areyouinsane

Post subject: Re: Where do contract / temp attorneys come from?

New postPosted: Tue Jul 05, 2011 8:21 pm

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Joined: Tue Jun 14, 2011 3:22 pm

Posts: 79

Another funny thing about personal injury firms is that they're almost pathologically cheap when it comes to office space & office supplies. Usually these firms are in some grungy little bodega-sized storefront in an outer borough, or in like windowless D-class Manhattan office space (mine was the latter).

You see, personal injury "clients" are mostly dirt poor, uneducated folks- in fact, many are homeless. That said, it's pointless to piss away $$$ on nice offices and such since anywhere with chairs and running water is likely to be a huge upgrade from what they're used to.

So when I first started at the firm I finished cutting/pasting a boilerplate motion together, and asked the boss where the exhibit tabs were kept. He looked at me like I'd asked him when my new Ferrari would be ready to pick up from the dealership.

"I don't waste money on that shit," he said. Then he tells me to go next door and ask X (the other partner) where to get them from.

So I roll in and X is screaming on the phone at some angry crackhead about her trip n' slip case and why she hasn't "got paid yet" and the typical ranting & shit. When he's done I ask him if he has any exhibit tabs. I forgot to mention that his office looked like the inside of a recycling depot, with about 10,000 old newspapers thrown all over, motions stacked up the ceiling, garbage pretty much everywhere.

He grunts and then fishes a Defendant's motion from a pile of shit next to his desk, then pulls a bent flathead screwdriver from the desk drawer and proceeds to pry the Velotext binding apart. The he tosses me the loose exhibit tabs and says "I'll leave this screwdriver on the desk so you can use it whenever."

That's how they rolled. Prying apart incoming motions to plunder their office supply content. Another funny thing was that they bought those knockoff printer toners from a dood on Canal Street who sold them off the back of a station wagon. They were terrible and all our papers looked like a charcoal briquette had been rubbed across them. One time a judge in Queens asked me if I moonlighted as a chimney sweep and was cracking up at how illegible the shit was.

Another funny habit of my boss was bringing dead batteries back to Duane Reade. The office had one of those electric combination locks on it, since turnover there was so high that he'd have to change keys about 6 times a month if it had a regular lock. Easier just to re-program the combination when someone quit/got fired/committed suicide etc.

So about every month or so the lock needed 4 new "AA" size batteries. The cheap ass would keep the battery package and have the secretary bring the dead ones back to Duane Reade scotch-taped into the pack and tell the clerk that they were dead when we bought them, etc. It worked every fucking time and was one of his big claims to fame. He said he learned that trick growing up in East New York, where he had a bunch of toy robots in the 1950s or whatever and always got free batteries by using that "trick."

He was very popular because his robots always ran full steam on fresh batteries, which were apparently very expensive back then. He was the talk of the town.

Here's another story: In NYC, when you settle an injury case for a minor under 18, the judge has to approve the settlement and review it's terms, etc. If the judge thinks its a shit deal, they can void the settlement and force you to trial. It's called an "Infant Compromise Order" and these appearances are very dicey, since so many PI firms are sleazy and try to inflate phantom "expenses" and other stuff to grab a few extra $$$ from the kiddies.

The judge sets up the bank account for the child directly, and NO ONE can touch a dime of the loot without court order once deposited. Esp. not the parents, who would of course piss it away in 5 minutes if given the chance.

So I roll into this Infant Comp hearing in the Bronx one day and find the clients ( a 9 year old kid) and his dad sitting on the bench outside the courtroom. Dad is a real gang-banger- gold tooth, gang tatts, scars, etc. He greeted me by saying "Where the fuck is Mister X?" (my boss).

I told him I worked for Mr. X and was there to cover the appearance and explain the settlement terms to him. This was a "heavy" case (in PI lingo anything worth north of 100 K is called a "heavy case" fyi.) The kid had lead poisoning from eating the flakes & stuff like potato chips in whatever housing project they called home. Anything over a 10 is a high lead reading, this kid had a 64 and had suffered permanent brain damage and learning disabilities, etc. The settlement was around 450 K, so the kid would take home 300 K after our fee.

So the dad says "Did you bring my check" and I told him "that's not how it works, the judge puts the money in a bank account until the kid turns 18."

Oh boy was this guy pissed. I forgot to mention he had an Escalade brochure in his hand and apparently planned a visit to the Cadilliac dealership right after court. He said he needed a car to drive the kid to day care, and how he was going to explain all of that to the judge. I told him it was highly unlikely that the judge would let him buy a luxury SUV with his kid's brain damage money, but this guy wanted no part of listening. He already had put his headphones back on.

