I am a jobless rising 3L at Michigan and I want to kill myself.

It's only just begun.... And about time.

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The ship be sinking.

BOB DELL* LIED HALF THE FIRST YEARS DIED

*Bob Dell is the MP of Latham. At First Year Academy he assured everyone that "there was a place for them" at Latham. To date no other V10 or even V20 has laid off half the first year class in one office.

I was inclined not to follow through to the lawschucks article until Elie mentioned the existence of a Venn diagram! Who could resist the Venn?!

You are all idiots!

SKADDEN SECURE.

Bob Dell, please explain to me why a "well diversified" firm would layoff 45% of associates in one office (New York). If Latham were "well diversified," wouldn't you need those associates to do the work that continues to come in during a downturn because Latham is "well diversified" into countercyclical practice groups?

When Biglaw laid me off, I cried, cried, cried all the way home.

#2,

You & other rising 3Ls have a whole year to find a job. Stop complaining. Of course, your chances would be better if not for the sandwich stealing taint that hangs over Michigan.

How about some charts on hiring?

Mystal went to Havard therefore he is smart.

Lawshucks

Bob Dell why you gotta fuck with peoples' careers bro? If you hadn't overhired those first years could have gone to firms that would actually have work for them.

Don't buy into the "good news" that the rate of lay-offs is slowing. The fact is that lay-offs are continuing. The rate of lay-offs must inevitably slow as we approach an asymptote. But the asymptote is reached (and lay-offs stop) when all lawyers are billing at least 1900 hrs/year. We are nowhere near that point as there are still a significant number of underutilized attorneys in the system. Anyone who thinks that firms are going to start hiring again (except to fill the rare niche spot) is delusional. What we are going through is a major reset. I predict that the number of new hires over the next 10 years will stabilize to equal 1/2 of actual lawyer retirements/deaths. This is equal to about 20 percent of the number of new grads being churned out at ABA approved law schools. If you are in law school (and either not at a T20 and/or not in the top 10%), I suggest you start rethinking your career goals. At age 22-26, you are still young enough to do something in engineering/science.

I don't get it.

15 all those engineering/science jobs have gone overseas. Americans don't do work anymore.

Funny how not a single law school has come forward to lower tuition.

Only solution to the oversupply problem is to organize a mass suicide.

THAT CHART DOES NOT INCLUDE STEALTHS.

Latham stealthed about 200 associates before they officially laid off the 190.

Stop being a mouth piece for these firms and report the real fucking numbers.

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No, americans don't work. We borrow money and spend. We can thank BIG FINANCE for the strategy of lending here and investing overseas. Thanks fuckers for pwning the shit out of our economy.

*gets laid off, collects unemployment, doesn't even bother trying to pay off my debt because it's hopeless*

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17, why should law schools lower tuition when they have far more than enough demand from students able to pay the full tuition, backed by highly accessible subsidized student loan programs designed to make education more "affordable"? Lawyers have never been good at math and as liberals tend to shun cost-benefit analysis.

17, 15 here. You, sir, are correct. At least with a science/engineering degree, you'll have survival skills that a JD cannot offer. To wit:

Civil Engineering degree: Building bunkers and panic rooms.

Bioscience degree: Growing tomatoes and other "plants" hydroponically.

EE degree: Building crystal radios using lemon juice/pennies as power source.

22, people are going to figure it out sooner or later or government is going to start regulating tuition. it's a more politically sound solution than pulling financial aid.

We need more, not fewer, layoffs.

25 is retarded.

11 - You said taint. hehehe Not sure I want a taint sandwich.

Showing the firms that laid off the most attorneys is useless data. Show us top firms as a percentage of associate population!

23 anyway, if you get one of those degrees post layoff and actually try to work in the field, you're looking at about a 50k salary for at least 11 years of schooling. that's fucking retarded. you'd make more as a shitlawyer and have less debty.

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is there a way to get unbanned from commenting? what if i sign up for an account?

Former Thatcher partners keep calling me and saying...things. Angry, sexual things.

24, did you expect the thousands of students paying full fare at TTT schools over the past decades to "figure it out sooner or later" as well? Don't hold your breath. Do you seriously think Obama will mandate private schools to not charge more than $X a year? They would have done so already to prevent places like Chapman from charging $38k a year.

The differences between the TTT students and T14 students, especially in math savvy and the ability to make life decisions, are not that great.

