Someone posted the following astonishing comment in response to one of my columns a few months back:
“I’ve never worked in a biglaw firm, but what happens if an associate just says no, I am busy this weekend, or no, I am on vacation that week, so I won’t be able to do that project. Do you immediately get fired? If that’s true, then you must not really have much to offer to the firm in the first place. In a situation where the associate had some real value to offer to the firm, I do not see why the firm would fire someone for that. Am I hopelessly naive?”
Go ahead – laugh. Get it out of your system. You know perfectly well your guffaws wear thin, right about when that twinge of poignancy creeps in. You, too, once mulled the notion of rising above the fray – going all Bartleby the Scrivener and muttering “I’d prefer not to” when asked – oops, I mean told – to work and work and work and work and work.
This “pure fool” of a comment-writer has raised a troubling issue (and that, by the way, was a combined Parsifal and Magic Mountain reference…this will be one of those classy columns larded with literary allusions.) Cower behind your carapace of cynicism, but sooner or later you’ll admit you weren’t always like this. You weren’t always a broken, cynical wreck who jumps at the slightest command. You used to be Bartleby The Scrivener, too. You imagined you were valued as a unique, complex individual. You imagined you held some sway over your own existence – some “preferences.”
I know it’s no fun trying to remember the stuff you read in college, but please attempt to keep up. Even if you weren’t an undergraduate English major, you might recall that the narrator of “Bartleby the Scrivener” was called “The Lawyer.” That’s right: “The Lawyer.” The whole thing takes place in a law firm! And remember what a scrivener did? It was the worst job in the firm – probably one of the worst jobs of all time. You sat at a desk copying legal documents – handwriting them – for hours. Reminiscent of doc review, or due diligence, or “running changes” – scrivening was mindless and, if you kept at it for too long, guaranteed to drive you bat-shit. You – and everyone else – would obviously “prefer not to.”
And yet, somehow or other, our narrator – “The Lawyer” (i.e., a partner at the firm) – is astonished when Bartleby, after being asked politely to scriven something, even more politely states in return: “I’d prefer not to.” The Lawyer explains his astonishment at Bartleby’s resistance by pointing out how he, as a partner – even in 1853! – possesses a “natural expectancy of instant compliance.”
You know all about that, right? The “natural expectancy of instant compliance”? Sure you do.
The “natural expectancy of instant compliance” is why you don’t say “I’d prefer not to” in biglaw. It’s why you instead “shut the fuck up.” The “natural expectancy of instant compliance” flows in the veins and arteries of biglaw partners. It fills those hollows where blood would otherwise go.
If you stop and unpack Bartleby’s mantra – and examine what it really means to say “I’d prefer not to” – you might not last long in this racket.
For starters, stating “I’d prefer not to” means telling the truth about your job. Of course you’d prefer not to – we’d all prefer not to work in biglaw. But saying “I’d prefer not to” also means perpetuating a lie – because you know perfectly well you have no choice whether to work or not. Pretending you have a choice is playing along with the official fiction that “an associate has real value to offer the firm.” The truth, which no one – least of all, you – wants to admit, is that the only value an associate has is as a slave. You are owned – your ass is bought and paid for – and because you are owned, you no longer have any choice in the matter of offering or not offering – or preferring or not preferring – or doing or not doing. You simply do what they tell you. Because they own you.
Behold the awesome power of $240k in school loans – coupled with a moribund job market.
Everyone knows what happens if you announce you’d “prefer not to” at a law firm: You get fired. The deed may occur in myriad ways, depending on how swiftly the holders of power opt to peel away the veil of self-deception surrounding biglaw employment.
Permit me to aid in the peeling process. Standing up to a partner at a law firm and going all Bartleby on him is akin to standing up to Simon Legree (literary allusion alert!) and averring the following:
“I am an African man, stolen from my family, dragged on-board a slave ship in chains, sold at auction to the highest bidder and forced to labor in these fields. Thank goodness I’ve encountered you, Sir. You look like a decent sort of person, and I know you cannot wish me ill, since I have done you none myself. Therefore, I humbly implore you release me at once and aid me in my return to my homeland!”
You might also try asking Mitt Romney for your job back. Not going to happen.
If I know Legree like I think I know Legree, he will snarl, crack his whip and shout some rather shocking, politically incorrect epithets – which will be your cue to return to picking cotton.
