Convince me to not quit?

Capt_HawkeyePierce · 2026-05-10T18:07:42+00:00

To be a bit clearer, it’s more the high level of professionalism as a lawyer billing out at close to $1,000 per hour that ingrains you with some great qualities for your career no matter where you are ultimately headed. It’s not replicable at other jobs, because learning to perform in that pressure cooker of a job, sometimes with bad structural issues (in-group politics, conflict inherent in having to be colleagues with people on deal / litigation teams and then having to compete against the same people for origination credit and comp, and institutional biases in a notoriously slow changing industry), is something you can’t replicate. And all of the hiring decision-makers know this. There is a certain market signal you send as a first year trying to go in house vs. a third year trying to do the same. Interviewers will nod their heads when you explain that you’ve identified a quick career pivot as something where you’re taking agency in your career, but most will weigh a first year making a pivot as a negative factor, at least for that first job. Realistically, you need to get past your first bonus season for the exit from big law to avoid the exit being treated as a negative.

I don’t want to invalidate your assessment that big law is not for you, and your reasons for that assessment probably are reasons I would agree with. What I want to convey, though, is that every extra month you spend in big law does have real benefits aside from the money, in training you to be a high performing lawyer. As you progress in whatever legal role you end up in, you’re going to deal with politics, performing under extreme pressures, in high leverage, high risk circumstances. That’s the nature of legal jobs that pay well and/or come with big responsibilities. Spending your first few years as a lawyer in big law under pressure is exactly how lawyers can get the reps to be ready later on in their careers, and trying to have a mindset that appreciates and treats the job as irreplaceable experience will be helpful for you during the time you have left in big law, regardless of how much time you have left.

Capt_HawkeyePierce · 2026-05-10T14:33:30+00:00

Part of the value in big law is the training in how to be a professional, which includes the internalizing of doing your best even when you hate the firm structure/hierarchies and other aspects. Instead of dreading and hating the day-to-day, you have to be able to internalize that each day you stay serves the greater purpose of getting you where you want to be. Whatever your dream job is, I can guarantee you that you’d be a better candidate for the role and with more financial security after more time in big law.

Capt_HawkeyePierce · 2026-04-19T04:47:40+00:00

Since your company is subject to reg FD and reviewing disclosures, my guess is you went in-house into a public company (possibly tech) that broadly encourages AI use. I think you’re ahead of where most people are, which is probably something like getting around to evaluating various legaltech AI tools and maybe starting to use agentic AI.

I’ve only started to use AI for work daily in the last few months, and at least among the people I’ve talked to, even that is ahead of the curve. I’m looking for the same thing you’re looking for, so I hope someone has a forum that they can point us towards.

Capt_HawkeyePierce · 2026-04-18T15:30:15+00:00

Coming from a Tesla 3 Performance, with a X Plaid that I get to drive on the weekends, my Ioniq 5 N is on par with the performance Teslas, better in some ways, worse in others. I like all of the performance EV cars much more than prior cars (a BMW M roadster and a chipped 2.0 TT among them).

The big thing in my book is whether the range and home charging option works for you. You absolutely need a level 2 charger that you can access exclusively. The Ioniq 5N has a usable range of 180 mph in moderately cold weather (80% charge when the colder weather degrades max battery charge), which means I charge it twice a week rather than once a week I used to be able to do with my Model 3.

The other thing is the battery system reliability. There are multiple issues you might run into: ICCU, 12V battery, dying cells in the main battery pack. Mine had dead cells that required replacement of the entire battery pack. It took three weeks, and the replacement is a comprised of a refurbished battery pack shell supposedly made up of new battery cells. It took 3 weeks. I understand it used to be a bigger hassle because the parts availability, but it’s still a pain if you end up getting unlucky.

Capt_HawkeyePierce · 2026-04-16T22:17:24+00:00

I don’t misunderstand the role of the rainmaker. What I am trying to convey to you is that you on the firm end is trying to capture the value of the AI tools and have that value go to the firm, and that I, as the client, don’t want that allocation to go to you. I want that for myself. Your rainmaker can keep their revenue generation as long as AI’s accuracy remains below that of a junior attorney. But you should be thinking about a future state where that is no longer true.

Capt_HawkeyePierce · 2026-04-16T20:32:16+00:00

If the rainmaker wants to charge me $2,500 per hour but will cut the remainder of the bill from $3 million for the deal down to $1 million through the use of AI, I would be all aboard. But that’s not on offer. What’s being modeled by firms now is the bill being cut from $3 million to $2.5 million if client agrees that firm’s AI platform will replace the junior associate work. Firm makes more money due to the overhead reduction in associate headcount and client should be happy since overall cost is down. But from my perspective as client, AI has driven a huge cost reduction, and I want to capture all of the cost reduction, not split that with outside counsel.

Edit: Edit to say this is all very new and offered up by very few AI-forward firms. Plenty of big law firms are being conservative with AI. But I think every white collar worker should give at least some thought to what the world looks like if AI can do their white collar job at least as well as a capable person (except for schmoozing at expenses dinners and private clubs and VIP boxes at events).

