The numbers

Staying with my plan of sharing my current fortunes, here is the day's post. I made $2,200 gross in February between the two part-time legal positions I currently hold. In March I pulled down $2,400.

Do the math. If you work full-time, 40 hours a week, and gross $2,200, you are getting paid at the rate of $13.75 an hour ($2,000 / 160 hrs = $13.75). I am on track for a $28k year. I made more than that at a retail position back in 1998 or '99.

That was when I was in my twenties. 

I am now trying to get back to where I was in my twenties.

How depressing is that?

It gets better. No only was I making more money back then, the rest of my financial situation was glorious by comparison. My wife and I had purchased our first house, a three bedroom ranch. We were both working full time. Her job paid a fair bit more than mine did (go figure, right?). Our house payment was about $700. We owned one car, a Honda Civic, but we owned it outright. Were not paying a note on that car. It was a few years old, and had about 55,000 miles on the odometer.  But, that baby ran great. All that car ever needed was oil, tires, and brakes. Neither of us had any student loans from our undergraduate educations (those were the days!). And, we had about $35k between saving, a small money market fund, and a handful of stocks.

Things were looking great. Just great.

That was then, this is now. I've been applying to damn near every job I find that sounds either remotely interesting or that I am remotely qualified for. Some of these jobs are for legal positions, and some of them are not. I'm not proud. I just need more income.

I'm not sure the J.D. is hurting me, because, really, how do you prove that? (Inversely, how do your prove that the JD helps? Answer: you cannot.) I can say in all honesty that it doesn't appear to be helping any.

I don't hear anything back about half of the time. No response at all.  No letter, no email, no nothing. Certainly no phone call. The other half are split between a paper rejection letter and an email. I have about a dozen recent rejection letters now. Three or four of them were for legal positions. Two were for what amounts to entry level office work: administrative assistant.

They're are simply form letters, with boilerplate language, and no reference to the actual position applied for. At least two are nearly identical. Go figure.

"We have decided to pursue other applicants show qualifications more closely reflect the requirements for this position and the needs of the department."

That phrase, or something very close to it, appeared in most of the letters.

"We have had a good response to our recruitment efforts and received applications from many well qualified individuals."

You get the idea. Bland, non-specific, form letters.

I'll keep knocking on doors. Because, really, what other choice do I have?

A rebuttal of sorts

Upon reading through a discussion on reddit which references one of my recent posts, it appears I need to clear a few things up.

1. Desire to be an attorney.

Look, my wife is an attorney and has been for nearly a decade now (9 yrs & change). I knew plenty of other attorneys before I applied to law school, both through her and through my own networks. I knew what law school would be like, I knew what the bar exam would be like, and I knew what the work of being an attorney actually entailed. I went to law school to become an attorney. For the most part, I have enjoyed being an attorney.

The issue not whether I "really wanted" to be an attorney. The issue is the lack of employment opportunities in the practice of law.

2. Debt load management.

It is a brute, and it is a major portion of our monthly outlay. My situation is a lot better than the five or six folks I staying in contact with since graduation. That does not mean my situation is what I'd like it to be. Are we swimming in discretionary income? No. But, we can manage. Barely some months.

Our debt load is not the issue. The issue is the lack of employment opportunities. My wife works in a solid, full-time position and makes a decent living. She has a decade of experience. Yes, we are still paying her student loans. I work two (might soon be three) part-time gigs. The reality is that I made a more money before I earned a J.D. Therefore, I would likely be in a better position to contribute if I had not gone to law school.

3. Lack of research.

I should just call this point "blame the victim" or "I am a special snowflake." See 1, supra. Far too often the first response to the bitter economic situation of many recent law graduates is that he or she didn't go to the right school, get good enough grades, or network enough, etc. The inference is that the recent graduate is either the sole cause of their own misery, or the majority contributor to it (i.e., it is somehow deserved). The added point, either stated or inferred, is that the responding writer is going to succeed where others have failed because he or she will go to the right school, get good grades, network it to the max, etc. (i.e., the writer is a special snowflake that will beat the odds).

Yeah, right. I did the research. I spoke with several attorneys. I read the materials my law school provided me detailing employment rates nine months after graduation and average starting salaries. What I expected a reasonable return on my investment of time and money. I went to a poorly ranked law school because (as I have already explained in an earlier post) it was located in the state my wife is licensed to practice law. It was not the only in-state school; it was the in-state school that accepted me. I could have left the state and attended a school of higher rank. However, I did not want to relocate my family. We could not afford a terminate my wife's income.

