Law School Lies

This week I went all out. I paid money to go to a 3 day legal convention. The why of it was because I am collecting specific CLE credits in one specialization, for reasons I alone care about. So I head down to New Orleans to the Admiralty Law Institute at Tulane. It is one of the larger events for a really small legal niche. This year the topics revolved around the central theme of maritime personal injury; not at all my interest but as I said, it had less to do with the specific topic and more to do with the overarching specialty credits.

The city was deluged with rain the entire time. There was no day you didn’t arrive or leave damp and unhappy. Huge puddles blocked your forward progress no matter where you went, and by puddle I mean a foot or more deep of water that stretched more like disjointed mini-ponds across walkways and roadways. Everyone tried to gauge how far they thought they could safely venture into the puddles so you could potentially jump the remaining several feet to the dry islands in between the water. I walked into one day of the lectures with an older attorney who walked to the edge of one puddle about 5-6 feet across  that stretched for a couple city blocks to our left and right. They hesitated only a moment and then said out loud “Fuck it.” and walked right through the middle of it. It nearly was as deep as his knees. I realized they were probably old enough that an attempted long jump across the water would lead to a more likely serious injury than having very wet feet for the day. I sidled into the puddle carefully and made the leap of faith, barely managing to clear the curb. There was something oddly amusing about an admiralty conference with a water problem.

The evening before the conference 3 large local law firms banded together and had a welcome cocktail reception. As I am still vainly trying my hand at trying to network to get a job, I of course showed up. The reception was at a wonderful venue and as with anything related to lawyers, it had a fully stocked open bar. It also had a band playing in one room, a fortune teller, and a street artist who were also hired to entertain us. But generally with my mind set on the idea of networking, I set about playing the room by randomly joining circles of conversation. All the while keeping an eye out for the singular person I know in the field who I was hoping was going to be at the conference, but they were a no show. Its amazing how lonely you can feel standing in a room filled with people.

I flitted from small group to small group. Mentioning you were looking for a job was a great way to have everyone in the group suddenly find something a great deal more interesting across the room to go investigate. One retired attorney (he had to be at least 70) told me amazing stories about how he did, and still does freediving and spearfishing. He also admitted he was the completely wrong person to network with (for various reasons he explained). Eventually I ended up talking to someone who turns out to be the wife of a big law attorney situated in my city. When the employment question comes up, she immediately says “oh you have to come meet my husband!” Thinking I might have finally hit some networking gold, I dutifully followed. The venue was packed and you had to yell to be heard at the best of moments as you threaded through the closely packed rooms. We finally make it at a slow crawl across the room, and she introduces me to her husband who shakes my hand and says “Good to meet you.” tersely, and then immediately looks to his wife and says “Let’s go” At which point he takes her hand and seemingly half drags her out. As she is being pulled away she says “Find him at the conference” and waves bye. It was really odd, I’m still unsure what I had seen transpire. So now I am again alone and I wander over to another small group who is also standing a bit offset from the masses. We get to talking and they are absolutely the most lovely and friendly people I have met in a long time. They are part of a small plaintiff’s firm (unfortunately nowhere near where I live…). They seem to have had their fill of the reception and invite me along to go find dinner instead. As I had also reached my fill of people wandering away once they decided I had no money, I readily agreed. I had a wonderful time with them and talked with them several more times throughout the conference.

I’m not going to spend much time on the conference itself. It was long, and although I shouldn’t admit it… very boring. The most accurate analogy I can give is the expectation versus reality of a small child when you tell them you are going to take them to a roller coaster factory. I had high expectations (for some reason) and instead I ended up listening to people talking about the benefits and drawbacks of ‘Maintenance and Cure’ versus Workers Compensation. (I may have just fallen asleep momentarily while typing that). My interests and specialty in Admiralty are apparently not representative of the field.

The conference center was quite nice and we were kept well fed at all points. Breakfast and lunch were both provided and both were enjoyable in my mind. I do have a bit of advice for anyone who may be going to something like this for networking purposes however… When you are ushered into a lunch — wait. Let a decent sized line form for the food before you get in line. The reason being: it is perfectly acceptable to approach a nearly full table and ask to sit with the people there… but if you are sitting alone at a table, it seems most people  will choose not to approach you or your table. (*mumble* *mumble* leper syndrome *mumble*). It is better to allow the tables to fill before you decide where you want to sit down, plus you can choose the table that has the nicer suits sitting at it. (yeah, I know… I feel smarmy writing that last bit, but it’s true.)

Day 1 ended with… a cocktail reception. And again.. since it involves attorneys… a fully stocked open bar. Different venue than the previous night, but no less opulent. I was excited by this one because it also had food! Unfortunately, I think I got to speak with even fewer people at this one, but I did meetup with a couple attorneys from the city I previously lived and talked a bit with them. The Tulane law students were invited to this one also, so I did get to speak to a few of them as they huddled together at a few of the ubiquitous standing tables. From talking with them it appears Tulane Law School prints up business cards for their students (I think) because they all had the same generic ones they plied upon anyone who would take one. After failing to make any  real inroads in conversation I took it upon myself to instead sample all of the food liberally before leaving.

Day 2 was uneventful except for a brief rage inducing moment, wherein a larger firm attorney on a panel discussion made a comment that large scale electronic document review should be left to “young, smart attorneys”, to give them ‘job security’. And then he laughed. And a federal magistrate next to him cluelessly agreed. I had a momentary impulse to stand up and call him out on being an asshole. Probably not quite so politically correct since I would have been effectively doing the same to the federal magistrate. The moment passed and I made a mental note of the firm name.

The day ended with… a cocktail reception. And… etc… etc.. fully stocked open bar. This one was by far the funkiest and most interesting venue. It was specific to young attorneys in the field. Now here is a very, very interesting point… if you stood at the front of the conference hall, and looked out over the crowd, it looked like you were talking to an AARP convention. It was a sea of old, white guys; the average age in the room was probably 55+. There were several moments where a speaker would comment on the general lack of young attorneys in the field in general. I’ve received emails from the organization trying to promote getting younger attorneys to join and seemingly at a loss as to why none are. They know the field has no real young attorneys going into it, and yet they seem clueless as to why. This cocktail reception was a beautiful distillation of the answer, but it seemed no one cared to fix it.

