Good luck Jim, I always enjoy your posts and insights into the law field, which I alomst got into but I'm delighted I opted not at the end and instead focused on my online business and couldn't be happier now.
Watching the office implode
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Brian said:
This isn't really an option for high earners like Jim, in NYS the maximum you can get paid in unemployment benefits is like $400 bucks a week.
I don't anybody who runs a farm but I know quite a few small business owners. Its hard back breaking labor, no wonder why most people who take a crack at entrepreneurship are recent immigrants.
Well, the meeting is over and here is what happened. Just pathetic, as so many other things.
They sent a memo out this past Monday announcing a 4:30 pm meeting for this past Friday. This is an old psche trick in that everyone was worried about it all week. What they ended up doing was firing their senior trial guy (who was fairly high paid) and letting a woman go that has been with the company for 10 years (longer than me and everyone else), really since the beginning. The guy walked out with his head high – the woman, who has an adopted 3 year old kid and a 9 month old at home, literally fled the office. This was not your American ho – this was a nice married Connecticut matron. They did the firings (for economic reasons) at 1:30 and 3:30 and then called everyone in at 4:30 and gave us the old song and tap dance (the trial guy got 2 weeks severance pay btw)
“this is the perfect number of people” “we will be more like a family” “everyone will be under the same roof – it will allow us to be more efficient” - the 98% owner gave the speech, the other two ‘owners’ sat there with their dicks in their hand. I have run my own ‘numbers’ on the viability of the company and can say that every single thing that came out of his mouth is bullshit. “I make this promise that all of your jobs are secure through next year at least” - what a joke. The guy that was let go – they were telling him and assigning him cases that were going out next month up until the very end.
The funny thing – is that I have been coming in very late, disappearing for 2 hours at lunch, etc. Nothing happened. The order of who is going to be canned is set and it will not be based on anything other than $$$ signs. I will now handle the senior guy’s trial load at a mid-level associates pay.
On the unemployment question – I checked out what ‘Playa’ said – the maximum monthly benefit in New York State is $1600. That does not pay the food and infant formula bills for a family of 5. Basing my decisions on getting unemployment – that total sum is better than nothing but not a drop in the bucket in New York.
@ GManifesto – you would be proud of me – this past St. Patrick’s day, a friend of mine snapped a picture of me with a pint in hand wearing a good Boss suit outside a high end lounge in New York. He does not read your blog but commented while showing me the picture later that I looked like a 1930’s era Chicago gangster.
As far as the wife question – in my particular case the owner’s wife got involved in the firm at one point and it went over like a lead balloon. Her cost saving ‘solutions’ were to order cheaper copy paper (which f’ed up the machine) and try to take away employee parking passes and toll plaza passes. She left after about 6 months but that was after the firm was disrupted. It was also difficult for the Brazilian ‘secretary’ to wear her usual paper thin white cloth ‘bunda’ jeans with the wife around. This is of course, why you should not fuck (or try to fuck) your bartender, then hire her as a paralegal, and then bring your wife into the firm – and expect things to run normally. It’s also difficult to hide automobile lease payments on the firm credit card. (The B girl got the use of a car after she wrecked her own in a DUI). I think that Brazilian went out and bought a long skirt for days that the wife would be there. Come to think of it – I think I got the paperwork from the DMV to apply to have her drivers’ license reinstated after the 6 month suspension for her third DUI in 18 months.
I don’t blame you for being suspicious of deals you are working with married guys that run the deals past their wives – or if they give their wives de facto ‘veto’ power over the deal. What I think you are actually up against – in your real life if you are in import/export guy – your married clients/sellers/buyers etc. with a typical fat and ignorant BUT WEALTHY wife at home will always have the following conversation -
Fat wife: So you met this guy Mason who wants to buy 1000 widgets?
Beta: Yeah, we had a few drinks over at the Hyatt – he seems to be hooked in with a lot of guys up North - I agreed to sell to him.
Fat wife: you got 20% over cost right?
Beta: No, it’s a first time deal and I’d like to check this guy out – I gave him 14% above cost for a first time deal.
Fat wife: What, you are kidding me right – you are fucking kidding me. You stupid man. You just gave a guy 25% off our usual price – he’ll tell our rivals, and why the hell did you give up that much money? You could have given him 19% over cost. What, was there some little hoochie momma there at the bar – did you really goto the Hyatt, huh. I can’t believe you. Is that perfume I smell.
Beta: So what, it’s a one time . .
