infidos agitans discordia fratres

That's pretty excellent. I'm quoting his letter here because it's worth reading and it's better than the ATL version with crappy commentary.

quote:

Statement of Howard E. Abrams Regarding the Next Dean of the Emory Law School

I do not want to be the next dean of the Emory Law School. And that may be my strongest qualification.

I believe two things concerning administration of the Emory Law School: (1) the faculty should run the Law School; and (2) the Law School should be run for the benefit of the students. Currently, neither of those is true though not out of deliberated decision nor meanness of spirit. Rather, the law school has acceded to a series of deans who (out of the best of intentions) have expanded their role at the expense of the faculty. And the goals of the Law School have never been identified with sufficient precision.

I believe the goal of the Emory Law School should be to help our students lead happy and productive lives and to contribute to their local communities and to the greater society. To do this, we need to give them the tools to succeed after law school however they define success, we must maximize the opportunities for them to realize their dreams, and we must find new ways of supporting our students whose dreams take longer to realize.
I have some thoughts on how those goals can be achieved, and so do others. I believe that the wisdom of a group far exceeds the wisdom of its individual members, and for that reason it must be a united faculty that leads the law school forward. While our past deans and their most trusted associates have sought success for our students, they lack the experience and collective judgment that the faculty as a body can offer. And by reengaging the full faculty in primary decision-making, those members of the faculty who have been marginalized will become invigorated. Accordingly, I would have the faculty chose a Committee of Committees, and this CoC would then determine the membership of all other law school committees. Committees would select their own chairpersons. Endowed chairs should be awarded by existing holders of endowed chairs; teaching award recipients should be selected by past honorees.

For too long, the Emory Law School has emphasized appearance over substance. I understand this emphasis: we have been told that a dean�s tenure is tied to the US News and World Report rankings, and so a dean who believes he can improve the school must first ensure he remains in a position to do so. One advantage of shifting from a bureaucratic model of administration to a faculty-run model is to prevent decanal retention policy from driving law school strategy.

We need to have a faculty more in touch with the general legal community. That means, I think, less teaching by adjunct faculty and more teaching with adjunct faculty. We need to have more team teaching by law school faculty with other law school faculty and more team teaching with other members of the University, especially members of the Business School and Medical School faculties.

This will also help us increase � and we need to dramatically increase � the entrepreneurial atmosphere of the law school. Regardless of what our students do and who they may advise, the world now requires an entrepreneurial approach in all aspects of commerce. We need to develop that spirit in ourselves; we need to help foster it in our students. We need a small business clinic. We need to better understand what our students do after graduation, and then we need to help them do it.

We need to teach more. Law faculties have used the US News and World Report rankings as justification for moving significant resources out of classrooms and into faculty offices: only faculty scholarship, we are told, will increase our peer reputational ranking. But as we all know, while the best legal scholarship really is very good, most legal scholarship (because publication decisions and editing are done by second-year students) is not good and rarely is read. Producing innovative courses and teaching methods likely will improve our reputation as much as the publication of one or two or three journal articles that are of interest only to other academics and often not even to them. Innovation in the classroom certainly will benefit our students. I would return to a four course annual teaching package, though with more team teaching as part of those packages.

And I think we need to change our financial aid program dramatically. I would shift most or all financial aid into student loans with interest deferred until graduation and with reduction of interest and principal payments for up to five years depending on post-graduation income. That is, those of our students who seek and achieve immediate financial success can afford to bear the full cost of their legal education. But those students who have other goals or whose goals cannot immediately be achieved should have the burden of their debt reduced for a reasonable period. This has the added benefit of tying the Law School�s economic interest to that of its students: if the students cannot find jobs, the school does not get paid.