The first answer was simple. No one was hiring. The way you get young attorneys into the field is to hire them, or have internships which lead to jobs. And no one had any. As I mentioned, the moment the topic of who I worked for came up and I said I was looking, it was a death knell and people immediately melted away from the knot of conversation. Absolutely no one asked for a resume to be sent at any point. Similar feelings were expressed by the law students and LLMs hanging around as well. Tulane tried a soft sell by printing up a booklet of resumes from their students, but it appeared to be an exercise in deforestation as very few people actually took them. And lord knows, not a soul at the podium mentioned the booklet or hiring during the conference. This is further held true when you look on Tulane’s own career site (internal or reciprocity); there were veritably zero admiralty jobs available. For a law school which so loudly touts its LLM program, it seemed as if they didn’t care what you did with the degree once you got it — because you certainly weren’t going to get work with it. I suppose that is actually true of all law schools at the moment though. But then again, there was the umbrella organization of the MLA, which has a job portal with a total of one job on it… actually the same job as was listed on it for months and months now. Basically, the simple concept of getting in new blood by actually hiring some mystifies the fuck out of them.

Second, however, was a slightly less obvious reason. Because there were no young attorneys around, none of the organizers gave a single thought about their needs. A law firm generally pays for its attorneys to go to conferences of these sorts, so most of the attending bigger firm attorneys don’t even think about the price tag– It’s covered by firm money. Its a business expense and is tax deductible. A new attorney would have to foot the bill completely on their own. The organization had not even thought about this until 2 weeks before the conference when they noticed NOT ONE younger attorney had signed up.  Then they sent out a hastily scribed email saying they forgot to include the ‘special pricing’ for newer attorneys. (I will admit, that was one of the big reasons I decided to go at the last minute… I could suddenly afford to.) The reception also seemed to be an afterthought because it wasn’t listed on the program or schedule. It got a quick powerpoint slide thrown on the screen after lunch telling us when and where to go. They can’t get anyone new to join because not only do they not cater to younger attorneys, but they almost seem to discourage them from attending.

If I thought anyone actually read this blog, I might be concerned about revealing my identity since there were probably all of a dozen young attorneys at this convention. Yes. Out of several hundred conference attendees… there were 12. Woo! So It wouldn’t be all that hard by process of elimination to know who I was. But, no one does read this and guessing the average age of the attendees, I doubt the internet is really something they are completely comfortable with so I think I am safe.

Conversation at this reception was better, but tinged with desperation. The majority by far were unemployed with few prospects. One of the LLM attorneys was excited I gave them a contact for a potential immigration law position. Yes… someone with a specialist certificate in Admiralty felt they had no hope of getting a job in Maritime so they were happy to dump it for an immigration non-profit. Great job ALI… are you beginning to see WHY there are no young attorneys there yet?

I ran the gamut of the room. Talked to a caricature of a far far right republican, to the point that I thought they were going to tell me it was a joke. They made overtly and over the top homophobic and racist statements and then told a story about how he was insulted someone called him racist. Weird, right? I also ended up talking to the nepotism millionaire hire; their family had some serious money behind them and ran a decently sized corporate empire so it sounded. They were hired by their family for a short time then lateraled to a big firm… who’d have thought, right? There was also a platinum blonde who rasped like she had a pack a day habit, but they seemed to dislike when people talked about trying to find work as she already had a job. Then there was the recent mother, who had taken off a year after law school to have a kid and was now back in the mix to get a job. Good luck with that because as soon as you mention ‘child’ in this industry, your interview is over.

The last day ended with the professionalism lecture. You would have thought someone pulled a fire alarm. As soon as the speaker stood up to talk, a good half or more of the conference stood up and left. I suppose I understand, but it was somewhat telling. I suppose if nothing else, I left the conference with the CLE credits I was initially going for, even if the networking potential was in the negative numbers.

But hey, there’s always the next convention! Or at least there will be for a few more years, because with the average age the way it is, ALI has the same problem as FOX news… their constituency is dying faster than they can replace them.

There is an ongoing CLE lecture series I have made it a point to show up to whenever possible. It is the most amazing CLEs I have come across. The series is sponsored by one of the big law firms, and they don’t mess around. They hold it in one of the best venues in the city, valet parking, hors d’oeuvres, wine and a limited bar, then the lecture followed by a dinner (and more wine). Did I mention it was free? All of it. It is fabulous. (you know how much of a fan I am of free food…) I fear the secret might be out however. The first lecture I showed up to several months ago probably had half as many attorneys as showed up at the most recent one. I hope this trend doesn’t continue because they might start limiting who is invited. Anyway, on with the stories.

The lecture series is partially linked with a local law school, and as such there are always the handful of professors in attendance who also bring along a few interested law students to mingle with the crowd. Being linked to a law school also means there must be the various notables who parade by the podium to issue congratulatory proclamations upon whomsoever has gifted the most money recently. Probably the more amusing personage is the dean of the law school. I’ve shown up to several CLEs sponsored by the law school and they always manage to show up, smartly dressed for about 3 minutes to welcome everyone and then invariably makes some statement such as “I’m so sorry I can’t stay for the lecture, but…” I guess that’s what they are paid for. To show up and show their face to the money, but after seeing them bail on every single event put on by the law school — I seriously begin to wonder. You have to shake hands and pump the guests for money at some point, you can’t just thank everyone for showing up and then run. Maybe I am expecting too much from the position, I don’t know.

Anyway, one of the talking heads during the congratulatory circlejerk introduced the general counsel of a huge company. While introducing him, they gleeful remarked that this managing attorney held 6 intern positions only for students of their university and primarily hired from that singular law school when hiring corporate counsels. The lovely concept of nepotism just got a nice round of applause from the audience. I was a bit unhappy that I now knew a strong primary reason why I never heard back from any of my applications to that company. Awesome. I was already in a bit of a foul mood because I had missed all the hors d’oeuvres because the parking garage entrance was damn near camouflaged, and this was just making my mood darker.