I am sick and tired of people, current law students in particular, who cannot seem to get their heads around the fact that you are tied to the state you are licensed in. Moving to a different state is a big deal when you'll be out of work for half the year until you can (a) sit for the bi-annual bar exam, and (b) get your results. There are not a lot of employers whom will pay an unlicensed attorney to sit around doing non-attorney work. Sure, such opportunities exist (a friend of ours did so around 2003 or '04), but those opportunities are few and far between, if they even exist at all anymore. Instead, my wife was able to leave one position and start a new one a week later because we did not leave the state she was licensed to practice law in. Our income stream barely rippled. Moving out-of-state would have been a big deal for us. It should not be discounted so quickly.

4. Bad life choices.

This is more of that "blame the victim" noise. Yeah, I get it, it's my fault. I bought the ticket, now I get to take the ride. Awesome. High five later.

Ultimately, all I wanted was a chance to sit for the bar exam. I got that. But, damn if that three year program of study couldn't have been reasonably compressed into two at most.

Seriously, is it so hard to understand that the law schools are in the practice of publishing job placement and earnings statistics that are misleading at best and simply untrue at worst? The mandatory grade curve and resulting attrition rate are not exactly advertised on the front page of those glossy brochures the schools sent out to anyone and everyone who signed up for the LSAT. That rather nasty surprise was discovered during the first year of school, not before.

The "law school scam" movement was in it's infancy when I was applying to law school. It is a far different landscape now. Go back seven years to 2006. That's where I was standing. That's the landscape I had before me. It was different then.

Two notable websites that come to mind are Third Tier Reality and Inside The Law School Scam (there are many others). These two sites were not in existence until 2009 and 2011, respectively. http://thirdtierreality.blogspot.com/2009/08/third-tier-reality.html; http://insidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2011/08/welcome-to-my-nightmare.html (yeah, yeah, last checked today). These websites and their authors have made a rather large impact on the discussion. And, the second one, ITLSS, isn't even an active website anymore.

As a related and important point, I am an attorney. I am currently working as an attorney. I'm not some pretender. This is my life. 2012 was bullshit (we moved between cities, I was Mr. Mom, see related posts I'm too busy to link, blah, blah, blah), but 2013 is shaping up. Am I making a good living? No. Not hardly. Am I busting my ass? Yes. I am looking for work everywhere, applying to any number of positions that I find every week, and saying yes to every short-term contract opportunity I find. I'm going to win at this game because I am too big to fail.

I do not cringe at your criticism.

I do not want your pity.

All this blog can stand for is what happened to one middle aged guy who thought it would be a good idea to go to law school. Then the bottom fell out of the economy. Life is a lot different now than it was 10 or 20 years ago. For me and a lot of other people. It is not going to get better overnight. Rather, it is going to take few years. Or, decades.

What happened to me also happened to many others. And, it may happen to you.

Once there was a snowflake...

I am not a special snowflake.

I did not believe I was a special, or different, or that I would beat the odds. Rather, I thought I was average. I went in expecting to be average. I graduated in the middle of my class. Seriously. I was two people south of dead center. You could not be more average than I was. 

Here is the problem: I thought the outcomes for an average student were a whole lot better than they actually were.

Why did I think that? Well, I relied upon the facts presented to me by the law school. 

It was a bunch of lies.

I know that now. But, I didn't know it then. And now it is too late to unwind. I've bought my ticket. Now, I must take the ride.

I was not a special snowflake. I just thought I was like all the other snowflakes. '

I was right about that part. Because, all the snowflakes got burned in the end.

The only folks I've heard about in my graduating class that have done well for themselves had a job lined up prior to school, or the work for a family member. In some instances, it is both. The majority of people I've talked to are just buried in debt and not making enough money to manage.

That's the reality. That is what is really happening out there.

I have ruined the financial future of my family

I once had a job, before law school, where I billed my hours. It wasn't legal work, it was consulting. Or, at least that's what we called it. It was good while it lasted. I made $35 an hour at that gig. I remember getting paychecks for $5k on occasion. Those were rare, to be honest. But, taking home something in the ballpark of $1,800 per pay check was common. $3k a month was easy. I averaged around $4k a month.

