Ed. note: Welcome to the latest installment of “Notes from the Breadline,” a column by a laid-off lawyer in New York. Prior columns are collected here. You can reach Roxana St. Thomas by email (at roxanastthomas@gmail.com), follow her on Twitter, or find her on Facebook.
At the Big Law Firm where we used to work, my friend Giovanna was the kind of associate that every partner dreams of. She spent nights and weekends at the office. She took on the most tedious tasks without complaining. She did the work of three people. She was conscientious. Sometimes, the partner for whom she worked would call her late at night, at home, with a frantic last-minute request for something that probably could have been done earlier in the day; Giovanna would turn around and go back to work to get it done.
Giovanna survived working for this partner for four years, but she did not survive the round of layoffs that eventually trimmed the herd at the Big Law Firm. In the months before she was “let go,” she had been certain that the figurative guillotine was poised above her waiting head. So, when she was summoned to the managing partner’s office to hear her fate, she said later, she was shocked, but not particularly surprised. She cried when she got the news, but then she gave them a piece of her mind and cleaned out her desk. A few days later, she left without looking back.
For the first few weeks, Giovanna and commiserated about life in the breadline. “I’ll never find a job!” she wailed, and threatened to cash in her 401(k). “Don’t do it,” I told her repeatedly, picturing her out on a ledge, cell phone in hand, ready to take a financially unwise leap.
“This is infuriating,” she said at one point. “No matter how many times I explain that more than 6000 people were laid off from firms, I swear people still look at me and think, ‘You suck, and that’s why you were let go.’ But AT&T lays off 50 people and it makes the CNN scroll and everyone empathizes.” I complained that Cliff didn’t understand that lawyers had emerged as the lepers of the new job market. She complained that her boyfriend, Tony, kept telling her to get a job at the local diner.
But Giovanna is one of the lucky ones. After a few weeks of unemployment, which we spend planning our eventual relocation to the shantytown which, she insists, is bound to spring up in Central Park, a former colleague passes her resume along to a friend of a friend and … before we know it, she has a new job.
Read about Giovanna’s new gig, after the jump.
Giovanna’s new position is at a mid-sized regional firm, and although she has taken a significant pay cut, she is immensely relieved. And, at least initially, she seems excited about the chance to work on something other than huge class action cases, in which she has been immersed for the past few years. In fact, I think, reading the first email she sends me, she sounds practically exuberant. “All in all,” she writes, “the place seems okay and they actually have a lot of real litigation. In the first day alone, I already feel like an actual litigator again. I have some memos to write and some random stuff to prepare for local counsel in one case but I get to go to court tomorrow! Yeah!”
The new firm feels different in other ways, too. “I was here until 7:30 last night,” she tells me, “and the place was a ghost town, which I’m pretty psyched about. From what I’ve been told, it has a decent culture, and people concentrate on their personal lives. Whatever — works for me! So, I don’t want to jinx it just yet, but this may have been a good move.”
Giovanna’s elation is short-lived: the transition from life at the Big Law Firm, it seems, is not as easy as it appeared. A few days later, she calls me in the middle of the day. “This girl I work with just came in and gave me a bowl of potpourri for my office,” she tells me in a guarded whisper. She sounds miserable.
“Why are you whispering?” I ask. “Is there someone in your office, or are you being held hostage?”
“Because,” Giovanna tells me, “it was really fucking weird. She told me that she wanted to give me an office-warming present, and I thanked her and said ‘that was so thoughtful, but you really shouldn’t have.’ So she said, ‘well, it’s not like I went out of my way to purchase it for you. It’s just that I have too much potpourri in my apartment and thought I could get rid of some.’ What the fuck? Who offers you a gift and then goes on to tell you that they just wanted to get rid of some clutter from their apartment and you looked like someone they could give their garbage to?”
I try not to laugh at the image of the (decidedly no-nonsense) Giovanna graciously accepting the gift of cast-off potpourri. “Well,” I tell her, “you know that lawyers can be socially awkward. At least you got a bowl of potpourri out of it.” She doesn’t answer. “Is something else bothering you?” I ask carefully.
“I don’t belong here,” she says, sounding despondent. “I don’t know how to do anything, and as soon as they figure that out, I’m going to get fired. Again.”
“You’re new,” I reassure her. “No one expects you to know how to do everything.”
“But I’m not new!” she insists. “I’m supposed to have these skills, and I don’t. I spent the last four years preparing binders for whoever was taking a deposition. Now I’m supposed to take the depositions. I’ve been writing briefs with arguments that the partner told me to make.” I hear panic rising in her voice. “I got assigned to a case today, and they told me to run with it. I’m supposed to move for summary judgment, and I have no idea what the basis of my motion is supposed to be.” She pauses for a moment. “I don’t even know where to get a fucking salad around here.”
