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Black Thursday strikes law firms

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Wonder if OP was either on losing end of an up or out policy or losing end of a law school curve.

Obviously he is in the legal profession as he is using a famous jurist as his profile name.
 
Originally posted by: FelixDeKat
Originally posted by: senseamp
What do you call 1300 lawyers in the unemployment line?
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1300 people who couldnt cut it in the worlds second oldest profession.
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What's the second oldest profession? I thought the order was:

Oldest: Prostitute
Second Oldest: Pimp
3rd Oldest: pricing analyst
 
I feel lucky. I have a job and my small firm just hired another attorney this week. Now I have seniority on three other attorneys 😉

MotionMan, Esq. (California)
 
Originally posted by: The Sauce
I read a statistic that there are 10x more lawyers in the USA than the rest of the world combined. Our out-of-control legal system is truly the one thing that sometimes make me wonder if it would be better to live somewhere else.
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i read a statistic that 57.8% of statistics are completely bullshit, and a further 22.4% are partial bullshit.
 
I tend to agree that many people (probably MOST people) are better off not going to law school, but the reality is that many segments of the profession are more recession-proof than other high-paying jobs. I do civil litigation at a small firm and we continue to be quite busy. We've hired two attorneys in the past year and are thriving. Honestly I'm a little ambivalent about the profession, but with the current state of the economy I'm damned grateful to have a six-figure income, an office I can wear jeans to, and a top-shelf stocked bar at work.
 
I work for a small law firm contracted with a major labor union here. I work very hard and put in many hours and long days to save Union members' jobs or get them favorable interpretations of their Collective Bargaining Agreement clauses...being a lawyer is NOT an easy profession...

You sound just like one of my classmates who finished bottom of the barrel in class ranking, sexually harassed female on-campus interviewers, sexually harassed a Country prosecutor during his 1L summer (costing him a job in any Pros/PD department in the State), and during a 2L clerkship burned every bridge between himself, his judge and nearly every lawyer that came before his judge. Then, once he graduated, complained to everyone that law school is a waste of time and they just pump you full of lies about high paying jobs to take your money.

You have no one to blame but yourself for your failure...
 
Originally posted by: sjwaste
I'm sitting in one of my final classes before graduating this May right now.

Job market is tough right now. That's why I hedged and went at night, so I have an actual career concurrent with my education. If I don't find a position as an associate before/soon after I graduate, I'll stay with what I do now until the market picks up. It's just part of the economic downturn.

It's short-sighted to say the jobs won't be back. Sure, lawyers as a whole are pretty bad businesspeople (which is why most went to undergrad in liberal arts), but not all of us are. Whatever the efficient business model needs to be, some of us will figure it out. I don't have a business degree and years of experience in business for nothing, you know 🙂 Plus, I have little desire to work at a big firm, so if a smaller firm doesn't want to pick me up, I'll do it myself.

I agree with aphex, sounds like you have an axe to grind.
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But don't a lot in-house counsel get moved to executive level positions in the same company? I would say they are better business people than the general population.
 
Real Estate law
Bankruptcy law
Tax law

Are all booming. Corporate law not so much. Litigation is as always as strong as it always has been, its litigation and we live in a society that thrives on it.

The real issue is current 1Ls and 2Ls are f'ed over. So are 3Ls that didnt get offers last summer. BigLaw corporate firms may be having issues, but firms that focus on other areas and most medium and small firms are doing quite well.

When the economy recovers, the legal market will too. Not to mention a lot of firms having aging Senior Partners who will be retiring/dieing off in the next 10 years.

 
Originally posted by: BoomerD
I don't know what makes me MORE nervous...

Lawyers who are out of work...or lawyers who AREN'T...😀
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:thumbsup: Nothing worse than a lawyer with time on their hands, Idle hands.... Devil's Workshop and all that.

 
Originally posted by: halik
Originally posted by: zzuupp
So, how again would someone in Mumbai have any relevant US legal experience to draft any documents?
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Better yet, how can someone in Mumbai be a licensed attorney in any U.S. state and thus be able to provide legal advice? O/P's brain is full of FAIL.
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Believe it or not, legal work is being outsourced to India, but it isn't document drafting or providing advice. It's document review, the tedious part of the discovery process in litigation where volumes of documents are checked for relevance and privilege.

Document review used to support unemployed lawyers with a decent income, but nowadays with outsourcing (all the documents are scanned and accessible online) and better flagging done by computer software, those jobs are all but dried up.

There is no safety net for lawyers anymore. And the layoffs are hitting large firms like DLA Piper and Holland+Knight.

Also, I have a feeling the ABA will be getting a lot of heat in the next year for accrediting so many subpar schools that are churning out unemployed grads with huge loans.
 
Originally posted by: CptObvious
Originally posted by: halik
Originally posted by: zzuupp
So, how again would someone in Mumbai have any relevant US legal experience to draft any documents?
Click to expand...

Better yet, how can someone in Mumbai be a licensed attorney in any U.S. state and thus be able to provide legal advice? O/P's brain is full of FAIL.
Click to expand...
Believe it or not, legal work is being outsourced to India, but it isn't document drafting or providing advice. It's document review, the tedious part of the discovery process in litigation where volumes of documents are checked for relevance and privilege.

