First - Word!

TEAR THOSE BIGLAW PARTNERS APART!

THE REVOLUTION IS COMING. IT IS TIME TO DESTROY THE PEOPLE WHO RUN BIGLAW AND FINANCE. THEY HAVE BETRAYED OUR TRUST AND NOW THEY MUST PAY.

VIVA LA REVOLUCION.

Wait, Northwestern is helping deferred biglaw students find pro bono jobs?

How about schools helping students truly interested in public interest find jobs! Geez...

5, no one is truly interested in pro bono.

Unless this financial mess eases, next to fall are the law schools. Deferring loan payments means the schools (especially the weaker ones) will start operating in the red. Just like the big law firms have discovered, operating in the red gets old fast--and eventually leads to dissolution. Fewer law schools is not a bad thing, and in fact may be unavoidable.

I really don't understand why people think firms have any kind of obligation to help pay off student debt.

I understand why people WANT firms to do it. But there are lots of things that I WANT.

8-

great argument

there are a lot of things I WANT. do you really think that's fucking persuasive jackass?

they have to pay off the loans because they're the ones fucking over their associates. if they were better managers, they wouldn't be laying off masses of people.

Why would two Kirkland partners leave for J&B. Does J&B in LA offer THREE kinds of coffee? Seriously, anyone know?
--Curious About Coffee

KICK ME IN THE JIMMY!

Its about time a law school stepped up to help its 3Ls.

1 -> I'm old enough to remember starting law school at an expensive law school when loan interest of all kinds was deductible, and then, when I graduated, having that deduction disappear for all but mortgage loan interest ... and that deduction has never been recreated.

You know what? I didn't like it, but as one of the end-of-the-baby-boom-era people, it was a sobering lesson for me. It taught me never to expect government rules to remain static. It taught me to plan to be screwed many more times as other take-for-granted things disappeared (for example, 100% employer-paid health insurance, local and state tax rates that don't rise, public schools good enough and safe enough for my own kids to attend, sports tickets that I could afford fairly often, a second home by the time I was 45, 401k retirement plans that always increase in value).

As other older and wiser commenters on this site have noted, many of the members of the under 30 generation of hot-shot law students and junior associates - at least as generally represented in commenters on this site AND in my personal experience - have been living in a dream world, where assumptions about starting salaries led many to incur huge debts that now appear to be not only significant but in some cases crippling. They are seen as crippling if the young hot-shot's expected gravy-train career path has turned into an actual or possible train-wreck (either because of a lost job in an oversaturated market or a cut in salary and benefits).

Although I feel for many of those under-30s, I am amazed at the many of them who have not yet grasped that they are living a lie - namely, if they think the changes to the legal market are short-term. They most definitely are not. From where I sit, I can see only fewer full-time practicing lawyers working for less money because clients are not going to pay what clients used to pay, even on so-called "bet the company" deals that the big-shot firms traditionally overstaffed (especially with junior associates who didn't always know what they were doing) and overbilled.

I could be wrong, of course, in which case those who I perceive as naive hot-shots will by their mid-30s be making huge money, in glittering showcase offices, with no pressures to cut their own draws or the salaries or positions of their associates and staff, or to find a public school for their three kids, or to convince their spouse that things have changed and he or she will need either to re-enter the job market or move significantly up the job ladder so that their family can afford most of the things it previously took for granted.

Or I could be right.

5, the school has opened up new positions in the clinics. They envision deferred 3L's applying for them, but that's mostly because they're unpaid.

Northwestern has also extended the application deadlines for both its tax and human rights LLM programs, and is charging 3L's who apply now half tuition for them. The human rights LLM might be more useful for a student that's really interested in public service, though I'm guessing the majority of the people that are really interested in it have already been looking and probably aren't scrambling in nearly the same manner as the 3L's who've just found out they need a job for the fall.

9: good luck with that theory.

NU is desperately trying to shore up its plunging USNews ranking by transparently "hiring" its own into some bogus clinics. Very TTT....

15 = partner emeritus.

you'll get yours jackass. trust.

Aint nuthin better than some duckasslobster for breakfast.

beating and robbing biglaw partners would be wrong. they earned their money fairly and ethic-- HAHAHAHAHAHA. sorry, i couldn't say that shit with a straight face.

FACT: A 7-year-old child was molested twice over a 3-month period by an illegal alien from El Salvador.

FACT: You won't hear about this in the mid-stream news.

FACT: You WOULD hear about this if an American raped a 7-year-old illegal alien. ATL would publish it, the Revrum Al Sharpton would protest, and LaRAZA would demand mass amnesty.

