Pls Hndle Thx: I Can’t Quit You
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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Comments
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First to say
Elie is Racist.
Things like this wouldn't happen if women surrendered their assholes more frequently.
"...associates don’t advise companies how to run their businesses or decide whether to operate..."
Fallacious. Those associates who make themselves invaluable to the firm which employs them find that their input is valued, solicited and often implemented. If your advice is non grata, it is not because your superiors are rude, but rather because you are nescient and your advice is nugatory.
Unless you work at a big plaintiff side litigation shop, where you drive the litigation, you don't need to answer client's calls 24/7, new ideas are requisite; and you get a cut of whatever the firm brings in. It's a fun time.
Great advice....NOT
Poster 3/Jake:
You are callous to the plight of every day people and a snob. i hope your children are not admitted to a top school.
4 - What if you work at a small plaintiff side litigation shop? Do you still drive the litigation? Do you still get a cut of whatever the firm brings in? It it still fun?
Thx.
Jake would not have happened if women surrendered their assholes more frequently.
As someone who had one of those other careers for intelligent, driven, educated people who want to sell their products, etc. before becoming a lawyer, I can verify that almost every business is in a "service industry" and and has clients to serve who don't necessarily operate on a 9 to 5. So don't get too down about that.
As for not creating anything--there are all sorts of jobs at companies that create stuff, but you don't actually do the creating. Instead you just push papers around the product, maintain the product, or sell the product. Lawyers may not be able to point at a tangible object and say "we sell that" or "we build that," but the work we do generates cash as well or better than creating or selling or building tangible products.
If you want to create things, go be a starving artist or writer, work in a factory or construction, or possibly be an R&D engineer, and quit your bitchin'.
JaKe, I am going to pound you in the ass until you cry.
Nasty Nate
7, Yes. Working at a small, exclusive, plaintiff-side litigation boutique was the best career decision I ever made.
~Not 4
All the posters threatening JaKe with bodily harm fail to realize that, as members of the hoi polloi, they will never have the opportunity to ever be near, let along see him.
Dear Samwell,
Do gay men douche their asses after buttsex?
DL
and vodka looks like water always.
JaKe, I am going to rape you with my 12" hoi polloi.
12 wins
JaKe = 12 = 16
You are so pathetic.
Check the IP adresses, you moron.
-16
17, far be it from you to imagine that there are multiple people who may have the same viewpoint. Do you also believe in God and Glen Beck?
To reiterate, it is unlikely that JaKa (as well as I), transported about by aprivate driver, to and from sercured workplaces and penthouses, will ever have to mingle with the hoi polloi: you.
Who wants to take my temperature the naughty way?
DL
How does one check the IP addresses of other posters?
21 - you cant. JaKe is messing with you. He has nothing better to do.
anyone who frequents this site daily has already failed as a human being.
"hoi" means "the" in Greek. Stop being redundant.
JaKe, I am going to rupture your anal cavity with my Brita water pitcher.
and in English foreign articles lose that function. Try saying, "You are a member of hoi polloi," or "You, 24, are a member of the hoi polloi." Stop being dumb.
26=racist
23 - Nobody gives a shit about these inferior languages.
14 almost wins, but the correct answer is gin in this line of work.
Audioslave, speaking as a former biglaw assoc, quitting this gig was the best thing I ever did for myself. Just save up some money and get the heck outta there! Yes, working in a corporate office is also a grind. But perhaps you can think of something you really do enjoy, and figure out how to make that work for yourself.
4 and 7, small elite plaintiffs' firm is better than (relatively) huge plaintiffs' firm, but both are better than big defense firm. i've worked in all.
-not 11
Marin's office is perfumed with farts and soy sauce? Sounds like she needs to lay off the kung pao chicken from Panda Express.
Anyone care to suggest some names of well regarded plaintiffs' firms in NYC?
