Posted on 04/21/2013 2:39:58 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
When I applied to law school in 1975, the nation was recovering from a severe and prolonged recession. Even so, I always assumed that I’d be able to make a comfortable living with a legal degree, although I didn’t think that practicing law would make me rich.
Three and a half years later, I became a new associate at one of the nation’s largest law firms, Kirkland & Ellis. It had about 150 attorneys in two offices, Chicago and Washington, D.C. My annual salary was $25,000, which is $80,000 in 2012 dollars. There were rumors that some partners in large firms earned as much as ten or fifteen times that amount; by any measure, that was and is a lot of money.
The unlikely prospect of amassing great wealth wasn’t what attracted me to the law. Rather, I saw it as a prestigious profession whose practitioners enjoyed personally satisfying careers in which they provided others with counsel, advice, judgment, and a unique set of skills. Mentors at my first and only law firm taught me to focus on a single result: high-quality work for clients. If I accomplished that goal, everything else would take care of itself.
Today, the business of law focuses law school deans and practitioners in big law firms on something else: maximizing immediate profits for their institutions. That has muddied the profession’s mission and, even worse, set it on a course to become yet another object lesson in the perils of short-term thinking. Like the dot-com, real estate, and financial bubbles that preceded it, the lawyer bubble won’t end well, either. But now is the time to consider its causes, stop its growth, and take steps that might soften the impact when it bursts.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Ban law shows that show lawyers as the saviors of everything, making law look like a better profession than business, science, engineering or real trades.
This retired lawyer wouldn’t mind one iota.
> The FDA has prohibited sales of Viagra to Attorneys...apparently it just makes them taller.
LOL
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Do you have a source for this assertion?
I'm asking because it appears that you have fallen for the media stereotype of lawyers. I'm sure criminal defense and civil plaintiff attorneys may have voted for the Kenyan, but most of the attorneys I worked for over the years were civil defense attorneys and they were all conservative.
I began as a legal secretary in 1983, but that title and that job no longer exists. When I switched firms a few years ago, I was in for the shock of my life. All of a sudden I was a “legal assistant,” doing paralegal type work I’d never done before in my career. Legal secretaries are quickly becoming a thing of the past, if they’re not already extinct. On the plus side (for me), the job is more interesting. On the minus side, it is enormously more anxiety ridden.
Do you have a source for this assertion?
I'm asking because it appears that you have fallen for the media stereotype of lawyers. I'm sure criminal defense and civil plaintiff attorneys may have voted for the Kenyan, but most of the attorneys I worked for over the years were civil defense attorneys and they were all conservative.
Look here:
Lawyers / Law Firms: Top Recipients
In 2012, $28 million to Obama, $14 million to Romney.
Even worse, in 2008, $48 million to Obama vs only $10 million to McCain.
In 2012, $20 million to Democrats in Congress, $12 million to GOP.
Overall, $89 million to Democrats, $42 million to GOP.
Of the top 20 recipients, 18 were Democrats, 2 were Republican. (http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/summary.php?ind=K01&cycle=2012&recipdetail=M&sortorder=U
Actually, FDR failed in his attempt to “pack” the Supreme Court with additional New Deal-friendly justices. The Senate must confirm appointments then as now, and his subversive scheme was too much even for the Democrat controlled Congress of the late 1930’s.
Doesn’t diminish FDR’s record as an enemy of the Constitution, and at which LBJ nearly succeeded decades later.
The firms are getting rid of older personnel period. Cheaper to hire some youngin’ for practically nothing than pay a big salary plus benefits to someone with more experience.
Riiiiight.....reminds me of a stripper I once met who said she's only doing it to pay for her college tuiton while she works on her PhD in psychology.....
Hiring stats are actually showing the opposite. Employment is up for 50+, down for everyone else.
I’ve had some recent experience with the legal “profession,” and I’m shocked at how marginal and mediocre these people are. I’m talking about legal documents with misspelled words and poor English, failure to appear at court hearings on behalf of a client, etc.
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This has been going on a while. Some real sick puppies go into law.
In my area, a law degee and two bucks will get you a cup of coffee. OUr local law school churns out so many of them, it is a joke.
and the little stupids thought that they wouold be in some 80’s legal drama lookalike law firm.
I have always thought the best gotcha for the lawyer industry is to make them provide free services at the same rate and levels as doctors. Free care no matter what with 24 hours staffed legal clinics that could turn away no one. and oversight that would critique their performance and threaten lawsuit if they lost the cases.
Yes, FDR made a fool of himself with his plan to state the Supreme Court with pro-big federal government justices, a plan which failed.
However, Constitution-ignorant voters re-elected FDR enough times that he was able to nominate an activist justice majority who saw things his way.
Well dah!....Even waitresses now have to “sell” and process so many tables to “qualify” in maintaining their employment... Customer service is “limited” to a time frame. Move them in and move them out.
Same in Retail Establishments using ‘hand helds’....they have to process a certain percentage of checkouts, on their shift, to “qualify” for how many work hours they will be scheduled for. The less you process the less working hours you will get.
Customers/Clients are now sought , not to be of service to, but to keep the numbers rolling...
And you don’t have to be “Old”...they just have to make more money than the “newbees” will work for. Anymore it doesn’t appear to matter if you are very good at what you do...they bring in a young pup and expect you to train them with what you’ve spent you’re life learning!
I only tell them what they ask...never offer to “help” them take my job!
RE: As I recall, and I may be off by a few hundred dollars, it was about $3,000 per year, including room but not board. Obviously, that should be adjusted for inflation when comparing it with current costs.
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According to this INFLATION CALCULATOR:
http://www.westegg.com/inflation/
What cost $3000 in 1966 would cost $20940.16 in 2012.
I’d like to see a really good Law School that charges only $21,000 a year today.
Good and valid request. I do believe, however, that the trial lawyers most always vote for the libtards, but the same cannot be said generally of others.
I worked for lawyers for 35 years, principally for defense attorneys in civil litigation. Contrary to the media image, they were all upstanding and honest. And as I said before, they were conservatives.
More like parasites draining the life out of their hosts.
This is sad for the honest lawyers. Both may soon be unemployed.
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