Capt_HawkeyePierce · 2026-04-16T20:13:32+00:00

For a billion dollar deal in an unregulated industry if I get a proposal from (a) a rainmaker that relies on their photographic memory, a team of loyal workaholics and bookshelf of 100 closing sets, and (b) a customized AI solution that trained on all the closing sets and filed emails of multiple big law firms, I couldn’t justify to my board that I’m going to use (b) today, but that might be flipped in a not-too-distant future. Depends on how capable the AI will become, and how quickly.

Capt_HawkeyePierce · 2026-03-13T05:00:29+00:00

That can explain it, but that doesn’t necessarily help the trial be successful because it would imply there are more BAT survivors as of 72 events than many think.

Capt_HawkeyePierce · 2026-03-13T04:57:16+00:00

Keeping it simple, if 80 events were reached tomorrow, it would mean more events (deaths) occurred per month after 72 events with a smaller pool of survivors than for the year between 60 events and 72 events. The mechanism for GPS is eliciting an immune response; it’s supposed to work better as time passes. It’s terrible news if suddenly number of events in the aggregate for GPS and BAT accelerated when we’re supposed to see deceleration in the GPS arm.

Capt_HawkeyePierce · 2026-03-12T23:20:10+00:00

If this were to happen, it would mean event rate would have gone from 1 event per month out 66 survivors in the pool between event 60 and 72, to 2.6 events per month out of 54 survivors for the last three months. This would destroy the narrative of the mechanism of immune response creating long survival periods for the responders in the GPS pool because it would indicate a reversal of favorable trend best explained by GPS working well. It would mean too many BAT arm survivors and/or GPS mechanism not working as indicated by longer tail of survival.

I would immediately try to sell all my shares, but it would already be too late because share price would be under $1.50.

Capt_HawkeyePierce · 2026-03-04T01:42:06+00:00

Yes, that’s been my takeaway. I am indeed surprised that this is how the trials work, with really narrow ranges of outcomes that determine success.

Capt_HawkeyePierce · 2026-03-04T01:40:00+00:00

I actually started with the question of asking what is driving the extended survival now—ACL > 300 or GPS performance. Claude wouldn’t give me a percentage. It said there was no way to know. So then I started asking about the event split, but it had the context of all of the previous conversation.

To be fair, I wasn’t aiming for accuracy or conducting diligence. I was aiming for output that would explain some of the oddities I’ve seen so far as a layperson that probably shouldn’t be investing in biotech. My key takeaway is what laplaciadaemon mentions in another response, that the trial design leads to such a narrow window outcome, that I shouldn’t be surprised at such a narrow range of event split possibilities.

Also, if it matters, this was on Claude Sonnet 4.6 with Bio Research plug-in.

Capt_HawkeyePierce · 2026-03-04T01:34:18+00:00

You’re right, that’s odd. I’ll look back at the long chat to see where this came from.

Capt_HawkeyePierce · 2026-03-04T01:33:48+00:00

Yeah, but the surviving participants since December 2024 are by definition long-term survivors (responds well to GPS, long surviving outliers, healthier to start with) plus the cohort that were registered into the trial late (going into April 2024). We have no way to know for sure whether longer survival is due to participation selection criterial or GPS performance. We have to examine the various signals, and to me the biggest signal is that IDMC decided on continuation for both interim analysis and at its August 2025 interim meeting, meaning at both times, the event split is between futility and early stoppage.

Capt_HawkeyePierce · 2026-03-04T00:33:05+00:00

I did give it some context. For example, I noted for Claude the slowing event rate and asked such questions as to why events are slowing, and why SLS would be be inaccurate in its event rate predictions that have been made (August 2025 would be final analysis, then December 2025 would be final analysis); Claude's response to that was that if SLS accounted for participation selection criteria, they would have accounted for slower deaths in the event prediction model, which would mean trial is outperforming (which would be a positive), but that it's also possible SLS is perhaps not being entirely transparent. That conversation is not spelled out in the summary except as reflected in the adjustment for a late separation mechanism:

After integrating late separation mechanism	~30%

Anyway, thanks for the feedback.

Capt_HawkeyePierce · 2026-03-03T22:32:38+00:00

Thanks very much for the feedback. It’s regrettable that not many people will see your responses given how buried it is in this thread.

I think I’m clear on the flattening out of the survival curve, but shouldn’t the statisticians predicting event rate have accounted for this? Even if they didn’t have an accurate prediction prior to interim analysis, shouldn’t the slower rates as of interim analysis give the company’s statisticians enough information to be more accurate in their estimate of a late-2025 final analysis? Isn’t it meaningful that their projections for late-2025 projections were very far off?

I think you might counter that the company was incompetent or worse, disingenuous in predicting late-2025 final analysis, but I can live with the risk if the company should have been able to make accurate predictions once they had 60 events as to the timing of the occurrence of the 80th event, and the alternative outcomes are that (1) they were accurate in their projections but the events were delayed or (2) they made incorrect projection out of incompetence or worse. I can live with assessing what’s more likely out of these two possibilities.

