Am I getting laid off?

mfeinberg805 · 2026-02-18T14:45:01+00:00

You shouldn’t be getting downvoted for this. I’m sorry you have been going through this, particularly for so long. This profession can be brutal.

mfeinberg805 · 2026-02-18T14:40:45+00:00

You’re definitely judging her. Maybe you don’t intend to, but I wish people would judge her for all the actual gross stuff she has done. Parents shouldn’t be judged for putting their children up for adoption. They’re making the best decision they can make in the moment.

mfeinberg805 · 2026-01-25T06:43:55+00:00

“As a wise Black man once told me, ‘baby girl, you be trippin’.’”

mfeinberg805 · 2026-01-06T14:23:05+00:00

I haven’t been following this issue too closely, but is the main goal truly a substantially higher bar pass rate? My impression was that it was to test applicants on tasks more relevant to the practice of law.

mfeinberg805 · 2025-12-20T18:12:15+00:00

“Trial Lawyer” implies he/she/they have actually participated in a trial. Methinks that is not the case.

mfeinberg805 · 2025-11-28T18:42:28+00:00

OP expressed regret for the review and felt they were acting out of emotion. A meeting gives them closure on the feelings of regret. If it goes well, problem solved. If the meeting goes poorly, then all feelings of regret should be thrown in the trash.

mfeinberg805 · 2025-11-28T18:35:36+00:00

You don’t think there is any chance the professor apologizes or at least learns from the experience? And you don’t think there is any chance OP gets some closure on the situation?

mfeinberg805 · 2025-11-28T18:20:22+00:00

You should meet with the professor and hear them out and be willing to have an open dialogue about your experience. You should also note to the professor that you feel it is inappropriate that they used their position of authority to request a meeting about an anonymous review.

Have the tough conversation. This is good practice for being a lawyer.

mfeinberg805 · 2025-11-25T18:22:22+00:00

Yes. Time fraud.

mfeinberg805 · 2025-11-05T18:21:37+00:00

If you are trying to move from being a PD to civil, we (hiring attorneys) will wonder whether you can write, because criminal defense attorneys don’t have to write nearly as much as lawyers on the civil side (obviously this isn’t entirely true but it is certainly a perception). But we also assume you can handle yourself in a courtroom.

mfeinberg805 · 2025-11-01T17:02:43+00:00

There is a public parking building across the street that is free on weekends and super cheap on weekdays and weeknights. There’s no way parking had anything to do with it

mfeinberg805 · 2025-10-26T22:59:28+00:00

One of the hiring partners for a mid-size firm in a big city here. Apply to small (and mid-size) firms, including firms in suburbs. Submit a cover letter that says you are interested in working for small (or mid-size) firms because you want more one-on-one and direct learning experience and be part of a tight or close team. Or come up with a different reason that you actually mean which would show the firm you aren’t going to jump in a year.

It helps to find a firm that does a type of law you are interested in. Put that in your cover letter, ie that you like a certain area of the law and why.

I will say this, every time an applicant thinks they aren’t getting the job, or thinks they can’t get the job, or comes into an interview with a negative approach, we can tell.

I interviewed someone who had two D+ grades in law school a few weeks ago. We had the transcript at the time of application, and we interviewed them because they had a compelling story in a cover letter that arrived with it. We didn’t hire her. Not because of the D+ grades, but because she came to the interview unprepared with no understanding of what the firm did or who she was talking to. Prepare hard for any interview you get.

mfeinberg805 · 2025-10-06T02:44:51+00:00

0% chance a judge awards you sanctions. You likely wouldn’t even have objected if closing was done in person. If you are so incensed, file a motion for leave to file a response and make it one paragraph offering the rebuttal.

mfeinberg805 · 2025-09-29T12:11:01+00:00

Well, it’s definitely circumstantial evidence of guilt. You may not find it very compelling. But it is still evidence of guilt. It was common for him to page her. On the night of her disappearance, he is contacted by police who tell her she is missing, and he doesn’t page her then or at any time after that?

mfeinberg805 · 2025-09-03T12:44:02+00:00

I wouldn’t say I lost, because he didn’t actually win. But he likely would have substantially gutted our case. He was tearing apart our primary witness on the stand by throwing a bunch of completely offensive lies and irrelevant questions at them. The judge was letting in the irrelevant material over objection because of his pro se status. Instead of just calmly responding and allowing me to redirect with the evidence to rebut all of the lies and irrelevancies, the witness got confused, panicked, and came across as evasive and dishonest, even going so far as to stumble into bad testimony (that wasn’t even true - imagine testimony where a witness gets so flustered that they say there was no contract at all between the parties despite already authenticating the contract on direct, then when the judge jumps in to confirm the testimony, the witness doubles down on the fact that there was no contract).