The lecture itself was pretty basic, which seemed a little out of place considering the prior lecture in the series was on a topic so specific to minutiae within the specialty as to be nearly incomprehensible to anyone not already an expert in the field. The lecture ended with more self-congratulatory remarks to various individuals and we were finally ushered in to the dinner.

All of these types of events have one thing in common. A near absence of tables. No doubt some sociological study somewhere made some proclamation that providing actual sit down tables during a professional / networky dinner was a big mistake. So now we are all consigned to hover around the handful of tiny standing tables with a plate of food in one hand and a drink in the other, wishing you had somewhere to put it down so you could eat. The theory is that you will flit from group to group talking and not become inured to sitting and never moving from one table, and thus only conversing with one small group of people. Think of it as enforced networking maybe. I was one of the lucky few who got in early and I took a spot at one of the tiny standing tables.

The first group to flit about the table were some big corporation counsels. They seemed rather disinterested in talking and eventually wandered off. The second group was a more mixed bag. There was one attorney who was a recent empty nest mother who had not been practicing and had decided that now was a good time to rejoin the legal community; As a solo. No one said word one, but I am nearly sure everyone else at the table thought she was insane too.

There was an associate from a small firm of half a dozen who offered to send overflow work / one-off cases to me if I was interested. I thanked them and said absolutely (and although I appreciated the sentiment, it is a horrible idea to actually follow through on because the only cases you will get from a small firm are the ones they trying to get rid of… no money, crazy client, malpractice magnet, etc.) It was a nice offer, but one that is taken up only by the desperate… and there are a fair number out there who are. It was made a bit more difficult to swallow because this attorney was supposed to be a soft-IP attorney and they asked the table if anyone had ever heard of website XX (basically a site on similar par as The Pirate Bay) as they had some recent case issues related to it. The way they referred to the site pretty much conveyed they had no idea what they were talking about nor what they were in for if trying to accomplish anything against it, which also conveyed that they were a really crappy copyright attorney. I’m always surprised by how technologically inept some people who practice IP actually are.

The last at the table with me was someone from a real firm, and we struck up a pretty decent conversation which ended with an actual offer to try to get me an interview at their firm. I truly hope something comes of it, but I no longer count on such things.

Eventually, group 2 started to leave and I decided to mingle in the remaining pockets of attorneys scattered around. I ended up at a table with a law student who had some very enviable offers by law firms. I was talking with them about random things and a bit of the bitterness from the other side of our degree. As we are talking, a guy who looks just like Jamie from Mythbusters (completely bald, mustache with a soul patch, AND a flat hat) saunters up to the table and puts his manpurse down on the table. He’s drinking tea from a teacup and alternately putting it down onto the saucer he is holding.  Something was off. The law student and I were talking, but Mr. Mustache was just standing there silently watching without introducing himself. The law student is shooting me a glance, and I take the cue to introduce myself to the guy. He is a solo (uh oh), and he starts talking about the lecture and how he was showing up only because he needed one more credit to be CLE compliant and this wasn’t his area of law at all. But he’s also slurring. quite. a. bit… Yup, he’s really drunk. Which in and of itself was a feat — the hors d’oeuvres only went on for half an hour, then an hour and a bit long lecture plus all the functionaries talking. It would have taken some serious drinking during that half hour to get to a point where you would still be drunk almost 2 hours later. Granted, he could have hit a few more glasses after the lecture, but damn… it would require some doing.

In a most uncomfortable 3 minutes, Mr. Mustache went from introducing himself in a normal tone, to veritably yelling about how there was still no cure for baldness but they have a cure for erectile dysfunction. He made a point of saying erectile dysfunction at least 3 times quite loudly. The law student had a slightly wild look about his eyes and obviously wanted to bolt. Both of us were now standing a good 2 feet away from the table increasingly trying to back away, as behavioral avoidance started to kick in and we tried to put as much real distance between us as possible. Mr. Mustache seemed to realize the lack of conversation and took this as a cue to say it was late and he was going. (yes… he was going down to the parking garage to drive home.. fucking awesome.) I gave the drunk about 10 minutes to get far enough away from where I might be driving to also decide the night had come to an end. While waiting for the valet to bring my car, the law student  came down. I laughed and said somewhat rhetorically “Why do the drunks always find me at these things…” The law student said he thought the drunk was attracted to us because we didn’t have a protective buffer of a larger group of people to ward him away.

He’s probably right. I need to experiment at the next lecture to test the theory.

When I was in Law School, I was an editor of one of the legal journals. I also published in it as well. The journal I was part of went through a bit of a transition while I was there. At one point in time, it had been a nationally recognized journal; a first of its kind. At the beginning, it had the possibility as the first on the field to take over as the singular journal for this niche of the law. But, as many things do in academia when left to its own devices, it floundered and lost relevance. By the time I joined on, well… it was not quite what it once was.

The first journal meeting I went to, the originator of the journal from many years ago showed up. They had long since graduated and actually had become a professor elsewhere in no small part due to the esteem of the journal (at least, the esteem at the time they were hired). The originator was a short, sharply dressed woman who dressed and moved like a motivational speaker. She made some vague proclamations about how she was going to be super involved even though she was no longer at the law school and was teaching at another university. As you might guess, I saw her only one other time… ever. She seemingly disappeared 2 months into my 1L year. After a few months, the head of the journal couldn’t get in contact with her by email or phone and she was written off as never coming back. I’m sure if I was really interested I could find her online and figure out the mystery of where she disappeared to… most of us assumed she got a job in another state and moved without telling anyone. At a certain point, we just didn’t care anymore; it would have been easy to communicate via email but she obviously couldn’t even bother to do that. There were probably only about half a dozen people who were actively working on it by the time I joined up. Of those people, there was only really one person who was honestly keeping the journal from falling into obsolescence, the current head of the journal. To give you an idea of the journal’s standing… The journals all shared a very large office, and you could tell the relative importance of each based on the square footage of deskspace allotted. Originally, we had none… and after a great deal of wrangling, I do believe out of the whole office, we got (in toto…) 3 X 2.5 ft of desk, and a chair (but no computer, and no office supplies, and no… well you get the picture — it was a slab-o-desk and nothing more). Although it did have a very shabby pinned label above ‘our’ spot identifying it as the official physical residence of the journal.