.
Fat wife: shut up – I should run this business. The way you run it we will be living in a shack. . .
Invariably, the guy will change his mind rather than sleep in the doghouse.
I would bet, if you thought back to all your deals – the guys with the best looking wives did not give you any trouble – it would have been the guys with the ugly wives.
On the question of ‘law’ taking a hit – this downturn is industry wide and getting stronger. There are a number of factors (the fact that law is declining is actually good for society)
1. Most laws against personal injury cases are getting stronger – for instance in New York you really have to have a real injury to maintain an auto accident lawsuit – auto litigation has gone off a cliff – it is now possible to really hurt your back in an auto accident and feel it for the rest of your life and not be able to maintain a lawsuit or get any benefit other than about $10,000 in no fault benefits.
2. The cost of maintaining even a good lawsuit has gone through the roof – for instance if you need a doctor to come down and testify – he may charge $10,000 and only work for 30 minutes. If you need a Doctor’s report about your own client to go to an insurance company to prove an injury – the doctor may charge you $2000 up front. It is simply too expensive to maintain a roster of 300 to 400 somewhat crummy cases anymore as so many did.
3. Law schools are churning out record numbers of lawyers despite the fact that the industry is shrinking.
4. People can now do their own wills, form their own corporations, and go to small claims courts without a lawyer and do a pretty good job. This takes away a lot of little things your local lawyer would take care of. You could train a bright high school students to do 98% of a lawyer’s job.
I’ll get some more up later -
They sent a memo out this past Monday announcing a 4:30 pm meeting for this past Friday. This is an old psche trick in that everyone was worried about it all week. What they ended up doing was firing their senior trial guy (who was fairly high paid) and letting a woman go that has been with the company for 10 years (longer than me and everyone else), really since the beginning. The guy walked out with his head high – the woman, who has an adopted 3 year old kid and a 9 month old at home, literally fled the office. This was not your American ho – this was a nice married Connecticut matron. They did the firings (for economic reasons) at 1:30 and 3:30 and then called everyone in at 4:30 and gave us the old song and tap dance (the trial guy got 2 weeks severance pay btw)
“this is the perfect number of people” “we will be more like a family” “everyone will be under the same roof – it will allow us to be more efficient” - the 98% owner gave the speech, the other two ‘owners’ sat there with their dicks in their hand. I have run my own ‘numbers’ on the viability of the company and can say that every single thing that came out of his mouth is bullshit. “I make this promise that all of your jobs are secure through next year at least” - what a joke. The guy that was let go – they were telling him and assigning him cases that were going out next month up until the very end.
The funny thing – is that I have been coming in very late, disappearing for 2 hours at lunch, etc. Nothing happened. The order of who is going to be canned is set and it will not be based on anything other than $$$ signs. I will now handle the senior guy’s trial load at a mid-level associates pay.
On the unemployment question – I checked out what ‘Playa’ said – the maximum monthly benefit in New York State is $1600. That does not pay the food and infant formula bills for a family of 5. Basing my decisions on getting unemployment – that total sum is better than nothing but not a drop in the bucket in New York.
@ GManifesto – you would be proud of me – this past St. Patrick’s day, a friend of mine snapped a picture of me with a pint in hand wearing a good Boss suit outside a high end lounge in New York. He does not read your blog but commented while showing me the picture later that I looked like a 1930’s era Chicago gangster.
As far as the wife question – in my particular case the owner’s wife got involved in the firm at one point and it went over like a lead balloon. Her cost saving ‘solutions’ were to order cheaper copy paper (which f’ed up the machine) and try to take away employee parking passes and toll plaza passes. She left after about 6 months but that was after the firm was disrupted. It was also difficult for the Brazilian ‘secretary’ to wear her usual paper thin white cloth ‘bunda’ jeans with the wife around. This is of course, why you should not fuck (or try to fuck) your bartender, then hire her as a paralegal, and then bring your wife into the firm – and expect things to run normally. It’s also difficult to hide automobile lease payments on the firm credit card. (The B girl got the use of a car after she wrecked her own in a DUI). I think that Brazilian went out and bought a long skirt for days that the wife would be there. Come to think of it – I think I got the paperwork from the DMV to apply to have her drivers’ license reinstated after the 6 month suspension for her third DUI in 18 months.