“Look,” I tell her, “the first three months of a new job suck. It’s natural to have a learning curve. You’re a good lawyer, and you’ll do a great job. You’re being much harder on yourself than anyone else is.”
“I’m a mediocre lawyer,” she says bleakly. “I gave up my life for the Big Law Firm, and now I don’t know how to do anything except prepare other lawyers to do things that I don’t know how to do.” I hear a knock at her office door in the background, and listen as she has a brief, polite conversation with whoever has come in. A moment later, she returns. “There’s probably an e-mail going around right now, asking who hired the senior associate who has no clue about anything.”
“You’re going to learn how to do it,” I say. “And you’re going to find a salad. I know it’s easy for me to say, but trust me. You’ll look back at this in three months and laugh at how worried you were over things that will be second nature to you by then.”
Giovanna does not sound convinced. When I meet her for dinner, a few weeks later, she looks tired. “There are lawyers at this firm who could litigate circles around me, even though I’m way senior to them,” she says. “It’s because they started out here, or at firms like this one, and they always had to do everything themselves.” She is worried about a brief she wrote, which a partner returned to her covered in red ink. “He thinks I suck,” she says dejectedly. “I’m waiting for them to see through me, and then I’ll be out on my ass.”
“No you won’t,” I reassure her. “The only thing partners love more than editing is editing their own edits. It’s not you.”
She pauses thoughtfully. “You know,” she says, “I think it’s a matter of confidence. At the Big Law Firm, everyone tells you that the cases are too huge and the clients are too important for you to take the lead on. They basically convince you that you’re not competent. I feel like I understand how everything works, but I don’t actually know how to do it. I feel like they’re going to figure that out.”
Well, I tell her, working at a Big Law Firm is, in some ways, like being an abused child. If you’re told for long enough that you can’t do anything right, you’re bound to believe it eventually. “But,” I add, “I’m pretty sure that most lawyers don’t know what they’re doing half the time. They just fake it really well.”
“It’s more than that,” she says. She tells me that recently she was in a partner’s office with another associate. In a fit of pique, the partner threw a sheaf of papers at both of them. The other associate, who, unlike Giovanna, was not a refugee from a big firm, said, “I don’t work this way,” and walked out. “Coming from a Big Law Firm,” Giovanna says, “my first impulse was to pick up the papers. It didn’t occur to me that you could stand your ground. I feel like that’s beaten out of you at a Big Law Firm.”
Listening to her talk, I feel a surge of anger. Giovanna, who is smart, beautiful, and talented, gave the Big Law Firm everything she had for four years. What does she have to show for it? Her reward – her parting gift – is the inability to stop second-guessing herself. It’s not right.
“You’re just more sensitive to criticism because you’re new, and you want to do a good job,” I say lamely. “They’re giving you a lot of responsibility, so they must think you can handle it.” Giovanna looks dubious. “I suck,” she tells me resolutely.
Giovanna continues to worry aloud that she doesn’t know enough, that she will forget her objections during a deposition, that she is missing something important in a brief. But, as the weeks go by, I begin to hear something else in her stories about work – a newly acquired fluency, a sense that she is more comfortable navigating her way through unfamiliar territory, and a discernible note of confidence. I have the urge to point out how much she is learning, despite everything she insists she doesn’t know. Still, there are times when I have the feeling that I have watched her tottering along on a bike with training wheels, and am now standing at the foot of the driveway while she pedals up the block, unaware that she is actually doing it.
A few months into her new job, Giovanna is assigned to take the deposition of a major witness in a case. The partners at her firm are convinced that they cannot win on the question of liability, but are hopeful that they will be able to limit damages in the case. When I catch her in the middle of preparing for the deposition, she sounds panicked. “This is so nerve-wracking!” she wails. The underlying law is totally unfamiliar to her, and she is certain that everyone will know she is a novice. To make matters worse, she and Tony have broken up, and she is not sleeping well. One day she calls me from work, in tears. “I feel awful,” she says. “I don’t think I’ll be able to do this. I’m going to screw it up.” I can hear her muffling sobs on the other end of the phone. “You’ll do a great job!” I tell her, feeling helpless.
I do not hear from her after the deposition, and I begin to worry that something has gone wrong. When she finally calls, it is nearly 11:00pm. “I was sleeping, but then I woke up and I couldn’t get back to sleep,” she says. I wait, apprehensively, for her to tell me how it went.
“Well,” she begins, “you’ll never believe what happened.” She was so nervous when the deposition started, she tells me, that she was – literally — shaking. Her adversary was a much older, seasoned attorney, who had clearly sized her up and determined that she was an amateur. In fact, she says, he stopped the deposition a number of times to interject with condescending pointers about how she should ask questions.
