lol

[Bob]

so i'm applying for internships for the upcoming semester, and of the many firms to which i applied, only one has granted me an interview (i aimed too high, apparently, the one that's giving me an interview was my "safety firm", so to speak). and i'm researching the firm, looking at their website and checking the news for articles about them, etc, and i see that about 10 partners and associates that recently left the firm are currently suing the head of the firm for financial mismanagement (they weren't paid properly, even though some of them billed 3,000 hours in a year, which is an inhumane amount of hours to bill) and psychological abuse.

and i'm looking at the firm's entry on my school's internship page, and it appears that although the firm is a general practice firm (meaning they handle all kinds of cases) my job as an intern will be mostly related to malpractice defense, so.......yeah.

i make poor professional decisions

[TAL]

Safe!

[ericlee]

it's pretty wise to do some research like that. Imagine how the other people felt by going in blind and getting the shaft.

[Bob]

to be honest though i think i'll still take the job if they offer it to me (it's only a 3 month internship, although they have a reputation for hiring our interns as permanent employees). and if they don't offer it, i can pretend i wasn't going to anyway. hooray!

[funk63]

lol you take life seriously.

[Kid Presentable]

I think it would be a wicked experience to work for a firm as shady and fucked up as that.

[Bob]

I think it would be a wicked experience to work for a firm as shady and fucked up as that.

yeah, i'm kind of curious to see what it's like

and also, if the other applicants (there are 5 including me, competing for 2 positions) read the same article i read, maybe they'll get disgusted and not want the job anymore, which improves my chances of getting it!

it really does sound pretty fucked up. i don't want to give away too much information lest you identify the firm, but according to the article, some of the complainants billed over 3,000 hours for a year and weren't paid their full salary, because the firm didn't have enough money. billing 3,000 hours is hard, real hard. if you worked every single day of the year, you didn't take one day off, no holidays no weekends no sick days, you worked every day, you'd have to bill 7 hours every day. bill, not work. time spent in the bathroom, in meetings, coffee breaks, staring into the distance because you're burnt out from working all day, you don't bill that. so needless to say, a 3,000 hour workyear requires you to either work your balls off for the company or lie. and people did that, and still didn't get paid their salary because the firm, which had people billing 3,000 hour years, didn't have enough money. that's real shady.

the boss' defense is apparently that the plaintiffs are lying, they just want to sabotage the firm because now they're a competitor (like i said, they left to start their own firm). i don't know, i have a hard time believing that. according to the complainants, the firm was founded by two people; one of them was level headed and calm, and the other one was quite fierce and assholish (which can be useful traits as a lawyer); the level headed one kept the asshole one in check, so as a duo, they worked pretty well and the firm ran smoothly. but the level headed one died, and the asshole one just starting kicking all the associates and other partners around, and apparently billed the firm for things that you aren't supposed to bill the firm for.

so yeah i dunno, i think i might want to work for them for 3 months just to see what it's like in a place like that

[paul jones]

yeah, i'm kind of curious to see what it's like

and also, if the other applicants (there are 5 including me, competing for 2 positions) read the same article i read, maybe they'll get disgusted and not want the job anymore, which improves my chances of getting it!

it really does sound pretty fucked up. i don't want to give away too much information lest you identify the firm, but according to the article, some of the complainants billed over 3,000 hours for a year and weren't paid their full salary, because the firm didn't have enough money. billing 3,000 hours is hard, real hard. if you worked every single day of the year, you didn't take one day off, no holidays no weekends no sick days, you worked every day, you'd have to bill 7 hours every day. bill, not work. time spent in the bathroom, in meetings, coffee breaks, staring into the distance because you're burnt out from working all day, you don't bill that. so needless to say, a 3,000 hour workyear requires you to either work your balls off for the company or lie. and people did that, and still didn't get paid their salary because the firm, which had people billing 3,000 hour years, didn't have enough money. that's real shady.

the boss' defense is apparently that the plaintiffs are lying, they just want to sabotage the firm because now they're a competitor (like i said, they left to start their own firm). i don't know, i have a hard time believing that. according to the complainants, the firm was founded by two people; one of them was level headed and calm, and the other one was quite fierce and assholish (which can be useful traits as a lawyer); the level headed one kept the asshole one in check, so as a duo, they worked pretty well and the firm ran smoothly. but the level headed one died, and the asshole one just starting kicking all the associates and other partners around, and apparently billed the firm for things that you aren't supposed to bill the firm for.

so yeah i dunno, i think i might want to work for them for 3 months just to see what it's like in a place like that

You ever seen 'The Secret of My Success' ?

they need to do a re- make with you in it(y):)

[Bob]

i guess i won't be dealing with this problem after all, they've elected not to hire me even though i was the only applicant. i couldn't even win by default

[jabumbo]

you must be one lame ass law student then (n)

[Bob]

that's the only explanation i can think of

[jabumbo]

you could always blame it on your lackluster undergraduate education?