The head of the journal had taken it upon himself to attempt to return relevance to the journal. He had gotten the ball rolling to make it a physically published, accredited journal. Actually getting any momentum for a project in academia is the hardest part. Once the project overcomes the static inertia, it starts moving on its own accord. He ended up graduating just in time to see the journal become accredited. The next head of the journal did not make any friends and nearly destroyed the groundwork that had been laid, but that’s often how things go with student run enterprises. The new leader took the reigns and started out by changing the name of the journal, then appointed his best friends to run the journal even though they had no background in the legal niche it was based on or editing at all for that matter. But, that’s a different story.

Gaining accreditation also meant we now had a real faculty adviser connected to the journal. They were decently well known in the outside legal field, and since we were trying to gain more legitimacy for the journal we asked if they would submit something we could publish in it. Initially we were told they would think about it, but behind closed doors the editors were told flatly no. They wouldn’t give us anything to publish because the professor felt the journal was too unimportant and it would tarnish the professor’s brand if they did. Yes, our own faculty adviser had just told us the journal sucked, in nearly as many words, and that’s why he refused to put his name anywhere near it. Worse than that, we were told they had openly expressed that opinion to other faculty so when we approached these others, we got the same response. Nice.

As one of the editors, I had been given a (supposedly) simple task. Since we were now officially recognized and accredited, we were entitled to a (very) small allotment of funds related to publication costs. I had been charged with finding out how much, and getting those funds. It took over 2 years. The truth is, I actually never got the funds while I was in law school… they only finally showed up about a year after I left. Somewhere early during my 3L year, I went to our faculty adviser to see if they could do anything to help speed the process that was going so interminably slow regarding the funding, and then also to talk about the new journal head who was taking it upon himself to fuck everything up with no consideration for how much work others had done before.

The adviser sighed, shut the door to his office, and proceeded to explain the inner politicking of the faculty. You see… there were limited funds. The faculty adviser of the Law Review felt that any other journals watered down the importance of his law review journal by distracting outside attention to lesser journals. So he went out of his way to block disbursement of funds and resources to competing projects. He had an unofficial agreement with the faculty adviser of the Health Law journal, the supposedly second most influential journal at the law school (in line with the imagined importance of the professors themselves.) The Health Law journal would receive unobstructed funding  (effectively so long as it was less funding than the Law Review) and they would both act as a unified bloc when confronting anyone who may threaten to diminish the funds to either. The journals as a whole received a fixed amount of funding, and it was divvied up amongst the multitudes, as it were. So the more journals, the less funding to each one. This meant that a new player on the field was a threat to all, and everyone was immediately allied against you. To make matters ever more petty, both of these journals also had endowments which added to their totals. There were already a small assortment of lesser journals which were an affront to the Law Review adviser’s sensibilities, and the indignity of one more was just too much to bear.

This actually played out identically in tenure hiring as well. An incredibly well liked Tax professor was up for tenure. They had done some amazing work and had started up a truly unique program at the law school. They apparently tipped their hand by presenting an idea for the creation of a whole Tax specialty department at the law school. The other departments were threatened by the possibility of a reduction in their funding, and lo and behold the Tax professor was kicked to the curb by a voting bloc of faculty who were trying to get rid of competition to their meager funding, as opposed to trying to make the law school better. Before you side too much with the ‘meager funding’ crowd, it might be valuable to know these entrenched professors were making over $200K per… so, you know… meager.

Getting back on track though… The adviser then addressed the second issue. He told me he felt the new leader of the journal was not doing a good job. He agreed with my complaints. And he said there was nothing that could be done, because… if a complaint was put forward, it would end up before none other than the faculty adviser of the Law Review, he also just happened to be the Academic Dean who oversaw complaints; who would then seize upon the opportunity to shut down the competition. Our adviser looked at me and said “Go ahead and make a complaint, but know that if you do it will end the journal.” He then thanked me for bringing it to his attention, and that was the end of our conversation. At one point in time, I had held this professor in high regard… not so much thereafter.

My involvement with the journal waned a bit thereafter. I still participated, but I cut my time commitment way, way back.

Before I begin… I need to preface this post by saying that there are good ones out there; I’ve worked with them. It’s just that for some reason it is strangely difficult to find those good ones.

When I was in law school, sometime during the first month or so, we had one of the ubiquitous free lunches where the coordinator for the local Legal Aid Society chapter came in and gave a presentation. They mentioned at the end that they were always looking for law student and attorney volunteers to come help out. My legal writing teacher made a point to also mention during their classtime that legal aid was a great way to be exposed to new legal issues you might not otherwise come in contact with. (For those who don’t know, legal aid is in itself a specialty within law known as Poverty Law… no kidding.)

Still with that fresh 1L smell on me, I thought this was a great idea. So I marched on down to Legal Aid and started volunteering there. And in the city I was in, it was great. The legal aid society went out of their way to include the law students and volunteer attorneys. The whole office was committed to the concept of legal aid for the masses. If there was a way to increase exposure and their coverage area, they did their damnedest to make it happen. I volunteered so often there I ended up getting an award at graduation for service.

Well, sort of at graduation… my law school being who they were received the award prior to graduation and promptly put it in a desk drawer until 2 months later and then sent it to me through the mail. So it wasn’t announced or in the grad program or anything… if I were a more paranoid person I might think it had been intentional (wink to those who know me). Not that being incompetent is much better, but the option is basically stupid or evil and I am not sure where they fall on this.