There are very many things about running a law school that I do not know. I do not know why we have had the same number of students since I arrived 30 years ago but the number of administrators has increased dramatically. I do not know why we are unable to replace members of the faculty who have retired or passed away. I do not know why the Provost has asked that dean candidates describe their vision for the law school in no more than three pages. Perhaps most importantly, I do not know why Robert Howell Hall Professor of Law Richard D. Freer will not be our next dean: he is our best teacher, one of our very best scholars, and he has the strongest relationship of any member of the faculty with the bench and bar. But I do know that we need new leadership and new vision. If we cannot get the most obvious candidate, perhaps it should be me.

Howard E. Abrams
Professor of Law

# ¿ Feb 26, 2012 02:29

Ani: Jun 15, 2001; illum non populi fasces, non purpura regum / flexit et infidos agitans discordia fratres

aarontxwl posted:

Okay I basically registred in January and haven't thought about it until now. I just don't want to (a) overstudy for it or (b) be that guy who has to retake it. But if it's a complete loving joke I'll just find the Barbri thing and maybe do some practice questions. I was also under the impression that an 85 means 85/100 so okay I'm going to continue not worrying about it.

Yeah, don't retake it. I signed up to take it earlier than all of my friends, and then completely forgot about it until the night before the exam, at 1am, when I was out at a bar. At that point, I decided that it wasn't worth studying, but that I might as well see if the test is really so easy that it could be taken cold. Answer? Nope - I got an 82, but needed an 85 for New York. Put in the 5 hours of studying that it'll take to guarantee a passing score.

# ¿ Feb 28, 2012 22:04

Ani: Jun 15, 2001; illum non populi fasces, non purpura regum / flexit et infidos agitans discordia fratres

Omerta posted:

Thanks for the moral support. I guess I'm overreacting because I haven't really studied/read for the class because I've been working on my comment all the time. It seems intuitive, but I thought about taking another code course (like BK or tax) closed book and it made me depressed and sad.

If you have time, find a book of multiple choice questions on secured transactions and work through it. I did this and it really helped, because it just reinforces all the basic connections that you need - e.g., you need to file to perfect, unless it's a X kind of security interest - there aren't really tricks and traps and hazy caselaw; it's just a matter of knowing the connections between the provisions of Art 9 and the bankruptcy code.

# ¿ Feb 29, 2012 16:52

Ani: Jun 15, 2001; illum non populi fasces, non purpura regum / flexit et infidos agitans discordia fratres

Omerta posted:

Like a bar prep book or something? The ST E&E is dumb and bad.

I used http://www.amazon.com/Glannon-Guide-Secured-Transactions-Guides/dp/0735564795 and http://www.amazon.com/Questions-Answers-Transactions-Bruce-Markell/dp/0820556661

Both were professor-recommended, so I don't know if they'll be that useful for other courses. I do know that it took me about a day and a half to go through them all; I just did the MC questions in sets of about 10, then looked up all the answers, then repeated. No other notetaking, or fancy outlining, or anything like that. For the next couple days, I knew ST backwards and forwards, which was just enough time to take the final.

# ¿ Feb 29, 2012 20:54

Ani: Jun 15, 2001; illum non populi fasces, non purpura regum / flexit et infidos agitans discordia fratres

Mr Gentleman posted:

my friend at an NYC firm tried to get a box of tissues from a secretary and was refused because "tissues are for partners"

which firm?

# ¿ Feb 29, 2012 21:09

Ani: Jun 15, 2001; illum non populi fasces, non purpura regum / flexit et infidos agitans discordia fratres

I don't know if I'm stealing this from this thread, or somewhere else, but if you want to know if you should be a lawyer, do the following easy self-test:

Take two retail financial products that you use (two credit cards, or two bank accounts, or two student loans, or whatever), and for each, gather all the relevant documentation - the agreement, the terms and conditions, the various terms of service for each feature, like the agreement they make you read when you pay your bill. Now, read through them all and summarize them, without omitting anything. Then, compare the two accounts to each other, and produce a short summary of the differences in the accounts.

If you graduate from law school and are very lucky, the above is what you will get to do for 12 hours a day while being screamed at.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2012 14:20

Ani: Jun 15, 2001; illum non populi fasces, non purpura regum / flexit et infidos agitans discordia fratres

SlothBear posted:

This is what happens to people who go to law school for the money.