[Bob]

naw they don't care about undergrad

i tell you what i think the problem is, is i'm really boring and i have nothing outside of my classes and my past internships to put on my resume. i didn't participate in any extracurricular stuff like student government or national lawyers' guild or black law students association or queer caucus or anything like that and i don't climb mountains or run marathons or any interesting stuff like that that makes you a better lawyer than me. i didn't participate because i don't fucking care about any of that, i don't even know what the student government does; a few months ago they came up with a constitution but they couldn't get enough votes to ratify the thing because nobody fucking cares about student government except the people who are in it, it doesn't do anything except look good on a resume and give you jobs instead of me

but anyway that's all biting me in the ass now because even though i'm just as qualified as anyone else in this school for the jobs i applied to (and i can demonstrate it, both of my past internships gave me glowing reviews, but nobody's reading them because they aren't getting past my boring resume) i'm not even getting interviewed because i didn't do any of the frivolous "interesting" shit that you're apparently supposed to do in law school and that tells employers that i'm a bad lawyer for some reason

[Documad]

Sorry about the job. I have applied for jobs that no one got. Sometimes you later hear that the partner who was hiring decided to leave the firm and go into practice or himself or something so they decided that they didn't need anyone after all.

I don't know about the extracurriculars. I had one of those but mostly I worked. I don't understand a law school without grades. I got my interviews based upon grades I think.

You are quite a charming guy on here so I have no doubt that you're going to land in the right place. Sometimes you just have to apply for a bunch of crazy stuff. I wanted to be a corporate type and I couldn't get one of those gigs so on a whim I applied with a prosecutor's office for a clerkship and got it and it wound up changing my whole career path.

[Bob]

i seem to be getting funneled into a career in tax law. my first round of internships my plan was to work for a judge, and of the 10 i applied to none of them even interviewed me, so the supplemental hiring list came around (i can explain more about this but since at my school the internships are part of the curriculum it's all very regulated by the school in a very surprisingly efficient manner) and i just applied to whoever was in boston and was hiring, and i ended up landing a job at the state tax court (well it's not a court technically but this isn't interesting enough to go into detail about right now)

for my second round of internships i got that judicial internship i wanted the first time, probably because my first internship essentially already was a judicial internship because i did the same work, it just wasn't technically with a judge. but of the 5 judges i applied to, 4 of them interviewed me, and the 5th one decided not to interview anyone at all. one of them, the one i ended up working for, basically hired me based on my resume alone; i was the only one he interviewed, it was just a formality really to make sure nothing was terribly wrong with me.

so based on that experience i tell myself "wow, what great credentials i must have, i'm going to shoot for the sky this time," so for the third internship (this one) i apply to 10 boston law firms, 9 of which do not interview me and the 10th decided to just be a jerk and toy with me a little. so i'm looking at the supplemental list again, and one of the jobs is with the state tax commissioner, so i'm applying for that. i figure i'm a shoe-in; my two internships have been with the main forums in front of which the commissioner litigates, and i've got a state and local tax course under my belt that i did pretty well in.

i don't even really like tax law that much, but i keep falling into these jobs. i figure i might as well stick with it, maybe i'll work for the IRS or something. i know someone who works there, he seems to be somewhat happy. and government jobs are pretty good i hear, you at least get to go home at a reasonable hour, and you get paid enough to not be hungry.

[Documad]

I keep telling the head of our tax division that at some point I want to work there. It's my long term back up plan.

Law firms are funny. Some of them pick people who they think they might want to hire in the long run, but others just pick people who they think will amuse them. A guy who I clerked with at a court had a ton of offers from law firms and what he had going for him was (1) he was a trained chef (2) he played golf really well and (3) he was cocky in a charming way. He was also a lazy ass who does poor quality and he has never been able to keep a job since.

Seriously: the best part about working for government or a non-profit is that your co-workers tend to be decent people.

[befsquire]

if you already feel you're making bad decisions, move to orlando and work with me!