Brian Tannebaum, our second favorite Floridian, who has taken captive the name Criminal Defense for his blawg (a reflection of his moral compass perhaps?), happened upon a fascinating idea. “Lawyers”, Brian argues, “cannot be laid off.” Only tools can be laid off,
If you are laid off, you are not a lawyer, you are a tool, a device, a big or small firm expendability. Check yourself.
When I first read his post, I challenged Brian to take it further, deeper. He demurred, but offered me the opportunity to take up the cause. I do so at his invitation.
It was a given in my youth that one of the greatest things to be was a professional. The reason, I was told, was that no matter what happened in the world, no one could ever take your profession away from you. Once you possessed the learning, the skills, the knowledge, it could never be taken away. It was yours forever.
This came at a time when the pain of the Holocaust was still very real, and when people who had amassed great fortunes lost everything in an instant. Businesses could be seized. Homes lost. Paintings and sculpture swept away. But no matter what group came to power, no matter how powerful they were, they could not take away your knowledge. This was a powerful lesson. This was why one became a “professional”.
As blawgs chronicle the layoffs from large law firms, not to mention the self-immolation of large firm owners who seem to lose their minds with some regularity, the world seems to be crumbling around thousands of lawyers who were assured that getting good grades, making law review, kissing butt at interviews, would provide them with a future of wealth and prestige. This was the way things worked. Just play the game, get the right summer clerkship, and you will live a life of plenty.
The country is filled with people calling themselves “lawyers” who entered this profession for the wrong reason. Maybe it’s not such a bad idea that they never really achieved what they perceived themself to be, and now find themselves looking for work, as “lawyers.”
Your world has come crashing down around your head, and the best some kid from Miami can do is kick you when you’re down? No, that’s not what Brian is doing. He’s challenging the conventional wisdom that took young men and women who entered law school one day with the dream of becoming a lawyer and, by the evil forces of manipulation, were turned into pointless drones to fill the needs of Biglaw. They received magnificent starting salaries, and all it cost them was their soul.
While I’m not entirely innocent of some small degree of Schadenfreude, with these wannabe masters of the universe coming face to face with their mortality, I feel badly about the misery caused by your having been misinformed.
You are lawyers. You were lawyers before. You are lawyers still. No one can take that away from you.
What you are not is employed. What you are not is on the partnership track. What you are not is guaranteed to get that partnership invitation when your class turns 10. Things aren’t working out the way they told you they would? Bummer.
Back in law school, people lied to you. Hey, they did it in grade school too, when they explained sex to you. You figured out the latter and will figure out the former as well. Lawyers do not need employers. Lawyers are not diminished by the collapse of Biglaw, recession or name-partner psychosis.
Brian’s lesson is that you have only seen yourself up to now as an employee, a cog in the wheel of profit per partner. When you stand in the well of a courtroom, no one cared what firm monogram was gold-leafed onto your brief bag. You were a lawyer, if only for the brief, shining moment. You spoke in a clear, stentorian voice, and your case rose or fell on your words. You, and you alone, stood between your client and disaster. Did it make you feel alive? That’s what it feels like to be a lawyer.
Only employees can be laid off.
Lost your job? Great. Now you can be a lawyer. Your mother will be so proud.
As a show of my appreciation to Brian for allowing me to play with his idea, the very least I can do is include this footer that Brian includes after every post at his blawg:
Brian Tannebaum is a criminal defense lawyer in Miami, Florida practicing in state and federal court. Read his free ebook The Truth About Hiring A Criminal Defense Lawyer. To learn more about Brian and his firm, Tannebaum Weiss, please visit www.tannebaumweiss.com
Remember, he’s from Florida (not that there’s anything wrong with that).
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Good stuff – a touch of sardonic to season…always good on a Sunday
Sardonic Sunday. I like that. And why does my wife keep going to your blog and just stare at the screen?
What’s a lawyer at the sea bottom? A good start. 😀
J/K 😉
Yes… Re your wife. I’ve done my best to answer her precise questions…. I’m just waiting for her next question/statement/ peremptory demand – I have sworn an affidavit just in case.
Scott, great post. I went to a law school where the vast majority of my classmates were headed to BigLaw. At times it was easy to feel my choice to pursue something else was strange and unorthodox. Your post reminded me what it means to be a professional and that the choice to focus on representing people (as opposed to corporations and institutions) is not only a legitimate choice, but perhaps at the very center of our profession.
Well, with all due respect, it’s very easy to deride people who are cogs in law firms. But when you have $150,000 in student loans and a $1400 a month loan repayment, it is not very easy to just start your own practice…unless of course, mom and dad are helping you out, or you have a well paid spouse. If law school was free you might have a point.
JPM,
That was my first reaction as well but SGH nails it on the head, we allowed ourselves to be lured into a trap by the siren’s song of joining the Biglaw collective. The song was sung to entice more and more student applicants to come in as drones to build the leverage, and profits, ever higher. We just lapped it all up and constantly bid up the cost of legal education in search of the promised Biglaw land of milk and honey. But now the large firms are not delivering on the financial security, have not really mentored the younger lawyers in the critical apprenticeship period and the young lawyers have six-figure price tags on their heads. This is a very scary scenario and I think it will have very bloody consequences in all levels of the profession. And I am one of the idealists who think we should be a profession first and business second.
Kevin:
In fact this generation is rejecting the traditional Biglaw partnership track in droves. People have not been “lured into a trap.” Everyone I know goes into Biglaw with their eyes wide open. Most people I know working in Biglaw hate it, and have already made plans to leave after 2 to 3 years. They take it for what it is: the only way to pay off huge loans in the shortest period of time. Then they can do what they really want.
