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First-Year Corporate Lawyer Can't Believe His Job Is THIS Soul Crushing
BI ^ | 11/28/2012 | Law & Order

Posted on 11/28/2012 12:20:34 PM PST by GlockThe Vote

"You know it's going to be boring, but you just don't appreciate how boring it actually is," one first-year associate at a large New York law firm tells us.

The young lawyer describes long days of reading dense papers, which he only barely understands, and which seem to have no bearing on any actual case.

"Doc review is the most boring experience of your life, but strangely nerve-wracking because you know you're messing it up, but you just can't bring yourself to care that you're messing it up. And you're probably going to mess it up even if you did care, so [screw] it, why even bother," he says.

This is why Biglaw is often described as "soul crushing" and why even as many lawyers struggle to get jobs one recent grad is complaining about the one he has.

(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Government; Miscellaneous; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: lawyer; legalese; whiner; woeisme
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Big Law Firms are mostly a racket. I work for myself solo and like what I do. I dont make nearly what these guys do, but I would hate working at one of those slave shops.
1 posted on 11/28/2012 12:20:39 PM PST by GlockThe Vote
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Comment #2 Removed by Moderator

To: GlockThe Vote

for later


3 posted on 11/28/2012 12:26:43 PM PST by Doctor 2Brains
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To: GlockThe Vote

“...So I get there; from roughly 9:30 to 10:15 I check my email, read the Internet; then I do whatever meaningless task I’ve been assigned for the day. And I haven’t actually even had that much work, so it’s not that I can complain that I’m working too hard, because I’m really not.”

That sounds very Office Space-ish.

It also sounds like a very inefficient business model. What’s the point of hiring young talent if you’re not going to keep them busy? I get that they do the grunt work, but if there’s not enough grunt work to keep everyone busy, shouldn’t they lay a few people off?


4 posted on 11/28/2012 12:28:29 PM PST by DemforBush (100% Ex-Democrat.)
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To: GlockThe Vote
The young lawyer describes long days of reading dense papers, which he only barely understands, and which seem to have no bearing on any actual case.

"Doc review is the most boring experience of your life, but strangely nerve-wracking because you know you're messing it up, but you just can't bring yourself to care that you're messing it up. And you're probably going to mess it up even if you did care, so [screw] it, why even bother," he says.

 

Poor slob. He ought to take a crack at reading the 13,000 plus pages related to Obama Care.  Then lets talk. I wonder if Pelosi has ever read it? As we know, she said we have to pass the thing so we'll know what's in it.

I truly doubt anyone has ever read this crap.

5 posted on 11/28/2012 12:30:52 PM PST by Responsibility2nd (NO LIBS. This Means Liberals and (L)libertarians! Same Thing. NO LIBS!!)
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To: F15Eagle

Agreed - I work solo and am the AP / AR / Sales ? Marketing / HR etc and the lawyer to boot!

I like what I do since i deal w the clients and cases beginning to end on my own terms.

These big law firms are big rackets. They rip off clients like crazy - overpay and overbill associates, etc.


6 posted on 11/28/2012 12:31:15 PM PST by GlockThe Vote (The Obama Adminstration: 2nd wave of attacks on America after 9/11)
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To: GlockThe Vote

Boring...he should stand a mid-watch on the back end of a carrier in the north sea.


7 posted on 11/28/2012 12:41:16 PM PST by stuartcr ("When silence speaks, it speaks only to those that have already decided what they want to hear.")
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To: GlockThe Vote

My husband’s cousin is a lawyer. Says that 75% of the job is reading. I read once that lawyers have the highest amount of quitters in the business field. There’s more former lawyers around than any other professional occupation. Not sure if it’s true, but my husband and I used to eat at an upscale restaurant, and our favorite server was a former lawyer. He told us he was never happier. He HATED law, and for that reason, too much reading. Doesn’t anyone tell these people at the jump?


8 posted on 11/28/2012 12:41:46 PM PST by RushIsTheMan (Liberals lie)
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To: F15Eagle
Exactly.
9 posted on 11/28/2012 12:41:58 PM PST by teflon9 (Political campaigns should follow Johnny Mercer's advice--Accentuate the positive.)
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To: Responsibility2nd
Section 1555: "No individual, company, business, nonprofit entity, or health insurance issuer offering group or individual health insurance coverage shall be required to participate in any Federal health insurance program created under this Act (or any amendments made by this Act), or in any Federal health insurance program expanded by this Act (or any such amendment), and there shall be no penalty or fine imposed upon any such issuer for choosing not to participate in such programs."

1) Because of the rush to passage, no Congressional history exists that would describe the meaning or explain the purpose of this section, thus no one is sure why it's in the law, who put it there, or what it means.

2) The language is ambiguous. There are two possible interpretations of the language:

Interpretation #1: The placement of the comma before the word "or" means that the words preceding it ("individual, company, business, nonprofit entity") are not modified by the words,"issuer offering group or individual health insurance coverage."

Interpretation #2: If you disregard the placement of the comma, or otherwise disagree with the above interpretation, the entire opt-out section applies only to entities "offering group or individual health insurance coverage" -- including individuals, companies, etc.