Don't go to law school for the money.

Obviously I don't love my job as much as I could, but I stand by that description. If you want to practice certain kinds of law, you should get used to the idea that you'll be reading long, dense documents under time pressure in a high-stress environment. There's nothing wrong with doing that, and there's nothing wrong with enjoying that, but you should see it coming before you go to law school.

# ¿ Mar 2, 2012 17:18

Ani: Jun 15, 2001; illum non populi fasces, non purpura regum / flexit et infidos agitans discordia fratres

Green Crayons posted:

I'm just talking generally. My current job is basically "give me the answer to this topic that you as a 2L probably don't know much about." I eventually get around to finding an answer, but (1) I'm basically manually sifting through cases and trying to synthesize precedent and (2) I don't know if I'm catching the bigger picture. In the first instance I don't know if I'm missing a key element of the particular topic and in the second I don't know if there's just something "out there" that deserves attention due to implications.

Obviously, "just look harder" is an answer -- but I'm hoping to also work smarter. Or is just "click through cases" the optimal research method?

Treatises are money. Sometimes it's not obvious what's out there, but for a lot of fields, there are one or two treatises that really should be the first place you start researching, every single time - e.g., if you're researching something in bankruptcy, you should always start with the relevant Collier's sections before doing anything else. If you don't know what the right treatise is, the Westlaw librarians or whatever they're called should know.

# ¿ Mar 6, 2012 14:19

Ani: Jun 15, 2001; illum non populi fasces, non purpura regum / flexit et infidos agitans discordia fratres

Zaleov posted:

Good points all around. I'll rephrase to "within normal business hours (i.e. 8-6)" vs. "outside of normal business hours". joat mon, I think you did a pretty good job of summarizing a few different career paths, despite my lack of clarity.

Part of the reason I was wondering is on ATL and other places, I often see discussions of how many billable hours a person might work in a year, but I was unsure of how that translated to hours/week of real work (or hours/week that you can't spend as leisure time).

I don't post that much in this thread anymore, but I'm a first-year associate at a biglaw firm in New York, practicing transactional law.

My hours vary a lot; my worst week was probably ~80 billable hours, and it's not uncommon to have a stretch of a few days / ruined weekend to meet a deadline. Some weeks, though, I'm not really busy at all and I read books in the office from 10-5pm and hide to avoid work. In general, regardless of where you are, it's always possible to get a call or an email requiring you to come back to work, though that happens very rarely to me because I've tried to avoid the kinds of deals where that happens. My firm is known for having really long hours, and I suspect I have billed and worked among the fewest hours of the first-years doing transactional work.

Working from home vs. in the office depends on the deal and the partner you're working for; for me it's generally fine, but I find I'm significantly more productive in the office so I try to work there as much as possible.

My ratio of billed hours to worked hours really depends on how busy I am. I pretty much need to be in the office on weekdays from 10-5 or so even if there's nothing for me to do, so on those days or weeks my ratio is terrible. On the other hand, when a deal is busy I would estimate that almost all of my worked time is billable. Any time that I spend in the office after hours or on the weekends is billable, so when you have a lot of that time, your ratio improves.

# ¿ Mar 9, 2012 17:23

Ani: Jun 15, 2001; illum non populi fasces, non purpura regum / flexit et infidos agitans discordia fratres

Mr Gentleman posted:

A first year in my class billed 320+ hours _before_ the end of _February_, but he by far exceeded the norm. I really just wanted to post that number because it's astonishing to me. But I have extremely good hours due to the nature of the cases I'm on and the partners running those cases. At my firm, at least, the % of total worked time that's actually billed time is thankfully pretty high.

Do you mean that he billed more than 320 hours in just Feb, because if so, that's crazy. If you mean that he billed more than 320 hours in January and some of Feb, that's not crazy at all - I hit 320 somewhere in early Feb this year.