Giovanna was so afraid that she would miss something important that she decided to take the witness through a huge stack of documents, slowly and methodically. She spent hours asking questions, establishing that the witness had complete control over a certain bank account. After a while, she tells me, both the witness and the adversary appeared convinced that she was fixated on a point that was largely irrelevant. The adversary started rolling his eyes; the witness, determined to point out the redundancy of Giovanna’s questions, began to assert, with increasing conviction, that he was responsible for everything related to the administration of the bank account. When, several hours into the deposition, she confronted him with a document that showed an unauthorized payment from the account, the witness and his lawyer exchanged the “Oh, shit,” look that every lawyer dreams of. Giovanna, a clumsy beginner with the looks of a pin-up girl, had beaten them with a royal flush, and neither had seen it coming.
As she tells me the story, I feel myself smiling, overwhelmed with pride. I fight the urge to yell, “See! I knew you could do it!” Although I had nothing to do with the deposition or her success, I feel oddly elated.
“So,” I say instead, “do you think things are starting to turn for you? Is it getting easier?”
She thinks for a moment before she answers. “I think I’ve learned a lot in the past few months,” she says slowly. “For a long time, I thought that, any minute, they were going to figure out that I didn’t know what I was doing.” There is a long pause. “But you know,” she continues, “I do know what I’m doing. I’m still working on it, but I think I’m a good lawyer, and I think I have good instincts. It’s taken me a while to realize it.”
Giovanna sounds tired, but calmer than I’ve heard her in a while. Was it the deposition, I ask her? What made her feel so much more confident?
“I’m not afraid anymore,” she says simply. “I already got fired, and I survived. I kept worrying about what would happen if I fucked up, but what’s the point? I can survive anything.”
Her voice trails off. “You know,” she says, “the sad thing about being laid off is that it’s like having a bad breakup. I’ll probably never give my heart and soul to another firm. I’ll do the best job I can, but I’ll never let it consume me again. Maybe I’ve given up on the dream, but I think I’m a better lawyer because of it … I’m more focused on learning to trust my instincts and less on the idea that giving my life to a firm will amount to something at the end of the day.”
Giovanna laughs. “Did I ever tell you the story about when I left my BlackBerry in church?” she asks. “The priest called me to say I left my little phone on the pew. I seriously doubted that he had the wherewithal to figure out who it belonged to, so I asked him how he knew it was mine. He said I was the only person he had ever seen working during mass.”
She is quiet for a moment. “I guess what it comes down to is that I killed myself for the Big Law Firm, and it wasn’t worth it. I looked around one day and I was thirty-something years old and I hadn’t had a relationship in three years. I was on my fucking BlackBerry in church. I should have gone straight to confession, and confessed to working on the Sabbath, but even that would have been ridiculous. How fucking lame is that? I could picture the priest saying, ‘That’s it? That’s your sin? Come back when you have something better.’”
I am lying on the floor, and I roll over, propping myself up on my elbows. It is late, and we are both giddy, laughing at the image of a confession that even a priest would find extraordinarily dull. I feel like I should be talking on a pink Princess phone, gossiping about boys and Project Runway. I feel as though we have both survived, and this moment of levity is our reward. I feel as though, for Giovanna, everything will be okay.
___________________________________________________________________________
Roxana St. Thomas is a laid-off lawyer living in New York. You can reach her by email (at roxanastthomas@gmail.com), follow her on Twitter, or find her on Facebook.
Earlier: Prior installments of Notes from the Breadline
thirsty thirst?
Noose = epic
B.
O.
R.
I.
N.
G.
Like many things at ATL, this used to be remotely entertaining, but no longer is.
Giovanna sat and spun
tl;dr;assume it’s drivel.
One of her better posts.
Good for Giovanna.
Lame, lame, lame. Let’s all braid each others hair and talk about our periods. Is it any wonder female lawyers don’t get respect?
What, the much vaunted BIGLAW EXPERIENCE and training isn’t as good as that in any random no-name regional firm? You don’t get a whole lot of experience when the partner:associate ratio is 1:5 and you’re the fifth associate on a deal/case? You learn more working on a small case than a big case? Say it ain’t so!
Can someone please post the cliff’s notes version?
6 = Roxana
LOL @ 10
Giovanna didn’t put out at her old job. But I hear she’s learned her lesson cause she’s puttin’ out like a gumball machine now and will keep this new job.
7 = Roxana
I didn’t read this but I know for a fact it sucked and I’m a better writer on a snowy sunday in January when the flowers aren’t in bloom?
-Hope Winters
Giovanna and Roxana work at the same Big Law Firm. Both Giovanna and Roxana get laid off. Giovanna networks and quickly finds a new job. Roxana cries “Woe is me” and starts a blog.
Roxana, keep up the good work!
sparkling wiggles
Most first year public defenders can run circles around big firm partners in court. It is funny to watch.
Latham strikes again!
sssssssssssssssssssssssssssooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo long
17 = Roxana
18,
Most Big firm partners can buy that first year public defender’s first born.
