Without A Map

Without A Map

N00b? Rube

June 29th, 2009 Filed under: Living by Heather

I thought I had gotten used to being a rube.

Nope. Still a rube.

Was doing some preliminary research on fall On Campus Interviews. (OCI). The Fall OCI is muy, muy, muy importante for law students. This is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, the reason why we’ve been working our asses off. This is where the Big Law apple gets really shiny and appealing. See, these employers, off the strength of your first-year grades, invite you to an interview. Many of these employers only take the top 10%, top 20% of the class for an interview. They also want law review, moot court, all the goodies. Usually it’s the largest employers who are coming to campus to interview, though there are smaller firms and a few government agencies who come through as well.

You interview, you land your summer job. And that’s it. If you do well your summer after 2L, they invite you back to work, full time, as an associate after you’ve graduated after your 3L.

For some reason, I didn’t realize just how important the grades were. It almost doesn’t matter what you graduate with, because those who are chasing those Big Law jobs landed them two full years before graduation, more or less.

Big Law. I’ve talked about it here before. Hell, I’m working at a Big Law firm this summer. But this is where the rube part comes in.

Sure, we know they make money. But I didn’t realize the money starts early. Summers, as summer associates are called, at a large firm can expect to make at least $1,700 a week. One L.A. firm was paying their summers 3,100 a week. Starting salaries for first-year associates at these firms, of course, start at six figures. One advertised its potential of a 20K + bonus. Others will pay you a stipend as you study for the bar, and will pay for bar review courses. (This is something I definitely plan to negotiate with my first job. Bar review courses are about $3,000. *And* most people can’t work while studying for the bar. It’s too intense.)

It’s just pots and pots and pots of money. I can see why people start to pass over the 75K job, if the 175K job is just in reach. You only need to bill 1950 hours*. Who needs to live?

I knew this was the reason why people come. But I didn’t know this was the reason why people come.

Damn, what a shiny apple.

*I’m starting to figure out what “1900 billable hours” actually translates to in real-person time. I’m working now maybe 45, 50 hours a week at the internship. Manageable. If I were billing, I’d only be billing about 25-30 hours. (I’m incredibly inefficient.) That puts me only about 1400 hours. I would be fired from the firm I’m interning at if I put in that kind of time.

Or, as this article puts it:

Billing 2,000 hours a year may not seem onerous. The total can be reached in just over eight billable hours a day, setting aside four weeks of the year for vacation and national holidays. But studies consistently show that a lawyer must spend three hours in the office for every two hours of billable work. Lawyers can’t simply bill time. They have to read and respond to mail and firm memos, go to meetings, read legal publications, and eat lunch—not to mention kib-bitz with colleagues, if not friends.

To do all of this and make the 2,000-hours target, a lawyer must spend the equivalent of 12 hours in the office for each working day. Since the day hasn’t gotten longer since 1958, the honest lawyer who commits to working “full-time”—to a schedule of 2,000 billable and thus 3,000 total hours—is giving his life to the firm.

Source: http://www.legalaffairs.org/issues/September-October-2002/review_kuckes_sepoct2002.msp

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Oh yeah, those things

June 28th, 2009 Filed under: Living, Mind of mush by Heather

Did I not tell you guys my grades? What’s wrong with me?

OK, it appears I passed. Here’s the breakdown:

Property: B
Torts: B+
Contracts: B+
Civil Procedure: A-
Criminal Law: A-
Legal Writing: A

GPA: 3.43

Made the Dean’s list. Still waiting to see if I made the top third. If I make the top 25% (or is it top 20%?) I can try out for law review.

Class standings are mailed out July 6. Until then, I wait.

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Cog

June 15th, 2009 Filed under: Living by Heather

Today went amazingly quick at work today. It was the oddest thing. I left around 5:30, not quite believing I’d been there since 9.

Perhaps the illness is setting in. The “attorney works too damn much for her own good” illness.

A bit of a routine has settled in around these parts. Mel B and I (mostly Mel B) have got the duplex cleared out enough where it looks like real people live there. (It took a machete and a lot of patience. And a visit from friends where we shoved boxes and things wholesale into closets.) I still look around, excited to be surrounded by my stuff, realizing more and more each day how stressful it was to live in places that weren’t mine. Right now we sit in our den, Melissa at her computer and me at mine, listening to John Scofield, feeling the breeze through the window and being glad I’m not writing a case brief right now.

So yeah. Routine. Each weekday morning I get in my fancy (for me) duds, feed or run from the outside cat, slide behind the wheel of my car, cross my fingers for decent traffic, and pull into the parking garage of one of the tall buildings downtown. I make sure to turn down my music as I swing around the narrow aisles and concrete pillars for spaces. I’m continually being tailgated by the likes of mercedes and porches and large SUVs because somehow I should just plow through the parking garage, cars and pedestrians be damned.

Perhaps the day flew by today because I’m finally figuring out what I need to do. Writing assignments. Research assignments. Thises and thats. Trying to make a good impression because even though I don’t want to be that kind of lawyer, damn, wouldn’t it be nice to land someplace and make six figures when I get out? In any case, they’re giving me some juicy things to work on, and I appreciate the glimpse at private firm life.

But it’s got a strange flip side. Some of the other summer fellows got together for a happy hour last Thursday. It was from 4-6. I managed to leave the office around 5:30, 5:45. I parked near the bar, which was a fancy downtown establishment, and walked the couple of blocks over. I don’t remember if it was a jacket day, but I was looking very establishment, probably in black pants, my big red bag, sensible pumps. I had already dedicated 8, 9, 10 hours of that day to law, and here I was to talk with other people, probably about more law stuff. I had a pile of stuff I still needed to do at work. And I was dressed just like everybody else. I passed others on the street, with great dyed hair and tattoos and on bikes and talking and walking and I wondered what I was giving up, as I morphed into a life of rules and precedent and suits and protocol and things only being right if a court says so. Creativity be damned.

It’s an odd thing. I still want to be the girl to practice in Converses, but eventually I’ll realize that I can’t fight the system, and that, already, I am the system. Yet another cog in the litigious, crime-ridden, regulation loving machine.

Pass me a Rutter Group, please.

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A quickie

May 26th, 2009 Filed under: Living, Mind of mush by Heather

This isn’t much of an entry. Did I mention that, as an intern, I get an office? And I share an assistant?

I’ve never had an office before in my life. So I took a minute, shut the *door* on my office, and took some pics with my cell phone.

office
It looks muy importante, no?

heather_office
My mug in front of my window for the summer.

office_view2
View facing southeast

office_view1
Saved the best for last. This looks all Dallas-y.

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Ugh

May 26th, 2009 Filed under: Living by Heather

Pathetic.

I’m nervous about starting my law office gig in a couple of hours. You’d think I’d never worked a job before.

Ugh. You all should laugh at my ridiculousness.

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