PS, before you leave work on your last day, try spreading this informational pamphlet around the office (link totally SFW) http://centennialsociety.com/business_reply/businessreply.htm
PS, before you leave work on your last day, try spreading this informational pamphlet around the office (link totally SFW) http://centennialsociety.com/business_reply/businessreply.htm
Looks like there is need for an open thread on plaintiffs' shops, ATL.
7&11 -
Yes, if its a small, exclusive plaintiff side botique, then the same rule applies.
Small & big are relative terms. For example, I consider a plaintiff side firm of 50 lawyers to be large.
Bottom line is that high-level plaintiff-side litigation is where its at. In terms of the money, the substance, etc.
The best set-up is a firm that is relatively small, but big enough to handle high value cases.
Also the best decision that I ever made.
- 4
4/37 -- I agree with everything you just said.
-11
I think what a lot of people don't realize is that life in corporate America is every bit as soul-sucking and meaningless as BigLaw life, it's just that people in corporate jobs don't have to work as many hours. The only people who work as hard as lawyers are those gunning for Director or Vice President positions, which are the only positions that pay as much as BigLaw lawyers make.
Believe me, I did 10 years in corporate America before crossing over to law. Unless you're one of the executives, all you ever do is "implement others' genius," except that they're not geniuses, they're morons.
Dilbert is not a lie.
Marin should have won the Nobel Prize for Literature.
"...when seated in an office perfumed with farts and soy sauce, law firm life can seem as pointless as intra-office mail...." = Win
Elie, substitute "shit" for "pie" and you've got it right...
39, I totally agree. There's a great (but new-agey and wacky) book out by Dee Hock, the founder of Visa, the credit card company. He talks a lot about how much hierarchical corporations suck, and suggests other ways that people could work together that suck less. Why is it that we live in a nominally open society, but in our day jobs, where we spend most of our waking hours, we accept living in a dictatorship?
39, but you generally don't have to obtain a professional degree, sit for a licensing exam, forgo 3 years of income and be subject to extra-office discipline/civil suits (malpractice) if you screw up when in corporate america. Plus, how many corporate gigs are you almost certainly guaranteed to be fired from, even if you do a great job, after a relatively short set period of time (i.e. not making partner after 7-8 years)?
Unionization is a good idea.
Dear Big Law,
You suck but you pay me real good. If you start paying me less we are going to have to break up.
Signed,
7th Year.
yes, unionization has done wonders for the manufacturing industry in this country.
Just realize that you and 99% of your compatriots won't be in BIGLAW longterm and appreciate it for what it provides: some good future contacts and a good income. The substance of the work isn't, generally, what will get you through it so don't sweat when some partner shrieks at you like a psycho. My professional life is far more satisfying now that I left BIGLAW, but I don't regret my BIGLAW years.
45 - yes, it HAS done wonders for manufacturing. it has improved working conditions and prevented management from taking advantage of labor. I suspect that what you are sarcastically alluding to is the financial mismanagement by executives that brought down GM, for example. that's not the result of unionization.
47 - 45 here. I was speaking more of the total flight of manufacturing jobs in this country and the transformation of the U.S. to a service based economy. A large part of GM's problem was precisely its labor costs. From the AFL/CAIO website:
As a share of total U.S. jobs, manufacturing has declined since its peak of 40 percent just after World War II to 27 percent in 1981 and now stands at about 12 percent.
I can't stop laughing at that ny estates lawyer who got convicted of more counts of fraus than his client who ripped off Brooke Astor
I don't understand the theory that you're job can't be rewarding unless you create an actual product. How rewarding is it to create and sell some over-priced piece of crap that no one really needs? It seems to me that pretty much every job has a service element to it, and pretty much every job has tedious aspects as well. Even if you have your own business, there will be aspects of running that business that are unpleasant, and you will probably put in just as many hours if not more. In summary: stop whining - it's a job.
