Associate Advice, Biglaw, pls hndle thx

Pls Hndle Thx: I Can't Quit You

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Ed. note: Have a question for next week? Send it in to advice@abovethelaw.com.

ATL –

I was wondering if you could do a post on (legal) coping mechanisms for surviving in BigLaw, besides the usual smoking, drinking, and sleeping with married partners.

BigLaw vs. Corporate America — what makes it so much worse? Is every Corporate America work environment this bleak and depressing?

Audioslave

Dear Audioslave,
I’ve spent a lot of time wondering why the commenters on Above the Law are, on average, thirty times more bitter than commenters on Dealbreaker. I think I’ve got it.
Law firms make a hellish trifecta: literal-minded nitpickers, a 24/7 service industry that creates nothing, and non-merit-based compensation. Unlike finance types or doctors, associates don’t advise companies on how to run their businesses or decide whether to operate; they are paid to paper the trail and implement others’ genius at their beck and call. Once emasculated, associates are measured according to Opposite Day, where precedent is good and new ideas are bad. And even when associates cobble together amazing No Third Parties clauses or blackline the shit out of opposing counsel’s first draft, they doesn’t see another dime. In fact, they’ll be lucky just to keep their jobs and be fleeced once again at year’s end for staff holiday gift contributions. This is all just to say that when seated in an office perfumed with farts and soy sauce, law firm life can seem as pointless as intra-office mail. Pls Hndle,Thx.
Even if you can never be happy at work, the key to coping is finding something on the outside that keeps you going. Not something corny like friends or family — more like Hapkido, presidential trivia, or being into the Titanic. These hobbies are cool in and of themselves, and when you get involved in their online communities, you get a whole new group of internet friends who also hate their jobs and are available to chat during the day. I’m telling you, my life changed when I discovered the Bedlington Terrier Club of America and The Bachelor discussion groups. I was no longer alone.
In any event, it seems you’ve already discovered the ATL online community, so you’re off to a great start. And if all else fails, you can always just quit the firm. Haha jk.
Your friend,
Marin
Elie answers the red courtesy phone, after the jump.

Wow, it sounds like Marin has been spending some “quality time” with Justice Scalia. But, just like Scalia, the “Wise Yenta” is essentially right.
The bottom line is that most educated people don’t want to work in a service industry. Most intelligent and driven people want to work for themselves. They want to sell their own product, or focus on their own research, or make money hand over fist with their superior financial instincts.
Law doesn’t look like a service industry on television. But there are professional prostitutes that spend less time servicing customers than lawyers. Attorneys are the weapons in other people’s disputes. Tools, if you will. And when you wake up one day and realize that you are an elite tool, that can cause some major bitterness and resentment.
But that’s only half of it. Most professional people believe that better and more prosperous days are right around the corner. Not so for a lot of Biglaw associates. They graduate from college with excellent credentials and could have chosen any number of rewarding and/or lucrative career paths. Instead, they chose to be well-compensated fry cooks, because it was safer. Now they are stuck making salaries they can’t possibly replicate without committing to more schooling, debt, and years off their professional lives. And their future involves continuing to serve partners until one day maybe they’ll graduate to the point where they are directly serving clients as a partner. You can’t work for a law firm for more than a week without hearing somebody say “making partner is like winning a pie eating contest where the prize is more pie.” Don’t forget: more pie + too much pie already = vomit.
I’m not saying everybody feels like this. Many, many people enjoy the law and honestly enjoy providing top-notch client services. These people are happy at the law firm. People don’t need a coping mechanism to deal with a job they love. I used to envy these people.
But for the ones that do not get excited when a client calls up at 4:00 p.m. on a Friday with a new legal issue, “bleak and depressing” doesn’t even begin to explain the living hell of re-editing a term sheet while your client barks orders at you from his balcony in the Bahamas.
Sorry, that’s not really advice. I don’t know what to tell you. I quit. But I still have dark dreams. I’m probably not the best guy to ask.
Looks like I picked the wrong day to quit drinking,
Glue Sniffer

And if Elie wasn’t abstaining, he’d say: “Also, drinking helps. A lot. Do you have a thermos? If not, get one. Trainer’s tip: rum and Coke looks a lot like Snapple if you get the proportions right.”
Do you have a question for next week’s Pls Hndle Thx? Send it to advice@abovethelaw.com.

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