Why? Because, when push comes to shove, a slave – to Simon Legree – is nothing more than a way to make money – just like a worker is nothing more than a way to make money to Mitt Romney, and an associate is nothing more than a way to make money to a biglaw partner. As long as you labor, they earn (many, many, many times what you do.) That’s why they (barely) tolerate your nauseous presence in their lives.
Money is the only thing that matters to them.
Melville’s story takes place not only at a law firm, but at a Wall Street law firm (remember the subtitle – “A Story of Wall Street”?) Yes – it’s about biglaw. And biglaw is a storied world of monied elites: patrician, white-shoe, WASP-y and privileged.
Surely these are not the sort of people who crack whips and imprison human slaves?
Of course they are. Don’t fall for the powdered wigs and French manners. Who do you think owned the slaves – and profited from their trade? Our “founding fathers” were up to their ears in human trafficking, including those patrician, upper-crust, white-shoe New England types, who financed the voyages of the slave ships. Fancy people with lots of money – who wish to earn even more – can do terrible things. They simply do their best to avoid being present when the visuals take a turn for the indecorous.
Back to my comment writer – and his question: What’s it look like when the gloves come off in biglaw – when you attempt to relate as equals, or even near-equals, and the Bartleby hits the fan?
I got my first taste of the answer one dismal night in a Sullivan & Cromwell conference room.
My second or third assignment at S&C had me reporting to a senior associate in the real estate group. I’ll never forget this guy (he haunts my dreams, and appears in several of these columns) – an obese, greasy-haired ogre with yellowed fingernails perpetually clutching a smoldering Marlboro.
On our first evening together, it became apparent we were the only attorneys assigned to this deal… and we were in for a late night. We ordered food – I remember an aluminum foil take-out container of eggplant parmesan – and were sitting in a conference room together, with said victuals, at around ten p.m. At which juncture I chose to deliver the following oration:
“It looks like we’ll be spending a lot of time together on this deal – so we might as well get to know one another. I never thought I’d end up on a real estate deal, but I guess why not? Anyway, I’m originally from New Jersey, grew up in the suburbs. You might hear a lot of jazz and classical music coming out of my office – those are my big passions. What are your hobbies in the outside world?”
The real estate ogre cut me off with a riposte as ingenious in its precision as it was elegant in its profanity.
“Do you think I give a fucking shit who you are or any of your bullcrap? Shut the fuck up.”
And so I did. I shut the fuck up.
Voila! We understood one another – and I assimilated an essential lesson of biglaw, with especial regard to my place within it. As we fed in silence, cherished notions of “collegiality,”“white shoe tradition,” “patrician institutions,” “practicing law,” “the profession of law,” “the Sullivan & Cromwell way” – and other such bullcrap and associated bullcrap of a similar nature miraculously fell by the wayside. I became, as they say in Scientology, “clear.”
I was a slave. I was owned. I did what he told me to do. I didn’t pretend he was my friend, or even a close acquaintance, or that he “gave a fucking shit about me or any of my bullcrap.” No one there did. That isn’t how S&C works.
I now address myself directly to the comment writer: Permit me to assure you, Dear Sir, without hesitation, that should you “just say no” to all-nighters and weekends – or suggest in the mildest way that you “would prefer not to,” they – the powers that be – will indeed fire your ass. Your “value to the firm” is your working hours – for which they bill many, many, many times what they pay you. If you are not working, they will fire you. If you refuse to work – or state your preference not to work – they will also fire you. If you attempt to make conversation over dinner, they may well fire you, too.
They might wait a bit, and first arrange for you to receive a bad review. They might give you three months severance (a quaint, dying tradition.) They might tell you to go fuck yourself. But your ass will be fired as surely as each morning the sun’s bright chariot scales the arc of the heavens only to descend once again each night.
Pardon me as I adopt the standard, accepted biglaw vernacular:
Get this through your head, Fucktard – the patrician graybeards who own your ass when you work at a big law firm are not, for the most part, nice people. It is not, for the most part, a nice place. They work for corporate America and the billionaires who own it – the Mitt Romneys of the world – who are, once again, for the most part, not nice people. They don’t get rich worrying about whether the common man has decent healthcare. Their attitude is simple – they love money, they don’t want to pay taxes, and you can go fuck yourself.