Hey FYI ==> The SEC's 2010 summer program for 2Ls [1Ls only in NYC] is accepting apps through 12/15/09. Also, the SEC's advanced commitment program for clerks and 3Ls is accepting apps and closes 12/15/2009. For experienced attorneys, our Denver, Atlanta, Washington, and Fort Worth offices are now accepting apps for staff positions. The pay isn't close to BigLaw but there are many other aspects of the job that make it worth considering. Good luck to those who are interested.
Back in the day when I was creating something tangible for a job, and before there were blogs, Dilbert was our high-tech corporate version of abovethelaw. People would email the author tips and we would see every stupid corporate initiative that came out at my company in Dilbert within days.
The main differences from my personal experience:
1. If you hate your corporate job, but you work 9-5 with a half our lunch, take all your holidays, and almost never work weekends, its not that bad. Your outside interests, hobbies, and social life can be the focus of your life. If you hate your job in Biglaw, you basically hate your entire life. ( I never hated either my corporate job or my current Biglaw job)
2. The ratio of a-holes and douchebags is much higher in Biglaw. In general, the people I worked with at a large corporate high-tech company were easier to get along with and work with. The staff in Biglaw is mixed. Some are nice and willing to do work, others refuse to do anything and then complain about the fact they actually were asked to do something. Never experienced anyone like that in corporate life. We didn't have alot of staff either - one secretary for a whole department.
3. Huge difference - salary information. Everything and anything about your salary was confidential. You had no idea how much any of your peers were making. Salaries were generally out of whack amongst the group. Due to salary inflation during the tech-boom, the going rate for fresh-outs (analogous to first years) was higher than what they were paying senior people. The way to get a significant raise was to jump to another company. For whatever reason, companies would pay to bring someone new in, but wouldn't pay competitively to keep you there. Maybe that was just my company - a good portion of the company left to start their own or go to competitors. I went to a start-up and got a huge raise, and then was recruited by a competitor and got another huge raise 2 years later.
4. Salary. A talented senior engineer with an advanced degree was making about the same thing a first year at biglaw in the early 2000s. The difference was that the engineering salary levelled off at that level, with small raises going forwarded unless you went into management. Don't know how engineering salaries have faired, but they certainly don't go up like biglaw salaries do. On the other hand, corporate people have a nice lifestyle.
5. The work. Depends what your doing. R&D and product launch is very exciting and cutting edge. Product maintenance and minor updating is pretty boring.
6. Cubicle....Office
7. Perks at many start-ups rivalled the perks at Biglaw. Assume perks have disappeared everywhere in this economy.
8. Layoffs - happen all the time in corporate America, Biglaw no longer immune.
46 wins.
"As a share of total U.S. jobs, manufacturing has declined since its peak of 40 percent just after World War II to 27 percent in 1981 and now stands at about 12 percent."
Of course. We should have all signed up our 12 year olds to work for $2 a day. Then the companies would have stayed in the country.
There are a lot of woulda, coulda, shoulda's around this topic. We could have had the balls to stop china's currency manipulation, which benefitted their exports at our expense. We could have increased the tax rates on companies who shipped jobs overseas, to capture a share of those increased profits, which no one believes were ever really passed on to consumers. We could have strengthened our regulation of monopolies, to catch price fixing and other market manipulations.
Unfortunately, we did none of the above. It's a shame, but to blame it all on union insistence on a living wage shows a basic ignorance of economics.
right 54, Trickle down theory - to the extent it ever worked - doesn't work if the trickle goes to India, China, Mexico, and elsewhere
54: Exactly. Labor costs abroad are pennies on the dollar paid to any U.S. laborer - unionized or not. Wanting to nickle-and-dime on labor has nothing to do with unionization.
Good Gravy, 26, why do you want to ruin a good water pitcher in some nasty elitist's ass?
54 has it on the money. Except for the fact that globalization is an artificial construct of the corporate-bought lawyers who make up Congress and the corporate lawyers who relentlessly moved to devalue labor in America.
As a union organizer, i truly believe that lawyers are going to continue to promote the artificial personhood of corporations above the personhood of human beings until the society become so awful for all but the rich few that having no society by exterminating the lawyers will be a delicious option.