There was no way I could let this settlement get voided. You see, in Shitlaw every single thing that ever goes wrong is all YOUR fault. There is also absolutely no training whatsoever, it is "sink or swim" from day one. Questions are not encouraged, since these guys have to spend every working minute scrounging for and signing up new cases, and settling old ones. Asking questions is a quick way to get canned, I saw it happen to about a dozen guys in the year and a half I worked there.

Thank God it turned out this guy wasn't even the kid's real father or guardian. The judge's clerk asked for his ID before the hearing and, seeing a different last name, asked a few questions. Turns out he was the mom's current boyfriend and she sent him over there to pick up the check. He started getting loud and all, so the bailiff came over and they bounced outta there real quick. I told the clerk to re-calendar the thing and we'd try to track down the mother for the next appearance.

So back at the office I get screamed at for not "following up" and getting the mom into court. I told him that I only learned of the appearance yesterday and was in deposition until 5 pm and had left a message on their machine, etc. He said next time to use "Sherlock." That's another funny story.

You see, it's very hard to keep tabs on injury clients, since many are in gangs, homeless, moving around public housing etc. When you finally get a fucking settlement, the work has only just begun because you then have to track these losers down and have them sign the release. So we used this shady "private eye" named Sherlock who was a former NY cop who I think did some jail time in the 80s. Sherlock's trick was to put word out "on the street" that the client had won millions in cash and had to show up at the courthouse at 9 am to have the claim form notarized. It was a great trick to get them in there, but not much fun when you have to explain that in fact they're getting 9 K for a herniated disc from their fender-bender.

Oh, those were the days. BTW don't go getting all excited about signing up lead paint cases. That horse long ago limped off to the glue factory. You see, almost ALL the NYC lead cases were against an insurance carrier named Firemen's Fund, who insured all the public housing in NYC and a lot of ghetto private properties. Some genius left the lead paint policy exclusion out of almost every policy written in 2000-2001, so it started a shitlaw feeding frenzy once word got out. My boss scored millions on this shit by having doorknob-hanger ads made up and hung from every crackhouse & hovel in NYC. Some lawyers were even having runners scrape lead paint off abandoned buildings and dumping it in people's apartments so they could cash out if the kid's lead levels were marginal (even marginal cases could get you 25 K or so nusiance value).

Those cases are now mostly all gone/settled. ALL the new policies have lead paint exclusions, so even if the kid is pouring skim milk on a bowl of lead paint flakes each morning, you ain't getting a dime.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1695190&forum_id=2#18430209)

"Oh boy was this guy pissed. I forgot to mention he had an Escalade brochure in his hand and apparently planned a visit to the Cadilliac dealership right after court. He said he needed a car to drive the kid to day care, and how he was going to explain all of that to the judge. I told him it was highly unlikely that the judge would let him buy a luxury SUV with his kid's brain damage money, but this guy wanted no part of listening. He already had put his headphones back on."

lololol

Good God in Heaven.

I want my firm to hire whoever wrote this, ASAP.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1695190&forum_id=2#18430597)

***

Like hurricanes, scientists are studying the “life cycle” of the typical NYC whiteout. Its root causes, if you will. The “chain of events.” They tell us it all starts with a craigslist ad, calling for some no-fault/landlord tenant/personal injury/_________(insert shitlaw practice area here) associate, with 0-2 years experience. Usually the salary offered will be south of 40 K, but much “experience” is promised in lieu of monetary remuneration. Court appearances and depositions are often mentioned, as well as “motions.”

Upon pressing the “post” button and placing the ad online, the white-out phenomenon unfolds. Within seconds, the telltale ring of the fax machine sounds thru the office as the resumes start shooting in. Building slowly, like a dynamo brought up to speed, the ring soon blares into a continuous, screeching din like a submarine’s “torpedo” alarms in those old WWII movies. Upwards of 75 resumes a minute have been reported, and often the hapless secretaries are dispatched to find milk crates, empty wastebaskets, and other vessels to absorb this incoming resume avalanche.