One of my clients reminded me recently of this state of affairs. She was interviewed by a major newspaper regarding the topic of a journal article she wrote in law school. She vetted everything by her firm’s PR department, so it was entirely kosher. And it was impressive – a feather in her cap.
Not one person at the firm congratulated her. Not one. It was as though it never happened.
Did she really think they gave a fucking shit about her or any of her bullcrap?
No. And that’s because they don’t. She’s looking for a job at another firm right now – any other firm – in the vague hope it might be different there. She knows better, but hope springs eternal.
Once again, for emphasis: They own you – and for whatever reason, owning you doesn’t inspire them to a concern for your welfare.
With regard to how it is you came to be owned – another client had a revelation this week after being accosted by a homeless guy for money. He gave the homeless guy a dollar, which apparently wasn’t sufficient, because the homeless guy screamed: “Fuck you, one-percenter dirtbag!”
In reality, my client explained to me, in strictly economic terms that homeless guy was the wealthier of the two of them. That’s because the homeless guy didn’t choose to go to law school, so he doesn’t owe a bank two hundred and forty grand. In fact, my client’s out-of-work, alcoholic brother-in-law who smokes Indo and slams forties all day is also wealthier than my client. Most people are wealthier than my client. It isn’t a difficult status to achieve.
Perhaps, my client mused, he should be the one running after the homeless guy and yelling at him on the sidewalk. But, of course, my client can’t afford to run, yelling, after anyone on the sidewalk – he can’t afford to lose his job. He is forced to behave himself, because he is a slave.
You are too, Mr. Naïve Lawyer. You are owned. They own you. So you have to behave, too.
There’s a point where even Simon Legree grows impatient and blurts it out:
“Don’t you get it, fuckhead? You’re a human slave. I exploit your labor for money. Your health or welfare don’t matter to me.”
Mitt Romney himself, at some juncture, could lose it and spit out the truth: “I leveraged your company with massive debt so I could grab a pile of cash. I’m not your daddy. I don’t give a shit if you lose your job and get sick and need a doctor. That’s not my problem.”
At least with Romney you can open your eyes and realize – much as you may long to be him – voting for him won’t make it so. Toadying up to biglaw partners isn’t going to transform you into one of them, either – though it might delay your being fired.
It’s about money – and power.
Yeah. They own you. That’s why you’re there. They’re not nice people and they don’t “value you.” That’s reality.
Sorry, Bartleby.
========
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 also heartily recommend my first book, an introduction to the concepts behind psychotherapy, Life is a Brief Opportunity for Joy
(Both books are also available on bn.com and the Apple iBookstore.)
The People's Therapist 
There are risks to acting this way, of course.
For example, at the firm I used to work, the managing partner once got a bullet shot into his house by one of his attorneys.
He wasn’t home at the time, but there is a risk when you treat people this way.
Do the wrong thing to the wrong person and you will get consequences that are quite unforeseen.
This question of saying “no” goes beyond big law. I have worked in several non-big law firms where saying no was not an option or else you were on the chopping block.
In regard to the responder who asked ” In a situation where the associate had some real value to offer to the firm, I do not see why the firm would fire someone for that. Am I hopelessly naive?” The short answer is yes, you are hopelessly naive and quite possibly filled with a deep sense of entitlement.
Other than a rain maker who could take significant book with them if they left, what real value could an associate add that could not be replaced in a couple days in this market? Which begs the question is what does the person mean when they say “real value”?
The issue of real value has less to do with what you are adding but how replaceable you are. In my humble opinion, there are three things that are not replaceable necessarily at a moments notice and may give you some power to say no.
1) Being able to bring in and take away clients….basically your book of business
2) Having some arcane knowledge where no one else in the firm could do that area of law without you and you do not have any manuals, notes, or trained paralegal that can be used to allow someone to pick that knowledge up quickly….plus of course having enough clients in that area that it could hurt if you left (I suppose this brings you back to point 1)
3) Having some connection/s that make you important. Are you a senator’s son or related to Paul Allen? Did you work for the IRS and it is all your contacts there that smooth that practice area over? Could the firm be at risk of pissing your connection off if they can you?