After a few years, the work dried up and I moved on. What I wouldn't give to have that job now. 

Fast forward past law school and now I’m doing contract work at the rate of $25 per hour. I have what amounts to two part-time jobs. I can’t seem to find full-time work under any of the rocks I’ve flipped over. And, trust me, I've looked under a lot of rocks.

I reviewed what I billed for one of those gigs in the month of February the other night. You know, to punish myself (joking, totes). Over the last two weeks of the month I billed only a total of 17 hours. Of course, President’s Day fell in the middle of that, so it was only really only nine working days. But, still. I went to law school to better my employment situation, not to look back at the pre-law glory days with envy. 

Seventeen hours is a fucking joke. I know people who bill that in two days! And, really, at most that should represent three days of work. Three easy days at that.

That’s what I managed to scratch up in two weeks.

I have ruined the financial future of my family. Just ruined it. I cannot pay my bills with this kind of income stream. 

When you drink Absolut straight it burns. Enough to give my chest hairs a perm.

I typed about a few words about my current state of affairs, the text in blockquotes below, back in February. It’s been sitting around on my laptop since then. It seems that I should make an effort to share the fruits of my labor, as it were, with the masses.

I've been thinking that I am ready to write a little more on this blog. Or, at least make an honest effort of doing so. For a while now, the better part of two years actually, I have engaged in conversation with like minding folks in similar circumstances at ITLSS. That satisfied any need I had to blow off steam or bitch about things. Now that Campos has reached the end of that blog's useful life and shuttered the enterprise, I'm realizing I can channel such energies here.

And, yeah, I'm pretty much comparing this to therapy.

I think it’s time I share a little something: I’m not really as angry as I seem on the pages of this website. I write here, in this manner, to channel my frustrations somewhere other than my liver (i.e., guzzling liquor). I have come to accept the fact that I’ve pretty much fucked myself by going to law school. Now I’m just trying to deal with it.

About that bit I wrote out last month:

I’m doing a monthly budget today. I haven’t engaged in this exercise since I was my third year of law school. We moved last fall, and it took a few months to sort out what our utilities were going to run, how much day care we needed, and what our transportation costs were going to be.

Well, now I know. The numbers are not surprising. But, they are grim. A lot of it centers upon my current under-employed status.

As in, things would be better if I made more money.

Who knew working two part-time jobs wasn’t the same as one full-time one. (I’m kidding.) I will probably write out something in more detail about my finances in the near future. Why not, right? It would be better than lying awake at night, starting at the ceiling in the dark, and wondering just how in the hell I'm going to extricate myself from this predicament. And, truth be told, I've been doing a fair share of that lately. And it is not fun. My life has gone pear shaped. 

I started applying for non-legal jobs last month. I graduated in May of 2011. I made it to February of 2013 before I realized I need to expand my horizons and broaden the employment search. The response thus far has been typical - I haven't gotten any responses.

Hey, but a J.D. is so versatile. 

They call it shit law

I was told a story recently by a lawyer I do part-time contract work for. A retired judge, that I've never met, apparently always treats the lawyer whom employs me badly. They both run in the same social circle. I do not run in that social circle.  I do not know who the judge is he was talking about, and I do not care to.

I think the phrase he used to describe the judge was, “He’s always a dick to me.” 

The lawyer whom employs me went on to say that, in his opinion, some people look down on lawyers that are not civil attorneys. The lawyer whom employs me is not a civil attorney.

He asked me if I had experienced the same.

“Oh, yeah. Sure.” I said, “They call it shit law.”

“What is shit law?”

“It’s a derisive terms used to describe anything other than working at a firm. A big firm doing civil litigation and the like.”

He stood and looked at me like I just pissed in his Cheerios.

Don't hate the messenger, bro.

2013 is a whole new year

I started writing this post in January. Seems I'm not moving very fast. Go figure.

I paid my annual bar dues about two weeks ago. A couple hundred bucks for absolutely nothing in return. 

I also signed up for a mandatory ethics course. Again, a hundred bucks for nothing.

How ironic I need to pay $100 to learn about “ethics” when I’m the one who is getting fucked? I tapped into the five grand my law school gave me for that fake job thing they set up to pay these bills. (This fake job: http://cruxoflaw.blogspot.com/2012/07/strange-bedfellows-indeed.html.)

