Less than An Attorney

I quit my job at a "small litigation practice" aka "insurance defense firm" and commenced a document review position through a legal staffing agency. While I was a litigation associate/plumber at my previous "practice," I was convinced that my life could not possibly get any worse. It turns out it can. If you are reading this blog, I will not tolerate any counter-veiling arguments that a Juris Doctorate from a third tier law school is useful and that there are many career paths that you can pursue.

Look, the secret is out. You graduated from a garbage dump and to add insult to your injury, you will end up in a penitentiary where you might as well shamefully wear your LSAT score stamped on your forehead and say "I deserve this." The truth is, you do. I mean what in God's name did you think was going to happen after spending $120,000 to go to a law school that is unaffiliated with any undergraduate institution and is free standing in the wasteland? Did you think you were going to Skadden??? Or rather did you think that Cravath was merging with the toilet firm that you work for above Dunkin Donuts?

You must hear me out when I tell you that if some staffing agency calls you and tells you that you will be working a 58 hour work week with only a 45 minute lunch break, for twenty some odd dollars an hour, in an office above a KFC with no windows, internet or bathrooms, they are not kidding. They did not tell you this simply because they were having a bad day or because you slept with their boyfriend. They are telling you this because it is in fact the truth.

You will get to the highlighting site and "train" for three days wherein you will be sequestered with the other legal rejects. At this point, you might start burdening yourself with questions from the most recent horror movie you saw; "Why are we all here? What is your birth date? What is your Zodiac sign?" Then, you will turn to the girl from some small Eastern European country who sits next to you and ask where she graduated from law school. You will find out that lo and behold she graduated from Garbage two years before you did or the equivalent of Garbage (what I like to call the trifecta: 1. St. John's 2. Hofstra 3. Touro). You will complain about what a friggin' dump that shithole is and she will tell you it is, in fact, a "good school." You will internally note that her perception is impaired because in her country she was going to be sold into female slavery and comparatively speaking, yes, Garbage is not in fact a bad institution, but an asylum. A dickehad supervisor will survey your every move and complain to the head of the project if you so much as go to the bathroom for three minutes.

Please take heed of this statement as if you do not, it will come to haunt you the rest of your career: A staff attorney at Paul Weiss, Hughes Hubbard or any of these other firms is not the equivalent of being an associate. All it means to be a staff attorney is that you become the douche who surveys the project. The staff attorney is perhaps what you should fear, not embrace, when this opportunity is offered to you. As if this position is offered to you, it means you have been sitting on the 19th floor of one of these God awful projects long enough to become permanent. At this point, you should either "get thee to a nunnery" as this offer means you have been a full time prostitute for a year, or kill yourself.