It’s mid-September. I’m talking with a client , a 3L at a top-tier school.
“Here’s how it works,” she explains. “There’s the have’s and the have-nots. Either you have a job offer, or you don’t. If you don’t, it sucks. You feel like an illegal alien.”
Unfortunately, she’s a have-not. Yes, she’s working to correct that situation – trawling small firms in her hometown, attempting to milk connections. But “have-not” might as well be printed on her forehead. Around her peers, she says, it’s the body language that betrays have-not status. As a have-not, you don’t talk much, keep your eyes down, and behave generally like the undocumented guy lugging tubs of dirty dishes back to the kitchen. The aroma of failure – let’s say it, loser-hood – clings to the fabric of your clothes.
Some thoughtful charity – maybe it was Oxfam – threw a fund raiser dinner some years back, with the worthy goal of educating socialites about world hunger. The guests were divided the way the world is divided. Behind velvet-ropes, at a small central table, a handful of diners savored a gourmet meal. Across the ropes, a larger group picked at bowls of plain rice. Further out, beyond non-velvet barriers, a sizable fringe of outsiders observed the others and listened to their own empty stomachs rumble.
It was just like law school – at least at the good law schools. At the second and third tier joints, it seems like everyone’s a have-not. If the personal experience of poverty derives from comparing oneself to one’s peers, then maybe everyone feels less impoverished at the lower-tier schools, where no one gets a job, everyone’s in massive, crippling debt – and the whole class occupies the same boat.
From what I can gather, at some of the more prestigious schools the have/have-not ratio is about 50/50. Maybe at your school it’s 30/70. Whatever the precise figures, I’m guessing there are a few empty stomachs rumbling out beyond the non-velvet barrier. As Heidi Klum puts it with characteristic pith: You’re either in, or you’re out.
My have-not client wound up in law for an odd reason. She stumbled on a bizarre aptitude for the LSAT. It was her friend who was studying for the test, but she took a sample one for the heck of it and scored 178. By some stroke of fate, that unlucky fluke resulted in her current educational and financial incarceration.
Now she could kill that guy. He crashed and burned on the LSAT and – as a result – is debt-free, working for a company developing green energy alternatives.
Naturally, having a weird aptitude for an aptitude test didn’t translate into possessing actual aptitude. She got B’s on her first year exams. By the time the cavalry arrived with her second year A’s, it was too late – she was already a have-not. Firms can pick anyone they want – and they want perfection.
Feeling a little…imperfect? Welcome to Have-not-ville.
As I talked to Ms. Have-not, I remembered another client, who’s starting his 3L year as a “have.” From the moment this guy got his offer, everything changed. He positively glowed, and strutted around like a self-satisfied bantam.
I offered congratulations, but couldn’t quite adjust to the new mindset. In my day, everyone got jobs – that’s why you went to law school. If you were any good, the firms took you out to lunch and laid it on. I remember a partner from Shearman & Sterling pitching me over the phone to come back after the summer program. I humored him, then impudently hustled off to Sullivan & Cromwell.
In those days, the law school have/have-not divide was limited in scope. For about two weeks, my best friend, a Latvian, hated my guts because I had an offer and he didn’t. But that was it – two weeks. He ended up with exactly what he wanted – an offer from a maritime law boutique, and eventually returned to Riga.
That was then. This is now.
My client, Mr. Have, was in full-on gloat mode. It got a little creepy. That gleam in his eye announced the arrival of compassion fatigue:
I’m in. Those other bastards aren’t my problem any more than kids in Gambia with intestinal parasites are my problem. Times are tough. I got mine. You’ll have to work something out on your own.
That’s my best attempt to recreate his internal monologue. In reality, Mr. Have jabbered on and on about stuff that, in my day, never would have crossed my mind. He announced he could date again – any girl would want to go out with someone with a big firm job. He could plan. He could live. He had a future. He wasn’t unemployed. He could look his parents in the eye. He could breathe easy.
No kidding. It sounded a little nuts.
I envisioned the reality of big firm life interacting with this guy’s future. He wasn’t in for a picnic – his trophy, his grand prize, was an offer from a faceless biglaw sweatshop. Working late nights and weekends, the usual abuse from partners – all that can be taken for granted. But it could play out different ways. He might get assigned to some hideous litigation that goes to trial and consumes his life. He might endure endless doc review. He might end up slumped at his desk surfing blogs until he gets laid off. That last scenario seems the most likely.
He doesn’t care. He only needs a job – a golden ticket out of the slums.
Another client tried to explain the logic of the situation, at least as she saw it. She was recently laid off as a 3d year, after two years at a biglaw hellhole.
“It seems fair,” she explained. “The firm somehow or other hired a bunch of 1st years and now they have to try to find them work. I got my two years of big-law salary, and funneled every cent into loans. Now I’m down to $80k. I’ll have that $80k for the next thirty years – but at least it’s only $80k. Those first-years should get the same chance.”