But there’s no taming this beast. As the toner bleeds dry, the print becomes fainter and fainter, until the boldfaced “Cardozo Sports Law Journal” and “Top 46%” boldfaced type dissolves from a scream to a faint whisper. By the ten-minute mark, the fax machine pages emerge blank and unblemished, the shitlaw credentials unprinted. The toner is empty. Yet onward the onslaught continues, page upon blank empty page pouring into a vortex of abject nothingness. This heart of darkness is pure white.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1695190&forum_id=2#18430646)

He's a lawyer. 1000% chance he gets paid to write.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1695190&forum_id=2#18436538)

chills up my fucking spine

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1695190&forum_id=2#19552852)

And I thought the clients were bad defending clients against IRS collections.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1695190&forum_id=2#18430997)

The sodas, coffee etc are all free in this cafeteria. You can just grab a cup and have as much as you want. You can see where this is going. This one really dirty guy we called "ShitFingers" (because he never washed his hands after taking a dump- there were like 10 witnesses to this fact) goes up there to get a soda, but he's pressing on the little bar that makes the soda come out with a glass he'd already used and had like slobbered all over. So this old lady next to him says "did you already use that glass- if you did that's gross, you're getting your spit on the soda fountain." It was kinda gross, the glass had like mayo and shit smeared all over it.

So ShitFingers gets into this huge argument with her and they have it out there at the soda fountain (most of these coders have bad tempers and get offended at the drop of a hat). Turns out she was a partner- oops. So the next day the agency guy comes into the basement and says we can't use the cafeteria anymore. The agency said we would get a non-taxable $10 added to our checks so we could get food from outside. Goodbye delmonico steak- hello street meat. The only good thing about this is that we got to meet Rachel Ray- there is a really good Halal food cart at 56th st and one day her and her film crew rolled up and offered to buy everyone in line lunch who let her cut in front of them. In real life she is literally like 4 feet tall. She was also smoking a cigarette.

The other problem with getting banned from the cafeteria was that everyone was now eating at their workstation. We were in the basement under the Rock Center, down in the bowels of the building with the furnaces and HVAC equipement, etc. With all the food garbage from like 200 coders eating down there, the place got infested with cockroaches. They were even crawling inside the computers and such. So Paul Weiss had the place roach-bombed and the day after the dead roaches were everywhere- on the keyboards, in the printers, all over the floor. Pretty gross. Even ShitFingers thought it was a little too dirty, even for him.

I forgot to mention that we weren't allowed upstairs period after ShitFingers pissed off the partner with his soda fountain debacle. So we couldn't use the Paul Weiss bathrooms- we had to use the public bathroom in the Rock Center. It only had one stall and a homeless dude named "Bones" pretty much lived in there and would holler "i'm in here motherfucker" every time you went to take a leak. So everyone started using the Heartland Breweries bathroom, which was pretty dirty too.

Anyway, that was a JD project- you didn't have to be admitted to work the gig. Because of that we only got $21 an hour. Most everyone there was waiting to get admitted to NY, because the minute you did you could jump to a SullCrom gig which paid $32 an hour plus OT. I got admitted right after the roach bomb, and was at SullCrom the day after getting NY Bar admission up in albany. After Paul Weiss, the SullCrom cellar was like a 5 star hotel. At Sullivan the coders have their own bathroom, break rooms, and even a little kitchen to use. That makes a lot of sense. It's kind of like "steerage" on those old ships- hell, would you want a dirty old TTT colder coming upstairs to use the firm's associate-level facilities? Of course not. Sullivan thus gives their coders their own little basement "world" which they never have to leave.

It was really funny one day about 3 years ago when I was starting a gig at SullCrom. My project was starting the same day that the SA class was starting, and they had this big reception table set up in the lobby with 'Welcome Class of '08" or whatever. I went up to the table and told them I was there for the doc review gig- they actually told me to wait outside and they'd come get us when the SA's had cleared the lobby! God forbid a TTT grad contaminate their little party!

Later in the day they took all the SA's to the basement (i think they were getting a grand tour of the firm) and the associate was telling them "these are all just temps." The SA's looked at us like we were animals in a zoo or something, it was degrading in kind of a funny way though. In doc review you work at whatever spare broom closet, furnace room, or other hovel they stick you in (manhattan office space is pricey and why waste good $$$ on space for TTT loser temps?) On big projects you literally sit elbow-to-elbow with each other, for up to 16 hours a day. You also have to use the beat-up old furniture from the 1970s that really belongs in a dumpster. Its very much like prison, with everyone so cramped into small spaces and tensions all flaring up. Chairs are a big, big deal- sometimes a wiseass newbie will try and switch his chair with a "veteran's" chair if he gets their early that day or something. Big mistake. You see, since the furniture is all pretty much garbage, there's a real pecking order as to who gets the "best of the worst" when it comes to chair allocation. Most of the time the backrest or the swivel (or both) are broken, so if you end up with a decent chair you hang on to it for dear life. If the staff attorney or supervisor moves your seat for talking too much or causing problems, you have the right to take that chair with you to your new workstation- it's part of the "unwritten code" of the temps. I have literally seen fistfights start over people trying to nab chairs that didn't belong to them.

