QI’m completing my 2L year at a top school and having trouble finding work. Or appropriate work, as in paid work that is actually law-related. I have a background in software development and want to use it somehow in my legal career but I’m actually not that interested in patent work, which is what everyone tells me to do.
Recently I came across LegalZoom and, to be honest, I thought it was one of the coolest things around. It serves the low-end client, has set prices for people, and from what I can tell delivers a decent product. Probably not the best product but likely good enough. And good enough seems to be the new standard for legal services for regular people, like people I know and grew up with.
What do you think of my prospects of developing an online business that delivers attorney-reviewed forms like LegalZoom? Every lawyer I talk to says it’s a waste of time and that it’s teetering on the edge of unauthorized practice of law. A lot of folks—law students and professors included—think I’m nuts and basically going to the dark side. Would I be wasting my time and my degree pursuing something like this?
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QI’m a fourth year associate and I’ve been busted for steroids. Let me explain. I’m a former Division II college baseball player and did well in sports and school. After graduating from law school and joining my current firm, I ended up in an interfirm softball league. I think my baseball background may have made the difference in my getting hired, as the league is pretty serious and the firm partners and more senior associates take the games seriously. Very seriously, with each team having to assign a “stats rep” to track stats and report those stats to the “commissioner,” who then records the stats each year. Going back to 1984.
As it turns out, I set the single season home run record in 2010 when I was a second year associate. During that winter, though, I was into weightlifting and dabbled (I know, bad decision) with steroids. I saw short-term fantastic results in weightlifting. And I also smashed the softball league home run record by 9, which seemed incidental to what I was trying to do personally. In other words, I didn’t mess with steroids to hit home runs in a law firm softball league. I was just trying to stay buff.
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QOkay, so I think I just ruined my career. In short, I told a partner to “F*** off.” Yes, I actually used the F-word.
To make a long story short, Douchebag Partner (hereafter referred to as “DBP”), told me to draft a Promissory Note (a small part of a much larger transaction) and send it off to the client for his approval. DBP gave me all the specific details—terms, interest rate, etc. He also gave me “the perfect precedent” to use. In other words, all I had to do was fill in the blanks, make a few simple, conforming changes, and send it to the client. And that’s what I did.
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QI work for a small firm (15-20 attorneys) in a big city on the West coast. I also went to law school in the same city and, to save money, lived with my parents while going to school. It paid off, as I now have half the debt of most grads and was able to weather joblessness during a particularly rough ninth month period after taking the bar.
The thing is, I still live with my mom (and my stepdad) even though I’ve been employed at my law firm for about four years now. I help around the house and pay nominal “rent” but otherwise use most of my salary to pay down my law school loans. Because she lives in a pretty tony area of town, when I tell people where I live people probably think I either a) make crazy money or b) married someone rich. It’s neither, and you’ll have to press me to admit I still live at home.
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QI’m a first-year law student and already have mounds of debt. Law school is OK. I like the challenge and the law—in other words, law is a good fit for me. I just hate that my debt will only get bigger and the jobs scarcer. I’m thinking about dropping out and trying to land an apprenticeship in New York, which lets you sit for the bar exam if you’ve worked for four years in a law office. What do you think? Do you know anyone who has done that successfully?
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QI’m a fourth year associate at a large firm. I work with a great partner. He’s friendly, engaged, a good mentor, and provides terrific feedback on my work. He’s also a “bra-checker.” That is, he’s a warm and outgoing lawyer who likes to touch people.
I noticed it during my first year working with him. Typically, we’d be in the hall and we’d chit chat about a matter or talk briefly about our respective families and at some point he would put his hand on my back and pat or rub it with the palm of his hand. He may say something encouraging or affirming but often he would say nothing at all. Just a rub or pat on the back—it’s what’s become known as his bra-check, and I’ve seen him do it with other associates, male and female. It’s just that the female associates are the ones who seem most troubled by it.
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Q“The rainmaker.” Every firm has one. This is a rare breed of lawyer: a unique cocktail of douchebag and perfectionist who is driven mostly by the need to keep referral sources in tact and deliver quality work product . . . until he passes the client off to another attorney to do the actual work. My firm has one, too. He is well-known in our niche as a difficult partner to work for, but he brings in so much business that partners look the other way as he is driving associates into the depths of hell.
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QI work in a small, four-attorney firm. I have been with this firm for 18 months and was with my prior firm for two years. I have generally enjoyed working here, but recently the senior (and only) partner suffered a subdural hematoma, which put him out of the office for a few weeks. He is 65 years old.
We have managed to get by and he has been able to offer some guidance on the cases assigned to me. However, ever since his injury, he has acted slightly more erratically and is obviously suffering from some memory loss and difficulty concentrating. Despite these issues, he has assured our clients and us that he is fully functional and that his mind is unaffected.
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QI’ve got an interesting dilemma with a two part question. Here’s the background. I’m four years out of law school and am fully employed with a small suburban law firm. Big city, tony suburban setting, decent pay. The job is fine, work is pretty steady. The problem—or so I’m told—is that I drive an old rusty truck. Specifically, a blue 1990 Ford F150, which I love. It breaks down a times, but I feel it’s all I need and doesn’t have all the presumptions of any other car. It’s a truck. I drive it. It gets me there.
It also doesn’t fit in. Last fall I was in the firm conference room with another associate and pointed out the window and down to the parking lot. I said “which one of these is not like the others?” The associate looked down at the rows of cars in the lot—Lexus SUV, BMW, Lexus SUV, Lexus SUV—and then said “rusty truck at 2:00.”
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QI am a 7th year associate at a megafirm. Let me be honest, I am nowhere near as bright as the associates in adjacent offices. I haven’t been made a senior associate because I am simply not good enough. I keep my job because there are certain aspects of the job I am good at (grunt work) and I get on really well with the really junior associates and have the patience to answer all their questions and guide them through mindless document review tasks at 2am on a Monday morning.
My problem is this. There are two slightly more junior associates (5/6 years) in my group who are champing at the bit for senior associateship and they see me as a roadblock. In all probability I am. They are both very smart and very good at their jobs. I think they perceive that the partners won’t make them up without first making me up (presumably not to upset me).
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