Other than those, almost anything is immediately replaceable? Are you the top litigator? One call and a new contract litigator could be taking over. Do clients love you? There are other nice lawyers that can be hired with just as great of a smile and gentle touch with clients.
I absolutely agree with the therapist here. Associates are slaves and slaves do not get the luxury of saying no without severe consequences. Even worse, given the economy and over saturation of lawyers, slaves are very cheap. Never overestimate your value.
I am a long-time reader and fan of this column. However, I have to say that I don’t think the gratuitous attacks on Mitt Romney in this column were necessary or warranted. (And let me preface this by saying I’m not some Republican troll, I am an independent voter who disagrees in part with both parties.) Let’s not pretend that Obama cares about the plight of a biglaw associate. You point out (accurately) that your client, like many typical biglaw associates, has less in economic terms than a homeless man. Yet our biglaw salaries put us outside of Obama’s protected “middle class” and subject to his mantra that the “wealthy” can afford to pay more in taxes. We don’t even get a tax deduction for the interest payments on our massive law school (and undergrad) loans because we are considered to be too rich. Many biglaw associates ended up where they are today because their parents viewed law school as the path out of the lower-to-middle class, and now we are punished for being “rich” based on our salaries, which couldn’t be further from the truth. In addition, the economy is in the pits, which hurts us all, and I don’t have any confidence that our current president can pull us out it. As long as it stays this way, we are all stuck in our current positions, giving up weekends and holidays to fulfill the partners’ natural expectancy of instant compliance.
Biglaw assocites don’t make over $250,000 a year until we get to be senior associates (by which time most have had ample opportunity to pay off even a quarter million in debt) and even then we don’t exceed that amount by very much. Keep in mind Obama’s tax proposals give everyone a break on the first $250,000 of income; you only get whacked to the extent your income exceeds that amount.
One of the things that drives me up the wall is democrats always talking about taxing “people who make more than $250,000.” No — the proposal is to tax incomes to the extent in excess of $250,000. Obama is not proposing to raise your taxes unless you are seventh-year or above, and even then not by very much.
Seriously? I was at BigLaw for ten years, and then moved in-house. Maybe I was extraordinarily lucky in my choice of firms (one AmLaw top 10, one top 25), but at both, people were kind, interested in my outside hobbies, and genuinely mostly decent people. Sure, they worked really hard, as did I. But someone saying something like you quote above would have faced significant negative repercussions, including a note on their reviews.
Did I have to give up vacations for work? Occasionally, yes. But it wasn’t the norm – and I was billing 2400 hours in litigation regularly. In general, unless there was a legitimate emergency, I didn’t see a lot of “fake” deadlines or soul-sucking from partners. I instead saw partners who were terrified of not getting this-piece-of-business-right-now, and putting pressure on everyone to make sure they got it done and got it done well. But that didn’t make them bad people – just demanding.
It strikes me that the world you worked in may not be representative of BigLaw overall, or at least may not be uniform. How do I know? Well, I paid off my student loans 4 years in, and stuck around voluntarily for another 6 because I liked what I was doing. Call me a sucker, but the work was interesting, the adrenaline fun, and my colleagues for the most part pretty good people.
The work he worked in isn’t even representative of S&C. This could never happen today, and I seriously dout it even happened to him then. if it DID, it was wildly inappropriate and would not have been tolerated if anyone else had known about it.
I seriously doubt that there was a recording device running when “the ogre” was wildly inappropriate, unprofessional & abusive. So no one would know. If Will had reported the incident, odds were not for a fair resolution. Stats on whistle blowers show the vast majority suffer in their career, employment, and financially. Other subordinates who experienced the same are fearful or wisely cautious about speaking out.
Even a responsible, professional supervisor would rather not deal with such unpleasantness. Evidence would be “he said vs. he said”. Most likely questioning Will and suggesting, “Surely you misinterpreted, exaggerated” and “If it really happened, then it was an aberration, so let it drop.” The senior associate has more history with the firm likely making him more trusted and believable. Certainly the firm would be more invested with him as an employee.
If this attitude and behavior was typical of the Sr. Ass., he may carefully pick and choose only some as targets and behave well around other subordinates, peers and his supervisors. Bad managers can persist, even thrive because they are canny enough to protect themselves.
Why the gratuitous Romney slams when it had zero relationship to your point. Are there no Democrats in Big Law — because donations list for Democrat candidates would suggest that there are (or that the “Mitt Romneys” in control of Big Law like to contribute to Democrats).
