[PaulRyansew]

I know a lot of people who are part of the "lost generation". My department has gone from having two paralegals to about ten in the last 18 months - a sign that they can't find or lost their training positions and are willing to take menial work instead.

[Cemeuncex]

Do you try and foster that reputation, or is referring to daddy one of the all natural talents?

[Efksqhyu]

That you'd follow him? No. Make the choices that you want.

My comment is that your post about it adds to your image, or brand, if you will.

[GfBTWMmV]

Summary: Job prospects for lawyers are incredibly grim but law schools are fudging there numbers to tell a different story.

Good, now David Segal just needs to invent a time machine, go back about 2-3 years, and actually be one of the first gaziznillion journalists to pick up on this hackneyed story. Do they have a memo out to rehash this every month or something?

How's it looking for you, Darius? Better, I hope.

Better than what? I was employed at a firm within days of finishing the bar exam, I've been building a profitable firm with a friend on the side, and as if two jobs weren't enough, a relatively prestigious third clerking with a recently elected judge is likely to be offered later this week and I'll be tortured by an extremely tough decision. The enormous glut of jobs this year is getting a little overwhelming.

But had I screwed around for three years and not walked out magna *** laude? Oh hell yea, I'd be ****ed, as the kids in that article surely are.

[bubbachew14]

Do we really need lawyers anymore? What with fastcase and all.

[TOOGUEITEME]

Summary: Job prospects for lawyers are incredibly grim but law schools are fudging there numbers to tell a different story.

This is the the gist I got after wading through the first quarter of the article. I'm glad I read no further as it presumably had nothing more to add than to demonstrate the tediousness of the author.

[Kayacterype]

That you'd follow him? No. Make the choices that you want.

My comment is that your post about it adds to your image, or brand, if you will.

[Battwenue]

They should if they have a reasonable chance of getting better returns.

[JesikaFclq]

You are working at a firm while building another firm? Is the "profitable firm on the side" some other kind of business?

No, it's a law firm. ~90% of what we do (drafting, mailings, research, voicemails, etc.) can be done overnight and on weekends, and for the remaining ~10% (court appearances, conference calls, etc.) our "day jobs" have hella-flexible enough scheduling to free up weekdays as needed. Of course, we may always jump ship and do our thing exclusively if business picks up enough to, which may happen now that general word of mouth in both business and criminal circles is dropping us odd jobs from time to time, we're go-to guys for two major contractors, I'm getting licensed in a second state come May, and a bank with a half-billion in assets has at least informally indicated we'll be getting most/all of their default cases starting this week. And that's all before we've even bothered to start any traditional "marketing," which could open god knows how many floodgates.

What I don't think the kids in that article fully appreciate is the best advice every private-sector lawyer has given me: as much as law students constantly strived to one-up each other and look the "best," once you actually get out there and hang out your shingle, how "good" of a lawyer you are or where you went to school is virtually irrelevant, and it's all a matter of knowing how to locate the right wellsprings of clients, and getting attuned enough to their unique circumstances to know exactly what they need to hear to sign with you instead of the other guy who - in all honesty - could probably do as good of a job as you if not better. Once that happens, all that's required is a minimal level of competence and a whole lot of continued schmoozing. The big firms these kids strive to get into aren't so much amalgamations of top "talent" as they are faucets from which closely-guarded client leads are poured like the liquid commodities that they are, and recent grads would usually have more than enough work to feed themselves if they just had the creativity, entrepreneurial spirit, and outright cojones necessary to tap into their own leads instead of having them spoon-fed to them. But I guess that's why partners are partners and associates are associates.

If they garnered a real asset with a real probability of a good return I could partly agree but these folks seem oblivious to the level of debt they are assuming. Didn't one dude have European semesters in their program etc etc. When I went to law school I was fortunate in that costs were lower but I lived modestly and also worked either part-time or full-time all three years. I am not seeing those kind of elements in these stories. It seems some of these folks were living a pretty nice lifestyle on borrowed cash

QFMFT. When my eyes first fell upon the study abroad sob-story I puked into my mouth a bit and just stopped reading. Had I not been able to work full-time through over half of law school and maintain a 2/3 merit scholarship throughout, you'd better believe I never would have touched that debt-factory with a ten-foot pole. Absent steady income, a scholarship, or rich parents, law school is simply not an economically rational choice unless you're either A) smart and masochistic enough to be virtually certain to end up in the top 10% and amass other distinguishing resume-padding or B) already sure to be hooked up after graduating by blatant nepotism. Anybody that did not already realize this at the outset and is complaining to journalists about it afterward is too ****ing stupid to flip my burgers much less review my commercial real estate transaction. Sweet chocolate christ am I ever sick to death of hearing these entitled c***s spout this bull****.