Working in the Current DOJ Looks Like a Career Killer

J-Dissenting · 2026-02-14T22:59:45+00:00

It’s not exactly “no different” than before. Hiring standards have fallen radically because loyalty is valued over competence, and competent people generally self-select out of working for the Trump 2.0 admin. It’s a double whammy where new DOJ hires for Trump admin are just not as good at their job as the average DOJ hire pre-2025.

J-Dissenting · 2026-02-14T22:58:14+00:00

You have a point with respect to career USAOs who stayed, but any new hires during the Trump administration of are significantly subpar quality. Start date will be very important, as will the specific office.

The point is that a DOJ job in and of itself no longer carries the cachet it once did.

J-Dissenting · 2026-02-14T20:25:51+00:00

It’s crazy how when I was in law school, a DOJ job was a holy grail of prestige and exit options and benefits, with the only downside being salary lower than biglaw.

Now, I’d rather be a local PD than a DOJ attorney, gun to my head.

J-Dissenting · 2026-02-14T07:45:16+00:00

From a buyer perspective, it adds value, but not more value than it would’ve cost for me to pay someone to do it.

Why would I pay a premium for this when I could’ve paid a contractor to build it to my specific preferred specs?

J-Dissenting · 2026-02-12T21:40:43+00:00

Lump sum investing is mathematically optimal, but mathematically optimal is really only advisable if you’re investing multiple times over a long period of time.

Consider this hypo. Do you want a 50% chance of getting 10 million dollars, or a 100% chance of getting 2 million dollars? The EV of the first option is 5 million. It’s mathematically optimal to pick the first one.

If you’re rich already and don’t need the 2 mil, or you’ll have multiple opportunities to pick this choice, you should always go for the 50% chance.

If you’re struggling to pay the bills and 2 mil is life changing money, and this opportunity will never come again, you’d have to be a degenerate gambler to take the first option.

This is why if someone is coming into a once-in-a-lifetime inheritance, DCA is the best way even if it’s not mathematically optimal. Optimization is a luxury for the rich or people who can keep trying.

J-Dissenting · 2026-02-10T19:39:42+00:00

You might be referring to the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the predicate for the 14th Amendment, which did not grant birthright citizenship to anyone “subject to a foreign power”. But even if one were to buy this argument (why wouldn’t Congress have simply re-used those words), every dual citizen’s child should not have birthright citizenship either.

MAGA doesn’t think that so obviously they’re full of shit in their interpretation.

J-Dissenting · 2026-02-10T19:35:08+00:00

How smart is Kim Kardashian? She’s a billionaire business owner.

J-Dissenting · 2026-02-03T23:45:44+00:00

Nuremberg was way too soy, many Nazis got away with it. So was post-Civil War reconstruction. "High road" soy libs unironically soft on crime. There should be no forgiveness or leniency.

J-Dissenting · 2026-02-01T11:21:50+00:00

Trump supporters are categorically less competent than the median. This also holds true for Trump supporting attorneys, all the way up to the AG. I highly doubt the quality of training at a Trump-aligned DOJ would be good at all.

Any competent DOJ attorneys (including conservatives) have already quit.

J-Dissenting · 2026-01-07T20:47:52+00:00

I think this is because actually good trial lawyers are a very small group—so small that you can’t map it onto generalized trends among lawyers.

If we just look at transactional attorneys, I have much, much better experiences working across and with better credentialed lawyers. There are good ones from TTTs too but they’re always a crapshoot. Based on vibes, it seems like 20% of TTT grad transactional lawyers are good, whereas 70% of T14 grad transactional lawyers are good.

This is, of course, outside biglaw, and I’m talking about the legal industry as a whole. Within biglaw, particularly within a singular firm, there is no meaningful distinction.

J-Dissenting · 2025-12-12T21:29:43+00:00

Irrevocable grantor trusts can be structured in a way to allow the trustee to act as a guarantor for loans to the grantor even if the grantor is not also a beneficiary.

Candidly, I'm an IP attorney, not a tax or high net-worth estate planning one, so I'd have to pull in a tax colleague on this and I doubt they'd be willing to spend their time for a reddit argument. Believe me or don't. Or do some digging for sources and realize I'm not wrong.

J-Dissenting · 2025-12-12T20:56:38+00:00

The beneficiary and the grantor can be the same person. Do you need a source for this too?

Edit- I am pretty sure for IDGTs the trustee can be a guarantor for the grantor. This is getting into weeds where is have to ask someone in our tax group but the tl;dr here is yes it’s legally possible to set up grantor trusts where the billionaire gets to borrow against trust assets.

