Don’t kid yourself. There’s a whole lotta crap associated with those shiny bennies. If you really think about what many if not most folks have to do/be to get those goodies, your choice might well end up being the same one you’ve made.
For real, man, for real.
I have a shiny Ivy League degree and I thought I wanted to to go law school. My grades and boards would have opened up a lot of doors. Even my double major was very law friendly.
I thought I would get some experience first, so since I went to school in New York City, I got a paralegal job in Big Law. NYC style. Senior paralegals had monogrammed shirts, and the starting salary for first year associates was no lower than 150 large. In the beginning it was breathtaking to see people just two or three years older than me pulling down money like that. The partners were all richer than God.
It took me less than two months to figure out that if working for Big Law were actually decent, there would be no money in it. I got to watch how the summer associates were wined, dined, hired, and washed out in one or two years. One of my pals, a first year, started seeing prostitutes because he never saw his wife. One of the accountants we retained was fired because he had the temerity to go to his kid’s parent-teacher conference instead of taking a conference call. I will never forget hearing the partner excoriate him: “I didn’t need to go to any fucking conferences for my kids!”
How much this partner’s kids loathed him was an open secret.
Almost none of the associates I ever spoke to candidly believed that the BMWs and the slick suits were worth it. But they were too deep in debt to quit, and had gotten too used to their $5000/month rentals. And the poor bastards who got married and had kids were trapped for life.
I have no doubt that there are people who can work in this environment without turning into truly miserable people. But you don’t know if that will be you before you start. And the odds aren’t good.
Keep tilting, dude.
Beaucarnea, I think you’re in danger of seeming classist (or reverse-classist, I can never keep the two straight) about this.
The idea that big-firm lawyers are morally bankrupt is not without its support in everyday culture. The idea that zealous advocacy might come before current social mores is not a popular one; ideas that contradict or espouse contradiction of those mores generally get short shrift.
Yes, big-firm lawyers make buttloads of money. But they WORK for it. The idea that one sells one’s soul, becomes evil, and then gets the car, and the apartment, and the bottomless sugar-bowl full of cocaine and the hooker to kick in times of stress, however is ludicrous.
Big-firm lawyers put in hours of work, as we all know. The idea that doing it just to make some rich guy richer is somehow “evil” is stupid. The same protection that an allegedly abused woman gets is the same protection that her alleged abuser gets is the same protection that DuPont gets is the… well, you get the idea.
Is there an economic disparity between these scenarios? Sure there is. Should DAs and shelter workers be paid more? Sure they should. But that’s for your lawmakers to decide.
Oh, and what about the people who do work that is putatively more evil than Big Law, the public defenders? What about them? Who should make more, in your view, a guy who defends drug dealers who sell in schools, or a guy who draws up contracts for a mutual fund that invests only in socially-responsible companies?
Just because you want to assign a higher moral value to what one person does, that does not mean, logically, that those who do something else ought to be paid less.
I want a big-firm job. I intend to get a big-firm job. I have a big-firm summer associateship set up and I am going to work my ass off (at the play work they give me to try to trick me into thinking being an attorney is funfunfun) to get an offer.
That doesn’t make me a bad person. It doesn’t make me less “good” than ANY other attorney, no matter the stripe.
And if I want to freak out about something that might impact those chances, I get to. So long as I don’t do it in the middle of an interview, who cares? The response I’m getting from the forum is that I’m overreacting. So I’ll try to calm down about it. But my reaction isn’t “evil.”
Oh, and Beaucarnea? It’s not about “leering” over my classmate’s “hot body;” I think you might be imposing a gender issue where none exists. I’m worried about (Campion put it better than I could) about being tarred with the same brush of irresponsibility.
And in Big Firm interviews, they’ve got so MANY people scampering after so FEW jobs, with such HIGH pay, that, sooner or later (and it’s generally sooner), when they’re deciding who NOT to interview, they can be arbitrary about it. So it might not be a concern of the magnitude I made it, but it isn’t nonexistent.
Just be glad you aren’t going to Duke, where all those stripper rapers go. Nobody from that school with EVER get a job, right?
Happy Scrappy Hero Pup, I appreciate your concerns about the importance of reputation in the career of law. But unless I have grossly misunderstood the purpose of your chosen field, then your job and the job of your mentors would be to assure the equality, the fairness, and the right to a peaceful existence that is as free from prejudice as possible for all people. Your profession is also tasked with defending our freedoms of speech, expression, and press. You of all people should enter a job interview without fear of even the slightest tinge of a sexually charged discussion.