Anyway… my point is that I had a very positive impression of Legal Aid when I left law school. What happened next I document here in all its glory. But, then I moved again. Maybe, just maybe, the new city will have a setup more like my original experience. So once I get settled and start plastering the neighborhood with my resume, I decide to contact the various legal aid organizations and see if they can use someone with copious free time on their hands.

The first one I got in contact was again, the one that had at one point been the official Legal Aid Society in the state. It seems they are much like a church, distance and politics cause schisms in legal aid organizations and they become something similar, but different based on the state you are in. A couple emails to people there get me no response and finally a phone call gets me a proper point of contact. The volunteer coordinator there is one of the higher placed attorneys in their organization. I contact her and get sent a bevvy of forms which really don’t apply to me. I offer to call or just show up to talk to someone if its easier for them so I can get setup to volunteer. I get a strangely mixed message about how hectic their office is and difficult to just show up, so why don’t I come show up.  (It seemed like she talked herself into setting up a meeting the further she got into writing the email.)

I show up at the office, which is a lovely and large 4 story office building that legal aid completely fills. I immediately figure that an operation of this size must need a veritable army of volunteers. I am brought up to the coordinator’s office which most notably has a huge map of the state covering one whole wall. I end up talking to the coordinator for the better part of an hour. It turns out the map is to coordinate disaster relief efforts. She tells me how they have a response team whenever there is a natural disaster to go on location and provide services alongside first responders. Which was amazing. I had never really considered legal needs as necessary during emergencies but once brought up, it became very clear how it would be helpful. We also talked about how the money completely dried up from IOLTA based funding in the state after 2008/2009. She told me the actual numbers and the massive drop… it was so bad they petitioned to the state government for funding to stay afloat. The state to its credit buoyed them up and they were now a state sponsored non-profit.  We finally get around to talking about what I was looking to volunteer for. I explain I am looking to do anything. I told her I was open to working in any area they needed more warm bodies, the caveat was that since I had literally just moved into the state, even though I had passed the bar there, I had zero time in their court system so I would need some guidance initially. This was not a surprise to her, it was in my email in a bunch of different places. “Hi, I just moved here and I am seeking to volunteer…”

The reaction I got in return was distaste with a soupçon of disdain. I was then treated to a story. She told me they had a volunteer who came in and offered to volunteer and was very interested in family law but had no experience. So they had them volunteer and taught them all sorts of things coupled with the attorneys there and then, this volunteer up and moved to a different city and got a job in family law. The implication being that legal aid had provided the ability and training for her to get that job.

Now… most people would maybe think, “Isn’t that how it’s supposed to work?” You show interest, you volunteer and gain experience, and then you port that over to a job. Not so from this coordinator’s point of view. She was pissed. It was the same argument small firms make when they don’t want to train new attorneys. “You’ll take our training and go get a higher paying job…” (a fallacy that has somehow become entrenched in the legal world). The difference here was legal aid was getting an unpaid volunteer working for them; and the volunteer was getting something from it as well. Apparently from the coordinator’s view, the volunteer should not have been getting any benefit. Regardless, because of this, they didn’t really want to use me. Wait… what? They didn’t want to use me because I might get better at what I was volunteering for, and be able to use those skills professionally?

The meeting was at an end. Hard not to end it after dropping something like that on someone. I left the offer of volunteering open and the coordinator said she’d send out a note to the different departments to see if anyone needed a random volunteer. About 2 months later I got an email from the coordinator saying she had a half filled out form from me. I refreshed her memory that we had met in person and talked about all the details. Almost verbatim the response was “Oh, right.” and then radio silence.

I ended up coming across several listings in the legal journals where this organization was looking for volunteers. Without going into depth, it became clear they weren’t looking for volunteers. They were looking for people to voluntarily write checks to them in lieu of actually showing up to do anything in person. Had I known they didn’t want volunteers and were only throwing out these pleas in an effort to get money… well, lesson learned. Thank you legal aid for this valuable lesson you gave me (for free!!! I bet the coordinator is pissed I learned something from them.)

 

I decided there must be other organizations to volunteer at so I contact another one. I was told I could volunteer there if I showed up to a free 8 hour training CLE. (Woo free credits). So I show up and I get the basics of the whole setup. This one was a specifically immigration related organization. I talked to one of the coordinator’s underlings and asked a few pertinent questions. Namely, do you have meeting rooms to meet with clients? Yes, absolutely. Since most of the immigrants speak Spanish (and an assortment of other lesser known languages) do you have translators. Yes, absolutely.

I told them I am very interested and I would like to volunteer, but I wanted to get some more specifics from the lead coordinator that the underling didn’t know. So they had me fill in my contact info on the sheet of interested volunteers (just a blank legal pad) told me they would get in touch with me, and off I went assuming I would get a call or email with more info. Instead I got an email stating that my name and contact info was passed on to a client who was told I was going to be their attorney. WTF!!! I called up immediately to the organization. I said I was supposed to get more info before I was signing on definitely. Specifically:

#1. whether they covered me with malpractice coverage while working on their case… No.

#2. About those translators… Oh, they are only for use by the organizations employees… and the meeting spaces? Those too? Huh.. I mean I suppose the underling didn’t lie; they DO have them. I am just not allowed to use them. Which is an odd way to construe my question considering I prefaced it by making a point of telling them I don’t speak Spanish.

#3. What if I have questions… you have a list of random attorneys unconnected with your organization who may be able to help answer my questions if they have free time. Are you kidding?

I told them they were crazy if they thought I was taking on a client from them. They were literally setting up the volunteer to fail or worse, censured. And to just tell some random client… oh hey, this person is your lawyer. Go contact them and figure shit out. Christ. Who set this system in place and thought “Yeah, that’ll work, that doesn’t look like malpractice at all.”

 

I did finally find a good legal aid org… but I also suffered for having worked so hard trying to volunteer. I am going to double down on my initial advice from my first posting… the next time someone tells you that as a lawyer you need to give away your services for free, laugh. Laugh at them and walk away.