That’s the ultimate trophy, the grandest prize – two weird, unpleasant years to live like a pauper and pay obeisance to the equivalent of a mortgage until it resembles a car loan – a car loan on a Mercedes-Benz S-Class.
Under the circumstances…that’s nothing to sniff at. $80k beats $180k. Owing $80k, you can (maybe) escape law and get on with your life. You can’t do that owing $180k.
So, sure, in the back of my mind I wonder how my “have” client is going to like biglaw. But I can see why he doesn’t care. He won the lottery by getting in. Now he can pay down part of his loans. That’s a rare luxury.
My have-not client might not savor such luxuries. Even if she snags a small firm job in her hometown, she’ll be earning $60k, not $160k. That won’t make a dent in her loans – not for decades. They may congeal into perma-debt, and out-live her.
I imagined introducing Mr. Have to Ms. Have-not. Not a pretty thought. But that’s how things are right now at law schools: un-pretty. Each interaction with a peer affords an opportunity to stare into the face of a have – and remember your status as an Untouchable. You can listen in on so-and-so’s tales of “summering” at Yadda & Yadda – like it’s a beach resort, not an anonymous meat-grinder. Then cringe whilst two Have’s compare notes on Yadda & Yadda versus Malice, Evil & Rancor – like 1950’s coeds sparring over Vassar versus Wellesley.
You – the have-not – crouch beyond the fence – you don’t even get a bowl of rice. You watch. And listen to your stomach growl.
Gather round Have-nots, Dalit caste of the legal world. I do not shrink away from your smell of loser-hood. I cast no reproach upon your expressions of despair.
Look into my eyes. I’ll tell you what I told Ms. Have-not:
You are young, capable, motivated and unique. Your value is infinite. An offer from a law firm means exactly nothing to what you are worth as a human being.
Please – do not buy into this bullshit.
This entire process makes me sick, and it’s wrong. You’re going to get through it, and put it behind you. It’ll be a war story. Trust me, your life can still have a happy ending.
Do not let yourself be treated this way.
Do not forget who you are.
========
This piece is part of a series of columns presented by The People’s Therapist in cooperation with AboveTheLaw.com. My thanks to ATL for their help with the creation of this series.
If you enjoy these columns, please check out The People’s Therapist’s new book, Way Worse Than Being a Dentist: The Lawyer’s Quest for Meaning
I can also heartily recommend my first book, Life is a Brief Opportunity for Joy
(Both books are also available on bn.com and the Apple iBookstore.)
The People's Therapist 
Ooh this remind me of my experience looking for training contracts (aka TC the first two years in a law firm in the UK). Half of my school group had a secured training contract and the other one didn’t. The “Have” looked down at us as if we were pulling the level of the class down just by being there and most of the time refused to even associate with us “Have Not”. Interestingly, and it might have been just in our class, the “Have” were predominantly white middle class males from top 20 universities, when the “Have Not” were a mixed bunch of minorities, women, mature students… Go figure!
It was very stressful, I spent a ridiculous amount of time procrastinating by making calculations about the chances I would have of getting the TC (estimating how many people graduated from the Legal Practice Course – the equivalent of the Bar exam – per year against the number of training places actually available). It got to the point where I was talking to everyone about it in the hope that someone would know someone who could get me an interview (including taxi drivers and shop keepers, you never know…)
Eventually (after 107 applications, yup…) I did get a TC with a brilliant firm two years in advance (which means that I had to wait two years to start, yes, that’s how it works in the UK). What I felt then was just relief. It was actually so stressful overall that it took me a 7 months (and I am not exaggerating) to actually believe I had been hired and I kept having nightmares about the firm retracting their offer.
All of this was over 5 years ago, the market is a lot worse now and the likelihood of getting a job/ TC a lot slimmer. Even to this day I still look at the number of people graduating against the number of available jobs and I just think, it was hard in my time, it’s damn near impossible now…
That is, by far, the dumbest reason I’ve ever heard for going to law school.
That was one of my reasons.
I look at it as converting (high) IQ into cash.
Which is what I now do with mentally retarded people.
Low IQ = easy cash.
The lower the better.
I think part of this problem comes from not having enough social and emotional support through the law school experience and not having a good reason to be pursuing the practice of law.
“I got my two years of big-law salary, and funneled every cent into loans. Now I’m down to $80k.”
A lack of financial managment skills is the problem here, not crushing loan debt.
I made $80K starting out in 2000 and paid off $125K in four years (the salary was because of the location, which was dirt cheap).
Yes, it’s annoying to live like that, but you have to get rid of the debt and that gets rid of the debt.