I feel strongly that you are projecting your personal feelings about your classmate’s cheesecake pics onto others. And though you responded to me with such a lengthy post, there are numerous others here who also disagree with your self-righteous indignation. Of course, you reserve the right to pose the question on a message board that caters exclusively to lawyers if you feel that the hoi polloi didn’t give your fears the validation you were expecting. But none of your postulation is going to convince me that your professional reputation has somehow been irreparably damaged by your classmate’s sexy pics.
As an aside, I feel that yours is a valuable and necessary profession, and I, just like most other American citizens will at some point require the services of a lawyer. Your profession has handsome financial rewards because it is tedious, time consuming, and requires years of study and very specialized knowledge. You should make money. Good money. No profession should be discredited simply because of it’s profitability. But I refuse to believe that your chosen field is somehow morally superior by virtue of its sometimes unfair infamy.
Don’t worry Happy Scrappy Hero Pup. From your responses here it seems you’ll fit right in at those Big Law Firms.
You have an interesting conception of what it means to be self-centered.
Are you really and truly THAT stuck? You saying there’s ABSOLUTELY NO WAY you can move on and let someone else take over your work? Did you sign a compact with the Devil that you’d never consider any other kind of lawyering? New York isn’t the only city with corner offices.
Personally, I think the only approach that makes sense in this life is to decide, arbitrarily but wholeheartedly, that the battle you’re engaging is the only one that truly matters. Win, lose or draw is beside the point.
So if you really think money is where it’s at, then that’s where you need to be.
And if you’re going to fight the good fight, then you’ve decided on a different form of currency.
I know nothing about lawyers - well, I temped for one who ran around his office in bare feet, but a week’s worth of exposure (literally) doesn’t exactly qualify as knowledge. However, I did work for highly paid executives in marketing, people who were envied by their peers for their positions and earnings, and their days were absolutely empty and meaningless. It was dreadful. I figured lots of money had to be thrown at these people to compensate them for the fact that they were wasting their lives.
For what it’s worth, I had a law school classmate pose topless playing golf in an international edition of Playboy during our 3L year, and it didn’t hurt any of us one bit, except our sides laughing. None of our classmates’ various stunts ever hurt us any.
I do have to ask, though:
What’s so evil about public defenders? 
I curse this life I’m living
And I curse my poverty.
And I wish that I could be
Oh Lord I wish that I could be…
Richard Corey
I really shouldn’t have gone off on the poor little me rant. Sorry about that.
Sometimes I just wish I’d made different choices. Reckon most people do.
While we’re on it, I have nothing at all against anyone wanting a big firm job, nothing whatsoever. A lot of my classmates from law school did exactly that. I do think that anyone doing so should know exactly what they’re bargaining for, though. This law review article by Patrick Schlitz should be required reading for every graduating law student:
On Being a Happy, Healthy, and Ethical Member of an Unhappy, Unhealthy, and Unethical Profession (warning: pdf)
More tongue in cheek, this article used to make the rounds among the law clerks at the federal courthouse I used to work at:
No one said Big Law is full of snarly toothed beasties so get off the cross already. Fessie made some offhand comment but in a previous thread she admonished me for being concerned about my salary and going into law to make money (not that working for the feds was the best way to achieve that).
Big Law is full of people. Some people, who take themselves too seriously, inflate their accomplishments and act like working at a firm is like ascending unto Valhalla and that every! single! thing! completely unrelated to them will affect the admittance to Jennah. These people are ripe for the mocking. Especially by their fellow associates.
But seriously, go ahead and wig out if it makes you happy.
Valhalla is about the best a lawyer can hope for…it ain’t like they let us in to Heaven. That’s why it’s Heaven. No lawyers. 
Well, I work as a lawyer in a big firm - admittedly in Toronto, not New York. I honestly think that people exaggerate both the upside and the downside of this sort of work.
It is true that I, and my compatriots and co-workers, work quite hard - but it ain’t so bad as all that. The money is very good, but not in the super-wealthy range by any means. I have considerable freedom to set my own hours (as long as I keep track of them!). There is of course lots of pressure to bill.
Can’t say as I am “truly miserable” or some sort of asshole monster. Of course, I’m not the most objective judge of that. Nor can I say that I really relish luxuries, or lust after fancy cars or the like – I do like being financially independant, and able to afford my own house and stuff. I do like the fact that, unlike most of my friends, I’m not ass-deep in debt.
I don’t consider my work particularly noble or ignoble - it is merely work, interesting at times, intellectually challenging, and the pay is better than (say) being a truck driver or the like.
Yes but you need to read the last verse:
He freely gave to charity, he had the common touch,
And they were grateful for his patronage and thanked him very much,
So my mind was filled with wonder when the evening headlines read:
“Richard Cory went home last night and put a bullet through his head.”
Oakminster check you e mail.