And I will also add… Before you or your firm donate time or money to a legal aid organization, ask around. Find out which one is actually worth donating to.

 

I haven’t posted anything recently, mostly because there has been nothing noteworthy to post. No interview offers of late, and very little beyond the standard rejections that have been slowly filtering in to my inbox. I did however get one unsettling bit of information. I’m uncertain what to do with the most recent insight I have been granted into the legal job market. It sorta implies most of my actions have been for naught these past few months in my grand networking pursuit.

I had a horribly enlightening conversation recently where it was explained to me in unvarnished terms exactly how networking is supposed to get you a job.  And it explains my current problems completely. I also think most people are using the term ‘networking’ incorrectly at this point.

So if we assume that at least 50%, if not more, of the jobs out there are un-posted and instead gotten through networking, the old question I started out with still stands. ‘How does one get a job through networking?’

There are actually 2 distinct concepts of networking at play. In the vast majority of cases, when someone says ‘networking’ they are actually referring to making business contacts. The standard concept of mutual benefit in which one party wants to sell you something, and you might want what they are selling. Think in the context of all of the legal luncheons I’ve shown up to where the majority of the guests are consultants: the consultants were selling services targeted to attorneys, and the attorneys were interested in the services because (in theory) the valuation services would get them a higher damage award. You can also think of this type of networking as the social / business meeting where two attorneys in complimentary specialties have an unofficial reciprocal referral arrangement. I send all my bankruptcies to you, and you send all your collections to me (I know, those two are usually linked and not complimentary but use your imagination damnit.) The main concept to take away from this first type of networking is that the relationship is reciprocal and continuing.

The second type of networking is much more ephemeral. It is the unilateral concept of networking. One side has nothing to offer, and the other has everything. You could almost more accurately describe it as a favor. An intern works for you for free (or damn near) and in turn you help them get hired, somewhere. Or the unicorn of the legal world, you meet the well connected individual who goes out of their way to call in a favor to get you hired with a firm; for no other reason than they like you. Now, granted, this type of networking is not completely unilateral. There is the implicit understanding that at some point in the future, you could in turn help the person who helped you. It’s not 100% required, but there is an understood obligation if the need arises.  I guess a bit like organized crime… I will do this service for you, but in return I will come asking a favor of you at some point in the future.

So… What I was told is that most positions are unlisted, in fact in many areas, they are completely unlisted. The first run at these positions goes to the nepotism hires (legacies?), the next hit goes to any interns who might be working there. Whatever left is what we are talking about now. A great many firms don’t  bother overtly looking for someone to fill these positions unless it is absolutely mission critical. And most critical positions are higher end lateral positions anyway, so they are out of reach to anyone without 5 yrs of on-point employment. But this doesn’t mean there aren’t open positions at the firm; these open positions are subcritical and can be filled at their leisure. The way these positions are filled is a steady trickle of phone calls from the friends and networking contacts of the partners. Firm A calls Firm B and after some smalltalk says they heard Firm B is looking to fill out some associate positions, and ‘oh hey by the way, I know this great guy who I would love to see working there…’ They vouchsafe credibility upon the applicant in a way a cold resume can’t. But more than that, Firm A has just told Firm B they would like a small quid pro quo. Hire this person and we will continue sending work to you, in fact we will probably send more because I like the person you are hiring.

To give this a more personal flair, I worked at an internship for 2 years continuously, for free and in truth at substantial cost in time and money to myself. The overarching idea was my investment of time for the benefit of the office I was working for would compel an obligation in them to hire me, or possibly work on my behalf to get me hired elsewhere. Although I was initially offered a position, the offer was rescinded as so many others were in the summer of 2009 for a variety of unfortunate economic reasons. The implication then was that the office would actually expend some effort to rectify the situation and reach out to connections elsewhere in an effort to help me secure a position. But that didn’t happen. In fact, nothing happened. No calls on my behalf, no contacts, damn near no interest. A new intern replaced me rather quickly and the office started calling him “the new Azrael.” I stopped by the office sometime later and happened to meet them… they were excited to actually meet their namesake. It was weird and depressing. I had been replaced and ignored almost instantly. Some of the failure to engender any sense of obligation likely was because it was a government position. Imagine trying to get a recommendation from someone at the DMV. Maybe that’s a bit harsh, but you get the idea.

Most of my networking attempts have ended with a half-effort by the networking source. They feel magnanimous for granting you their time and they bestow upon you a handful of contacts seemingly pulled at random from their email address book (which if you are doing your research correctly you have probably already reached out to with a cold resume anyway). But you are at least granted the the use of the source’s name to put in your email and say “oh hey, I had lunch the other day with so-and-so (drop name here) and they said you might have an associate position I would be perfect for…” But the personal phone call and recommendation that actually gets you in the door is reserved for someone else.

So… what is my take away from this? Apparently I need to go hunt unicorns.

I dislike how so often it seems employers tend to dump your resume / application into a black hole if they aren’t interested in you, and you never ever hear back from them. Why can’t they just send an email saying thanks but no thanks? At least let me know that spending forever filling out your application with all of the exact same information that can be found on my resume was received, perused, and noted somewhere.

In this day and age, sending a response email should be the norm. I’ve run across several variations such as when they even send an email with a scanned letter attachment  as the rejection — I’m looking at you Halliburton. (not sure why… Why not just say ‘No’ in the email? Why the extra step?) And it’s always nice to receive a physical note in the mail, even if it is a bit of an outdated method. For as much as I make light of their responses, I truly do appreciate that the firm / company doesn’t do what so very many do and let you hang in the ether wondering if the application was even received. But some go a bit too far and don’t seem to put much thought into what the letter actually says, and that is where they calmly step over the line of professional courtesy.