Document review used to support unemployed lawyers with a decent income, but nowadays with outsourcing (all the documents are scanned and accessible online) and better flagging done by computer software, those jobs are all but dried up.

There is no safety net for lawyers anymore. And the layoffs are hitting large firms like DLA Piper and Holland+Knight.

Also, I have a feeling the ABA will be getting a lot of heat in the next year for accrediting so many subpar schools that are churning out unemployed grads with huge loans.
Click to expand...

The kicker being....who in the hell would prosecute? No one who ever wanted a private sector job, that's who! That would have to be some terminal cancer patient/ lawyer or something. you tyhink there's a "thin Blue Line"? that's a wall of silence? The "Pinstripe Wall" has it's own rule book.

 
Originally posted by: axelfox
Originally posted by: sjwaste
I'm sitting in one of my final classes before graduating this May right now.

Job market is tough right now. That's why I hedged and went at night, so I have an actual career concurrent with my education. If I don't find a position as an associate before/soon after I graduate, I'll stay with what I do now until the market picks up. It's just part of the economic downturn.

It's short-sighted to say the jobs won't be back. Sure, lawyers as a whole are pretty bad businesspeople (which is why most went to undergrad in liberal arts), but not all of us are. Whatever the efficient business model needs to be, some of us will figure it out. I don't have a business degree and years of experience in business for nothing, you know 🙂 Plus, I have little desire to work at a big firm, so if a smaller firm doesn't want to pick me up, I'll do it myself.

I agree with aphex, sounds like you have an axe to grind.
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But don't a lot in-house counsel get moved to executive level positions in the same company? I would say they are better business people than the general population.
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Most lawyers make lousy business people (How's your stock doing today?).

MotionMan
 
Originally posted by: AlienCraft
Originally posted by: CptObvious
Originally posted by: halik
Originally posted by: zzuupp
So, how again would someone in Mumbai have any relevant US legal experience to draft any documents?
Click to expand...

Better yet, how can someone in Mumbai be a licensed attorney in any U.S. state and thus be able to provide legal advice? O/P's brain is full of FAIL.
Click to expand...
Believe it or not, legal work is being outsourced to India, but it isn't document drafting or providing advice. It's document review, the tedious part of the discovery process in litigation where volumes of documents are checked for relevance and privilege.

Document review used to support unemployed lawyers with a decent income, but nowadays with outsourcing (all the documents are scanned and accessible online) and better flagging done by computer software, those jobs are all but dried up.

There is no safety net for lawyers anymore. And the layoffs are hitting large firms like DLA Piper and Holland+Knight.

Also, I have a feeling the ABA will be getting a lot of heat in the next year for accrediting so many subpar schools that are churning out unemployed grads with huge loans.
Click to expand...

The kicker being....who in the hell would prosecute? No one who ever wanted a private sector job, that's who! That would have to be some terminal cancer patient/ lawyer or something. you tyhink there's a "thin Blue Line"? that's a wall of silence? The "Pinstripe Wall" has it's own rule book.
Click to expand...

You think it would be hard to find a lawyer to sue the ABA? If so, then you do not know lawyers (especially the unemployed kind).

MotionMan
 
Originally posted by: Born2bwire
Originally posted by: stateofbeasley
And these jobs that are going away aren't coming back.

When some Indian in Mumbai can do the same legal research and document drafting for $10/hr, fewer clients will be willing to pay for people in the US to do the same work.

Don't go to law school if you can help it. It's a waste of time and the jobs are going overseas.
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Are you shitting me?
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No. I am not making this up.

People outside of the legal profession have no idea what is happening to the profession. Legal work is essentially information processing. Anyone with an Internet connection and access to an online database like LexisNexis can do most of the back end work.

Do a google search for LPO and Legal Outsourcing. There are numerous companies that do this now.

It doesn't take a genius to draft motions or subpoenas either.

For the record, I am admitted to practice in two states, and I passed both bar exams on the first try. Bar exams are pathetically easy. The multiple choice multistate only requires you to memorize lots of rules. The essays are almost all straight IRAC format. People generally fail these tests because they spend time worrying about failing instead of plowing through the questions.

The doc review circuit has its share of crazy malcontents (and people who are so crazy that they could never get a job anywhere else), but there are lots of people who left the ranks of associates because they couldn't take it anymore after 5-7 years of billing 2400 hours/year.
 
From my viewpoint as a blue-collar worker all my life, it's good to see outsourcing starting to hit white-collar workers for a change.

Folks in white collar jobs always said shit like "You just need to retrain," or "No one owes you a living. If someone can do your job cheaper, then so be it."

Of course, now that I'm about to become a white collar worker for the first time in my life...:roll:

I just need to hit the fucking lotto so I can retire.
 
Originally posted by: MotionMan

You think it would be hard to find a lawyer to sue the ABA? If so, then you do not know lawyers (especially the unemployed kind).

MotionMan
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You're right. I do not know lawyers, of any kind.
I would hope to keep it that way. Being poor, I hope I'm not much of a target.

 
2L at a national law school here. The summer job market is definitely down this year - I only know a few classmates who don't have jobs at firms lined up for the summer, but I've heard that at some schools <50% of the class have summer jobs at firms. Of course, the big question is how many of us summer associates will get permanent offers. In years past, most of the top law firms gave permanent offers to 90-95% of their summer associates, but this summer that number will probably drop a bit.
 
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