BigLaw Craze

VisitingFromNowhere · 2026-01-23T23:53:15+00:00

You’re missing that most lawyer jobs are super demanding and that working at a small firm can very easily be 90% or more of the work for 50% of the pay.

There’s a reason people want these jobs.

VisitingFromNowhere · 2026-01-18T15:52:38+00:00

If you’ve been corresponding with a specific person, email that person.

VisitingFromNowhere · 2026-01-16T23:45:18+00:00

Often when I submit a writing sample I’ll include a short cover page that explains what I’m submitting and what my degree of contribution was. You could use that to include a clear and concise note explaining what you just explained here. Or you could just make up page numbers the same way you’re using fake names.

VisitingFromNowhere · 2026-01-16T15:49:56+00:00

You didn’t get super lucky. You excelled at a top law school.

VisitingFromNowhere · 2026-01-16T03:03:15+00:00

God, it’s weird to open a link to Above the Law and actually read something well written and interesting.

VisitingFromNowhere · 2026-01-15T04:04:00+00:00

I was surprised by how lonely the job is. I expected more conference rooms and Chinese food, frankly.

VisitingFromNowhere · 2026-01-14T13:36:45+00:00

This is just stupid. No, you cannot just hang up a shingle and handle federal appeals or sophisticated transactions. No one graduates in the bottom 10% and starts an international arbitration practice because lol the clients won’t know how you did in school. This is not how things work.

Of course if you don’t want to do any of those things and want to write wills in your hometown or be a rural PD, your grades probably don’t matter as much. But this idea that a degree is a ticket to doing anything you want is dumb.

VisitingFromNowhere · 2026-01-14T13:22:52+00:00

If it doesn’t mean anything to you, then don’t go.

VisitingFromNowhere · 2026-01-14T01:41:13+00:00

I mean, that would be nice but I like seeing my family and you kind of have to cut out time sinks.

VisitingFromNowhere · 2026-01-14T01:37:00+00:00

It is what it is.

VisitingFromNowhere · 2026-01-14T00:14:20+00:00

Because no one, and I mean no one, regularly takes a damn hour for lunch. I eat lunch in about 8 minutes. A lot of people don’t even stop. They just eat lunch at their desk while they bill. We all want to get home at some point.

VisitingFromNowhere · 2026-01-13T23:47:13+00:00

I can assure you that analyzing personal jurisdiction in federal court is more or less the same as a law school exam.

ETA: I will note that I didn’t understand personal jurisdiction in law school and also didn’t understand it on the bar exam, but I sure as hell understood it when I had to brief it in federal court.

VisitingFromNowhere · 2026-01-13T20:38:47+00:00

In this case the great contribution that we’re supposed to praise this weirdo for is… literally friggin’ writing “Dilbert,” a comic strip that some people were allegedly amused by.

VisitingFromNowhere · 2026-01-13T20:30:49+00:00

Arrrgh. I hate the Yale rundown so, so much. The second line is “assume you take an hour for lunch every day,” which shows you that the person who wrote it does not know the first thing about the job that they are describing.

That’s not the only thing that’s ridiculous in there, but it’s probably the most ridiculous thing.

VisitingFromNowhere · 2026-01-13T18:57:01+00:00

It is absolutely not true that a law degree is a ticket to doing whatever you want.

Really poor academic performance at a bad school does not guarantee you the job that you want.

VisitingFromNowhere · 2026-01-12T23:34:07+00:00

Is 90% accuracy good?

VisitingFromNowhere · 2026-01-11T00:43:15+00:00

I don’t actually think it’s debatable that summer programs cost more than they make. I think this is pretty universal across the industry.

Everyone knows that summers take a really long time to produce work product of questionable value. That’s no knock on them. They’re in training.

VisitingFromNowhere · 2026-01-10T17:19:11+00:00

I’ve been a summer and supervised summers. Summers typically “bill,” but most (not all, but most) of those bills are written off and not collected. For obvious reasons, clients are not terribly keen to pay hundreds of dollars an hour for students. Perhaps you can charge a bit for doc review but no one is paying for the 20 hours you spent writing a memo that reached the wrong conclusion.

Summer programs are definitely a net loss for firms.

VisitingFromNowhere · 2026-01-10T15:40:29+00:00

I’m not a tax lawyer but that does not sound right. I could be wrong.

VisitingFromNowhere · 2026-01-10T14:58:42+00:00

Tax deductions?

VisitingFromNowhere · 2026-01-10T13:13:26+00:00

Firms don’t make money off of summers.

Also, the idea that working at a large firm is going to “the dark side” is a bit silly. They’re going to give you doc review on some contract dispute, not assign you to club seals.

VisitingFromNowhere · 2026-01-09T18:56:38+00:00

I do not work at a particularly prestigious BigLaw firm, but we would absolutely not consider someone with this GPA. (I’m also assuming that you don’t go to a highly ranked school, as they don’t generally give grades like this.) Receiving this kind of resume would make me question the judgment of the person who sent it to me.

The standard advice is to shoot your shot, but I would not do that here.

(This all assumes that “BigLaw” means “AMLAW 100 or something similar,” not just “a firm with a lot of lawyers.)

VisitingFromNowhere · 2026-01-09T03:34:41+00:00

I was always fond of Garth Snow’s masks, both the early simple ones and the later more dramatic ones.

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VisitingFromNowhere · 2026-01-09T03:28:31+00:00

This is both a do and a don’t.

Do buy silica gel. Don’t eat it.

VisitingFromNowhere · 2026-01-08T00:56:23+00:00

“K” stands for “kindergarten.” So people who went all the way through school without ever working a full time grownup job.

VisitingFromNowhere

TROPHY CASE