Depressing Things

Gradenfreude: I Passed the Bar Exam, But I Still Mop the Floors at My Crappy Job

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Ed. note: Gradenfreude is a new series chronicling a recent law school graduate’s life after attending an unranked school. Feel free to email the author at TristanTaylorThomas@gmail.com, and he’ll respond ASAP. After all, it’s not like he has anything better to do.

I know that I complain about my job a lot, but when you have the experiences that I’ve got under my belt since graduating from law school, I think I have the right to complain. Personally, when I’m at work and thinking about how much I hate the job, I’ll sometimes wonder, “What could possibly make this worse?”

Last week, I found out.

I walked up to my boss as he was speaking to a coworker about the lack of intelligence required to do our job, and he said, “It’s not like we have a bunch of lawyers walking around here.” And my coworker responded, “Actually, now we do have one.” It was then that my boss grabbed a mop and said, “Tristan, just because you passed the bar exam doesn’t mean that you can’t clean the floor.”

Wow. I didn’t realize that it was possible, but my boss actually made me hate my job even more….

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Parent Cites Stepson’s Law School Debt In Suicide Note

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I write about law school debt, often and passionately, because at the end of the day there are real productive people who are getting ruined by taking out more money than they can reasonably pay back. Not all of these people are “deadbeats,” and not all of these people are too stupid to understand a loan agreement. Many of them are people who simply thought that in America education was the path to upward mobility.

But unfortunately, in America today, education is also the path towards financial instability, or even disaster. People who take the shot at bettering themselves through education can easily find themselves with bad jobs and a mountain of debt that will take decades to pay off.

It’s not just happening to kids. The New York Times had a big article yesterday that highlighted all of the parents who have taken loans out for their children’s education and now can’t pay off the loans. And since we’re talking about parents, we’re dealing with people who maybe don’t have decades to get their financial houses back in order.

In one shocking case, a man took his own life; in the suicide note, he said: “I can’t even answer the phone in my own home no more. I can’t live like this no more.”…

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Quote of the Day: And Then They Came for the Partners

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Bill Henderson

It’s kind of like the Hunger Games. You’re just trying to survive.

– an anonymous partner quoted by Professor William Henderson in a presentation today at Unlocking the Law: Building on the Work of Larry Ribstein. Professor Henderson noted that today many partners move laterally not for greater prestige or pay but for sheer survival.

(One factor that’s keeping partners up at night, after the jump.)

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Quote Of The Day: How Are Law Schools Like Bad Dates?

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Steven J. Harper

Every incentive they see encourages them to pump-and-dump: pump up demand for law students and dump debt-ridden graduates on a glutted market. Their unemployed graduates become someone else’s problem.

– Steven Harper, commenting on the typical law school business model that deans and their superiors reportedly employ to maximize their short-term profits.

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Washington Post Hops On The ‘Do Law Students Know How Stupid They Are’ Bandwagon

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Dear internet, make me a graphic like this, only for law school prices and with, like, a student crying or something.

So we’re all going to vote tomorrow, and then on Wednesday most of us are going to wake up with the same old problems. I’m going to need to lose some weight. Romney’s going to be an unemployed rich guy nobody likes. And America’s law students are going to wake up in the middle of the night worried about getting jobs.

Last week, the Washington Post wrote an important article on the abysmal state of the legal job market. It sounded notes that are familiar to regular readers of Above the Law, but I feel that whenever the facts about legal education make it into the Post or the New York Times, it’s important because parents see it there. The more parents know, the less likely they are to push their kids into law.

While most of us know the broad picture (it’s a figurative disaster), it is still fun to pick through rubble….

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Dear Prudence: My Husband Is Contemplating Ruining Our Lives By Going To Law School

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Back in April, we brought you a story about a family who had written to Dear Abby, an advice columnist, about their child’s law school loan debt. Apparently the mere thought of assisting their darling daughter with the repayment of her $100,000+ debt load was just too much to bear. The daughter had already ruined her own life, so why should they ruin theirs too? And yet, tens of thousands of students are still willing to look this student loan debt problem in the face and laugh.

Yes, in a time where the Executive Director of the National Association for Law Placement is forced to write entire columns about the fact that there is no conceivable way he could describe the current entry-level job market as “good,” others are still considering applying to law school.

For example, today we found out that the matriarch of another family sought wisdom from an advice columnist as to whether her husband should go to law school. How did she respond? Let’s just say Dear Prudence is a little more in tune with the realities of today’s legal job market than Dear Abby will ever be….

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How Much Will Law School Cost In The Future? It’s Pretty Scary…

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In the past few months, those involved in legal academia have been going back and forth over whether the cost of law school tuition is “too damn high.” Many would argue that it is, considering the fact that even during the height of the recession, some law schools instituted across the board tuition hikes. Even now, when repeated calls have been made for reduced class sizes, law school tuition continues to rise to make up for the lost revenue those additional students would have provided.

This problem, they say, needs to be remedied immediately — before the law school tuition bubble pops — so that we can avoid additional problems down the line. Because after all, as my colleague Elie Mystal noted in 2010, “Law school tuition might be recession proof, but student debt repayment is not.”

If we continue on this way, we may be looking at some pretty scary numbers in the future….

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Dewey Have A Criminal Case On Our Hands?
(Plus your chance to own a piece of Dewey.)

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Whatever happened to the Manhattan district attorney’s investigation into the failure of Dewey & LeBoeuf? It seems like we haven’t heard about it for weeks. Today we finally have some news to pass along.

As we mentioned in Morning Docket, this morning the Wall Street Journal ran a piece about the current state of the investigation. There are a few additional details, but on the whole, we don’t know very much at this point.

We know more about how you can get your hands on part of Dewey’s art collection. Keep on reading for details on that subject….

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(Plus your chance to own a piece of Dewey.)“

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Boutique Firm Advertises Law Job That’s Above Minimum Wage (And Below Everyone’s Standards)

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Back in May, we brought you news about a full-time job opportunity that appeared on Boston College Law School’s Symplicity page. Everyone expressed outrage over the position advertised, simply because of its annual salary of $10,000. If you do the math, that works out to about $4.81 per hour, which is well below minimum wage. But apparently our economy is such that at least 32 people applied for the job — a job that didn’t even yield a living wage.

Keeping that tableau in mind, tipsters recently brought our attention to yet another low-paying job. This one is above minimum wage. But even jobs that will get you off of a ramen noodle budget just aren’t good enough these days….

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Terrible Job Potpourri: Your Womb Is More Useful Than Your Law Degree

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It’s time to take another look at some of the worst jobs being offered to recent law graduates around the country. Most people think that getting a J.D. is a path to high-salaried positions where you work in an office that smells of rich mahogany.

For some people, it all works out. But many recent graduates of law school end up fighting it out on salaries between $30,000 and $60,000 a year. It’s the bi-modal salary distribution curve, folks, and it’s not your friend.

Today, we’re not looking at full-time jobs, though. We’re taking a look at some positions available for people looking to supplement their income. These are part-time positions, but if you are a student or a recent graduate who needs some extra cash, you should check these out.

And, you know, despair…

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