Hear No Evil

First and second year associates?  “They’re worthless.”

That’s not me talking, but Paul Beach , General Counsel of United Technologies.  No, he’s not being mean to young lawyers, though there’s been a rush on sales of dart boards with his image.  He’s trying  to make a point . To law schools who refuse to acknowledge that their job isn’t to produce a never ending stream of esoteric and fantastic theories in overly footnoted articles, but lawyers.  To young lawyers, that you have much to learn and aren’t as brilliant as Justice Cardozo the minute you step away from law school.

I took a look at Lawyerist  yesterday after receiving an email from Aaron  Street  asking if I would guest post over there.  My reaction was a bit snarky, given that it’s a for-profit blog dedicated to self-aggrandizement of the Slackoisie, though it was nice of Aaron to ask, given that most of what I have to say runs counter to the sensibility of his readers.

The lead post at the time was about going solo  straight from law school, with a provocative title asking whether it equals malpractice.  It concludes:

You can handle going solo. Read the rules in your state, confer with colleagues, and research as much as you need to. Be diligent and meticulous with your cases, and you will realize you are capable of more then you think.

Deep, huh?  Inspiring.  You can do it.  Just don’t screw up.  As Ellie Mystal writes at Above the Law , there’s mass delusion about the future of law students and young lawyers, each of whom believes that, odds be damned, they will be the one who wins the brass ring.

Honestly, the depths of hubris the would-be graduating class of 2013 shows here is beyond “self-confidence,” it goes straight to “self-delusion.” There’s no way 52% of pre-law students should be “very confident” about anything other than getting screwed with their pants on — and the fact that these same people can only point out the flaws in their own logic when thinking about other people is sickening. It’s the same idiocy that makes a person say “I can get a Biglaw job coming out of Law School X so long as I’m in the top ten percent of the class,” without understanding that everybody thinks they’ll be in the top ten percent of the class.

This isn’t about putting people down, or being mean, or bursting bubbles.  The blawgosphere is largely populated by the young, many of whom get irate at the lack of love shown them.  Throughout their lives, they been given nothing but love, and like any addict, they can’t live without it.  Truth and reality are unbearably bitter in comparison.

Dan Hull spells it out as clearly as possible

.mr_rogers_neighborhood_small.jpg 

At a minimum, we wish that law schools could convey a few truths, and what might be called “old verities”, to part-time clerks, summer clerks and grads:

1. Even for the most brilliant, motivated, resourceful and ambitious people, law practice is time-intensive and very hard–especially in the beginning.

2. Graduating from law school with top grades and willing to give practice the old Siwash try is only the beginning of your travail. Again, practicing law is hard. Even harder to learn how. And hard to maintain as years roll by at a comfortable and honorable level of quality. You don’t get to say this much: “Sorry, Jack, but I’m on my break.”

3. Real-life client problems pose extraordinary ambiguity and complexity (you can’t “Google” the answers; you may fret over some projects and have to stay late; at first, it may interfere with your relationships and your “real life”).

4. Maybe you’ll find that private practice is not for you. It’s not about the lawyers, courtliness, lawyer-centric cults of “professionalism”, bar associations, wearing cool suits, prestige, money or being in a special club. If you stay in it for all that stuff, even if you make big bucks, you will regret it. No, you will hate it.

5. Clients. Talented people with JDs are legion. It’s really about those you serve.

The blawgosphere is replete with people who wear cardigans and whisper sweet things into your ears.  They tell you how wonderful and brilliant you are, and how all the bad things happening around you are someone else’s fault.  No one is responsible for their own lives anymore, so don’t feel badly about being unemployed, or working in a boiler room, or blowing the case because, well, you just didn’t know what you were doing.  It’s not your fault.  Nothing is your fault.  Nothing.  And blaming others is almost the same thing as achieving something for yourself, right?

The internet offers the comfort that the real world denies,  There are a ton of blogs, chat rooms, websites, directed at making you feel good about yourselves.  You love them because they agree with you, that you’re not a loser.  They offer laundry lists of people to blame and hate for your failure to achieve everything your little heart desires in the first eight months of practice.  After all, you aren’t unreasonable.  You know that it takes more than 6 months to get the corner office.  But certainly 8 is more than enough to rule the world, right?

