Cut Your Losses, or Finish Law School? An ATL Debate

By David Lat & Elie Mystal

Martin Luther dropped out of law school - and so can you.

At what point should you give up on your dream of becoming a lawyer? It’s a question on many people’s minds lately. Whether they were laid off during the recession and haven’t been able to get back in, or if they’ve just graduated law school to the triumphant sounds of crickets, people are wondering when it’s time to stop throwing good money (and effort) after bad.

It’s a question some people start asking before they even graduate from law school. With the school year getting underway, returning law students are once again wondering whether or not they made the right choice when they matriculated to law school in the first place.

Earlier this week, Lat received this question from a 2L at a top-eight law school:

Hi David. I’ve got a dilemma and it’s really eating me up and I was wondering if you could give me some advice. Here are the salient points:

* I’m at [redacted] — an awesome school.
* It’s a crappy economy and I don’t anticipate getting a job anytime soon.
* My 1L grades are A-, B+, B, B, B-, B-, B-, B-.
* I’m not sure I really want to spend my life being a lawyer. It seems like such a boring profession.
* I think I would be really happy being a public interest attorney, like working at the DA’s office or on Capitol Hill. I get excited about those jobs — but they pay nothing and are super-hard to get.
* I’m about $70K in debt — so I’ve invested so much!

People tell me that a JD is a great credential to get. I just don’t know if it’s worth it to finish the degree. It’s so darn expensive. Realistically, if I stay the course I’ll graduate with $170K in debt. If I don’t finish, I’ll never have the degree and the prospects that come with it.

I feel that long-term, over a 40-year career, it could be good to have the law degree — it’s from [redacted], not from a lower-ranked school.

Should I finish law school or walk away?

Mwahahaha — David isn’t here, Mrs. Torrance.

Just kidding. Lat is here, and he will answer your question in a second. But first, let Elie explain why you should run, now…

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Non-Sequiturs: 09.02.10

By David Lat & Elie Mystal

* Wasn’t there a guy — black guy, big ears — who specifically tried to stop this kind of thing from happening? [AltTransport]

* Are you a Biglaw associate with a family? You should despair check out this advice. [Life's Work]

* Tiny crustaceans have been found in New York City tap water, possibly rendering it unfit for consumption under the dietary laws of kashrut (kosher). Elie’s take: “I refuse to believe in a God who cares about this s**t.” [OUkosher.org via Consumerist]

* The “Top 100 Women of Weed” features four fierce females: Jessica Corry, Allison Margolin, Jeralyn Merritt, and Marjorie Russell. [CelebStoner via TalkLeft]

* Barry Scheck — the DNA evidence expert who helped free O.J. Simpson, and who also founded the Innocence Project — talks about the 258 cases in which the Innocence Project has secured post-conviction DNA exonerations. [Big Think]

* Are you an aspiring law professor? Here’s a conference that might interest you. [Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law / Arizona State University]

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Meet Miss England — She’s a Law Student!

By David Lat

Another day, another law student turned beauty queen. If you can’t get a legal job in this economy, you might as well settle for a free car and a year’s supply of make-up, right? It’s certainly better to get the cosmetics for free than to steal them — just ask Caroline Giuliani (Rudy Giuliani’s attractive daughter, who could herself be a beauty queen.)

Last week we wrote about Chantal Raymond, a gorgeous graduate of Harvard Law School who was recently crowned Miss Jamaica World. Today brings beauty pageant news from across the pond, reported by the Telegraph:

Jessica Linley, 21, defeated 60 other contestants to win the title at the annual pageant in Birmingham. The statuesque blonde – who wants to be a solicitor – will now represent her country at the Miss World contest in China next month.

No, not that kind of solicitation — although the luscious Linley could make a mint in that older but less learned profession. “Solicitor” and “barrister” are British terms for “lawyer.” (For more on the difference between the two, see here.)

Let’s learn more about Linley — for example, where does she go to school? — and maybe see another photo or two….

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Career Center: A Resource for Researching Large Law Firms

By Above the Law

Just a reminder that the 2010 summer associate survey results have been incorporated into the Summer Associate Program sections within each of the Firm Snapshots. So be sure to visit the Career Center, where you’ll find inside information about the summer programs at all the major law firms. Here are some examples:

  • Lunches at this firm are limited to 10 “traditional” lunches budgeted at $65 each, and 20 “casual” lunches budgeted at $15 each.  But if the wining and dining, long hours, and BlackBerrys aren’t your thing, the firm gives a few summer associates the opportunity to spend an additional four to six weeks on a public service project at their full firm salary.
  • With 93% of summer associates receiving offers in 2009, no start date deferrals, a summer associate weekend retreat on Catalina Island, and a trip to Disneyland, this firm has its summer associates feeling like they’re summering at the happiest Biglaw firm on earth.
  • Unsociable types need not apply to this firm, which summer associates confirm lives up to its “very social” and “fratty” reputation.  In addition to a full calendar of after-work events, a summer associate weekend retreat is held in Beverly Hills for more socializing, schmoozing, and a bit of training.
  • Summer associates who share the same entrepreneurial spirit as this firm will thrive in the free-market assignment system, where summers are in control of their workload and who they work with, and have no qualms about needing to “reach out to attorneys for assignments, mentorship and feedback.”
  • Summer associates have to “[b]e prepared to be on top of [their] game all the time” at this firm, where social events are as equally important as work product quality.

For information on summer programs and associate life at all the top firms, visit the Career Center.

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Hard Stats About Female Equity Partners

By Elie Mystal

Today Am Law released an exhaustive report about female equity partners at major law firms — equity partners, not to be confused with non-equity partners (who are really glorified associates that firms slap with the “partner” label in order to look good when folks like BBLP or Jezebel come calling). The numbers aren’t going to surprise any woman who is seriously considering a career in law.