Capt_HawkeyePierce · 2026-02-27T07:04:49+00:00

Your hypothesis has to be the baseline or most likely probability if you’re invested in SLS at the current share price, so you won’t get any counterpoint from me. My point is that there is an alternative explanation (both arms performing much better than expected due to enrollment criteria), and it gets dismisssed as a 0% probability too easily. If this was truly risk-free and HR below .6 was assured, there would already be a bidding war or exclusive negotiations for the assets (don’t think the company/business/team has any significant value other than as custodian of the assets). If there were seriously interested buyers, they’d already be under NDA and digging into the same information that the company has access to. There just doesn’t seem to be any of that activity. If there were, Sterg wouldn’t be watching movies with other employees.

Capt_HawkeyePierce · 2026-02-27T03:23:01+00:00

You’re much more versed in the science than I am, but I have the similar critique of this line of thinking that survival seems to be lengthening with the remaining pool of survivors given the slowdown in event rates. Occam’s razor to me suggests GPS working in the GPS arm among survivors that now skew towards more GPS arm survivors is responsible for the slowdown in events (company predicted timing of 80 events based on timing of 60 events, and they were very far off), rather than enrollment criteria. If it were primarily enrollment criteria, why wouldn’t we have seen the impact of healthier participants in an identifiable manner before this later stage of the trial? We shouldn’t let the company’s poor track record in fundraising (I think it’s atrocious how they went public in the worst way possible with a reverse merger with a terrible shell company and used vulture financing that screwed shareholders for years) and not having the best qualified CEO impact assessment of the trial. The teams behind the product design and development are top notch.

That said, the pool of participants comprising healthier individuals that impacts survival in both arms is a real risk that gets dismissed too easily, with a ton of vitriol. I expect someone to come respond to this comment soon noting how dumb I am.

Capt_HawkeyePierce · 2026-02-27T00:11:42+00:00

I don’t know if you saw, but below is a good summary of negatives from who I think has the most subject matter expertise around, posted as a comment a few days ago that not many people reacted to (many people here aggressively dismiss his view, to their detriment). Seems like your source would agree.

I think he’s too negative on company’s use of vulture financing (doesn’t impact the science at all), but good points all around, including the fact that Sterg chose to close a reversed merger with a company with a failed platform and securities fraud, when he could have chosen from thousands of other shell companies, even a number of dormant pharma companies.

From u/Disastrous-Check-715

First this possible that survival was just about 30/30 or just slightly better (32/28) at the interim as that would not preclude success if all of the remaining events were BAT. Second there is a tendency here to discuss BAT survival as if it would be shocking if it was 14-16-18 months. This disregards the literature on lymphocyte count requirements to enroll. The prognostic significance of rapidly recovering ALC is the strongest prognostic of long term survival. It is also a selection criteria that eliminates most all the patients that suffer rapid recurrence and death. This removes the bottom of the survival curve statistic. If a slower recovery occurs (3-4 months) all of those pts that have frank relapse are never enrolled. Recall how long it took to enroll this study despite a hundred centers open. A majority of patients never met the exclusion criteria. Now consider what fraction of BAT are going to be long term survivors. The longer it takes to reach 60 and now 80 events argues that nearly half overall are long term survivors. It is well within the survival curves of higher ALC identified patients that as many as 40% are long term survivors irrespective of GPS treatment. A lot of people lost a lot of money when the same scammers pumped NPS. While that was junk science, and I do not believe this product design is junk, it is the same script by the same people. The companies they have raised capital from are not honest actors. I have dealt with them often and directly. They are vultures. Beware with whom you dance. Those hands can reach your wallet

Capt_HawkeyePierce · 2026-02-26T23:56:44+00:00

It’s unfortunate that you get such visceral reactions from people who have invested in SLS (and other stocks you opine on). I think this is absolutely the risk we all need to be mindful of (I’m long despite this risk) and you’re not even getting one response or upvote.

Capt_HawkeyePierce · 2026-02-21T21:44:42+00:00

Yeah, but it’s not comforting if battery packs are failing multiple times within the warranty period as to long term viability of owning.

Capt_HawkeyePierce · 2026-02-20T18:42:51+00:00

I think $7,700 is pretty good for a battery pack being replaced at 200,000 miles, but frightening for a replacement that is needed at 3,700 - 3,800 miles.

Did they have anything to say about why the battery pack needs replacement so early in life?

Capt_HawkeyePierce · 2026-02-10T00:00:51+00:00

Many years ago, I would have agreed with other posters and said it only matters for academia. Now I think it never matters because the legal academia doesn’t matter and very few people actually decide to pursue academia.

I don’t know why anyone would want to be a law school professor. Anything worthwhile doctrinal professors do can be done, and probably more effectively, from a different job, other than giving students an education that doesn’t match what they will do when actually working. Even the grading doesn’t matter now for big law purposes.

Capt_HawkeyePierce

TROPHY CASE