It’s all relative.
LOL at Roxana giving someone career counseling.
Cliff’s Note Version
Giovanna gets canned.
Giovanna gets new job.
Giovanna is insecure at new job.
Roxana consoles Giovanna.
Giovanna feels and does better.
That was a great read. It was a little long, but I didn’t get so bored that I stopped.
Maybe midlaw wouldn’t be so bad.
I’ll bet Giovanna misses waiting in a partner’s office for four hours to get interrogatory responses signed.
Roxana = guest
Keep on keepin’ on, Roxana. Forget the haters.
25, I want to barf in your mouth
Giovanna, a proud graduate of Yaroslav the Wise National Law Academy.
Keep on keepin’ on, Roxana. Forget the haters.
16 – blogging and job searching are *not* mutually exclusive. Also, I think Roxy’s blog will continue irrespective of whether she finds a job – the unemployed lawyer in NY is her schtick, and she’s probably schticking to it.
25 = Roxana
28 = Roxana
31 = Roxana
18,
I appreciate the sentiment, but there’s a certain incongruence in your statement. When and where have you had the chance to watch a first year PD take on a biglaw partner? I don’t see how the two would cross paths.
32 = Roxana
26- I work at a small firm and I have to do that
What a pathetic, self-absorbed wench.
Goes to work at a large law firm where she (as long as everyone else) is obscenely overpaid. Learns nothing useful except blind obeisance, but gets paid lots of money for it. Gets sacked when the world figures out large firms charge too much given the talent within – which is largely illusory.
Then expects us to care. Honestly, there are people who slave just as hard for a pittance, who work in public service or who do work for others, and who have the balls to stand up and do the right thing in performing their job, who have also been laid off. In droves. Unlike our heroin here, they don’t have a financial cushion to fall back on. But you don’t have them (or their friends) spewing self-pitying drivel built upon a breathtaking, and mystifying, sense of entitlement. They move on and deal with the world knowing that they are no more deserving than their extant circumstance.
You wonder why people hate lawyers? Get over yourself.
Not like “litigation experience” means anything anyhow if you’re not a moron (like 80% of practicing lawyers). I have 9 months of litigation experience and I am able to fully handle all aspects of a case from motion practice on. The trick: know your case, read the relevant case law, make arguments, write like its a law school assignment (i.e. with good format, transitions, etc) and you will do better than most practicing attorneys, who apparently don’t know how to write, just search lexis for soundbites without reading the context of the cases, etc.
pics of giovanna and roxana, preferably making out.
If 31 = Roxana AND 28 = Roxana, then it must follow that 31 = 28. since 31 > 28, the proposition that 31 = Roxana and 21 = Roxana must be false.
41 = Roxana
Giovanna is a pretty hot name. She sounds bangin’ yo
pretty good, pretty good
was going to forward it to friends, then decided they wouldn’t have the time to read it
Better writing that any of the ATL regulars. Hire Roxana.
“I feel as though we have both survived, and this moment of levity is our reward.” Wrong. Giovanna has survived. You are still wallowing in self-pity and writing turgid prose.
Good one Roxana. I really do look forward to your posts.
45 = Roxana
45 = Roxana
46 = Roxana
55 = Roxana (I’m willing to bet my V10 job that this is in fact the case)
Man, this was a dissapointing post. Like many readers, I come here to watch Roxana whine and self-destruct so I can feel better about my life. Since she has failed to provide us with a real ‘Notes from the Breadline’ article, I will be taking the liberty…
I woke up this morning and stripped naked to take a shower. Realizing that all I had to do for the rest of the day was sit on my ass, I prepared a bath for myself. As I lay in the tub, I thought about how crappy my life was and whether I should slit my wrists. I decided, naw, we can save that for a different day. I went to the local subway to eat when someone offerend me a job in NJ. I decided that sitting on my ass all day and hanging with my friends in NY was better than moving to NJ. I ate and got home and thought about why I didn’t have a job. One of my cats scratched me in the face. “Dumb cat” I exclaimed. I then sat on the couch and watch daytime soap operas for the rest of the day. That night I called ITT tech and decided to be a car mechanic. The End.
46 = Roxana
150,765 = Roxana
48 = Roxana
55 = Roxana (see, 50 was correct)
Roxana, great post. Keep up the excellent work.
I hope you got the Starbucks gift card that I mailed to Breaking Media, c/o Lat!
56 = Roxana
36, maybe 18 means by comparison though not head to head. Like watching two pitchers in separate games and comparing them.
I think there are very few good jury trial lawyers in BigLaw. Though it is such a rare thing for a big case to go to trial it hardly seems relevant. Phil Beck and Ted Wells come to mind as good ones.
Partner Emeritus = Roxana
This is ATL filler at its finest.