#1. I’ve never had a prospective employer spend money to make sure that I knew, that they knew that I knew, that I was rejected. The venerable law offices of King & Spalding apparently want to make sure you are aware that they don’t want you. And they’re willing spend money to ensure it.  K&S sends out certified, signature required letters of rejection. So not only do you find out you’re rejected, but you likely have to trek down to the post office to find out. I initially had the paranoid thought that this might have been specific to me, but using some Google-fu comes back with a lot of the same quizical responses wondering why the hell they would do this (1, 2).

Thanks for the convenience guys. You spent $6.48 to let me know you aren’t interested…. I think I might need to apply to absolutely everything you have open on your career page. You know, just to be certain.

 

#2.  I applied to a firm which had over 100 attorneys in 5 offices around the country, 50 of which were located at the office I was applying to. The reply:

Small size? In what world is your firm a ‘small firm’ ? I get it if you aren’t hiring, but don’t make something up which is trivially untrue. Maybe they just haven’t bothered updating their rejection letter since they actually were a small firm.

 

#3. I got a rejection from a prosecutors office. The rejection itself had a bit much religion parsed throughout the letter (weird in its own right). But the last line almost seemed like a threat…

maybe I’m just paranoid, but it just sounds ominous.

 

Just to show the opposite side of the coin and to give you a story of an amazingly helpful rejection… I sent out an application via email and received a phone call from the partner 2 minutes later from a firm of about 35 attorneys. Sadly, he basically said that unless I had a book of business, they weren’t interested. He could have left it there, but instead he invited me to lunch to pass along advice and some contacts. It took him about a full 2 minutes and cost him nothing, no stamp, no letter. Yet I hung up the phone with a massively better opinion of that firm than any that have sent me letters. I’m not counting the lunch as something prospective employers should do; as that was above and beyond.

A minor continuation from the Happy Hour post. As I had mentioned, the Headhunter told me to call and during our conversation they offered some contacts that might prove useful. But out of the few names they gave, they specifically told me to call up one firm in particular and ask for “Mary” (or so we shall call her). Mary as it turns out is the office manager for a small firm who is somehow a ‘close personal friend’ of the headhunter. The headhunter tells me they might be looking to add someone to the firm as their business has ticked up in the past year. The headhunter went so far as to drop Mary an email saying I would be getting hold of her via email and also calling to speak with her.

I was very grateful to the headhunter for this very specific introduction, and I proceeded to send Mary the usual email with my resume and basic info. She responded to my resume with an email stating “please give me a call when you have a few minutes to talk.” Which to me, sounds a lot like a phone screen interview… but then, I am wrong a great deal. Regardless, as soon as possible, I call the office. And the phone rings… and rings.. and it goes to voicemail. So I leave a message. No response for the rest of the day and the next. So I call again. Same deal… rings to voicemail. And another message. This continues for a bit over a week. I call pretty much every other day and get no response.

Finally after about 10 days, I actually get Mary on the phone. And she says, “Oh.. I really wanted to talk to you, but today is not a good day. Can you call back on Wednesday?” I ask when, again trying to nail down a specific time, and the best I get is ‘in the morning’. Then she tells me ” Oh and here is a different number to call me at because I am not often by that phone you’ve been calling.” Ah. Maybe that’s why I haven’t gotten her on the phone… but… that first number was the one she gave me in the email she sent… and is she saying she doesn’t listen to her voicemail or was she explicitly ignoring my calls… maybe it was all just an oversight; right?

So I call back on Wednesday. Ooo.. turns out she’s super busy, can I instead call tomorrow. “Sure” I say. Why not? So I call the next day. No answer, and I am back to leaving messages on voicemail (now on the new and improved number). 3 more days of calling with no humans answering and I finally get a human. A secretary (where the fuck have they been this whole time?) answers and tells me Mary is in a meeting and what is this call in regards to? I leave a message with a human this time, but still no callback from Mary. I make a personal promise since it has now gone on 2 and a half weeks of phone tag, I won’t bother if it hits the 3 week mark. I basically give it one more real attempt to contact Mary. By some stroke of luck, she picks up the phone on the terminal end of my self imposed deadline.

But gosh darnit, don’t-cha know… she has to go do something out of the office. And she says, “You know, why don’t you just show up here. Cause if you’re here in person I can’t just ignore you.” and she laughed sardonically. I said, “yeah, sure. I’ll do that.” or something to that effect and hung up.

I’m not sure what the purpose of constantly telling me to call her back was. I assumed I was calling for a job, but over the better part of a month — I never did find out. I can’t help but be a bit paranoid if this is what happens when I deal with a “close personal friend” if there was some ulterior motive I just can’t see at play. Regardless, I highly doubt the head attorney for the firm has any idea, and I am sure they would be unhappy considering how it reflects on the firm.

In the continued attempt to network my way into a job, this week I ended up at a legal organization Christmas party. Nothing says festive quite like a bunch of lawyers in suits. It was actually more a lunch than a party. There was a very nice string quartet which almost no one paid any attention to and seemed to spur people to talk louder as opposed to listen to them. One of the few positives of showing up to these things is I get to see the nicer / swankier restaurants around this city. And I also find out which are actually good and which are just overpriced. Sadly, this one was just overpriced and the food and service was really lackluster. I have a feeling they didn’t make many friends in the legal community with this lunch.

The obligatory mingling happened before the lunch, and as with previous networking events, the actual number of attorneys in the room was at best only 50% of the attendees. There were a half dozen law students, but by far the bulk of the people mingling were ‘consultants’ or headhunters. The consultants moved through the room like lampreys hooking onto a shark (an apt simile I suppose). Most were primarily touting themselves as valuation consultants (litigation financial damages guesswork). They would wander over and make a quick introduction, and their eyes would flick down quickly to my nametag seeking the firm or business name to give them an idea of whether I was worth their time. As my tag was blank where the employer should have been, they almost immediately asked who I worked for, and most often once I mentioned I was an attorney looking for work their eyes glazed over and they quickly wandered away to someone else. No money = no interest in talking to you.