15 - I'm going to kick your asymptote.

33, it'd be fucking easy for he government to negotiating financing/funding for a set cost.

This is what health insurers do. Why the fuck should the government not do the same thing when they're providing the bulk of the financing (at least indirectly through that fed guaranty).

If not for that fed guaranty, demand would go WAY down because people couldn't pay and tuition would drop, so the law schools might as well play ball.

33,

It works like this.

Government says, we'll provide the guaranty for the financing, but only if tuition is X dollars.

The schools would have no choice but to comply because without federally guaranteed funding very few people could pay.

18 - No shit. It bugs me not to see PH on that list. They stealthed way more than the 40-something that were laid off in March. People are in fear of the summers leaving, like they're human rights observers.

28 -- here's a project for your lazy ass. Take the LS charts, compare them to the NALP numbers and presto, you'll have your "worthy" percentages.

YOU RAT BASTARDS DON'T PUBLISH THE CHART IF YOU'RE NOT GOING TO INCLUDE THE STEALTHS. YOU'RE JUST ACTING AS A MOUTH PIECE FOR THE FIRMS, REPORTING WHATEVER NUMBERS THEY CARE TO ANNOUNCE

36, no what happens is that the elite schools will drop government-funded student loans, because they have far more than enough demand, and the politicians will get lambasted as racists for not allowing poor loan-using students (read: minorities) to go to Harvard/etc. Thus, it will never happen.

When is Elie going to get out of bed today?

4 year experienced top grad B.S Chemical Eng. , works in office, earns 110 k/year with excellent pension benefits and matching plans. 40 hrs a week, every other friday off.

fresh out of college top grad petroleum engineer, 70k/yr +10k bonus , same benefits as above. Not the best, but not bad.

42 -but it still sucks, should just be a doctor. Requires less intelligence.

Speaking of stealths, I still don't understand how Ballard Spahr has been able to avoid acknowledging laying off north of 30 associates, and politely asking several partners to leave. Oh, that's right, they're irrelevant.

29/30. If you can't get a real job in the legal profession with your TTT JD, and you are too lazy or debt averse to get an engineering/science degree, there's always:

Way up west (way up west),
there's a story told (there's a story told)
about a bunch of cowboys.

Tiny and bold. (tiny and bold)
Ridin' tall. (ridin' tall)
Tall in the saddle!
Herdin' cows the size of schnauzers
but they're cattle!

YIPPIE AYE AY, MINI SIRLOIN BURGERS!
YIPPIE AYE OH, MINI SIRLOIN BURGERS!
YIPPIE AYE AY, MINI SIRLOIN BURGERS, HA!

I hope that plays in your head all day now. And it will. The more you try to make it go away, the louder it will get.

Don't forget Shearman & Sterling. They're not done laying people off quietly. Strangely enough, the departure memos seem to all be flying every three months on the first of the month.

The ship be sinking...

#11, #3 here. At least the '09ers got their $3000/week . If they were smart, they saved some of it so they can start paying down their loans for the year they are being deferred. I do not have that luxury.

I am also serious about wanting to kill myself.

11/48 - If you're really having those feelings, go talk to Dean Baum. It's not something to joke about.

Good luck.

--Unemployed MLaw Alum

I took my son to camp at a SMU like college this weekend. Waitress at J Alexanders was a rising senior totally committed to going to law school. I'd give her a link to this blog if she was over 21, but did everything I could to talk her out of it. FAILED.

She just thinks it would be helpful to have a law degree before she gets married.

#49, I have tried to speak to Dean Baum but no luck. And the time slot reserved for law students at CAPS is right in the middle of a block of classes.

Seriously what the hell am I supposed to do wtih 200k in debt and no way to pay it off?

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37- If they included stealth, Paul Hastings would be number one. They started these layoffs in the Fall of '07 and continue to pick off associates by ones and twos. My friends in LA tell me that the big one is coming once the summers leave. De-equitized partners have also been leaving, but very quietly.

51 - Dean Baum can be tough to get a hold of, but he was actually really helpful the one time I had an issue and needed someone to talk to. I'd show up at his office and be persistent. Don't let his minders tell you that he's too busy--let them know that you need to talk to him and can wait.

As to what you're supposed to do with $200k of debt -- I don't know. I'm looking for a job myself, and the options seem to be: (1) contract work (sucks, but it'll pay some of the bills); (2) government work (slow hiring, but there are postings, including some for people with no work experience); and (3) some small and mid-sized firms are actually still hiring.