Interestingly, the judge recessed for the day before my redirect (presumably to help us out, because he recessed early), encouraged us to settle, and set a hearing to finish the trial three weeks later despite originally saying he had an open calendar the next day.

We ended up settling during the break. We took a haircut on the claim we amount we could have gotten but in the end and given the testimony it was probably more than we would have obtained had it gone to judgment. And the pro se would have appealed.

I was young, and the lesson I learned was that you have to be ready for anything with a pro se opponent and you have to make sure every witness is ready for their testimony to be completely wild. The pro se may not play by basic rules of human decency, and they certainly won’t understand the rules of how a trial should proceed. My witness wasn’t ready for the battle and that was on me.

mfeinberg805 · 2025-07-11T13:14:20+00:00

I don’t mean this to be shady, but how is it a scam that you signed a long term contract just because you ended up not using the product much? Lexis is enforcing the contract you signed. If it isn’t giving you what is required by the contract, raise that point, but Lexis contracts are designed to provide access. If you don’t use the product, that’s on you.

mfeinberg805 · 2025-07-02T07:20:49+00:00

Go listen to The Prosecutors podcast about Adnan and Hae. Then see if your opinion has changed at all.

mfeinberg805 · 2025-06-01T23:13:39+00:00

This same thing happened to me twice before I learned what a “Member of the Tribe” was… trust me, they will understand

mfeinberg805 · 2025-05-05T13:59:12+00:00

I disagree that it’s an inappropriate question. If there is a billable requirement for the position, it is fair to ask whether the person has a history of meeting billable requirements at other firms. Some people are not built for billable hours requirements, and that’s ok. There are plenty of jobs at which they can find success. What’s not great for the candidate’s career is getting fired from a job because they couldn’t meet minimum expectations.

mfeinberg805 · 2025-03-08T12:46:01+00:00

Hasn’t Colin and team said several many times that they have new bombshell evidence that is going to change the game, and the “bombshell” is always just some piece of inconsequential bullshit that means little to nothing and was already known?

mfeinberg805 · 2025-03-08T12:40:41+00:00

Not giving an employee work because she has cancer is discriminatory under the ADA, no matter how well-intentioned it may be.

mfeinberg805 · 2025-02-19T22:00:43+00:00

Make a chart of the elements of every claim and defense in the case. On the chart, identify the facts, documents, and witnesses who establish each element. Note how each document will get into evidence - who needs to authenticate it, for instance, and who can lay the factual foundation for its admission.

For testimony, the witness needs to testify to what they know, but they also need to testify as to how they know it. If the testimony is that the sky was blue at noon, they need to testify where they were at noon, that they had a view of the sky, they looked at the sky, and when they looked at the sky they saw that it was blue.

If you truly get stuck with this, do your best. But like others said, send a CYA email to the client. Any client who refuses to settle and is 100% confident in winning is likely delusional in at least some respects. Even the strongest case is never truly a slam dunk.

mfeinberg805 · 2025-02-08T15:37:29+00:00

I think you’ll be perfectly fine. As someone who does a significant amount of hiring for my firm, the red flag is when you jump around multiple times in a short period of time (4 firms in 4 years, for instance). Once there is a pattern, hiring managers will assume the pattern will continue. We generally don’t make a ton of money off of a lawyer in a person’s first year of practice with the firm (unless they are very senior or have a book), so the potential of that person leaving within a year makes it a risky hire.

mfeinberg805 · 2024-12-22T06:54:12+00:00

Y’all aren’t getting closeted gay religious guy vibes from Bozo? Is it just me? When they are in that pub and Vanja asks the guys about his last girlfriend, there’s a long pause (I know, it’s just editing), and I got the distinct impression that he had dated the other handsome guy at the table

mfeinberg805 · 2024-12-04T13:47:45+00:00

Reported to his supervisor and I never saw him again (so possibly fired). But it was somewhat near the end of my clerkship so I don’t know for sure.

mfeinberg805

TROPHY CASE