People started sitting down for the lunch and as I am surveying the room, an older middle aged woman starts talking to me and then says, “wait… I’ve met you before.” My mind quickly raced through the interviews I’ve had and I couldn’t place her. But she mentioned a few key facts about me from memory so I had definitely met her somewhere. Then it dawned on me. Holy crap. This was the nutty lady from the Happy Hour. She looked different in the light of day, and not half drunk, and not slurring out conspiracy theories. She surveyed the room and said “where do you want to sit?” All I could think was — ‘damnit… Not with you!’ As if by some minor divine intervention, someone a few feet away waved at her and she went to shake their hand and exchange pleasantries. I took the opportunity to head over to a table with only a single chair open, and I sat down next to a nice older gentleman in a tweed jacket. It was probably the best choice I made all day.

It turned out he was a retired general counsel who was now teaching. We started talking about various law school topics. He personally knew several of the professors I had, and the conversation ranged from his distaste of laptops in the classroom to exam material. He held a gravitas such that when he addressed the table, everyone stopped talking and everyone listened. He had been a fixture in the area for a really, really long time and everyone knew him. As I am compelled to do, I had a brief sojourn onto the topic of employment and specifically ‘me seeking employment’. (I am a whore, I’m not too proud it admit it…)

He shot a surreptitious glance over to the kids table that had the half dozen law students, and a few unlucky random individuals, and then started talking about the job market. He obviously felt bad about the situation but also didn’t want any students who might be in one of his classes to hear this. He had been a general counsel of a rather large former Fortune 100 corporation. In his own words, circa 2000, if a student came to him for job advice he could pick up the phone and effectively get the person an interview minimally, and sometime a job just with a phone call. He rather wistfully said, but that is all in the past now. He told me that starting around 2002 everything started to taper off, then by 2008 there was nothing. He basically said he had no chance of getting anyone a job at this point.

Worse, he leaned in and told me one of the most depressing things I’ve heard in a long time. He said “I was having a conversation with someone at one of the big big firms. Think Jones Day.” He then noticed that the person next to us was from Jones Day, and he clarified “not Jones Day, but on par.” And he asked them, “How many summer associates do you have this year?” The attorney told him “zero”. He said “what? None?” And the attorney told him ‘We ended our summer associate program some time ago… I thought you knew.” He then asked, “Well how many law grads did you pick up then.” The attorney answered again – ‘Zero.’ They only hired laterals. Exclusively. 

So quite literally, the model being developed for law is this: Corporations only hire from law firms. Law firms only hire laterals from each other. Neither corporations nor law firms train their attorneys anymore. The only avenue open to newer lawyers are small firms. And they are the only place to gain practical experience and training. And they are the least able to financially absorb training costs, and don’t want to expend much money because they feel that if they do, you will just take that training and go to a higher paying firm once you are trained. So now, you are required to work for free at an internship; then get a badly paying job at a tiny firm. All with the hope that you can port those skills at some point in the distant future to a better paying job; all the while deferring your exorbitant loans until you potentially get a decently paying job. Even though this wasn’t how the situation was setup for those who are now enforcing this regime on us. That’s right. They got the benefits and then rolled up the carpet behind them.

The professor had about as rosy an opinion about the future of the legal industry as I do. And he had the benefit of much greater experience and a very connected career behind his words.

The lunch wound down and I ended up talking to a guy who I had thought was an associate at a large firm. The consultants nearly flocked to him when he walked in the room giving the impression that his firm must be leaking money. I had seen him around previously but hadn’t had the opportunity to talk before. I assumed he was with a big firm based on the attention he was getting, but as it turned out, he was a litigation guy from a small 4 person firm. Apparently the consultants had done research and marked out who was more likely to want litigation support and who didn’t. He had graduated at the same time as me and had a startlingly similar story in relation to not finding work. The only real difference was that he hadn’t moved all over the damn country like I have. It was only this year that he had gotten work with the small firm through some previous contract lit work for them. He gave me a bit of insight from the happier side of actually finding work.

I wandered back to my car generally depressed. I don’t think I am going to show up to these lunches anymore; they aren’t good for my psychological health.

I admit, sometimes I am slow on the uptake. I’ve obviously had a lot of time to consider why I’m not getting offers, and why at least some people out there are getting them over me.

Something I realized after the last interview was a bit of a revelation to me, although it probably shouldn’t have been. Law firms, and law departments are monocultures.

A single person often directly holds sway over who gets hired. A law firm’s managing partner; the District Attorney; the General Counsel of a corporation. Each of them is the ultimate decision maker over which attorney gets hired for any given position.

The same could be said for any business unit which has the ability to oversee the hiring into itself. Human resources does not get nearly as much say about who gets hired into the law department as the lead attorney does; and we want to keep it that way. It makes sense. Those who are most knowledgeable about the field should be the ones making the hiring decisions.

The obvious problem is that it creates a cult of personality, centered around a single person’s concept of what they think makes a good employee. The department takes on the flavor of the person who holds the hiring power.  This is also borne out in the interview process. The singular person decides on how the interview should be conducted and what the questions should be… and interestingly they are also the final arbiter of what constitutes a correct answer.

The gaming commission was setup from the ground up by the crazy lead attorney. It made sense that the people who had been hired and survived in that environment were themselves odd and crazy. He only hired from the 4th tier and he only hired people he got along with. Vis a vis – crazy. The most recent DA interview was filled with true believers because the DA only wanted his office to have true believers working in it. Your passion for social justice had to burn with a righteous zealotry to make it into that office. On a more subtle tone, the multi-position interview went badly because the office was effectively built around many attorneys working independently on their own projects and not bothering other people with their work. But this meant no one communicated to form a bigger picture, built in institutional blindness.

The firms and legal departments mirror their originators because that is who hired in other attorneys who fit the same mold. They become monocultures by unconscious design; or maybe better termed egotistic natural selection.

This concept begins to break down the larger the firm / department becomes. The singular personality can no longer exert full influence over who gets hired. A multi-state firm begins instead to behave more like a corporation with several hiring individuals and a rough homogenizing edict, but the variety begins to seep in over time. It’s an interesting concept which I don’t think I have given much thought to prior to the latest interview.