Do you want to turn off people who have different political views than you? Because you did.
Will, isn’t the problem then capitalism and not necessarily the law? It is the way it is practiced. The law itself is not odious.
That’s the problem with capitalism. It encompasses everything and trivializes it into a monetary issue. It’s greedy ppl being assholes who are the problem, not capitalism.
People even get fired for wearing the wrong tie (car dealership/football story). Especially for “at will” employers, you can be fired at any time. At some point you have to decide what is, and is not, worth standing up for and how important it is to you personally to not live your life in fear.
Also, I’ve worked for some people who while “strong”, genuinely appreciated someone who stood up to them sometimes or argued/persuaded them to do something differently.
My experience wasn’t biglaw, but if you have a persuasive/good reason known in advance, you can take steps. For one personal matter (opportunity to compete in an international sporting competition required me to have a particular Thursday/Friday/Saturday off and incur significant expense) I mentioned it to the partner in charge of the department months in advance. He agreed it sounded cool, and HE informed every lawyer in the department that I would not be available those dates.
At the other extreme, same law firm, someone almost missed the birth of his first child on a Sunday because he was working all that weekend. The partner he was working for later asked me why the new father hadn’t said anything. The partner was appalled that he hadn’t spoken up – and was far more disturbed by the failure to speak up, as it seemed so abnormal to him on the spectrum of human behavior…
Setting aside your slave analogy (which, while overblown, may ring true for many BigLaw associates), you chose an odd anecdote to try to illustrate it.
Re your S&C story — did it never occur to you that there may be plenty of perfectly reasonable reasons that this ogre-ish associate didn’t want to discuss your hobbies or your no-doubt-exciting childhood in suburban New Jersey? Like maybe the information you were so eager to share simply wasn’t very interesting? Or maybe because he just wanted to get the damn deal done with and go home?
He may have been unnecessarily rude in brushing you off. But I can’t imagine that spending the night cooped up in a conference room with take-out food and an overly chatty, inexperienced first-year was his idea of a fun evening. Just because someone doesn’t want to be your friend doesn’t mean he would (or could) fire you for opening your mouth. After all, as a senior associate, he was hardly the slave owner — but he was the one responsible for your work that night and the one who’d have to explain it to the partner that ‘owned’ him.
Yes, your explanations while likely true do not relieve the Senior Associate of the need for civilized, respectful behavior. He could have artfully turned the discussion towards their work or expressed his need for quiet without the angry personal attack. When a person loses control like that, later one needs to own up to it, apologize, and learn coping strategies to avoid lashing out in the future.
This anecdote reveals clearly that the Sr.Ass. considered Will as an object, merely a machine to be used for work. By dispensing with social manners and interaction, he showed that he was ready to run Will into the ground without proper maintenance. Poor management by the Sr.Ass. who was responsible for Will’s work product on this assignment. No manacles or whips present there, yet it does sound like indentured servitude, a form of slavery. Slavery dehumanizes and abuses people, treating them as property.
This incident was one of many indications at S&C of such a system of operation. Perhaps you’ve missed earlier pertinent posts of The People’s Therapist? Will shows how the systems of law school and big-law firms exert pressures on all participants leading to negative behavior and illness.
Clown, you know that the only successful biglaw veteran in the race is Michelle Obama, right? And that all of the biglaw partners donate to Obama, right? WTF are you talking about with Romney – tons of the people who worked directly under him became rich just like he did. He was never a dick to his coworkers.
Your writing, as always, is witty and fresh, but in this piece your usually satirical and playful tone was replaced by a deep and, frankly, shocking bitterness. I hope you are doing well and that nothing unfortunate happened to you over the summer.
Don’t bate me Will, with your communist, anti-Romney agenda. you should also rethink your support for the current administration in light of its anti-Israel policies. But, on points of law (or rather biglaw) you are as ever straight as an arrow (no pun intende, and no offense to Bigbird 🙂 On the topic of birds, and cages, I thought you might enjoy the following poem:
A free bird leaps
on the back of the wind
and floats downstream
till the current ends
and dips his wing
in the orange sun rays
and dares to claim the sky.
But a bird that stalks
down his narrow cage
can seldom see through
his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and
his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.
