OCI process over.

My original schedule had 29 interviews. 14 in DC, 8 in NYC, 7 in Philly. Long story short, DC was a massacre. Not only is a generally harder market (presumably unless you are GW/Gtown), but the kids looking primarily at DC were, across the board, the tippy top of our class. I got brutalized there. 1 callback out of 14 in DC. 4 out of 7 in Philly. 5 out of 8 in NYC. The only problem with my final result was that I had often chosen the DC branch of firms I liked a lot, and thus the NYC/Philly firms were ones I had less interest in.

Ended up canceling 3 callbacks, got 3 offers out of 7, and will be at a v50-100 firm in NYC that I very much like next summer.

Congrats!

congrats. interested in clerking?

Potentially. I will see how the firm handles it, and I'd be most interested in doing it after a year or two as an associate.

And thanks for the congrats, guys. So nice to be done with it all (though I did enjoy the hotels and dinners).

grats d00d

No reason to be terrified. If you have a question about what you can and cannot do, tell the person you will get right back to them then call your local bar association's ethics hotline. They will help you. Also be sure to take some of the better ethics classes. The best can be seen on line, and are part of the ABA Curriculum. BTW if you are not a member of the Young Lawyers Division, you should be, It is a great way to learn, meet influential attorneys and sell your own ability. (PS They love to listen to bad beat stories.)


See the next quote:

Congratulations on the job in NY. I assume you know the city, but if you come up and want an insiders view of the courts, give me a call, I'll take you around, and buy you a beer or two as well.

In the "never make assumptions" department, I filed a complaint two weeks ago after (of course) getting consent from the client and explaining that it could very well mean going to trial. He called me yesterday asking how the trial went.

OMG,

You are the reason everyone hates lawyers. Of course the guy is furious, and of course he is double furious after holding for 20 minutes.

1. Don't let anyone hold for 20 mins, ever. Jesus.

2. Tell him the situation, even if he's yelling at you (again, most people would be yelling here), before ****ing him over so hard.

Sounds like the guy chose to sit on the phone for 20 minutes. If I am on a call and someone calls for me, the receptionist gives the option of (1) go to my voicemail; (2) leave a call-back number; or (3) hold. If he chooses to hold, the receptionist is supposed to follow up with him every now and again to see if he wants v/m or to leave a message with her. If he is really insistent, the receptionist might bring me a note so that I can know that he's holding, at which point I am usually going to say that she should tell him to leave a voicemail or a call-back number, unless I know that I am really just about done with the current call.

1. he told my receptionist to "get my ass off the phone". he chose to wait. I was talking to the family of a pregnant lady who died last month. F him. I agree with you though, my boss makes clients wait for a long time and it drives me nuts. I think it's a control thing.

2. He knew the situation before hand. He was so furious not because he got sued, but rather b/c he had to go pickup certified mail from the post office.

1. IF you tell my secretary to "get my ass" to do anything, and we aren't married or I haven't traveled your birth canal, you can go F*** yourself. I will get on the phone when I choose to and that will never be less than 1/2 an hour unless I intend to give you a second A**H*** to use because I have stuck my foot up your other one.

2. When you yell at me, I hang up. I can hang up all day. I like hanging up on you, because you are usually to far away for me to stick my foot up your a**.

Look, the guy may or may not be in the right legally. I wouldn't make him prove to me that he shouldn't be in the case, I would act quickly to try and find our if I have served him incorrectly as I would worry about an abuse of process complaint to the bar OR worse a law suit.

I am also not about to give up who or what I am however. I can be your best friend, or your worst nightmare. YOUR Behavior determines that. I already know that by virtue of the time and money i have invested in my career, that I (Lawyers generally) am the scariest beast in the forest and I know the other animals (non-lawyers) hate me because of that, but I owe them nothing, because I am not tasked with feeding or protecting them. I am loyal only to the client, and to my oaths. That is not to argue that I am going to go after someone who has done nothing wrong, but I am not going to allow someone who may exist under some mistaken belief that he knows more than I do about law, to even think he can intimidate me. I am not giving up the position I have attained through my training and experience. Not unless it somehow helps MY client. I don't want to be prickly but I am not afraid to be because someone might not like me.

Now personally I would follow up the conversation with a letter outlining the fact that he has told you he was not involved, but that he has provided no proof to that effect. I would further tell him that he can get free legal advice from the local or State Bar Association, and that if he can provide some proof that he isn't the responsible party you thought he was, you will follow up on his claims to see if he is improperly named. I'd still serve him until I dropped him from the suit.

Good luck.
AC

What a badass

On a good day

Are you a lawyer?

neone know how i would go about changing my loan repayment plan to 30 years or to IBR?

nvm i got it. for those wondering u just go to lenders site

Biglaw baller using IBR itt.

if you don't mind, why do you want to stretch out the payments?

Seems like a decent time to ask... what exactly happens to all of the kids at Tier 3/4 schools who end up with 200k+ in debt and absolutely 0 chance of ever being in a position to pay it off? Like in real world terms what do they do since you can't declare BR? Just get their wages garnished for the rest of their life while the principal spirals out of control? Obviously 2500 a month or w/e is a lot even on a biglaw salary but I was curious about all these future indentured servants.

Mcdonalds

Does anyone from a Tier 3/4 actually rack up $200k+ in debt?

It's not all gloom and doom. There are plenty of well-paying non-lawyer jobs available.

Actually buy and cook your own food, you will save more money, better, join a co-op and cook for others and save money or better make money.