R
Yeah, that last verse is pretty much the whole point of the song. I’m just not a BigLaw kinda guy, and I know that. If I was in that situation, I’d prolly end up like Richard Corey.
But damn. The big firms are paying puppy lawyers 150K+ right outta school. My Executive Director doesn’t make close to that kinda money…
Then again, those puppy lawyers ain’t gonna talk in Court for years, if ever. I was trying cases my first week on the job. Sent a man to jail my first day in court, then sweet talked the clerk into finding me some arcane thing called a Ne Exeat Bond, cuz the Judge told me to prepare one and I didn’t know what it was
Nobody’s really touched on the most important issue here. The blog that the OP linked to is absolutely correct in saying that the cover image doesn’t really do her justice. There are far better pictures of her in the gallery, so everyone should peruse it carefully before making any hasty decisions. Personally, I quite like this one.
…well, she certainly continues to uphold the school name. I believe she’s attempting to do a one-person reenactment of the Phryné/Hypereides testimony…
(25 years to make use of something that stuck from the Classical Humanities course…Thanks, Dope 
)
But you know, there has been much said back and forth and I really do not feel that Big Law is in any way “evil”, since we need them to handle the really big stuff, BUT, however, we must recognize that things like…
…however “fleeting”, makes Big Law sound to the outsider not like snobs but like, um, excretory orifices. Which is unfair because, of course, they HAVE to be that way, in order that at hiring time they get someone worthy of risking both the money AND reputation of the Firm and the welfare of the clients on him/her.
(But really, if they have the background check so down pat, then they should easily recognize a patently anomalous case, should they not?)
And of course there’s its complementary component…
…whereby Big Law has the law students right where they want them, in an utterly weak position of need (or of want), and in fear of what will be the arbitrary thing that will knock them off the competition.
HSHP, the thing that keeps you in the wrong 2,991 people who don’t get the 9 jobs, can be that you end up in a group of 5 identically qualified people for that last slot and the committee made the final cut by drawing cards, or based upon what shoes were worn, or by divination through goat entrails. Or maybe Boston schools in general get knocked down a peg this term because a senior partner had bad chowder at last Friday’s luncheon. The hot chick incident? About as likely.
I guess I would never fit in one of these hypercompetitive populations; oh, when I put my mind to it I can crank up the excellence and get maximum performance from myself, but the notion that I have to worry about someone else dragging me down, specially over some trivial matter? Hell, I’d say, I’m doing positively GREAT; if these guys won’t see that because they associate me with someone I have nothing to do with, the problem is with “those guys”, not me and not the someone.
Of course, someone who merely wants to Practice Law and does not particularly care about hitting the Big Time, may do like my brother and only put a short-term lease on his Soul to get that JD (UPR - ABA accredited and dirt cheap for residents), and save himself some of the stress. Sure, he’s not getting all the bling, but he’s making a decent life for himself near DC, and he’ll very likely end up reasonably comfortable and well-respected in his professional community.
HSHP, I just re-read your OP and follow ups because I felt like I may have unfairly judged your quandry. Then, my eyes traveled to the upper right hand corner of your OP. Dude who makes reference to an obscure Beastie Boys song needs to get back to his roots and try his best to avoid becoming a humorless, uptight pundit.
You know why she posed? Do you? She’s crafty.
Late to the party and NAL, HSHP. Hi from across the river, BTW.
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No. In the last three years, my grad school’s dean has resigned, a dean at another graduate school here was busted and forced to resign for having porn on his computer, and the (former) president has managed to offend women, African Americans, Native Americans, and just about everyone else with a pulse. The new voice of chick lit, a student here, was exposed as a plagiarist, and some highly-strung grad student here killed a guy in the street in a bar fight. All of these things have had fuck-all to do with me, though I have been asked what I thought of these events in a two-day interview. I am certain it had nothing to do with my job status, just more of a “hey, weird things are happening at your school” conversation piece. Oh, and the former governor of New Jersey, the one who appointed his lover as a highly paid security consultant and was forced to resign in disgrace, graduated from my program. All of these events did nothing to affect me for better or for worse.
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Well, two reasons. One, this is America, and people are allowed to do any number of things that are perhaps indicative of poor judgment but are legal - like posing for third-rate skin mags. So if your classmate truly wants to pose for the mag, hell, more power to her. As someone else pointed out, it’s likely that she put herself out of the running for a job that you might consider, so that helps your chances, no? Two, if an organization decided to assess me based on the behavior of another adult that I had absolutely no control or influence over, well, fuck them. Who the hell would want to work for such an organization? Now, do I think this situation might pose an interesting question about ethics that could arise in some interview context? Possibly, and it might be a good one. But if someone thinks less of you because of the actions of another individual that is only connected to you by being admitted to the same program you were, they’re really, really stupid.
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Male.