No – the problem comes from the finances. First, 25 years ago you could manage the cost of school and the debt, even if you left law down the road or chose a non-big law career path. You will find many lawyers from that era who don’t complain or whine today, finishing up 20 year careers at the FTC, SEC, etc who have been very satisfied. Second, 25 years ago, hard as it is to believe, the short term pay gap between a big firm starting salary and other tracks was not a chasm, outside of NY and NY branch offices in other cities. The longer term gap existed – big firm partner versus GS-14 – but that was way down the road and only mattered to those whose focus was long term earning capacity. With the cost of education today, no one can ignore the cost differential of not having a big law career, and law school no longer makes economic sense for anyone who doesn’t want to – or can’t – have one.
She could have taken that 178 to any state school and gotten a full ride. Or to some TTT and gotten a full ride, all while living at home. Theoretically she would have been in the top 10 percent, or at least 20 percent of her class in either of those situations (which gives you a very good chance at post-grad employment, relatively). I feel no sorrow for her.
I know… The thought of a little Top Tier school student not having something handed to her on a silver platter for the first time in her life absolutely breaks my heart.
I love this “no sympathy” trope that keeps getting worked into the ground in these comments. It’s like listening to Republicans discussing the unemployed and competing to sound the most like Mr. Scrooge.
Hey – that “little” Top Tier school student is a person. She worked hard. She’s frustrated and disappointed. She might not be literally starving to death – but she has feelings, too. She hurts. Have you commenters no humanity? Disgusting! Out of touch with reality! You need to chill!
It’s not that people have no sympathy, but that they believe there needs to be accountability for decisions. I am reminded of a law-school professor who hammered home the point that “the law protects the weak, but not the stupid.”
That’s the kind of thinking that blamed people for getting AIDS from unprotected sex. I remember that kind of thinking from the 1980’s and 90’s as I buried friend after friend. I despise that kind of thinking.
Bernie Madoff’s victims should have known better, too. And yeah, those Jews should have recognized what Hitler represented and gotten the hell out of Germany while they could. If they ended up in an oven, it’s their own damn fault.
That’s cruel, stupid, self-righteous, inhumane thinking and we could all do without it. It’s blame the victim thinking.
Godwin’s law.
Guest123 says, in effect, “[If she wasn’t all that enthused about law school — which we can assume, because she only applied because of the aptitude test] then she should have gone somewhere cheaper so she wouldn’t be in debt”.
And you say, “That’s like blaming Jews for the Holocaust”?! This is why people have gripes with your advice. You got absurd lengths to stick to your (predetermined) conclusions that law firms and law schools are unmitigated evils and that everyone else is an innocent victim.
Of course she’s a human being, and she’s in a bad place, and I really do feel for her. I wish so many people wouldn’t go to “law school by default” or to “keep options open”, and I wish people wouldn’t go to law firms because it is (or at least was) the easy way out.
But when someone says, “Hey, she could have gone to law school basically for free” and you reply “That’s like Jews for the Holocaust”, you lose credibility.
Please don’t be naive. The top firms only hire from top schools. Ask a headhunter. You’re not supposed to say that, but if you want to shoot for the top, you need a top school. If you go to school for free, you don’t get the top school, and you hit a glass ceiling. That’s why she chose to pay.
Go ahead, take that scholarship to the second-tier place, and get stuck. Then you’ll only have yourself to blame and we can all point and laugh. The misfortune of another! Ha-ha!
(serious response this time) This is actually one of the hard things for an outsider to figure out.. how much do these law students know in advance? I wonder if many of them knew the odds and thought they would be better than the pack and succeed, and then when they don’t, they claim they had no idea what they were getting into. Also once they are at law school, wouldn’t they quickly realize the situation? If they still proceed with law school, and they end out in debt and miserable, surely they aren’t 100 percent the victim here.
I think though that it’s human nature to think you’ll do better than you will, especially if you’re used to succeeding. They once did a poll of MIT freshmen and something like 98% of them felt they would graduate in the top half of their class. This is why I don’t think it’s fair to portray law students as victims of a scam… the current situation in the legal job market wasn’t planned out; tuitions skyrocketed while the job market became much more difficult, then law schools scrambled to cover themselves. Also, I do wonder as I said above if unsuccessful law grads (subconsciously perhaps) portray themselves as caught unaware more than they are.
Still obviously the model should change; regardless of who is responsible surely a situation where you have thousands of law graduates with huge debts and undesirable career options is something that should be changed.
A good con always relies on the greed – and egotism – of the mark for the scam to succeed.
If you go to Vegas knowing the odds but thinking you have a system to win, you aren’t being conned. If people all around you are talking about the scam, and you still participate, you’re not being scammed. I just don’t know what the full story is.
Re: A good con…
Yes, and the con is still illegal.
