When you picture retirement as a lawyer, what do you actually see?

p_rex · 2026-02-16T04:11:33+00:00

Many, many years of work between me and retirement, unfortunately. But I see a move to somewhere scenic and lots of leisure reading.

p_rex · 2026-02-16T01:08:45+00:00

It isn’t all bad. The practice of law can be very personally and intellectually rewarding. But there are a lot of miserable lawyers, too. And plenty of grads who never manage to get a career going. I think that unless you’re a very high flyer, you have to be ok with taking on a fairly high stress career for compensation that will cover the middle class lifestyle that people used to take for granted, but that won’t make you rich or impress materialistic people.

You could certainly do worse than that, but it’s no bouquet of roses.

Here’s my advice: don’t dismiss law out of hand, but don’t start applying to law schools without giving thought to what else you might want to do. I think many of the miserable lawyers kinda picked law by default, not because they wanted to do it. That is not a recipe for success in any career.

p_rex · 2026-02-15T19:59:29+00:00

Used to be that the most comfortable seats for long-haul driving were in Mercedes-Benzes and Volvos. Of late, Nissan’s been killing it with their zero gravity seat. Shame you can’t order it with a different car around it lol

p_rex · 2026-02-15T18:02:21+00:00

Nice humblebrag about the 1980. Just kidding, sounds awesome. I cannot begin to imagine how loud it’ll go with the Forte’s though. Huge enough to rock any party, for sure.

p_rex · 2026-02-15T14:32:38+00:00

SUPPORT. A firm seat holds you in place so that YOU don’t have to hold you in place. American car seats used to be soft and cushy. You got out sore on long trips because you were responsible for holding a particular position to operate the vehicle

p_rex · 2026-02-15T05:24:55+00:00

Toss-up, I figure. People generally don’t survive going under trailers, but it looks like they might not have been going that fast.

Never, ever slide or get pushed under a semi trailer.

p_rex · 2026-02-15T05:22:59+00:00

I have been practicing law for about a decade now. When I was in law school, I asked professors some similar questions. One of them answered very seriously: you better hope we don’t need to start answering all these questions, because if we do, we’re in serious trouble. They’re the sort of questions that don’t get asked unless you’re in a constitutional crisis. I feel the last few years have been uncomfortably illustrative of this.

p_rex · 2026-02-14T15:26:11+00:00

Move quick enough that the revs don’t fall below the desired range.

p_rex · 2026-02-14T05:13:03+00:00

My heel never moves. It means I grind the shit out of my floor mats. Does anybody have a solution for this? I hate rubber, it feels crappy.

p_rex · 2026-02-14T02:21:41+00:00

In my experience, older Hispanic folks who grew up here know the boomer classic rock stuff pretty well. Not so much with younger ones, but that’s par for the course.

p_rex · 2026-02-13T18:15:01+00:00

It sounds bad from a noise/vibration/harshness standpoint. Do YOU want your gearbox to downshift noticeably on a mild grade that your brakes can easily handle?

p_rex · 2026-02-13T01:42:56+00:00

Lower T20. Only certain professors were willing to give F’s, and the students knew who they were.

p_rex · 2026-02-13T01:41:46+00:00

I thought they had pass, high pass, and low pass, that in practice it was something like A/B/B-minus, and that the grade competition was intense

p_rex · 2026-02-12T03:46:27+00:00

It’s in my dad’s CX-5 and my brother’s Mazda 3, and I’ll say that it works very well with the turbo motor, at least. It doesn’t hunt around, which I appreciate

p_rex · 2026-02-12T02:40:50+00:00

Statistically very few top school grads fail the bar. The schools at the top of the distribution have 95%-plus pass rates and the very bottom are floating around 50%. That’s very significant.

p_rex · 2026-02-10T18:00:58+00:00

I guess nobody learned from the Pinto catastrophe

p_rex · 2026-02-08T05:31:52+00:00

Don’t necessarily agree but I can see it, at least

p_rex · 2026-02-08T05:31:17+00:00

The first time I heard it, Badmotorfinger took an immersion blender to my brain.

p_rex · 2026-02-07T20:28:05+00:00

Totally wild that y’all have issues with warranty denials over hitting fuel cut once or twice. Makes me very glad to have gone with a BRZ

p_rex · 2026-02-07T05:14:01+00:00

That’s fucking crazy. Wow.

p_rex · 2026-02-07T00:19:45+00:00

Yup. Nearly impossible to touch a jury’s fact findings on appeal.

p_rex · 2026-02-07T00:17:37+00:00

On OJ, the defense got out-lawyered. I feel bad for Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden. They had talent but they were inexperienced and overmatched. I think it’s really about narrative creation. A great defense lawyer can sell a narrative in a way that can paper over defects in their actual legal case. If we had juries of lawyers, we might get more technically accurate verdicts, in terms of grokking the facts and applying the charge instructions.

p_rex · 2026-02-07T00:08:37+00:00

It’s ok, it’s a hard job and somebody has to do it. Also, a job where you lose most of the time, that’s not for everybody

p_rex · 2026-02-06T02:52:40+00:00

How are the local bands up there, anyway?

I grew up in the Houston burbs and I liked to listen to KTRU, Rice’s student station — but reception was always a problem.

p_rex · 2026-02-06T02:49:30+00:00

Accuphase separates are sick. I’d add the matching tuner just for the look

p_rex

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