Criminal illegal aliens:

http://blogs.tampabay.com/breakingnews/2009/04/largo-man-arrested-for-sex-crime-against-7yearold.html

Yeah right #5, because living in Dallas is so much more prestigious than living in DC. You are a degenerate loser.

Fact: #22 is an idiot.

17:

I am currently a partner at a biglaw firm, and have a specialty regulatory practice. My position is quite secure as I have a fairly strong book and my practice is growing.

I paid off my college and law school loans on a federal government salary. Many of my friends did the same with inhouse salaries, midsize firm salaries or government salaries. A biglaw salary is not required to pay off loans. If you require such a salary, good luck.

The entitlement of some of the posters on this blog is astonishing. The world does not owe any of us anything.

-15

9, let me call the whaaambulance for you.

24 = liar and a racist

24: by "The world does not owe any of us anything."

don't you really just mean

"I don't owe you dipshits anything"?

24: by "The world does not owe any of us anything."

don't you really just mean

"I don't owe you dipshits anything"?

10, I think Jenner is realizing that to be successful, they have to be Kirkland. That's why they laid off a dozen of their own partners, then picked up two from Kirkland. They're thinking about changing their name to Kenner and Elock.

27/28:

I concur with that interpretation.

22 -- Huh?

- 5

Many people do not take out loans as undergrads - they work while going to school because they know there is a good chance their career won't allow for loan repayment, especially in the early years.
THen, they work instead of going right into grad school, and they save money, take fewer loans, or just don't go to any school that will leave them 150k in debt upon graduation.
These people are not any less smart than a law student.
But somehow, all of you think the government should pay your loans? Or, even more ludicrous, a private business?
yikes.

32 -- yes please.

It sucks trying to start a public service career in this budget climate and it does not help that deferred associates by the boatload are looking to work for free...

32, handouts from the rest of the world is the new way of thinking. You need to change what you can believe in.

Yes We Can!

Sorry #5, I meant #6.

29, you know what they say. Out with the old, in with the nucleus.

13 -- Supposing the tree of lawberty needs to be refreshed time to time by the sweat of new associates, how would you have advised your average T6, full-tuition student to have proceeded? Just not go?

It's hardly our fault that tuition has surged, or that associate salaries have barely outpaced inflation since the 1980s.

KILL 24!

It isn't Franken AND Coleman keeping the legal battles going, it's just COleman.
Franken's been certified the victor, upheld by the courts.

13, I think your rather insightful comment may have been completely lost on all of these Gen-Y/Everybody on the Soccer Team Gets a Trophy/Entitlement Complex Children.

It’s time to grow up kids; real life is nasty, brutish, and short.

13 here

Thanks, 41. I agree 100%.

38 - When I told my middle-class dad I was going to law school, he told me that it seemed there were too many lawyers already, but he was sure that if I worked hard, I would make a good one ... and that there would always be room for another good one.

You asked for my advice. If, as many have done, you decided to go to law school and incur 6-figure debt, whether you knew it or not you were placing a bet that there would be a high-paying job for you, not only when you graduated, but for many years thereafter.

Would I have made that same bet? I think I would have done differently, such as: waited a few years while I saved up some money; waited until a less expensive, but good school admitted me; considered a school where I could work my way through (incidentally, I worked part-time as a law clerk while in law school, and it was better preparation for practice than any of my law classes) and thereby finish school with much less debt, and thus much more able to fare well if the job market declined.

So ... perhaps it's "hardly your fault that tuition has surged, or that associate salaries have barely outpaced inflation since the 1980s," but it IS your problem.

How are you going to deal with it?

Caslin has a good trick he plays on interviewing 1Ls and summers. You go out for lunch or dinner at a great steak place and first thing he orders is an Arnold Palmer, which to a lot of newbies sounds like a stiff mixed drink. The young ones almost always respond by "following" his lead and ordering a real alcoholic beverage, then matching him round for round throughout the meal. I only had one glass of wine I think, but I've heard plenty of stories of kids getting hammered in front of a very sober Caslin. So ... watch out JB summers ... getting a bit sloshed doesn't really affect your offer, but anything dumb you say will be instant fodder for firm consumption.

DVZ is the man.

Arnold Palmers are great.

That trick wouldn't fly in the South though.

22/36 -- apology totally accepted. I was feeling awful for awhile.

- 5

Spitzer, please remain in whatever hole you currently dwell and spare us any attempted comeback. No one needs you...especially not to regurgitate Posner to us.