You might not be getting your $160k V20 dream job right now anymore (...and that's the only reason many of us signed up for this), which sucks, but it's not everything. I understand that the debt can feel crushing, but there are better options than giving up. Cut expenses (live with friends, family, parents, SO, Craigslist roommate; don't lease the 3-series; etc.) and don't add to the debt with credit cards more than you have to.

Oh, and definitely make sure that you pass the bar. Not passing happens, but it's the last thing you need in this environment.

Good luck to you.

54 - I know you're trying to be helpful, but you're still suggesting jobs that probably won't pan out.

51/24/everyone who's done the math and despaired:

1) A LOT of people are in the same position.

2) It's not your fault you haven't been able to get out of this position. Houdini couldn't fix this. You're not suffering from laziness or lack of vision or anything else. There is no magic solution that everyone else figured out and you didn't.

3) The people promoting harebrained schemes and new degrees in engineering haven't thought it through. They're just trying to say something encouraging because that's what you do. Personally, it makes me more nervous because I think, "But my loan payments, in harbrained scheme, is completely unworkable, plus taking time to implement the scheme will put me in default, so does that mean I'm not trying hard enough?" Then it makes me feel like the whole thing is my fault. But if you look at the number of graduates, the number of layoffs, the salaries paid in legal and non-legal jobs, and assorted business start up calculations, you can see that it doesn't make sense. Sometimes plans don't work, and people hate to admit that because it feels like they're saying, "Yeah, you ARE screwed."

4) Don't get down on yourself in any way. You made it through a top school. I'm sure you have other accomplishments to be proud of. Just because an entire industry failed, it doesn't mean you will not have the life you want.

5) If you want to do something, look up groups suing student loan companies, and legislators exploring the issue, and blogs and things like that. Might as well get your story out there if you can. People still think all lawyers are rich, and the faster we destroy that misconception, the easier it will be for strapped graduates trying to find non-legal work.

6) Suicide will make everyone around you feel worse. If you do nothing else today, you spared your family that pain. Since anyone contemplating suicide is in incredible pain, that's a real accomplishment, and something else to be proud of.

7) Please don't waste time trying to talk to your law school dean. His job is to make money off of law students. If you're not helping him do that, then he's not going to help you. Call a suicide hotline, a friend, or a family member. The law school is just a business. They're not your buddy.

PS - I know this may be excessivelly picky, but I HATE that line, "You might not get your dream job, but..."

First, anyone not graduating in the top 20% or so has already come to terms with not getting into big law. No need to act like they're overreaching by hoping to actually pay off the loans.

Second, for new lawyers, legal jobs jump from 160k to <40k. It's not like people are complaining about not getting a beamer.

Third, there really wasn't an opportunity to learn this unless you were very, very familiar with the finances of recent legal graduates before law school. Personally, I interviewed eight attorneys prior to entering law school, read all the ABA publications and US News Reports, talked to career services about what to expect, networked constantly before graduation, and all I ever heard was, "You'll be fine. Your first job may not be your dream job but it'll pay the bills."

Unfortunately, THIS DOES NOT APPLY IF YOU GRADUATED AFTER 1995! I didn't know that. But every single person I talked to had graduated long enough ago that their student loans were $50k-ish, at a time when salaries were still comparable. That's a HUGE difference. When I got my payment calculator third year, I was like, "Oh, shit." But by then it was too late.

Finally, people who say this are under the hugely misguided impression that your law degree could qualify you for a $60k or above non-legal position, right out of law school. That's just not true.

So let's just stop saying this to each other, please? It's really, really not helping.

Is it possible the student loan crunch of - compounding interest, payments that don't affect principle, penalties, fees, and, of course non-dischargeability in bankruptcy - could be comparable to the draft in the 1960s?

Could it almost be considered a choice of conscience to just take off for Canada?

There are similarities: It primarily affects the poor; the odds of an individual succeeding are very low; and it's a system established by and for the benefit of old men who are making money off the mess.

I'm not necessarily considering it. But I wouldn't look askance at someone who decided not to live the next 30 years working long hours as an indentured servant to some unregulated loan servicer.

55/56 - I know you're just trying to be helpful, but...

