The Deadliest Sin?
March 19, 2009 · by Legal Tease
A few things are bound to happen when you spend 76 straight hours closing a bond offering in a windowless office the size of a handicap toilet stall, eating nothing but stale candy corn from a nearby vending machine and fantasizing about unconsciousness. First, you make peace with the fact that showers are for people far luckier than you. Second, you start obsessively calculating what your hourly salary might be compared to, say, a teenage babysitter or a shoe-shine guy. Maybe you start to hallucinate a bit. Or wonder if it’s possible to slit your wrists with a stack of post-its. And then, finally, you catch sight of your pale, desperate reflection in the desktop monitor and you realize the pathetic, obvious, predictable truth: You’re wildly jealous of the people your firm recently laid off. [Read more]
How Screwed Are the 1Ls?
March 9, 2009 · by Legal Tease
Q: As a 1L hoping to score a summer gig with a big law firm for my 2L summer, all of this layoff news does not bode well. Given the fact that law firms are slashing people left and right, delaying start dates for first year associates, rescinding offers, and offering year-long delayed start dates, what is going to happen this August when current 1Ls go through recruitment?
Obviously the competition will just be worse as law firms will be hiring less people….but how bad will it be? Is it time to plan a volunteer trip building houses in a third-world country or something so that I can say I did something interesting my 2L summer (and hope that I can score a big law job after my 2L summer)? I’ll be clerking at a non-profit law firm this summer, and am reasonably ranked at my Tier 1 law school, so in any other year I’d have an OK shot at big law. I know that people who are in the top 10% at T14s will be ok—but what about the rest of us? Let me know if it’s time to pack my eurotrip backpack. [Read more]