As I've said before on this web page and will undoubtedly say again many times in the future, an update may be in order. My total law related earnings for 2012 comes it at a grand total of $7,100.00. Run your head around that one a few times. I can honestly say that there was about $7k in income last year that is directly attributable to my having earned a law degree, getting the nod from the C&F folks, and passed the bar exam. Anything else I cobbled together had no bearing on my being an "attorney".

$7k.

To put that in perspective, I am in my early forties and was making between $30k and $50k per year prior to law school. (That swing is attributable to my doing a few different things over the last decade.) Totally awesome. High five later.

As being an "attorney" is turning out to be right up there with ten miles of bad road, I have begun applying for non-JD positions for 2013. A few thus far. I don’t know yet if my JD will prove to be an asset or a liability. But, I’m leaning toward the latter. No interviews yet, but this is a recent development. I will try to share any developments either way on this blog.

I also began cold-calling local attorneys last month. Just flat out telephoning people out of the blue. One call led to a lunch meeting / interview. It lasted two hours. An offer of a part-time position doing research and writing for a small firm followed. I, of course, took it immediately without hesitation.

The job started last week. 

So, I've got three things going on. First, I'm doing contract work for a criminal defense attorney. Basically, I'm doing legal research and writing motions. An occasional memo, and one court appearance. It's up and down. Some weeks I have two or three days to pull something together. Sometimes I have less than that, and I'm up working until two o'clock in the morning after making dinner for the family and getting the kids in bed. No matter how short the notice, I always say yes. Frankly, I'm afraid to say no. And, some weeks that attorney doesn't have a project for me. Like I said, it's up and down.

Second, I'm doing all kinds of odd jobs for another attorney related to a tort case. Some weeks I talk to a private investigator, do a little research, visit the courthouse, track down something or the other on the phone or internet. Whatever is asked, I just do it. This one is also up and down. Mostly down. Barely worth mentioning, actually.

And, finally, the part-time gig I started last week. It's looking to be about a twenty hour per week commitment. It may become more. We'll see. It is in an area of the law I pretty much knew absolutely nothing about until I jumped in last week.

I can honestly say that one thing law school taught me is that I know I can figure out an area of the law in a few short weeks. We did so semester after semester. New subject matter? No problem. So, thanks for that, law school. You're the tops.

That's it. That's what I'm doing these days. I'd like to be busier, but it's better than nothing. I am on track to match last years horrifically dismal $7k in law related earnings pretty quickly. So, I've got that going for me.

An update is in order

I guess I can call myself an attorney now. I don't, very often. But, I can.

Strange phrase, isn't it:

"Attorney."

I haven't referred to myself as an "attorney" but two or three times.

And only when someone asks me, "So, what do you do?"

I say, "I'm an attorney."

And, then we talk about the weather or some shit. It's such a stumbling block. It just derails the conversation.

I have some friends from law school who use "Esq." now, in their communications, signatures, and so forth. It seems clumsy to me. So, I don't do it.

I don't know if I can say it's all that great being an attorney. I'm not surprised by the work, really. I guess I just thought my experience would be a little different than it has been. Law school was something to endure, the bar exam something to simply pass.

For what it's worth, I can knock the following off my list: (1) graduate from an accredited law school, (2) pass the bar exam, (3) get paid to do the type of work only a licensed attorney may do. Done, done, and done.

And what a long, strange trip it's been.

OK, all jokes aside. Here is where I'm at now. I am working, basically part-time, doing contract work for two different attorneys. Both of these men I knew prior to law school. And, I suppose I should also point out, both of these men have been practicing law for years and are throwing me table scraps.

The upside is I am covering my expenses, spending time with my family, and getting paid actual money to do legal work. I have current employment to list on my resume. And I have professional references that are not either law professors or people I worked for before I went to law school.

The downside is I'm pretty much working out of my house or a public library. All I require is a power source and an internet connection. The house is fine with me. It's flexible, the 'fridge is mere steps away, and I can walk around in my pajamas all day if I want to. The library is OK, but I have to actually get dressed and shave in the morning. Well, at least dressed. I'm typing this from a table in the library. I have a file in front of me which contains a police report and a bunch of other docs. I'm doing a motion to suppress, illegal search and seizure basically.

You know what occurred to me this morning that prompted this entry? Law school teaches nothing about the actual practice of law.

I know, preaching to the choir. You've all heard it already.