The Dow is Down Guy = Roxana
60 = Roxana
I also went from biglaw to a small-midsize firm, and what this post says about the experience is true. There is little to no affirmation in biglaw about associates’ development of lawyering skills, even though it is happening without a doubt. When asked to write a brief for a partner at a new firm, I was overwhelmed by the positive response to my work, thanks to the skills aquired, but unacknowledged, in biglaw.
58 = 36 = 18 = Roxana
63 = Roxana
Retired partner here: I spent decades practicing with and against BigLaw attorneys. I can say without hesitation that very few of them were worth dried shit when it came to being attorneys. They didn’t know shit, they couldn’t do shit, and they weren’t worth shit.
Well the underlying message in this story is simply that Big Firms treat you like shit, and well small firms dont. That is pretty self-evident one thinks – amazed that Giovanna didn’t know this before she hit up the 525th Floor of the Firms Offices covered in gold plated furniture and oak chairs.
Evidently, the cost-ratio is going to be different. But the end equation is a life-style one.
Big-Firm, Big Hours, Big Car and No Life.
Smaller Firm, Less Hours, Less Cash, Life.
Pretty simple really.
@39 comments – completely ironic that someone who works 110 hour (prob more) weeks is overpaid. Wow, if you didn’t have a life and worked all day after studying for 6 years and having study loans coming out your ass – you probably would want to be overpaid too. Fucking moron.
Really good post. The point she is getting at is a good one. The big firm model makes complete sense economically. I do not fault them for their business model. They have little interest in training associates, and have an adverse interest in exposing associates to clients or substantial responsibility. But I do fault the law schools. Law students don’t know anything about the legal field, and the law schools should be the first to point out the drawbacks of working for big law. Instead, they are extremely silent when the big firms come on campus, and congratulatory towards the students who receive offers. Its not a matter of quality of life, or whether morally you’re working for the “good guys”; the big firm model has some serious drawbacks for a young attorneys professional development and the law schools provide little guidance to their students on this.
Roxanasslobster
66 = Roxana
39 wrote: “Unlike our heroin here,”
Did I miss something, or did Roxana start dealing to make end meet?
68 = Roxana
Where the fuck are the female attorneys named Roxana and Giovanna? Some 1980s porno?
My office is just full of Kates, Amys Jennifers, Allisons, etc.
PS. These are the worst posts known to man. They are not entertaining, provide nothing, and are too long. . . typical of someone who thinks they are more important than they actually are and likes to hear themselves talk.
You dont deserve a job.
You deserve to live in a garbage can like oscar and slimey.
71 = Roxana
73 = Roxana
“For the first few weeks, Giovanna and commiserated about life in the breadline”
I read only that far. . . to post something missing a noun if retarded. Im sure the next 4500 paragraphs of this thing are just as bad.
PROOFREAD!! This blog puts the legal profession to shame with the typos.
Its not like you have a job or anything else to do. God damn it.
76 = Roxana
I agree with 63. After going in-house I had the same crisis of confidence that is explored in this post. It doesn’t take long, though, to get over it. I am now much more confident and a much better lawyer. It is unfortunate that those who toil as associates in Biglaw get spit out as barely competent scaredy-cats. It’s a good thing that by and large us Biglaw refugees were pretty smart in the first place. Once you apply yourself in your new setting and rebound, you’ll quickly realize you could have been doing exactly what the partners at your former firm were doing all along. That realization is a big reason why I avoid paying Biglaw fees anymore. It’s (mostly) a big scam.
69=Roxana
78 = Roxana
Wow, Roxana appears to be writing comments to her own post at a furious rate…
Not Roxana.
81 = Roxana
It’s starting to annoy me that litigators on this site, and apparently other lawyers as well, continually talk like like litigating = lawyering. Litigating is one specialized area of lawyering that Biglaw does not prepare you very well for, in general, and is probaly the one area of lawyering you should avoid if going Biglaw. It’s hardly all there is to being a lawyer, though.
If, like most of us, you work in any of the dozens of other areas of the law, Biglaw will often prepare you very well. I am quite confident that a Biglaw associate in project finance, for example, is far better able to navigate a project financing than a lawyer from almost any small firm. Sure, you do a lot of diligence, but you also learn how to write and negotiate contracts and manage a transaction far better than a lawyer from a random midsize firm.
Biglaw litigators, quit bitching. Litigating is not the be all end all of lawyering, and if you didn’t know what you were getting into when you got into Biglaw litigation, then you’re an idiot.
83 = Roxana
Giovanna = Roxana
83 = insecure?
86 = Roxana
I seriously look forward to this post. Keep it up. can we get a Roxanne update?
88 = Roxana
@76
“Its not like you have a job or anything else to do.”
“It’s” dangerous living in a glass house.