I think you ought to get out of the law therapy business. For someone who so obviously hated every day as a lawyer, it’s clear you can’t let that go in your new career. These are no longer informative posts, they’re screeds against everyone associated with law firms. Theoretically, I am your target audience, but this will be the last post of yours I read…
The problem is that Will’s view of biglaw as horrific-beyond-belief is validated and “proved” every day by his self-selected clients. His clients are those who NEED to discuss their problems with, or in, the legal industry. By definition they HAVE problems to discuss.
I love my job in biglaw, so I’d never see a therapist to discuss it. He’ll never see this point of view sitting in front of him in his office.
Amen amen amen amen. So happy to see these comments! I feel validated as a human being who happens to love my biglaw job!
Please keep in mind, as you stop reading me, that I’m not making this shit up. Not any of it. This is the reality of law, right now, for a lot of people.
But it’s not for everyone. Your posts have the tenor of “All [private sector] law sucks for everyone all the time”. But it doesn’t, and it certainly doesn’t HAVE to. I work at a “faceless biglaw sweatshop”, and I make my personal life a priority. I do sketch comedy and run a food blog, and I am in a band. I like what I do, and I have hobbies outside of work. I’ve had to work literally around the clock at times, and cancel travel plans at times, but when those times pass, I make sure that I make time for MY priorities. And guess what? It can be done. And I’m just a few years out of law school.
The earlier poster had it right– you clearly hated S&C, maybe with good reason, and you’re taking that anger out on all lawyers everywhere.
A lot of people going into law had issues before they entered the legal profession.
If they can’t deal well with intense stress and/or have limited resiliency, then the (chronic) stressful atmosphere of Law school / BigLaw will trash them, causing them to at least partially decompensate at some point, leading them to your doorstep in extreme misery.
If, however, on the other hand, they are like “Cmon Now” or “Zad”, and presumably are good at handling chronic stress and prioritizing their life, then you have positive outcomes in BigLaw.
In many cases, it may be a life skills / coping mechanism issue.
Yes, her current situation is kind of depressing, but, in retrospect (assuming she doesn’t eventually get a BigLaw offer and get sucked into that maelstrom) it’s probably going to open all kinds of other, better doors.
I’ve talked to a lot of female lawyers lately, and most of them are actually relatively happy. Shocking, I know. But none of them are in BigLaw any more!
Here are several interviews she might want to take a look at: http://thegirlsguidetolawschool.com/interviews-with-helpful-people/.
Stay tuned for others, as people have time to answer the questions I’ve asked. It’s an interesting mix of perspectives, and somewhat reassuring, I think.
The picture of the starving child is incredibly insensitive. I am a 3L and am a “have not,” but I would never equate that to the dire situation portrayed above. I made a poor financial decision; I’m going to graduate with a lot of debt and a 60k salary if I’m lucky. That wasn’t my plan and it stinks. I won’t be able to take fancy vacations, I will probably never own a big house or drive a brag-worthy car. But, let’s be clear, that is in no way the same as literally starving to death. Let’s have a little perspective.
The image was not meant literally. If you read the piece, it’s clear I’m employing a metaphor. In fact, the hyperbole of the metaphor itself – and the image – is meant to heighten the implicit humor of the situation – of the inherent absurdity of drawing a comparison between a rich, complacent American confronted with a starving child in Africa and a boastful, manic law student with a job offer confronted with a panicked, humiliated, helpless law student without a job offer. Whatever…never try to explain a joke.
Oh come on, grow up! What are you in an episode of “Legally Blonde”? Clearly this comparison was a joke and a literary device.
You’re mentioning you’ll “do” with a $60K a year job? You “will not be able to take fancy vacations”?! Heck, I was a lawyer for over 4 years I never, ever made that kind of money. Do you realise how many people will actually not find a job at all? I seem to remember that the US unemployment level is about 9-ish%. I tell you what, if I was over $150K + in debts and I couldn’t find a job, or could only find work at a drive through, I wouldn’t care about the people in the third world because what I would care about is how my family and myself would survive.
Not everyone at law schools comes from middle class white families, the ones who do tend to be the ones who have the jobs. Stop taking the politically correct to an extreme level and say “oh you can’t say things like that” in a self-righteous voice. Look around you at the people who, in this market, are trying to avoid bankruptcy and just losing everything.
This post was to the point because it highlighted the difficulty of getting a job anywhere at the moment. Law schools are churning a huge amount of indebted graduates who will not find a job, and when it’s you and you can’t go back to live and mom and dad, it’s a nightmare.
Anyway. Sorry to interrupt. You may return to your self-righteous moral indignation.
This post is disgusting, for so many reasons. First of all, to compare law students, who have been privileged their entire lives, and would never have been in the position to go to law school, to hungry kids in third-world countries, is disgusting. Second of all, just because you don’t have ab offer at a top-tier law firm, hardly means you’re a “have-not.” It means only, in most cases, that everything that you have ever had in life has been handed to you, and at last, you don’t have an easy route, you have to work for it. To compare kids in law school without offers at top-tier firms to kids in India, who are starving, is disgusting, and shows how out of touch this guy is with reality…perhaps by virtue of his clients?