Look into suing lenders? Seriously? I like my strategy of targeting government jobs, small and mid-sized firms, and contract work.

As I said, I'm out of work myself, and I think those have a better chance of working out than other options. Do you actually disagree with this? If so, what are you suggesting that this person (and the few thousand like him, and the thousands of laid off T14/V50/etc. like me) do?

Also, what is the problem with "you might not get your dream job, but..."? It's true, isn't it? Yes, that person might not get his [insert firm name] M&A position, but there are still jobs out there (even if many of them are contract jobs) that won't force him to eat ramen in his parents' basement.

nice post 55

59 - which part? the part about suing lenders?

"I like my strategy of targeting government jobs, small and mid-sized firms, and contract work."

These strategies do not have a realistic chance of working right now for the recent graduate.

- Contract work has dried up, and the pay is plummeting. Most placement companies aren't even taking resumes.

- Mid-sized firms have their pick of fifth year associates, and have started advertising for things like, "Red head with $200k in business and three to five years experience in blah blah blah..." Even if the posting is general, they want something really specific, and it's not a recent grad.

- Government jobs are getting thousands of applicants per opening. Either they screen for grades and prestige, or they just hire someone's cousin.

Also, I didn't say "go out and sue a lender." I said make sure you keep an eye out for class action lawsuits you can join. Sallie Mae and someone else just lost big class action suits in the last couple years. Don't be left out. Not because it's going to fix everything - it won't. But the more people keeping an eye on the lenders, the better right now.

"If so, what are you suggesting that this person (and the few thousand like him, and the thousands of laid off T14/V50/etc. like me) do?"

- Keep applying for openings every day, but realize how unrealistic your chances are. Otherwise you're just setting yourself up to think it's your fault when nothing comes through.

- Move in with your parents to save money NOW. Spend nothing, pay the minimum on any debt, and hoard cash.

- Do what you have to do to make sure you NEVER miss a student loan payment, because the minute you do, you'll start an avalanche of fees and interest hikes that you will never dig out from under.

- Don't be hard on yourself, and especially don't pretend anyone who is in this position should have done something else or can now just run out and apply for government jobs and everything will be fine if they just stop whining. It's not true.

- Write a letter to your congressman, your bar, and your aba chapter outlining your situation, and demanding a rollback of exploitative lending fees and practices. Senator Carl Levin might be a good bet - he led the fight against the credit card companies.

- Tie your plight to the economy. Law students are supposed to be able to spend more money than most people, but it's all going to the loan companies. That's not good for the overall economy, it's only good for a few states where the lenders are based.

- Look up those states and write the representatives. It won't help unless you live there, but it might make you feel better.

- Remember how rough this all is, and think twice about buying into the law school prestige whore thing where you call people "loser" for not graduating at the top, not getting hired right out of school, not staying with the same firm 20 years, and so on.

That's all I've got. I didn't make this situation. I'm not the only one who didn't see it coming. I'm not going to feel like a failure if I can't fix it. Sometimes you're screwed. (Technically, the American revolution was fought over debt, not taxes). I'm not the first person to get screwed, and I won't be the last. Eventually this will all shake out, and in the meantime, there's not a lot I can do except try to minimize the damage.

"Also, what is the problem with "you might not get your dream job, but..."? It's true, isn't it?'

It's not true, and it sounds like blaming. Like if people would just stop whining everything would be fine. Perpetuating that attitude leads to people thinking suicide is a realistic response to $200k in non-dischargeable loans. I know you think it's encouraging, but I don't think it is. At all.

Also it minimizes the seriousness of the situation. Most people aren't looking at "job that pays just enough to live on." Most people are looking at, "job that sucks, looks awful on my resume, and doesn't pay enough to cover the bills anyway."

This isn't a Lifetime movie where the recent grad decides she'd rather have a family and a quiet life making just enough to be comfortable, and turns down the high stress job in the city.

Most of us would kill for the quiet job, but IT'S NOT AN OPTION RIGHT NOW. When you set it up as a false dichotomy, it makes it look like anyone who doesn't have a job is just being picky, and that isn't helpful.

There was a great idea in the comments at ABA Law Journal: Promote the idea of using volunteer work to pay off student loan debt.

I guess it would work like a Teach for America, or Peace Corps, type program?

It probably won't fly, since the loan companies are pretty influential, but they're paid for defaults by the government anyway, so maybe?

Jones Dizzle, my nizzle.