I don’t blame you for being suspicious of deals you are working with married guys that run the deals past their wives – or if they give their wives de facto ‘veto’ power over the deal. What I think you are actually up against – in your real life if you are in import/export guy – your married clients/sellers/buyers etc. with a typical fat and ignorant BUT WEALTHY wife at home will always have the following conversation -
Fat wife: So you met this guy Mason who wants to buy 1000 widgets?
Beta: Yeah, we had a few drinks over at the Hyatt – he seems to be hooked in with a lot of guys up North - I agreed to sell to him.
Fat wife: you got 20% over cost right?
Beta: No, it’s a first time deal and I’d like to check this guy out – I gave him 14% above cost for a first time deal.
Fat wife: What, you are kidding me right – you are fucking kidding me. You stupid man. You just gave a guy 25% off our usual price – he’ll tell our rivals, and why the hell did you give up that much money? You could have given him 19% over cost. What, was there some little hoochie momma there at the bar – did you really goto the Hyatt, huh. I can’t believe you. Is that perfume I smell.
Beta: So what, it’s a one time . .
.
Fat wife: shut up – I should run this business. The way you run it we will be living in a shack. . .
Invariably, the guy will change his mind rather than sleep in the doghouse.
I would bet, if you thought back to all your deals – the guys with the best looking wives did not give you any trouble – it would have been the guys with the ugly wives.
On the question of ‘law’ taking a hit – this downturn is industry wide and getting stronger. There are a number of factors (the fact that law is declining is actually good for society)
1. Most laws against personal injury cases are getting stronger – for instance in New York you really have to have a real injury to maintain an auto accident lawsuit – auto litigation has gone off a cliff – it is now possible to really hurt your back in an auto accident and feel it for the rest of your life and not be able to maintain a lawsuit or get any benefit other than about $10,000 in no fault benefits.
2. The cost of maintaining even a good lawsuit has gone through the roof – for instance if you need a doctor to come down and testify – he may charge $10,000 and only work for 30 minutes. If you need a Doctor’s report about your own client to go to an insurance company to prove an injury – the doctor may charge you $2000 up front. It is simply too expensive to maintain a roster of 300 to 400 somewhat crummy cases anymore as so many did.
3. Law schools are churning out record numbers of lawyers despite the fact that the industry is shrinking.
4. People can now do their own wills, form their own corporations, and go to small claims courts without a lawyer and do a pretty good job. This takes away a lot of little things your local lawyer would take care of. You could train a bright high school students to do 98% of a lawyer’s job.
I’ll get some more up later -
5. Contract doc review work being outsourced to India.
6. The legal economy is a parasite on the larger economy, which is already on life-support.
7. Corporations continue their exodus from America, producing even less need for American laws (and thus lawyers).
6. The legal economy is a parasite on the larger economy, which is already on life-support.
7. Corporations continue their exodus from America, producing even less need for American laws (and thus lawyers).
the problem for this country is its not just lawyers being downsized, its alot of industries. between technology (the internet) and the increasing availability of information the need for professionals who used to provide these services is gone. i seriously think that the last recession never ended and things are going to keep getting worse before they get better.
Brian said:
I think the problem of exporting jobs to enrich the top 1% of stockholders is a little more fine-grained than the "hopeless" judgment.
I sort of lucked into an export-resistant profession when I go tired of programming and went into mental health. Although in general IT is better paid, i was able to get higher up in MH than I was in IT.
There is a pretty strong cultural barrier to exporting a counselor's job. I personally wouldn't be that interested in getting psychotherapy from someone via teleconference in India no matter how smart he was relative to that culture.
Also, things where you have to be physically in the location ( Network Engineer setting up routers and firewalls rather than programmers who can be anywhere) are more resistant to export.
Nurses also fit in to this category. One health care job that pays over 100k is Nurse Practitioner, requires a master's in nursing--in some states you can get set up almost like a doctor, you just have to have a relationship with a doctor and he doesn't have to be there all the time. In calif, you do need him in the same office I think ; but I had a very good practitioner in Oregon and he really ran his own practice.
I agree with the man who grew up on a farm, to go from law to farming when you're competing with unreal hi-tech conglomerates-- you better have some pretty special niche they're ignoring-- goat cheese or something--or else it will be like moving to Mars.
Brian said:
dude, this is a full blown depression. exponentially growing debt financing by paper printing ponzi schemes, the lowest labor participation rate since WWII (and back then, women were housewives... nowadays, women work and we still have less people employed!), bread lines miles long (43+ million on food stamps), and, to top it off, our government continues to implement more socialist policies.
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