Hi there! I’m “this guy” – you know, the one who’s “out of touch with reality.” Guess what? I was kidding. No – I’m not seriously comparing starving kids in India with out of work law students. Imagine that. I’m jokingly employing hyperbole to draw a parallel between the two in order to draw out a humorous point and utilize IRONY. Yes – look it up. IRONY. It’s related to a SENSE OF HUMOR. Exceedingly rare in legal circles.
You’re falling into the CLICHE of “blaming the victim.” It’s a pretty standard, rather boring feature of many of the comments I receive from the approximately 10,000 people who view my column each week. The idea is that if you don’t like it – “it” being the incredible suckiness of law – then you should “man up” or “suck it up” or whatever – so long as you blame yourself, instead of addressing the problem, so long as it is your fault, and you’re a whiner and it’s all about you complaining because it couldn’t possibly just be that biglaw sucks – although, of course, we all know it does.
Okay – you may return to your self-righteous moral indignation. And your disgust. I know you love the disgust. That’s the part that gets you the hottest. It kinda turns me on, too. Ooooooo…disgust. That’s good. For so many reasons.
Hey, don’t sweat it. If I were stuck in a miserable law job like you, I’d probably need to vent, too. And I wouldn’t be worrying too much where I directed my anger – I’d spit bile wherever it landed, because it sucks that much, and doing something that sucky for so many hours in a day can subtly alter a person, and leave you pretty darn bitter.
Perhaps by virtue of the suckiness?
To be fair, you are engaging in at least as much self-righteousness as others. To suggest that someone like the woman you describe is a “victim,” rather than simply a person who made a poor decision and who needs to figure out how to deal with the consequences, feeds into a destructive victim mentality.
There are real victims in life. She isn’t one. While I agree that her position is difficult and that there is value in conveying her story as a cautionary tale, your hyperbole does everyone a disservice – it is implicitly and unfairly dismissive of those who succeeded under similar circumstances. Many comments that you perceive as self-righteous may actually be more defensive than anything, along the lines of “I worked hard and made sacrifices others weren’t willing to make, and I deserve some credit for that.”
The picture you paint is one in which those who succeed in what is undeniably a difficult profession deserve no recognition for that because they did nothing more than have the luck not to be a “victim.” That really isn’t a fair portrayal.
Why do I feel like I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole… I’m not even sure where to begin with that last comment. Somehow, if I take law schools and biglaw to task for their treatment of young lawyers, I’m victimizing the lawyers who somehow manage to “succeed” – whatever that means – whatever any of it means. So…white people are being victimized by blacks…and law schools and biglaw are being victimized by young lawyers’ complaints? Or victimized by me? Poor law schools. Poor biglaw. That bad ol’ People’s Therapist is gonna get ’em.
I had the managing partner of a huge NYC law firm in here last night and he was cracking up at some of these comments. “Please, Will – leave biglaw alone!” he cried, in terror. We both shared a laugh. I mean…c’mon guys. Let’s get real. I know it feels good to blame yourselves and each other for everything – that’s how lawyers roll – but maybe it isn’t all your fault? Maybe there’s an industry making billions off your pain – and naivite…and masochism?
What are you talking about? I was criticizing your portrayal of a law student who has difficulty finding a job as a “victim,” and now you’ve got victims all over the place.
Please say hello to Alice if you see her.
If I’m unable to find a job due to a recession, can I legitimately deem myself a “victim” of that recession? Maybe it would be more politically correct to employ a moniker like “recession survivor”? Of course, if I’m a lawyer, it seems I’m entitled to no sympathy because everything must be my own damn fault and I’m a whiner. Why can’t someone simply fall victim to a cruel, money-hungry system that’s…ummm…for want of a better word…victimizing people?
Will, you need to chill man. I read your posts with some regularity, and I think you give voice to some very real, very legitimate frustration. But I’m not with you on this one. It’s not about moral indignation. It’s about taste. Call it a joke. Call it a metaphor. Call it a dazzling display of literary devicery. Call it what you want. But comparing newly minted JDs who might have to contemplate work outside of “BigLaw” to children who are dying of hunger in the third world just kinda fails. Cut the other dude some slack. He is only pointing out the obvious: this particular joke you make is in bad taste.
I suppose you were “sickened” and “disgusted” by Jonathan Swift’s Modest Proposal, too. Cooking and eating children – disgusting! Harrumph!
Good article and comments Will. But if you think any of these posters actually understand your Irish baby eating comparison to your own article you don’t understand how lacking they are in a knowledge of history and the classics. Most of them will just continue to lash out at the privileged rich or the lazy poor or yell at you for being a monster for comparing law students to the poor. And I can hear the two with at least some ability for independent thought and intellectual curiousity googling Swift “Modest Proposal” right now.