The problem is that only 16% of law grads get these jobs. Then there is a massive fall off with the rest fighting over $50,000 a year jobs and financial doom.
The ABA does not protect this “profession.” In fact our guild is promoting the outsourcing of jobs to India as we speak! Some profession that is!
I know that I might be better off working for myself. The problem is this:
1. I am single;
2. I have a $1400 a month loan repayment:
3. I live paycheck to paycheck:
4. I have no savings ( I do not live beyong my means).
I simply cannot get it off the ground. Where am I going to ge the year of expenses that Jay Foonberg says you need to start a solo practice??? People who say you can just “hang out a shingle” are delusional and dishonest. Frankly, if most of the people on Susan’s blog were honest they would fully disclose their financial and marital siutaion.
Did their parents pay for law school?
Are they married?
Does their spouse make money to cover the bills?
Did they have savings?
Do they have contacts and clients available?
How much experience did they have before they went solo?
I think you’re missing Scott’s point. Nowhere in the post does he advocate hanging out your own shingle. He is promoting (at least, I think he is)recognizing yourself for who are you: a well-trained professional, with the power to benefit (or really screw) your clients in the judicial system. Want to be a cog in the biglaw machine? Great. Absolutely nothing wrong with that. Just don’t be a drone. Be a lawyer.
By extension, if Biglaw, Midlaw, or two-semiretired-partners-who-hired-you-straight-out-of-law-school-to-do-work-they-didn’t-want-to-law has recently fired you, take the chance to reflect and realize: you’re still a lawyer. If you want an employer, find someone willing to pay for your professional skills.
JPM,
I agree with almost everything you say. I also know lots of BigLaw attorneys who hate what they do and have already planned their exits. I know lots of Biglaw attorneys who don’t want to make partner because they don’t see the worth of it anymore. But don’t forget that the blame goes all the way around here. Large firms sung their song of milk and honey, law schools touted high average salaries that didn’t really exist justify the loans and we as students just took it all in with shiny-eyed optimism and signed on the dotted line. I really doubt that anyone’s eyes were really wide open early enough to truly effect (sp?) their situation, which was before they went to law school. We’ve made the choice to law school and to pay the price. I don’t think we appreciated what the price really was. And I’ve said this before elsewhere, but in the recent past the business pursuits of the law have reduced the profession into roadkill. While I would never doubt that a lawyer should make a decent living I do think that the increased desire for greater and higher profits has destroyed many aspects of the profession.
For the honesty:
1. I am divorced and was divorced during my 1L year,
2. I have a $1900 a month loan repayment,
3. I did live paycheck to paycheck but my last paycheck was almost two months ago,
4. My savings are almost depleted.
I graduated from law school three years ago, passed the bar on the first try and have been a lawyer for two years now. I have also yet to land that vaulted first job and have been a solo by default doing contract work in DC. My parents couldn’t afford to pay a dime towards my education and I honestly was heavily banking on having spousal support to get through law school, but that didn’t happen. I also moved to DC which was out of the range of my family, friends and contacts because I couldn’t afford the starting salaries of $40k where I was.
I am in the Six Weeks Til Solo course trying to learn how to convert my solo-by-default practice to a solo-by-choice one. After two years of contract work and trying to get into the federal government, my faith in others hiring me is waning but I know that I can be a good lawyer. Becoming a good lawyer from this point is going to involve a lot of things that I don’t want to do. One thing I’ve learned from the course is that I need more office assets to go out on my own than I can afford right now, so I’m going to have to work more contract jobs and then work on my book or portfolio on the side.
At some point you have to make a choice, are you going to fight for yourself or not?
I ask this question in earnest..was your decision to become a lawyer somewhat influenced by the glamorous way tv and movies portrayed the legal profession ?
Remember the movie “Paper Chase” or tv shows like “Law and Order” and “Perry Mason” ?
The law schools just ate this stuff up and served it to you with big promises and a large bill. They knew that it is a illusion of easy money.
If you would like to feel better ask some doctors if they made the wrong choice. It used to be that medical doctors looked down on dentists. Well I got news for them, dentist make more and easier money than MD’s. It is now sort of a joke amongst DMD’s ( Didn’t Make Doctors )that goes like this: “There is a mob of anesthesiologists outside willing to work for food, call the police”.
This discussion sort of reminds me of the post on this web site concerning Coastal Bank. The people felt deceived even though nobody twisted there arm to take the loan.
Don’t worry about the future..it is bright..there will be millions of lawsuits coming in the bankruptcy and victim business.
Food for thought. The way I read this post is that Scott is not trying to denigrate those who enjoy and relish working at Biglaw, neither is he making fun of those who are not cut out for anything else other than working for the Man; he’s writing for those who always felt that they’re not maximizing their potential, that they should really be doing something else, that they can and should be molding the law rather than be molded by it.
Sorry, But You’re Not Cut Out For Solo
One curious reaction to my post yesterday about what it means to be a lawyer in the Age of Layoffs was to read into my message that I was another voice in the chorus of “Go Solo, Young Lawyer.”
Sorry, But You’re Not Cut Out For Solo
One curious reaction to my post yesterday about what it means to be a lawyer in the Age of Layoffs was to read into my message that I was another voice in the chorus of “Go Solo, Young Lawyer.”
To my colleagues who aspire to hang their shingles in the face of adversity, I offer you two incantations to arm and shield yourself against the daily grind of financial insecurity, utter isolation, total responsibility and desperate vulnerability –
“The money will be there”
and
“Tomorrow will be a better day”
When you replace your excuses with the power of these two incantations, you shall rise beyond your chains of specialization and marginalization into the reasonably prudent counselors at law that our country so desperately need. Do not hesitate to leap into the abyss as those with a lesser grasp of English than yours have prospered.