But just because they’re not surprising doesn’t make them any less depressing. From the report:

The data compiled for this first systematic look at the issue is presented below. When we reviewed it, two numbers immediately jumped out. First, women make up only 17 percent of partners at the firms we surveyed, even though they have represented about 51 percent of law school graduates in the last 20 years. Second, of the women partners who work at multi-tier firms, 45 percent have equity status. In comparison, 62 percent of the male partners at these firms have equity.

Retention issue much? At 17 percent, you’re talking about a serious glass ceiling sitting on top of women at major law firms. With spikes pointing downard. And holes so small you can’t possibly fit squeeze through them if you are carrying any extra weight, or a baby….

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Caption Contest Finalists: ‘Linen Closet Associates’

By David Lat

Last week, we asked for possible captions for this strange photo:

Vote for your favorite from the eight funny finalists, after the jump.

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The World Hates Lawyers: Mainstream Media Manages to Criticize Biglaw Summers AND Public Sector Lawyers in the Same Breath

By Elie Mystal

Earlier this week, Conor Friedersdorf, writing for The Atlantic, poured a big bottle of haterade all over the legal profession. More specifically, he criticized the way “Ivy League” lawyers are recruited, and the “palpable sense of entitlement” they exhibit even when they don’t take Biglaw bucks and instead work for the government. Here’s the set up:

The details of how elite law and business consulting firms recruit astonish me every time I hear them. Even getting an interview often requires attending an Ivy League professional school or a very few top tier equivalents. Folks who succeed in that round are invited to spend a summer working at the firm, the most sane aspect of the process.

But subsequently, they participate in sell events where they’re plied with food and alcohol in the most lavish settings imaginable: five star resort hotels, fine cigar bars, the priciest restaurants.

And here’s the money shot, one that is careening around the legal blogosphere like Billy Joel trying to get back from the Hamptons before the hurricane hits:

Though it isn’t defensible, it is unsurprising that a lot of people who eschew offers to work at these firms, favoring public sector work instead, imagine that they are making an enormous personal sacrifice by taking government work. The palpable sense of entitlement some of these public sector folks exude is owed partly to how few of “our best and brightest” do eschew the big firm route (due partly to increasing debt levels among today’s graduates, no doubt).

Really? You want to do this now? You want to talk smack about the people on the bottom rung of this totem pole, while willfully ignoring the clients, partners, law schools, and state governments that generate huge sums of wealth off the backs of the palpably entitled?

Fine. Let me take off my glasses, and we’ll step outside…

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Legal Eagle Wedding Watch: Badgered

By Laurie Lin

Before we go hard-core with the lawyerly nuptials, we must mention a couple of recent Vows columns that are worth a look. First, this offbeat pair had three children together before finally deciding, at the ages of 63 and 39, to tie the knot. And the geriatric groom sounds way too horny: “I lusted after Nina, and still do, in a very primal way.” Yuck. If you’re over 40 and not John Slattery, Pierce Brosnan, or Captain Jean-Luc Picard, we don’t want to hear about your primal lust.

Then there’s this uncomfortable write-up, in which the couple cheerfully airs a story that makes the groom sound like a massive cad at best (he “shacked up” with someone else while she was studying abroad and failed to mention that detail in the cheesy love letters he was sending her). “I’m still pretty incredulous that she’s with me,” says the wannabe-player groom. So are we.

On to this week’s slate of newlyweds, which we believe sets a new record for number of Harvard and Yale degrees:

1. Anne Catherine Savage and Zachary Podolsky

2. Elena Lalli and Guillermo Coronado

3. Caroline Lopez and Nicholas Miranda

4. Alexandra Denniston and Caleb Schillinger

Read more about these couples — and vote for your favorite — after the jump.

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Porn-Posing Canadian Judge Puts Away the Gavel — For Now

By David Lat

Yesterday we wrote about Madam Justice Lori Douglas, a Canadian judge in Manitoba who, in her pre-robescent days, apparently posed for nude pictures — while engaged in such activities as bondage, sex toy play, and oral sex. These photographs apparently made their way on to an interracial porn website called DarkCavern.com (without Douglas’s knowledge or consent, according to her husband — who claims he posted the pics during a bout with depression).

The pictures came to light when an ethics complaint was filed against Justice Douglas and her husband, matrimonial lawyer Jack King. A former client of King, an African-Canadian gentleman by the name of Alex Chapman, claims that King sexually harassed him by showing him the porn pics of Lori Douglas and encouraging him (Chapman) to have sexual relations with Douglas. According to Chapman, King suffers not just from depression but from “Jungle Fever”: he is titillated by African-Canadian men getting it on with white women.

Justice Douglas did not comment to CBC News, which broke the story. But she has taken other action in the wake of the scandal….

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Give Your Legal Writing Nine Lives

By Adrian Dayton

“If you build it, he will come.”

– Voice heard by Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams

Writing a book, blog, article or white paper are all great ways to get noticed and build relationships in the legal industry. Unfortunately, practicing lawyers confront great demands on their time, and even though they have good intentions, the work of creating this type of content is often delegated to associates or put off altogether. Part of the problem is that writing blog posts and articles is a loss leader. You spend too much time writing without business coming in, and soon enough you’ll be out of business.

Here is where social media and email marketing comes in. Every article and piece of content you create no longer has just one life. Now it can easily have nine. Hopefully one of these nine lives will give you the extra motivation to start writing more.

Life 1: Blog.

The law blog is your home base for all your new content. Creating blog posts on a regular basis is the single most powerful tool for business development in the online world. The search engines love fresh content, and once you have enough content on your blog, you will create a steady flow of traffic to your site….

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