Also-for people who are genuinely dissatisfied with the practice of BigLaw–why not try something radically different? I mean, you could actually go do some good for the Dalits out in rural India just by organizing a microloan project to fund kids’ education. I used to make fun of people who moved out to random parts of the world with vague missions to “do good”–and I still do. But I really do think that it is possible to make meaningful change in the lives of others–either in India or in New Orleans, or Detroit, etc. Open a damn restaurant! Become a machinist! Whatever. Isn’t it better to be alive than dead?
Actually, I read your column quite often. I have a good sense of humour, but using that picture was a jerk move. Go ahead and make the analogy, but it really doesn’t require the visual. And you could have used a better analogy anyway.
Um….Ami. If you think the problem is the picture and the analogy is not a good one then you are not as smart as you think you are. And it’s not supposed to be funny, so your lack of a sense of humor should not be an issue here.
With all due respect – the analogy – to the poor being locked out and gazing on helplessly while others feast – is a good one. The photo – yep – also appropriate given the metaphor. Sorry. I’m right. You’re wrong, mon vieux.
Will, it’s been over a decade since you left the law… why are you still so utterly obsessed with it? I mean, get over it dude. Yes we know, working for biglaw sucks. But seriously does your life have to revolve around it?
Dude! It’s because I work with about 50 miserable lawyers every single week whose emotional lives are profoundly and adversely affected by biglaw. And because I just published a hot-selling new book on the topic and I’m in the middle of providing publicity for that book, doing radio interviews, speaking on panels and generally being the go-to person on the topic, which is evidently of interest to others besides myself, to judge by the 1,000’s of books I’m selling and the more than 10,000 people who read my blog every week. Is that cool with you? Don’t mean to harsh your buzz.
Please, I invite you to sit in my office with a 25 year old with $240k in loans and no job, who is crying his eyes out and talking about giving up and asking me how he could have done everything, worked his hardest to please everyone in his life – and now he just wants to crawl off and die or take some pill that will make the pain go away. Then, please – I invite you – “get over it” and stop caring.
It’s not that I harbor some irrational obsession with “hating” biglaw. It’s that I harbor an irrational obsession with caring about young people and their lives. Get it?
The point is, you chose to make your life revolve around this issue, by becoming a therapist and writer specializing in miserable lawyers and law students. For example you decided, ok rather than spending this summer doing something new and fun, I’ll write an entire book about miserable lawyers. This isn’t part of your job. Your clients don’t demand that you become an author. Face it, you’re obsessed. Real question: do you have more of a life now than the people in biglaw who haven’t left your mind since at least 1998?
I left MSW school and immediately took a job at St. Vincent’s hospital, working with gay men in a program designed to address risky sexual practices. My clientele for years was largely gay, HIV+ men and their friends – dancers, artists and a diverse population from all walks of life. I wrote a book – “Life is a Brief Opportunity for Joy” – a guide to psychotherapy and more conscious living that has nothing whatsoever to do with law or lawyers. I published it. It was during the publicity for that book that AboveTheLaw contacted me – I didn’t know who they were – and asked for an interview. That led to a column, which led to a veritable flood of lawyers coming into my practice, desperate to see someone – amazingly, a therapist! – who actually knew what he was talking about with regard to biglaw. The new book came out of those columns. My interest isn’t law – I haven’t practiced in years and hated it when I did. My interest is in people – and there’s a population out that that’s been reaching out to me in droves. I’m doing my best to put their truth into words and share it. The response has been overwhelming – and overwhelmingly positive.
I bet you still thought about BigLaw all the time when you were working at St. Vincent’s 😉
Honey, before MSW school I spent a few years as a direct marketing exec at an online bookseller. Law was wayyyy before all that. I forgot all about law by the time I got to St. V’s. It amazes me I can still remember my two years as a kid slaving away in the dungeons of Sullivan & Cromwell.
okok… I’m just teasing you (as you probably have figured out). I’m not actually even in law right now. I’m just some guy in his 30’s who’s bored at work and considering a career change. And I have to say, you and the other bloggers are pretty good at making law seem really horrendous. If I did go this route though, I’d never go near biglaw (I don’t know if they’d even take someone like me) nor would I ever go into the kind of debt that you see nowadays.
Ha! I knew you were actually a nice guy. A lot of lawyers are, too, once you scrape through the varnish of cynicism. The problem with not going into debt is…how else can you pay those outrageous law school tuitions? And if you do borrow the money…then you need the biglaw salary to pay the loans. That’s the trap. I fell for it just like everyone else. Now I’m like Cassandra, shouting my warnings into the wind.