The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.
The free bird thinks of another breeze
and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees
and the fat worms waiting on a dawn bright lawn
and he names the sky his own
But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams
his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.
The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.
…by Maya Angelou
I agree with the others re the Romney attacks peppered into the post… I’m no fan of his, but it’s a huge stretch to work your political opinions— unrelated to this topic— into this post. I admit, I’m disappointed. I normally love your writing, but this pontificating is not what we your readers have come to look forward to.
For everyone here who’s whining about the references to politics, I would like to remind you of two things:
(1) The election is in a couple of weeks.
(2) After the election, none of us will have to hear about a major election for another four years. Unless the chads hang again.
I was a partner at an AmLaw 50 for ten years. Will and Edgar have it right.
If we’re quoting poetry on the value of individual lawyers, I offer up these lines from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Elliot:
“No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.”
@Kate— Eliot seems to suggest that it would be “better” to be Hamlet— he isn’t all of those powerless things (deferential etc.) and wasn’t the fool. But he actually played the fool to a great extent, and utterly failed as an actor in the world (and maybe even as an actor in his play-within-the -play). By the end, everyone is dead except Fortinbras and Horatio and Hamlet’s country has fallen into the hands of what seems to be evil-minded foreigners. How’s that preferable? He gets the long poetic speeches and the bit players get only the short responses? Maybe he outfoxes Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (who are utter tools and could perhaps have been biglaw associates in another life) but he doesn’t get the throne, he doesn’t get the girl (she’s dead too) and he succeeds only in replacing one set of evildoers (Gertrude and Claudius) with another (Fortinbras and his boys).
As to the overall proposition (i.e., we are slaves to an evil empire), it is wildly overblown. The world is full of people in horrible circumstances with absolutely NO CHANCE at success. No lawyer in biglaw falls into that category. We have all had access to the best educational opportunities available in U.S. society and CHOSE our current circumstances. The point has been made over and over again that no one REQUIRED biglaw associates to go to law school, borrow money or work for biglaw. We all have alternatives– suck it up, pay off loans, get out if you want to. (Cf,. Frank Zappa: “you’ll be absolutely free/only if you want to be.”)
My dad was a child of the Depression, had to quit school in the 9th grade, joined the CCC, then fibbed his way into the Navy underage and survived WWII in the submarines. His enemies dropped depth charges on his boat. He saw action all over the Pacific (and by “action,” I mean weapons firing at him, not what biglaw associates pursue on weekends). That’s some rough duty. Rudeness by a senior associate over eggplant parm isn’t even in the same universe. Was my dad a slave? He could have ended up dead, not just bankrupt or bored. What choice did he have? If he hadn’t gone into the Navy, he would likely have ended up in the Army. Any way you look at it, some sort of weapon was going to be pointed at him with evil intent. He got lucky, but he was also smart enough to think his way through life— it took him years though. Surely you can too.
[…] –https://thepeoplestherapist.com/2012/10/24/sorry-bartleby/#more-4204 […]
Awesome story. I was just named a Super Lawyer in my region and practice area. Not one single mention or congratulation within the firm. The guys who are already Super Lawyers probably thought “they made a mistake, she’s not of MY caliber” and the people who aren’t named are stewing about “why not meeeeeee?” It is true, they only care about your flaming bullcrap when it makes THEM a dollar.
Barteleby’s problematic situation was actually akin to that of Hamlets…although not quite as high brow. I imagine that he thought that, by living in the office he could economize. MB used to have a pizzeria around the corner but I digress. The problem that the 1% has is that, NO ONE HEARS THEM. so, they shout as loud as they can but to no avail. They do not realise the cage that surrounds them…until it is too late. There is no escapeTheir friends have become foes, and they are trapped for the rest of their lives in quiet desperation. Even the one chance they had at love, they have thrown away or refused to ackhnowledge. Their only choice is to soldier on reaching for the numbness in the dark and ego/anger which is the only thing remaining in the crucibale after everyting else has burnt.
They also don’t want to go to sleep because of the regret they will feel upon waking up…
“I don’t have any confidence that our current president can pull us out it”: I look in vain at the Constitution for the first hint that that is his job, and in the Economics textbooks for any clue that he could do it anyway.