90 = Roxanne
As a senior associate in the same boat, I think this rings true…I enjoy your pieces, Roxana, but I would recommend editing these pieces down…think of a general audience who might not necessarily enjoy every mundane detail of our wretched lives (however accurate, and I get the distinct impression that you are in fact chronicling real-life events/conversations/etc) and make it tighter…ask a non-lawyer to review.
It’s good to read stories like this one that really humanize attorneys. Sometimes the public gives them a bad reputation for the type of work that they do. But Giovanna’s story, I think, really shows not every attorney is greed or amoral, but someone that can actually be trusted.
92 = Roxana
I hate you Roxanna.
61 -
Puh-leeze. I am not Roxana.
2 things:
why is Giovanna, who is employed, whining to her unemployed friend about how much her new job suck? That’s just mean and selfish.
and has Roxanna’s life of unemployment reached such boring lows that she now has to blog about someone else in order to have material?
I was with you in the beginning, R, but now you’ve totally lost my interest.
Giovanna, if she exists, violated her client’s privilege.
Why is she confiding to an outsider that her colleagues believe that they will lose on liability? If the deposition story happened, it’s only one more step to someone figuring out what case this is and suddenly she has worsened the negotiating posture of her client.
Do they not teach this stuff at big law firms?
95 = Roxanna
PS. Roxanasslobster says what?
30= funny
Micheal Ray Richardson = Roxanna
Good post, although I have to wonder how did Giovanna make Roxana feel when she calls to complain/worry over her new job, given that Roxana was still desperately searching?
95 – Roxana
Roxana – You suck at everything.
102 = Roxana
104 = Roxana
Too long. But the article makes a good point about lack of associate training. I know many 6+ years Big Law litigation associates who’ve never taken a deposition.
Another aspect of lawyering Big Law fails to teach is client development. You see it in comments here all the time–associates expect to do work that was brought in by partners. When work dries up, it’s the partners fault.
I moved from Big Law to boutique and am really shocked at the 3rd years in this boutique who actually have a book of business. Again, I know plenty of Big Law 6+ year associates with hardly any business of their own. Hell, I know partners with little to no books. But because this boutique threw these guys out there, telling them that the amount of money they bring home is *directly* related to the amount of business they bring in, they’ve been bringing in business.
Lame. Fiction fluff.
107 = Roxana
108 = Roxana
NO MOAR!
I haven’t read the comments on an ATL piece in a while. Yep, you are all still fucking idiots.
110=Roxana
In all honesty, I had two separate reactions to this piece:
1) This is excellent, emotional insight into the life of a young lawyer in transition.
2) Maybe most women shouldn’t be lawyers.
83 -
Litigating IS the end-all-be-all of lawyering. Did any kid every growing up dreaming of being a lawyer because he wanted to draft contracts?
M&A lawyers wish they could be businessmen, but they don’t have the balls to take on the risk. (Think George Costanza in Pretty Woman).
Finance lawyers are wanna-be I-bankers who again didn’t have the balls to accept the risk, and who also weren’t good enough at math.
Regulatory lawyers are failed politicians. IP lawyers are failed engineers. Entertainment lawyers wish it could be them in the spotlight, but they lack the talent.
Sorry, 83, litigation is what lawyering is about. Everything else is just failed dreams.
36-
It’s not likely they would ever be up against one another in court, but a public defender is in court almost every day, doing anywhere from 5-20 trials a year, whereas most BigLaw partners never see the inside of a courtroom. So it stands to reason that a public defender would be a better litigator than a BigLaw partner simply from having done exponentially more direct, cross, jury selection, argument, etc.
Why do people go through the trouble of posting comments in response to this woman’s posts just to say how much they don’t like her posts? Seriously, I don’t get it. Do you people have some brand of OCD that requires to post a comment in response to every story on this website?
Ther are few things more pleasant than trying a jury trial against a 50 year old Biglaw partner who is doing his third jury trial of his career.
Iowa Guy
101 = racist
101 = racist
I would like to say that I thoroughly enjoyed this.
This post confirms yet again that his whole shtick is a hoax designed to win a book deal. I wouldn’t be surprised if Roxana (or Mike, probably “her” real name) is a 2L at Fordham.
122 – Roxana
“so you were in the shower….” then Elle solves the case!
I once watched a former prosecutor try a bs slip and fall case against the litigation chair of an insurance defense firm. Minimal injuries and shaky liability. Verdict over $ 1 million.
Does litigation practice tend to attract the smarter grads out of law school?
123 – Roxana
Just for the record: I worked for a medium sized regional law firm, was treated like crap and then laid off during the recession, just like the Big Law kids. Some things aren’t a matter of size. I have a new job working with decent people and the symptons of PTSD from my law firm experience have come flooding out. It is true, however, that the assignments and levle of autonomy that I received in my two years in Mid Law vastly outpaced the work my peers/friends in the same practice area in Big Law firms were doing.
@127 – Yes
127 = Roxana
“levle”?