You need to get your payments down to no more than 1500 a month then rent another 1500 or less then you need to learn to live on about 1000 a month for a total of 4k a month.

That is not impossible to earn on your own.

If you were to work a 30 hour billed week, and billed at $75 per hour, that is $2200 a week. Where to get 30 billed hours a week? Well first figure out how much time it takes to draft a will. A simple will is 2-3 hours work. You need 10 a month, 225 for a will is a good standard without a trust or other fancy stuff. Call every cousin, friend, friend of a friend etc, offer them an inside price of 225 for a will but 325 for everyone else. You ought to have at least 30-100 friends/relatives or others that need a will and see the bargain. Same goes for simple Pre-nups.
That ought to keep you going for starts.

Now get your shoes on and visit every solo and small firm (Under 4 lawyers) in and around your area (I set it at about 25 miles diameter) you want them to let you handle 3-5 cases a week for $100 a day up to 5 cases for the firm but must be grouped correctly.
You just make appearances and set out your schedule. For example let's say you can cover about 3 counties in your state. You cover local courts and lower courts for traffic, misdemeanors, small claims and civil under 50K.
5 firms or solos can easily throw off that much work and in most places it is worth it to them to try. If you handle their trial work for a one day traffic trial then you want 250 for that case. (They ought to be getting at least 500 and probably more on the case)

Now you have an average of 20 appearances a week. Try to group them, Mondays county 1, Tuesdays the next county etc. 83.33 hours a month on appearances and 30 hours a month on small wills at bargain prices and now you have earned 10K for the month without even having an office. Now contact the Public Defender or CJA Clerk at the US Dist. Court house. Offer to serve on the appeals panel or take a case at the civil rights or landlord tenant court Pro or better low Bono.

Need to have your wills look good, Get a virtual secretary, new phone services allow you to have a number that forwards to your cell. Now 100 hours a month isn't much so be reinvesting your efforts into your marketing. Blog, join and participate in Bar committees, Play some poker, give out cards. Go to the gym, instead of sending a Facebook message, pick up a phone or better go out for coffee or a beer. Go watch a game. WRITE AN ARTICLE. Get at least 2-5 hours of quality CLE in a month. Your average day should be 12 hours M-Wed. 10 hours Thursday then a law related activity, and a solid 7-8 hours on Friday with another 6 hours over the course of the weekend.Keep that schedule for the first 5 years. Cut down the Mon-Wed. 12 to 10 hours if you can thereafter.

Rather than refer big cases away, look to partner up on the biggies with a more experienced attorney. It is ok to give him most of the fee, but you keep the client. Stay away from contingency fees until you have enough money to fund the cases.

In my first year out of law school after getting admitted I earned more money on my own than most of my classmates did working on Wall St. at the time. To this day I have kept pace with most of them while I enjoyed coming and going as I pleased, making all of my boys concerts and coaching all of their teams, playing poker or golf 1-2x per week.

KEEP Records especially gas and Food and entertainment. A Breakfast or Lunch alone is a waste. Get with others who can and will refer work to you. Now do not charge those clients those small fees. Those are reserved for friends and family and for lawyers with whom you contract. Now find out what the going rates are for lawyers with under five years experience and charge about that. Require retainer letters and Bill monthly or weekly. Keep ahead of the client, if the case is about to close be sure you are already paid.

Tweek at will to fit the numbers you want to earn. Just keep it simple in the beginning and enjoy both learning to run a business and practicing law. Get a mentor who will listen to your questions and run with it, pay off those loans fast as you can. In the beginning, pay them off and put an amount equal to them in an account then after you have saved a big portion of what you owe, call them and see if you can get a deal. Bet they would rather zero out than garnish wages of a self employed lawyer.

In five years an industrious 2 or three or dare I say fourth tier law school grad will make as much if not more than most of the Tier 1's that went to work for a big firm or the government.

I Did.

Not to nuthug too much, but ACShark is definitely the greatest poster of all time.
If this whole DA thing doesn't work out, I'm in for this hang a shingle business

It's basically free money even for those who plan to aggressively pay down their loans.

The interest rate is the same for those on the 10-year plan and those on the 25-year plan so switching to the 25-year plan (or IBR) allows the borrower (with discipline) to divert any payments that are beyond the monthly minimum to the loans with the highest interest rate. Here's an example:

(A) 10-year plan, minimum monthly payment of $500. I pay $600. $500 gets equally spread around all loans and I can control where the additional $100 goes. (From what I understand, if you don't send the lender a note indicating that you want the additional money to go toward the principal the lender treats the $100 as an early payment for next month and it doesn't decrease the total interest paid.)

(B) 25-year plan, minimum monthly payment of $200. I pay $600. Now, only $200 gets spread around and I can divert $400 to the loans with the higher interest rate.

It seems like the ideal strategy is to switch to IBR for the stub year (which anyone can do because IBR is based on the prior year's AGI) because the minimum monthly payment is $0. For year #1, IBR might still be available but if it isn't then switch to the 25-year plan.

Also, the government pays your interest on subsidized Stafford loans that your minimum payment doesn't cover while you're in IBR-mode. The money saved while in IBR during the stub year (and whatever other years you qualify) does get recapitalized when you switch into the 25-year plan but the subsidized is still free money -- the interest never capitalizes. (And obviously the interest on the unsubsidized portion < what you gain by diverting more money to the 8.5% loans.)

Can you define stub year?