This opened my eyes to what Bartleby was all about–an expression of independence, of liberty, a refusal to participate in his own exploitation! (the refusal to participate in your own exploitation was also a prominent theme in “on the waterfront”)
I can see your point completely, that the incentives of capitalism go into hyper drive in big law and the master could give a fuck about you. In the words of Ray Liota of Goodfellas, “Fuck you. Pay me.” I want to offer an analogy that may be more fitting than the slave ship. That of Pullman Town. Pullman Town is where rail workers at the Pullman Palace Car Company had to live to keep their jobs. It was a company town where the CEO of Pullman owned everything, from the library to the church to your house. You paid rent to him. The town was outwardly beautiful with trappings of cleanliness and apparent decency but inside the workers were underpaid, overworked, and could not speak freely. Inside people were clobbered by debt. They were worked to death and if they chose not to work they were simply replaced. (Look up the Pullman Strike. You probably learned about it for a half of a period in history class. Too little time).
The problem I have with the slavery analogy and even the pullman one (though less so for Pullman) is that slavery was inescapable physical cruelty (rapes, killing, whipping, mutilation, torture, literally capturing human beings). I dont think it’s fair to the physically brutalized to compare them to lawyers working in offices who are emotionally brutalized. The master cares not for either but the cultures are incompatible. It must feel like slavery to work in big law, but do you think a slave would say it feels like big law? Unlikely. If your point is that those who run the show couldn’t give a fuck about their workers because they are thinking profit, I see your point plain as day. It seems that our capitalism has evolved, slavery is no longer but the system has put us in bondage tour own needs.
What work I have done I have done because it has been play. If it had been work I shouldn’t have done it.
Who was it who said, “Blessed is the man who has found his work”? Whoever it was he had the right idea in his mind. Mark you, he says his work–not somebody else’s work. The work that is really a man’s own work is play and not work at all. Cursed is the man who has found some other man’s work and cannot lose it. When we talk about the great workers of the world we really mean the great players of the world. The fellows who groan and sweat under the weary load of toil that they bear never can hope to do anything great. How can they when their souls are in a ferment of revolt against the employment of their hands and brains? The product of slavery, intellectual or physical, can never be great.
-Mark Twain
You often explain the working conditions in biglaw by the debts contracted by law students. Your logic seems to be: big loans requires high wages, and paying associates so much implicates having less time, therefore heavy workload.
But I live in France and my whole tuition to get the best corporate law degree in the country was of 1,500.00 € . Every law school is public in this country, so lawyers usually don’t have any debts when entering the job market (except the ones who’ve done an LLM in the US and failed to get a scholarship). Therefore partners should not be persecuting their associates like in the US, since they should be able to offer smaller wages. But they don’t, everything works exactly the same and it’s not just imitation.
I don’t think Will is saying that big loans require high wages. I think Will is saying that big loans give associates the feeling that they must work in biglaw (and suffer accordingly) because they need to pay the big loans. Personally (if my understanding of what Will is saying is correct), I disagree with Will about this. Like you, I graduated from law school without any student debt. (My dad paid for everything.) However, the reason that I continue to be a lawyer is because the money is incomparable to anything I could make anywhere else. I can either work as a lawyer ($20,000 per month) or at Walmart ($20,000 per year.)
Regardless, I find it very interesting that you say that the same “biglaw situation” exists in France as it does in the US.
The sad thing is, this is getting worse not better. The legal market has never been more competitive and there are literally thousands of paralegals who would literally sell their soul to get a training contract at a big firm. As a lawyer, i would think very very carefully about recommending it is a career to my children, that’s perhaps the saddest indictment of all.
I think I am the person who posted the original comment that gave rise to this blog post. If one of the first comments posted in response was something about wrapping me in a blanket and giving me a hot chocolate, then that was me. I have always had this attitude about not surrendering my free time, or my life, and guess what? I got fired twice in my first two years out of law school. But, eventually, I developed some skills that provided real value to the lawyers I worked for, and I was worth what they were paying me even if I just worked 9 to 5. I can’t imagine how awful it must be to feel so trapped in a job, so replaceable at a moment’s notice. No wonder your psychotherapy practice is filled with lawyers.
[…] had read one of this dude’s posts before. The one about Bartleby the Scriviner. And I really enjoyed it. For some reason it never occurred to me to read any of his other stuff. […]