“When, several hours into the deposition, she confronted him with a document that showed an unauthorized payment from the account, the witness and his lawyer exchanged the “Oh, shit,” look that every lawyer dreams of. Giovanna, a clumsy beginner with the looks of a pin-up girl, had beaten them with a royal flush, and neither had seen it coming.”
So, she spent several hours wasting her client’s money to get to the smoking gun that she knew was embedded in there the whole time? I don’t understand why this was a victory. I can’t even imagine how ridiculous that would look in the transcript.
Roxana = Roxana
yeah 132… the glory of dumb luck.
To the medmal ambulance chaser at 115,
litigators are the sanitation engineers of the legal industry – cleaning up other people’s messes and taking the crumbs that drop from the table. Not what I dreamed of as a kid. Sorry that you’re so envious of those who made to the folding money . . . even though your childhood dreams came true. Maybe you should have re-evaluated your dreams once you grew up. Or did you but just couldn’t make it with more sophisticated work?
Wow that was a great article. Good job Roxana and best of luck to your friend. Big law is truly the blight of all lawyers. Pays well but work sucks
You’d think that posts like this would cause associates to reconsider their obsequious devotion to every partner’s whim. It won’t, because lawyers are pussies.
As a third year biglaw associate long ago, I watched a “top-flight” partner argue a summary judgment motion in court. He clung to the lectern and shook the whole time. He was pathetic. I realized then that he was an excellent salesman but sucked in court. Shame on the client’s in-house counsel who allowed his company to be raped with legal fees. His routine was to overbill alll cases and then settle on very bad terms on the eve of trial.
I always really enjoy these.
I’m not Roxana, but if I were, I would say, dudes…if I wanted your writing advice, I ask for it. kthxbai
I’d
-139
Rox is a jobless loser.
I enjoy reading these posts because the writing develops the characters well and has vivid imagery. The topics are timely and give us insight into the experiences of laid-off lawyers, as well as still-practicing lawyers. The stories sound real, and if they are not, they are close enough to what actually happens to be genuinely informative. I hope Roxana IS developing this into a book, or writing another one.
Even on the transactional side, the experience gained at BigLaw can be very narrow. After 5 years I knew a lot about some pretty sophisticated work, but I couldn’t competently draft a promissory note. I had always handed that off to “the promissory note lawyers.”
Practicing in SmallLaw really broadened my skills and made me a better lawyer because I understood better how all the pieces fit together, I bore the responsibility for the matters I worked on, and I got to know my clients as real people. My BigLaw experience stood me in good stead, however. I was able to do things that the smaller firms could not have taught me, because they just didn’t have enough experience in large complex matters. Ultimately, when I worked at a MidLaw firm, I think I got the best of both worlds.
Something important I realized: Most legal skills can be developed over time, if you don’t already have them. To be a smart lawyer, however, you first have to be smart.
@132 – You are truly a nitwit.
132 fails to understand the many, many purposes of a deposition, and has clearly never taken one.
143 AND 144 – Roxana
Fine. Enough with this. I am tired of pretending.
I AM ROXANA!!!!!!!!!
132 here and I’ve taken and defended depositions, albeit not a ton of them. I’m at a small firm and this deposition style would be considered an enormous waste of time and money. The writer herself said that the only reason the associate proceeded as she did was because she was so afraid she would miss something, not because she had some grand vision. Doing that and then having a big “Gotcha!” hours later is not some brilliant litigation strategy. I can see getting the guy to admit he had control over a bank account by going through statements, but hours upon hours of going through statements?
And anybody who uses a Blackberry in church is truly an asshole.
142, you’re exactly right. I came out of school in a down market and started at a MidLaw. I was junior, midlevel and senior associate for the first three years to just a couple of partners, so I learned a whole lot about different aspects of corporate, securities and transactional practice, and some of it was trial by fire, but the partners and other associate were nice about teaching. Working there was not an ego thing. The deals may have not have been as high dollar and without some of the really creative Wall Street tricks, but everything else is the same, and I didn’t spend my whole time on diligence and closing checklists. That firm also had first years doing depos, and people got trial experience very quickly.
On the flipside, at my BigLaw with actual transactional work, when we hire BigLaw midlevels, they (like BigLaw litigators) can talk a nice game, but they are missing years of very basic experience. I can’t use them at their billing rates, and it’s damn frustrating.
Kids! If you actually want to DO – you must go to a firm or a practice group where you don’t simply fill some junior associate grunt role year after year in the hopes that you might be the ONE to whom they decide to teach substantive legal practice.
136, 137, 139, 142 = Roxana
Will the real Roxana please stand up?
