“Don’t care how, I want it nowwwwwwww!!!”
Posted on 01/19/2010 5:25:52 AM PST by reaganaut1
...
“The Deep End” was conceived in 2007, that halcyon era of $160,000 starting salaries and full employment even for law grads who had scored in the 150s on their LSAT’s.
Those days are over. As the profession lurches through its worst slump in decades, with jobs and bonuses cut and internal pressures to perform rising, associates do not just feel as if they are diving into the deep end, but rather, drowning.
Lawyers who entered the field as recently as a few years ago could reasonably expect a life of comfort, security and social esteem. Many are now faced with a different landscape. Firms shed more than 4,600 lawyers last year, according to a blog that tracks the legal industry, Law Shucks. Bonuses for those who survive are shriveling, and an increasing number of firms now compensate associates based on grades for performance — shades of law school — rather than automatically advancing them on the salary scale.
For those just starting out, it’s easy to think that the rules have changed six minutes into the first period.
“I thought, ‘Great, I can afford to buy a house at 23,’ ” said Jacqueline Muna Musiitwa, recalling her first year as an associate in 2006 at Pillsbury in San Francisco. “If I start this way at 23, goodness knows what it will be like when I’m 40.”
She accepted the notoriously grueling workload for the prospect of Caribbean vacations, a convertible and a big loft apartment. But young lawyers now entering the field can feel no such assurance, said Ms. Musiitwa, 27, who left Pillsbury after a year to start a boutique firm.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Great news .....
We have way to many lawyers and they are always looking to insert themselves in places they never used to be. Trying to gin up more work for themselves. Parasites, leeches
great news along with Martha Coakley losing.....another lawyer loser. Scott Brown is not a lawyer
Some of the enterprising unemployed lawyers should go to DC and become lobbyists ... for tort reform.
Good lawyers seem to be non-existant.
I don’t know any that care about the Constitution !
(Any help ya’ll can give me getting the Uniform Child Abduction Prevention Act repealed in the states it has passed in would be great.)
“The big salaries they are talking about in this came with big city, big firms....”
you got that right Woebama....my daughter was a pardner in a blue ribbon K Street firm in Washington DC....she was making $350k gross...here’s where the money goes
$80-90k income taxes
$120,000 house note(to live in a white neighborhood in a very dangerous city)
$4000 lunch money(it costs money to eat down town even at your desk)
$3600 parking deck with armed security(no woman alone should try to park in an unattended lot at night in downtown DC)
$12,000 clothes(when you’re billing out at $600/hr you can’t meet with clients wearing a WalMart skirt)
$$72,000 (time lost in billable hours working pro bono on a capital murder case)
$10,000 yard man/maid/grocery service (when you’re at the office nights and weekends you don’t have time/energy to mow the yard)
$15,000 self directed IRA
$0000 car note...she drove a paid for Toyota.
She got let go 6 months ago....as a pardner she was expected to bring clients into the firm....you do that by joining the country club and schmoozing prospects on the golf course...or take them deep sea fishing ect...if you don’t bring in new business, you’re history at the firm.
You know one now. There are more of us out there. Some post on here. ;)
I am an attorney.
For the most part, life after law school has never been the pollyannish caricature shown above. For the top of the class a the top-tier schools, there may have been jobs waiting after law school. But, for the vast majority of law schoool graduates, law is like any other field — you have to start at the bottom, put in your time, earn your keep, and work your way up.
Starting salaries for fresh law school grads (at least in Texas) can be $50K to $75K (reasonably good, but certainly not exorbitant). Many attorneys start off doing unstable temporary work for a good hourly wage — $30-$40 bucks an hour or so — while looking for a permanent gig. They don’t hand out $75K per year jobs on the street corner ... finding a job with a law degree and no experience can take some time (particularly when every competitor in the market has the same degree, and likely more experience).
The earning potential for attorneys is good ... but you don’t just waltz out of law school and into a $150K job. It takes time, it takes work, it takes diligence ... just like any other industry.
FYI — this is not intended as a complaint, but a reality check for budding attorneys and non-attorneys that think the life of a law school graduate is like it looks on TV. I believe it is a good thing that most attorneys have to pay their dues.
SnakeDoc
I agree. I also stand firmly on the basis that the Constitution is set in stone and not a living breathing document that is changeable at a whim.
Scott brown IS a lawyer. Boston College Law School.
Everyone pays their dues.
Yah, I forgot about the help . . . I was so middle class I didn’t realize I needed maids and so forth when working 80 hour weeks, so I was coming home and doing the dishes!
ooooops thanx
The law is not a productive profession at all. It is friction on the engine of commerce and productivity.
If you raised taxes on lawyers (especially on huge awards) you would see wild economic growth.
It was only a few of years ago that Rush was telling us about DC law firms adding “scores of global warming litigators” to their staffs. Dollar signs bigger than tobacco leaves were dancing in their eyes...
I wonder how that’s working out for them?
Most law is cut and paste. A paralegal can handle most standard transactions and legal issues including court.
You only need a good attorney for serious things or high risk ventures.
Some are. Most aren’t. Attorneys are a necessary part of business. Mine give good advice and smooth things out. I wouldn’t kill all the lawyers if I were you. ;-]
“Don’t care how, I want it nowwwwwwww!!!”
According to his bio he is ... went to the same law school (Boston College) that John (did you know he served in Vietnam?) Kerry attended.
Scalia agrees with me.
Since they themselves (in Miranda) declared their salaries a constitutional right, I think it is entirely appropriate to cap their salaries as they are de facto government employees.
Accountants are much more valuable, but they aren’t a Congressman from Massachusetts or a Senator from New York.
More importantly, a law degree seems to be sufficient qualification for any government job, even though you can get through law school without taking one mathematics course.
It is dismaying that our country is run by people who, by and large, go there because they are too stupid to do math. Lest we forget that Obama’s only substantial qualification was his law degree.
What’s really dismaying is that free men sent them there to rule.
It is the voters fault we have the government we have. Although my great aunt (83) says that nobody wanted Social Security, but they just passed it despite the objections of the voters. We still haven’t learned.
Government must be shrunkified. ;-]
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