So why don’t you start a movement against the Education Complex? The same way there is a Military-Industrial Complex, there is now an Education Complex. There are a lot of people making >>$100k (especially when you factor in benefits!) in safe & secure jobs giving worthless degrees that don’t lead to jobs.
The reason it exists is because the government is ultimately behind the loans — just like the mortgage crisis. If there were private investors buying the loans, they might say, “how exactly are you going to pay that back . . .??”
I’ve though about blogging about this one. I think the financial instruments in which these things are packaged are called “SLABS”.
Given my love of watching Italian debt yields spike, I figure it’s only a hop, skip, and a jump to student loan debt.
Although the Student Loan Debt System is one of the few massive credit origination systems left in the U.S. that’s keeping the GDP rising. 🙂
I wonder how your clients would feel if they read the detals of their private “confidential” therapy sessions here. I think this is somewhat inappropriate of you. Even though you have not actually violated HIPPA, your clients might wel feel that they have been “used” by you for your personal ends. I am also a lawyer who is not a social worker and therapist, and feel your tactics are somewhat unethical. Care to respond?
I want to know how you get information out without some disclosure.
This is one of the things that annoys me about law in general.
How can we achieve total transparency in life (meaning all information if always available to everyone) while keeping secrets?
It’s tough. I start my pieces with an idea – a theme – and then I pull together the various stories I’ve heard over the years – and my own experiences – and create a “composite” character – or a few of them – to illustrate it. If I do my job right, they seem like real people…and I get nasty comments about how I’m not respecting my clients’ confidentiality. That’s the irony – the better the column, the more “real” it seems – and the more flack I receive for it.
Yeah, I care to say go f-ck yourself. I’m insulted at your suggestion that I would violate HIPPA or somehow don’t know how it works. I’ve been a therapist for a long time and I’m not “using” anyone. My columns aren’t based on any single client – they’re fictional composites based on dozens of stories I hear over months and years of working with lawyers. I’m extremely careful to preserve confidentiality in all instances.
F-ck you and the horse you rode in on. I owe no apologies for my work or my writing and I resent your insinuations about my ethics as a therapist.
Wow, that’s a pretty aggressive response to a legitimate question. I can see why S & C hired you. Why not just say up front, at the beginning of your blog post, that you are talking about a composite “client” instead of two diametrically opposite actual people as you make it seem? It’s a proven rhetorical device, but again, somewhat misleading when you are purporting to discuss actual people’s situations. The comments here suggest that the reality of lawyers’ lives in Biglaw don’t fall so neatly into “have” and “have not” categories, so why use a rhetorical device to argue the opposite? It makes good and controversial copy, and encourages argument, but as far as honestly representing reality…….
I’m not a lawyer, so I don’t have to publish a disclaimer regarding the patently obvious. If I were writing about real people, I’d be violating confidentiality, wouldn’t I? And I’m a therapist, so I can’t do that, can I? C’mon guys, keep up.
You reacted so defensively that you really did not hear my actual question. I did not suggest that you had violated HIPPA or did not know how it works. I merely suggested that, if you were talking about actual individual clients, there might be some boundary problems there. Since you now admit you are talking about fictional “composite” clients, the question is moot. But really, did it require the testosterone cascade that ensued?
Yes. Yes, I believe it did. I “cared to respond” and that response required the testosterone cascade. Which would explain why it ensued.
Breathe, buddy. Breathe. LOL!
There isn’t that much I take with utter seriousness, but the matter of my commitment to my clients – my ethical duty to my profession – this is the one place where I lose my sense of humor. Psychotherapy is a unique relationship, based on trust. I do everything in my power to honor the trust my clients place in me. It is a privilege to share their thoughts and feelings – one I would never violate. People share secrets – and tears – in my office. I can’t make a joke out of that, or take it lightly, or let it be implied that I would ever behave unethically with regard to my duties.
Pre-crash, in 2006….places like Cadwalader in NYC were dishing out pussy passes to hot female associates who graduated from TTT law schools. Literally anyone with a pulse and a hot body. Traditional Biglaw credentials did not apply – yep, life is not fair.
Wispa, do you look like an orc from lord-of-the-rings? Are you a leper? Go look in the mirror. Life is fair. If you are a hot woman you deserve a good law job as opposed to some dog who went to a first-rate law school becuase she realized she was too ugly to get married and fart on a man. Women who are attractive and are lawyers SHOULD be hired over uglies becuase they are genetically superior-that is borne out from thier faces. A lawyer is a social parasite who belongs in a concentration camp because they do nothing for society and are almost always physically ugly. It is a genetic fact that if you eliminate ugly people the population improves.
Burn all ugly lawyers! Burn all ugly lawyers! IF you are an ugly lawyer I know where you can get a handgun without a 5 day waiting period and make the world a prettier place
Mate, you should think of asking your doc to up your medication because clearly it’s not yet working for you.