Anyone who thinks that litigators are the real lawyers is a freakin’ idiot. Millions of dollars in endless discovery requests is not what the law is all about. And for those who think you can get good transactional experience at a midlaw firm, well …
when (and, admittedly, if) the economy comes back to life, let’s see who the banks and hedge funds are hiring for in house – former midlaw associates or former Biglaw associates. Regardless of what kind of experience you may or may not have, what good does it do you if you can’t get hired anywhere that actually does the work you’re looking for?
who the eff would want to do transactional? Hello? BORING!
Top talent litigates. Everyone else wishes they could.
LEAVE MY BABY ALONE!
– Roxy’s mama san
Can we start a petition on having these worthless columns stop!!?? Is this O magazine or what??
LOL @ 146
Many partners go out of their way to sabatoge an associate’s career by telling him/her how bad he/she is. Why? An associate who thinks he/she can’t do anything right (1) will not feel as entitled to a salary increase; (2) will not feel he/she has much to offer to other firms and won’t interview elsewhere; and (3) will not feel he/she can strike out on his/her own.
Here me, every single attorney who reads this. You are a professional. Your profession upholds the law and uses the law to help people. There are millions of Americans who need legal help right now. You may not be the best lawyer yet and you may not make the most money, but you have the ability to use the law to help people and you can and will survive. Believe in yourself, and go change the world!
146 = Roxana
154 = Roxana
150 = Roxana
158, 159, 160 – Roxana
Giovanna is packing a tranny?
“Anyone who desires to do anything other than mindless discovery review avoids litigation like the plague.”
Right. Because junior transactional associates don’t do anything mindless. From what I could tell, BIGLAW junior associates in corporate did nothing but check for spelling and formatting mistakes.
I thought this was beautifully written and am appalled at the comments. Ugh. You people are so depressing.
1-165 = Roxana
1-166 = Roxana
You all can hate on me all you want but just know I’m coming back bigger, stronger, better. You can’t keep a good woman down (not without a lot of force, wise guys). Your venomous comments are like blasts of cum in the eye. They sting a bit, sure, but they teach you so many parables about this fucking shit life we all get.
– Roxy
Roxana, this charade has gone on long enough. I am calling bullshit on this piece – large chunks of it appear (particularly Giovanna’s comments about her difficulties in the new job) very closely resemble something sent around by Technolawyer a couple of days ago, when a lawyer named “Dawn” makes very similar comments.
Visit http://www.technolawyer.com and download the
7/6/2009 article entitled “BigLaw: Senior Associates Can Still Learn New Tricks” to see what I mean.
–Shocked, Shocked!
167 and 168 = Roxana
164 = Roxana
I’m calling BS again. Roxana is a pseudonym for Kash. This is all 100% fiction. Look at it closely. Every post is a caricature of life as a biglaw lawyer playing into all the stereotypes. But the author has clearly never actually worked a day in biglaw or even gone to law school. Sure some of us have experienced one or two of these things, which makes it believable at first, but no one experiences ALL of these stereotypical biglaw scenarios that Kash (oops, I mean Roxana) pretends to experience every week.
do girls really cry this much?
I’ve had just about enough of this biglaw bashing. I don’t know what firms you all work for, maybe mine’s just better at developing young associates, but I’ve gotten a lot of great experience as a young associate. I suspect, however, that this can be done at most firms. You just need to show a little confidence in youself and you’ll get the responsibility. It’s precisely the mentality of people like Roxana and Giovanna that hold them back, not anything intrinsic to biglaw itself. In school it’s all about what you know, but in the firm it’s assumed everyone knows it all (or at least close to it). Now it’s all about how hard you beat your chest.
76: “if” retarded? A proofing error in a post lambasting the writer for not proofing? Idiot.
173 = drank too much firm koolaid
174 = Roxana
Since when is a 4th year considered a “senior associate”?
Otherwise, excellent post. Relevant and a pleasure!
” Now it’s all about how hard you beat your [concave, pale] chest.”
177 = Roxana
Excellent story. Dead-on. Best story I’ve read on ATL in quite a while.
Excellent story. Dead-on. Best story I’ve read on ATL in quite a while.
180 and 181: Roxana
Wow, I really wish that I could be a gay man in NY who suddenly decided he couldn’t handle being a gay man anymore and who decided to become a woman, who then convinced his BFF David Lat to pay him way too much money to blog about being a laid off female attorney, even though I’m a voluntarily unemployed transexual “writer”, who made up half of the stuff for my blog wholecloth since, you know, I don’t have any actual authentic experiences to work off of…
Then I could be just like Roxanna!
Look, assholes, if you don’t want to read Notes from the Breadline, don’t. This series has been out long enough so that you know essentially what to expected in format, style, and, sadly, depressing content.
If you want to complain about complainers (irony) in your spare time, you should either 1) spend your time better so you don’t get fired and end up learning the hard way about the unemployment blues or 2) since you’re already fired and have so much time, be nice to people who are still actually somewhat productive.
184: Roxana
A lot of wisdom here. You’re a good writer.