3) Final interpretation may be left to judges if Section 1555 is used in a legal challenge.

4) Given all the mandates in the rest of the law (the totality of the law), some judges may dismiss this section, but others may not.

5) For states with health care freedom acts that challenge Obamacare in court, Section 1555's ambiguity may have to be considered and a legal interpretation made.

10 posted on 11/28/2012 12:42:06 PM PST by TurboZamboni (Looting the future to bribe the present)
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To: GlockThe Vote

Why can’t he just hang a shingle and start his own?.............


11 posted on 11/28/2012 12:42:41 PM PST by Red Badger (Lincoln freed the slaves. Obama just got them ALL back......................)
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To: GlockThe Vote
Speaking of soul crushing lawyers:


12 posted on 11/28/2012 12:44:48 PM PST by SoFloFreeper
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To: GlockThe Vote

Welcome to entry level jobs. It’s the sucky end of the stick where you prove you’re worthy to do interesting stuff.


13 posted on 11/28/2012 12:46:31 PM PST by discostu (Not a part of anyone's well oiled machine.)
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To: GlockThe Vote

I’m also a solo practioner; have my office on the Courthouse square in a suburban county. I thank God that He didn’t curse me with too many brains as I would likely have had the Big Firm draw me in with the lure of the large salary. And in so doing I would have sold my soul. Instead, I deal with real clients and not stacks of dry paper. For the associates at these firms, the Courtroom is a rumored place far far away. I’m in the Courtroom almost every day, and it is there that I feel more alive than anywhere else. More importantly, I am not a slave to a billable hours sheet in an office an hour’s commute away. I am free to spend time with my wife (who is an absolute saint), and I coached my sons’ sports teams. I am active in my church and in my community. Most importantly, I can post on Free Republic.

Big Law Firms are nothing but a pyramid scheme, started back in the 1960’s in California and spread later to the rest of the country. The partners in the Big Firms realized that the key to wealth was not billing more hours themselves, but instead hiring scores of young lawyers as cannon fodder out of the law schools, and then profiting off their billing hours. In order to make the scheme work, they needed the law schools to open the gates and flood the market with an annual oversupply of new lawyers. The law schools were all to keen to participate, as it allowed them to grow, too.

Thus, the Big Firm brings in a score of new lawyers each year, and sweats them to death. Many of them are then discarded five years later after they’ve been burned out, often having mental problems, divorce, and substance abuse issues. Their dead husks are replaced by the fresh young lawyers just out of law school. The really unlucky ones become “junior partners” where the cost of “buying in” to the partnership causes them to work even more hours, and for the 10 years they buy in they actually take home less money. They are tortured longer.

Like I said, it’s a pyramid scheme. I have been truly blessed by God that His plan for me was not to fall into that pit.


14 posted on 11/28/2012 12:50:15 PM PST by henkster ("The people who count the votes decide everything." -Joseph Stalin)
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To: DemforBush

Well Glock(like the name have 2 myself) it works like this. He only is billable only 10 hours a week, give him a promotion and charge 4 times as much.


15 posted on 11/28/2012 12:50:54 PM PST by ImJustAnotherOkie (zerogottago)
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To: GlockThe Vote

reminds me of the lawyer trying to prove up his fees before the judge and he asked for $300 an hour. The judge said he was too young to rate that fee..the lawyer’s associate responded but he has billed for hours far in excess of his age...


16 posted on 11/28/2012 12:52:18 PM PST by rolling_stone
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To: RushIsTheMan

Oh they’re told, but nobody ever thinks they’re going to wind up the stable boy, they always think they’re going to be the general. And if they do well eventually they do get to be the general, but you always start in the stables. Entry level in any field is the manure work. That’s what young people don’t get, when the guy explaining the reality of their field says “for every guy doing this awesome stuff that’s why you chose this field there’s a hundred doing stuff that makes your classwork seem fun” what they hear is “you’ll have a hundred guys doing all the scutwork while you get to do all the awesome stuff”. Young people are filled with dreams and even when you tell them the reality they don’t listen because they’re dreaming.


17 posted on 11/28/2012 12:53:20 PM PST by discostu (Not a part of anyone's well oiled machine.)
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To: Responsibility2nd

If somebody wrote it, then somebody read it.

You can bet when the time comes. (which means it is too late to stop it) we will find out a lot of things that are in it.

Right now some liberal jerk is sitting on something he cannot wait to spring on us.

What this man is comlaining about is that lawyers write things so that lay people cannot read it and many times lawyers cannot decipher it either.


18 posted on 11/28/2012 12:56:22 PM PST by Venturer
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To: GlockThe Vote
I work for myself solo and like what I do.


19 posted on 11/28/2012 12:57:09 PM PST by E. Pluribus Unum (Labor unions are the Communist Party of the USA.)
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To: RushIsTheMan

The schools bs the students and set unrealistic expectations.


20 posted on 11/28/2012 12:57:40 PM PST by GlockThe Vote (The Obama Adminstration: 2nd wave of attacks on America after 9/11)
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