Strange bedfellows indeed

It may be time to post some content on this blog again. I have not written anything for publication in months. I've been keeping a file (read: pile) of notes. A few scraps or paper, really, here and there.

I am now over year out from graduation. I am not employed as an attorney. Nor, have I been at any time in the last 12 months. At least not in any sense of the word used in common conversation with normal, average, reasonable people. I was "employed" as far as my law school is concerned. And, I was employed as far as the USNWR folks are concerned.

I was a "graduate fellow." No, I don't know what it means either. Other than a rather grim view of what people will do when the opportunity to falsely represent themselves arises. And I mean the law schools, not the graduates.

You see, the magic number is nine months. Yes, what matters is what the graduate is doing nine months after graduation. If the graduate is not "employed" in the common sense of the word, working for pay, full time, in a job which requires a JD, well, such information would be damaging to a law schools ranking. So, the answer is to create, out of thin air, a "job" for this student.

Hence, the Graduate Fellowship Program. Or, GFP (Get Fucking Paid). I was offered a check for five thousand dollars ($5,000) if I agreed to volunteer my services, part time, for the remaining length of the spring semester.

I am not a proud man. I signed the contract and accepted payment.

That check sat on my counter for two months. I simply could not face it. I guess I was more proud than I originally thought.

I eventually deposited it at my bank. In a separate savings account, populated only with those funds. It is dirty money. Dirty. Fucking. Money. I may need it someday. But, for now, I can't stand the thought of co-mingling such gains with the funds that feed my children.

I wish I had the strength of character to decline the school's offer and say, "No. No, you count me as unemployed. Because that is what I am."

Thinning the herd

I know a lot more about the machine which legal education now that I am standing on the far end of process with a J.D. One of the things which really surprised me at the TTTT (fourth tier toliet) I chose to attend was the brutal effects of the grading curve.

My wife went to law school a few years (and a few children) before I did. She went to a lower-ranked state school, but one with a history and a respectable reputation. I, for reasons I can barely now remember nor articulate clearly, went to a for-profit law school. It was in the same state my life was licensed in, but a different city than where we lived. So, a big move for the family, but not as big as it could have been.

I matriculated in 2008 with 174 other students. Three years later, I walked with the 89 who actually completed the program. That means 85 students were lost along the way to failure, drop-out, or transfer. That is a total loss of 48.8%. (I should say now, I am no whiz in math. I may make a mistake or two in my back-of-the-envelope calculations here today.)

My cohort lost some 70 students between 1L and 2L. That number comes from the class rank I was given in May at the end of the first year. There were 174 students on the list. Students who simply disappeared (there were a few) during 1L remained on the list of 174.

There was a 40% reduction in student body at the end of 2L. The total class was now 104.

I find that number alarming. As I understand it, from my wife's experience in school and that of others I have read, a loss of about 10% to what is commonly termed "attrition" can be expected in the first year of law school. Much of that loss is expected during the first semester.

To have forty percent of the folks who began the program vacate their seats is simply unheard of. Well, unheard of until you start reading about the Law School Scam. Some of these folks figured law wasn't for them, some transferred to a different school. But, I believe the majority of them failed out of the program.

Someone asked me once, as I described to them the number of people who failed out of the program, "Why would the school admit people who couldn't handle the work?"

It was a good question. One you would expect of any other graduate program in the country. The short answer is the law schools admit people "who can't handle the work" simply to take the money. Students were never there to "handle the work." They were there as cannon fodder. This mass of under-performers is what pays for the discounted and free tuition offered to the high LSAT / GPA folks. That keeps the all-important USNWR rankings humming along, those lives destroyed through non-dischargeable debt be damned.

The curve forced curve utilized at institutions such as my (proud) alma mater lead to an inevitable deficiency in grade point average. In short, if you give 15% of every class a grade of less than a C, you are going to fail out that same number of people.

There was a loss of an additional 15 students from 2L to 3L. I calculate (poorly) that to be a 14% reduction.

You may ask, who the hell fails out after the 2L? Just over a dozen people, apparently. Here is where it gets really ugly: All those kids have credits for courses they cannot transfer or use toward any other program of study, employment, or career. The debt they incurred for either one third or two thirds of a J.D. cannot be discharged in bankruptcy. It will never go away. And, it will be compounded at around 7% interest. They will be paying off those loans for years. Decades in many cases. I feel bad for those people. Some of them were my friends. One of them I still talk to.

They got screwed.