Another problem are those "one serve coffee" machines that are often in the break room. You know those "Green Mountain" machines with the little one-serve pods? Being dirt poor, the coders are prone to "hoarding," and the popular flavors like hazelnut will often vanish the second the case/box is opened. That's because some coders will take like 50 of them and hide them near their workstation, usually in a file cabinet or under document boxes, etc. So usually all that's left for coffee is like Dark French Roast Decaf and other crap flavors. Another big thing is the take-out menu folder. There are certain Chinese restaurants that rarely give out menus, so people are very fussy about keeping the "rare" menus in the folder. It is very bad form to take that menu from the folder to your desk, because if you lose it it's the only one we had. Also do not write on the menu, ever, unless it's something funny.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1695190&forum_id=2#18431433)

It was only a matter of time.

Yes, Big Debt fans, the inevitable outsourcing of ShitLaw is now underway. These recent comments from a NY no-fault attorney’s blog reveal that lowly insurance defense work- long the province of TTT grads- is now being churned in Bangalore instead of the Bowery. So long, ShitLaw, and bon voyage! Here’s a link to an Indian LPO (Legal Process Outsourcer) who boasts of handling no-fault insurance pleadings for several NYC firms (left side of page).

As we’ve long predicted, it was only a matter of time before the insurance defense boiler-rooms sniffed the savings in shipping their legal effluent offshore. Like a welfare recipient buying “Coach” on Canal Street, the rinky-dink firms just couldn’t resist following their Biglaw brethren down outsourcing’s parade route. Monkey-see, monkey-do.

Do you blame them? After all, if the AmLaw 250 crew trusts these Third World “lawyers” with billion-dollar M&A deals, patent litigation review and other high-ticket items (all with the ABA’s nascent blessing, of course), why wouldn’t Crash Jackson Esq. let them cut n’ paste bales of whiplash motions together for his $1200 fender-bender files?

If anything, the insurance defense sweatshops were latecomers to outsourcing’s bandwagon. We speak from experience here, having launched our legal “career” from a $40 K a year downtown no-fault mill (no kids, that number’s not missing a digit) back in 2006. Sweet Jesus, the memories. King’s Civil Court, 141 Livingston Street, Brooklyn. The infamous 9th floor “no-fault” part.

How fondly we recall the motions being wheeled into chambers via a rusted Pathmark shopping cart, its wheels buckling under the weight of so much legal toilet paper. John, the grouchy but loveable court clerk, had Stage IV throat cancer and would hack blood while rasping at us losers to “shut the Fuck up and listen for your case” during calendar call.

He wasn’t kidding. John kept a .38 special, sans holster, tucked in the waistband of his trousers. Sometimes he’d hammer a stapler inside a steel wastebasket to get the attention of us barristers when the din of no-fault bickering crossed a certain decibel level. Hell, even a chainsaw operator would cringe at how loud that place could get. We still awake at night with ears ringing, recalling the nightmare of $347 neck-brace negotiations. Those old “dollar collars.”

That said, John was one of the few good guys you’ll meet in the miserable sewer of ShitLaw practice. He realized full well what a pathetic waste of time the entire charade was, and how poorly paid we were paid to boot. Your humble narrator’s constant complaining once led him to announce: “if you monkeys ever form a union, you’ve found your shop steward.” They just don’t make ‘em like John anymore. Blue-collar Brooklyn all the way. A Mets fan. God bless the old bastard. Cancer long since carried him away to that big courtroom in the sky.

For those unfamiliar with no-fault practice, a brief primer: It’s the legal equivalent of stamping license plates in a prison metalshop, only at lower wages and more authoritarian working conditions. In NY State, a driver’s own insurance company pays medical expenses and lost wages regardless of accident fault. This moronic idea, hatched by “policy” wonks in the NY legislature, naturally resulted in systemic and wholesale disaster. To wit:

Mobsters get two junkyard cars, register & insure them, and then recruit homeless dudes and illegal immigrants to stage minor accidents. The police are summoned, an accident report prepared, and the scammers then begin “treating” at bogus outer-borough medical mills operated by the crime syndicate. The insurance carrier is then billed for the phony “treatments” plus a truckload of phantom medical supplies like canes, neck braces, massage units, and so on. NY even allows billing for quack “medicine” like aromatherapy, acupuncture and other witch-doctor nonsense.