# ¿ Mar 11, 2012 07:23

Ani: Jun 15, 2001; illum non populi fasces, non purpura regum / flexit et infidos agitans discordia fratres

Mr Gentleman posted:

Nope, 320 just in February alone (a few days before the end of February, too)

drat.

quote:

He got totally crushed by two different teams he was on getting hot on work at the same time (and some other unfortunate coincidences)

I'm pretty sure my officemate hit 320 in January - he was on some M&A deal that never signed, but was always about to sign. He spent two weeks staying at the office until 4am every day, because the partner and mid-level wanted him to be there just in case.

# ¿ Mar 12, 2012 15:41

Ani: Jun 15, 2001; illum non populi fasces, non purpura regum / flexit et infidos agitans discordia fratres

commish posted:

I am always a bit more appreciative of my firm when I read crap like this.

It's not a firm thing, it's an individual thing. I work at the same firm, and I've never had anything like that - I don't spend time in the office when I'm not working, except during normal business hours. I also just don't work that much. I think having that happen to you is a combination of bad luck / working with the wrong people, and not having enough of a spine to push back.

gret posted:

I'm pretty sure I could hit 320 too if I got to bill time spent in the office twiddling my thumbs.

Yeah, probably. I don't think anyone thinks of hitting 320 as some accomplishment; it's just bad luck, and for me and people at my firm, it's just sort of like an occupational hazard, like earthquakes would be if we lived in California.

# ¿ Mar 12, 2012 16:38

Ani: Jun 15, 2001; illum non populi fasces, non purpura regum / flexit et infidos agitans discordia fratres

Zarkov Cortez posted:

What about pressure to do more hours for partnership?

Depends on the firm, I guess. My firm doesn't have any kind of hours requirements, formal or informal, and I get the sense people don't care that much - this is partly because we don't really bill by the hour for corporate work. My sense is that it would be bad if you were perceived as a shirker, but that's tied more to your satisfactory performance and your availability and responsiveness when necessary, and less to your actual hours billed.

I don't think making partner at my firm or peer firms in New York is realistically possible, so that's not something I (or other first years) seem to worry about, but it's still bad to be perceived as sucky because people won't want to work with you on good deals, and you'll end up doing lots of diligence or something equivalently lovely.

# ¿ Mar 12, 2012 19:14

Ani: Jun 15, 2001; illum non populi fasces, non purpura regum / flexit et infidos agitans discordia fratres

Sulecrist posted:

I remember a story (NYT maybe?) about there being an order of magnitude more Chinese law schools than American ones. I mean, it's not impossible--you just need to do very well at a T-14 and get a job at a very prestigious firm. Success at an Asian firm is probably easier than working for the ACLU. It's just not very likely at all.

At my firm, we don't send people to the Beijing or Hong Kong offices unless they are native (or equivalently fluent) speakers of Mandarin. If you are a Mandarin speaker and you get a job with a firm with a HK office I imagine it would be fairly easy to get sent over there. Similarly, if you are qualified to get a job at a firm in New York, I don't think it would be harder to get that same job directly at the Hong Kong office. One thing to keep in mind about practicing in Asia though - they work really really hard. You hear about how horrible hours are at biglaw firms in New York, but they are nothing compared to HK.

# ¿ Mar 27, 2012 10:26

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# ¿ May 16, 2024 01:46

Ani: Jun 15, 2001; illum non populi fasces, non purpura regum / flexit et infidos agitans discordia fratres

It's kind of weird to me that someone would need to take Critical Race Theory and the Law 101 to figure out that the law is a big machine for loving over poor people and minorities.

Maybe I had professors that really emphasized this (though I don't think they tried to), but I never took an ".. and the law" course and it still seems obvious to me that a country whose constitution explicitly authorizes slavery and the slave trade and that didn't really start trying to eliminate legal discrimination until the 1950s is a country whose laws and institutions will be written to favor its dominant groups.

# ¿ Apr 15, 2012 11:31

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Business, Finance, and Careers > Lawyer & Law School Megathread #12: Started Out Barrister, Ended Up Barista

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