All of this would be just fine, except for one unfortunate detail.  Why are some of your contemporaries out there, working hard, growing as lawyers and human beings, learning from mistakes and accomplishing goals, while you are sitting in your mommy’s basement eating Cheetos, playing video games and whining?  It’s just not right.

Don’t want to listen to me?  Fine.  Listen to Paul Beach.

9 thoughts on “Hear No Evil

  1. Venkat

    As a person who doesn’t like to stress, I’ve found that the stress can be tough to deal with.

    In fact, that’s the one thing that took me most by surprise. Lawyering started out stressful, and it’s pretty much stayed stressful, or gotten more stressful. This stress has the capacity to wear people down. It’s certainly tiring.

    William Gibson has this quote when asked about his writing:

    “When Bruce Sterling and I were writing The Difference Engine, I’d moan sometimes about the labor required (as much fun as that was, and often it was lots of fun, but I’m basically lazy). He always had the same response: ‘Yeah, but it beats loading concrete blocks.’ Which is so obviously true, and has since become a mantra of mine.”

  2. SHG

    Some find the stress exhilerating. I always want to eat a donut when I get out of court after a day on trial.

  3. Hull

    Thanks, Scott. Wow. Honored.

    Venkat–Re: just your first line, dang, that’s a little sad. Even though your past defenses of anonymity on the Net generally were something I could never understand (coming from anyone forthright and sane like yourself ), you do seem to be a bright and talented person. My only point: The best lawyers, leaders, scholars, poets, politicians, execs, salespeople, chefs, brokers, bond traders, editors, writers, truck drivers, flight attendants (I prefer “stews” but whatever), waitresses, athletes, bosses, sport-philanderers, friends, soldiers, workers and human beings I know at least like–and very often even crave–stress. Great lawyers, especially, work very well with stress, say, 90% of the time stress comes knocking. They make stress help them. Like the cliché: “It’s not stress if you love what you do.” (I have heard that frequently for 25 years. Haven’t you?)

    When we went to law school, I thought we all signed up for stress. Didn’t we?

  4. Anonymous

    Oh really, it’s the recent law school grads who’ve been given “nothing but love” their entire lives and now feel entitled? In reality, it’s the middle-aged baby boomers who were given nothing but love their entire lives by parents struggling to find meaning via their children in the aftermath of World War II. Now that they’ve made partner or gotten cushy in-house jobs, they have no qualms about pulling the ladder up after them…and making sure even the people who make “partner” nowadays don’t get equity.

    This is the same shtick the old give the young to convince them why the fact that they aggrandize all the value added by the youngins is justified. When you’re a 1st year, 5th years tell you you don’t know how to really be a lawyer. When you’re a 5th year, partners will act as if you’re still wet behind the ears. And on and on. The reality is, if you get a position where your work has an actual impact on outcome (which is rare), the wheat gets separated from the chaff quite quickly. I’ve encountered plenty of experienced lawyers who weren’t fit to lick a younger attorney’s boot-heel.

    If you really believe people like Paul Beach, then you probably also prefer an experienced journeyman benchwarmer to a rookie Chris Paul or Lebron James. Experience is important, but so is talent. Not every law school grad has it, but neither do most weathered vets.

  5. SHG

    Now that you’ve informed us of your reality, teacup, my turn to ask a question:

    Why are you so gutless that you wouldn’t put your name to your brilliance?  Given all you think you know about life, it would seem you would be more than proud to tell all those morons that you’re the king of the world and everyone else is just so terribly unfair to you.

    Maybe it was just a mistake because your eyes were clouded by all the tears.  Feel free to include your name in a reply, and I’ll make sure you get the credit you deserve for straightening things out.

  6. gsf

    “Be diligent and meticulous with your cases, and you will realize you are capable of more then you think.”

    I hope those younguns hanging shingles are meticulous enough to know the difference between “then” and “than.”

  7. Venkat

    I agree that stress goes hand in hand with any worthwhile professional achievement. Even the chef cooking the meal at the idyllic but popular seaside restaurant stresses about how it will turn out. That’s one of the reasons why it’s so good.

    I think I work well with stress but I don’t think I work any better. I definitely don’t seek it out!

Comments are closed.