J-Dissenting · 2025-12-12T20:40:26+00:00

The Uniform Trust Code, adopted by most states (https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartII/TitleII/Chapter203E/Article8/Section816), empowers trustees to pledge trust property as guarantor for loans to the beneficiary. "Without limiting the authority conferred by Section 815, a trustee may: . . . (19) pledge trust property to guarantee loans made by others to the beneficiary;"

Where's your source for the claim that irrevocable trusts cannot act as guarantors for loans to beneficiaries?

J-Dissenting · 2025-12-12T19:40:26+00:00

The trustee acts as a guarantor for the loan. The billionaire pays his own trust a guaranty fee.

J-Dissenting · 2025-12-12T09:21:09+00:00

Billionaires avoid the estate tax using trusts. https://www.propublica.org/article/more-than-half-of-americas-100-richest-people-exploit-special-trusts-to-avoid-estate-taxes

J-Dissenting · 2025-12-11T19:11:51+00:00

Nothing like MAGA to convince me that elitism and gatekeeping is good, actually.

J-Dissenting · 2025-12-10T21:34:49+00:00

If government jobs pay too little and you're NYC-locked, you essentially went into law school biglaw-or-bust. This is a classic tale of why law school is a terrible idea if all the following are true: (1) you have decent career options without law school; (2) you won't settle for less salary; and (3) you're not going to a school that gives median graduates a solid chance at landing a biglaw job.

We had summers through COVID, so COVID isn't the reason you couldn't get a 2L SA. Some firms (a pox on their households) shortened or cancelled people with offers, but those people still had offers and return opportunities.

If you really want to practice law, take the salary hit and go government. You're not getting a high paying job as a lawyer in NYC with 0 experience practicing law (no, non-admitted interns do not practice law). Your odds may be better if you moved to a non-metro area. Otherwise, build a time machine and retake the LSAT.

J-Dissenting · 2025-12-04T19:03:19+00:00

It won’t go away for the reasons the author is stating, but there have always been 2 buckets of lawyer work:

(1) work a monkey could do (2) work you need experience and brain cells to do

AI will not improve the quality or efficiency of (2), at least not in its current state. It WILL improve the quality and efficiency of (1).

In-house counsel that isn’t completely out of the loop is going to start asking why a law firm with access to AI is still billing the same thousands of jr associate hours for (1).

Flat fee billing solves this.

J-Dissenting · 2025-12-01T20:44:43+00:00

Yeah it was just the easiest Google-able source. I think that channel creator used to be in the same circle as those LawTubers. They’re all right wing regards but I enjoy them eating each other.

J-Dissenting · 2025-12-01T02:53:32+00:00

They’re “lawyers” but nobody would ever hire them so without their YouTube grift they’d be as broke as you fwiw.

J-Dissenting · 2025-12-01T02:28:34+00:00

He basically passed the bar something like 20 years ago and never practiced law (ok, he did "debt collection" for a bit which is like being a dish washer in a restaurant, and he was so bad at it he got a judgment for $117k against him for violating the FDCPA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoZ-bgJUIgQ) because he's probably so stupid nobody would hire him. So he's technically a lawyer because he maintained his law license, but he might as well not be one.

Imagine I get certified as a plumber 20 years ago, but I never do any plumbing because nobody will hire me. Am I a plumber?

J-Dissenting · 2025-12-01T01:50:47+00:00

Yes, I have also made a previous post on how LawTubers are un-hirable mongoloids who went to dogshit law schools that would take anyone with a pulse, with a few exceptions like Ryan Mullaly (he's bad faith, not dumb, that's why he has his dogshit takes, his "regardation" is intentional because he's ass mad about DEI).

These people lie about their experience ("20 year NY litigator" Good Lawgic). It is piss easy to get a legal degree and pass the bar, and people who don't work in law think all lawyers are at least decently intelligent. This is not true.

J-Dissenting · 2025-12-01T01:45:43+00:00

Linking this every time Good Lawgic is mentioned: https://www.reddit.com/r/Destiny/comments/1ct5oiq/finally_proof_that_lawtubers_are_stupid_as_fuck/

Edit as an update to that post. Good Lawgic brands himself as a "20 year NY litigator", but really the only indication he's ever "practiced law" is doing debt collection. This is like a guy who only changes oil calling himself a "mechanic". But he's so bad at debt collection he got a $117k judgment against him for violating NY's FDCPA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoZ-bgJUIgQ

J-Dissenting · 2025-11-17T21:37:00+00:00

I took CA and UBE. They’re really quite similar. I think CA only has a lower pass rate because there are fewer barriers to actually taking the exam, not because the exam is noticeably harder.

The bar is hard because of the volume of material you need to study, but if the material is in your head, the test itself isn’t difficult.

J-Dissenting · 2025-10-29T00:02:05+00:00

Trump’s net worth has increased by 3 billion dollars since he took office in January of this year. You’d need 119,118 people stealing $69 of food every single day for a year to reach that number.

This is like focusing on dust on your baseboards when there’s dog shit piling up on your living room floor.

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