I think this is performance art rather than a cry for a massive dose of Seroquel.
I would totally quit my law job if it meant that I had to subsist on nothing more than Irish babies . . . but I can’t even afford them what with the loan payments.
Getting into Biglaw is paramount to pay off your loans. I don’t care how bad it is – and I take Will’s testimony that it sucks as gospel.
What is worse? Sucking it up and having no life for 3 years and paying off your loans or being financially crippled for the next 30 years by loan payments?
The bottom line is this: it sucks alot more to be buried in 30 years of student loan payments that seriously curtail crucial parts of your life: dating, marriage, travel, buying a house, having kids….all of these are crucial to “happiness” and are negatively affected by student loan debt…especially if you have paid sticker and have more than $100,000 in debt.
Will went to Sullivan and Cromwell- he did not go to Legal Aid! Good for him – he was smart enough and took the money. I would have done the same in his position.
Also remember the exit options after Biglaw are awesome. Of friends from law school (2006 grads) who got Biglaw, most of them have left Biglaw and simply used it to pay off their debt. They are now working at the Dept of Justice, SEC, In House at GE, In House at Hedge Fund, In House at Toyota. They got the Biglaw stamp of approval and prestige. All of them now make more than $100k a year (apart from dept of Justice) and have a life. All of them are happy as clams.
The rest of us are totiling away in crappy jobs – for 40/50/60k with crappy benefits and little vacation and hours and stress that almost match Biglaw.
And you wonder why I am unhappy.
Sincerley,
Suicidial 2006 law Grad making $67k with $102,000 in debt who does not qualify for IBR.
You can knock off that $102,000 debt on a $67K salary in several years. It will hurt, but the alternative is worse.
I have all the life I want and no debt. Plenty of savings. No mortgage.
I’m just not that interested in life, so that makes me different than most of the complainers here.
JP – consider this. When I graduated in 2006 I had $155,000 in debt.
In 5 years I have paid off more than $50,000 in principal…so I have been very frugal and have paid down alot. I have no credit card debt. I have no car. I really watch my money. Still I have no prospect of buying a house or getting married and having kids. Even dating – I just cannot afford it. I am very strict with my money.
(I hate to think how much interest I paid ontop of that – pre-crash the interest rates on the private portions , about 2/3 of my loan balance were around 10%!)
@WIspa
I spend about $26K a year to support a family of four. Granted I have no mortgage and no car debt, although the cars are 10 years old. I assume at some point that my wife will get a job if I want to send my kids to private school, but at this point it’s certainly not necessary.
Are you in a major metro area or something where it costs money to live? This is the most expensive place I’ve ever lived in my life and it’s a small metro area. I had to downsize to a ranch house when I moved here.
I find it interesting tha the articles that are written telling us how Biglaw sucks and how we dodged a bullet by not getting in are always people who worked in Biglaw and enjoyed the money! Sure, now they parachuted out with a nice deposit for a house, or money to start a business, no loans and a S&C or DLA Piper stamp on their resume and are a Prof at Harvard etc.
Will, I give you credit for making a balsy move. On the other hand if you offered me $200k a Biglaw lateral job now I would bite your arm off! Sure, money doesn’t make you happy….but it might stop me from being unhapp! LOL
I would just like to add that psychotherapy notes really aren’t that much fun to read.
Blah, childhood abuse, blah, blah, suicide attempt with pills, blah, blah blah, GAF 25 on admission, 60 on release, blah, blah, blah.
In my experience, the Have vs. Have Not mentality kicked in as soon as first-semester grades were released.
Keep fighting the good fight, sir.
The last words of your post reminded me of something a mentor (a lawyer in government) said to me before I entered Biglaw: “Don’t let them tell you who you are.” I smiled and said something like, “yeah, sure, of course.” I didn’t get it. How could they tell me who I was? But they do. It’s insidious. You are a one or a zero, a piece of data that drives up PPP or doesn’t, meaning you as a person have value if you make money for the firm, and don’t if you don’t. I don’t begrudge the firm it’s right to make money — it’s America — but I am outta here as soon as it’s realistically possible. Thank you for giving your client such good, healthy advice, and for sharing it with us.
Thank you so much for this article…it made me feel a lot better. Someone understands the misery I’m in!
Spot on. It’s a bloodbath out there.
The problem is, more so with the newer generations than my own, that the debt burden shouldered by these once proud, never had a real job kids is that their rejection in the legal world and inescable debt peonage stunts them.
Their pride, the systemic fraud (capitalis parading as academicians), and the ignorance of the society as a whole guilts them into not away from a stacked deck. So congratulations, the failures are just going to double down.
My recommendations? Don’t pay the loans, and start a cash only business. Sure you
wont have any prestige, but you don’t have that now, nor will you, ever. So get over your issues and start living for fun instead of living as wannabe law firm fodder.