Like the Lilliputians in Gulliver’s Travels, these parasites teamed up to hamstring the insurance carriers. Remember kids: a cloud of mosquitoes tops a tiger’s death toll any day. The rules & caselaw all favor this infectious swamp of scammers, and billions have been stolen from NY drivers as a result of this ongoing heist. Shady collections law firms “buy” collections files from the clinics at 50 cents on the dollar, file Summary Judgment motions, and then just wait for the case to come up on calendar. For every victory, the medical mill gets an additional cash kickback. The byzantine rules and massive deluge of cases (150+ a day in Brooklyn alone) make it death by a thousand cuts for the carriers, who simply raise rates rather than pay a living wage for the cases to be properly litigated.

That doesn’t stop the occasional IDH (Insurance Defense Hero) from slipping thru now and then. All veterans of ShitLaw know the type. These barristers make up for their abysmal salaries in bare-knuckle belligerence and “fighting the good fight.” Unlike the usual hung-over, half-asleep J.C. Penney clad schlubs of ShitLaw, the IDH struts into court like Clint Eastwood entering a saloon. For their 40 K a year they’d take a bullet for Geico or Allstate, and take it with pride. Every case is like “High Noon.” One almost expects an IDH to come flying into depositions wearing tights and a Superman cape. We’ve often thought of pitching this character as an action-hero cartoon. Just imagine:

“Slower on the LSAT than a lobotomy victim, more powerless than a day-old fart, able to cut n’ paste huge motions with a single click- what’s that flying into court?

It’s a BIRD-it’s a PLANE- no, it’s the INSURANCE DEFENDER !”

Hell, we’d watch it. So would you.

Today it’s not uncommon for no-fault associates (or what’s left of them) to earn as little as 25 K a year, with turnover measured in hours opposed to months. After just 6 weeks at my first no-fault gig, I’d already risen 7 seniority notches on the letterhead. But wait: this “firm” gets even funnier:

Too stingy to buy motion-exhibit tabs, they’d instead have us cannibalize incoming papers for their office-supply content.

“Just pry apart the Velotex binding and yank the fuckers out”, said the partner. He even had a custom-bent screwdriver designed just for that purpose. We associates swapped these exhibit tabs like inmates trade smokes. An “Exhibit A” and other high-alphabet letters were always in short supply, whereas a “Q” was common as cabbage. Whenever someone quit we’d quickly plunder his desk to “stock up” on these much-needed supplies. One nasty, rodent-like guy who’d lasted 10 months had a real motherlode: eight “A’s” and eleven “B’s” stashed in his drawer. Or should I say “under his drawer.” Well hidden-the prick. For what motion he was saving them I have no idea. We called him “the squirrel.”

This dump also printed us our own cheesy business cards on that perforated cardstock you can buy at Staples. For laughs I’d bring the whole sheet into court and just rip them off as needed, like a dispenser. Once I gave this hot Wilson Elser chick a whole uncut page of them, but she never called me.

Sadly, my once-rising star was an elevator to nowhere. Insurance defense work is so boilerplate and mindless that many firms “dump” experienced associates once a certain salary threshold is reached (roughly 60-65 K). Five year’s experience isn’t worth much more than five minutes, and it’s simply more cost effective to “keep the line moving” with freshly minted suckers from Car’Bozo, Brooklyn, NYLS and other gutter schools than pay experienced associates a living wage. Now that Bangalore & Co. are handling all the paper-churning, these insurance “firms” can simply troll craigslist for per-diem clowns to show up in court and bicker over the cases for as little as $25 a file. Like the Joads in The Grapes of Wrath, these migrant barristers wander the court system like fruit pickers.

The work was beyond mindless. Like the A-Team, if you’ve seen one episode, you’ve seen ‘em all. The characters changed while the script stayed the same. Day after day, year after year, squads of TTT grads trekked off to court, got yelled at/berated by court personnel, and limped back to the office to cut n’ paste the next day’s sad mountain of paperwork together. “Lateral” options from this practice area included can & bottle scrounging, panhandling on the 7 train, or becoming assistant fry cook at Burger King.

Note that the above is written in past tense, akin to a eulogy. Miserable yes, but these insurance-mill jobs (along with serfdom in Biglaw’s doc review gulags) were essentially the only option then available to scores of non-elite grads. Now it’s all over but the singing. With tuition at laughable NYC law schools now creeping toward 50 K a year, we sincerely wonder when the TTT’s Ponzi scheme will finally & fully collapse. How many student loans need go underwater before the suicidal insanity of this “education” sinks in? How many more schools will the ABA accredit, how many stadiums will bear Thomas Cooley’s name? How many more overpriced sabbaticals will Karen Rothenberg “not” take (oops, wrong post.)

What’s left of NYC doc review (which is very, very little) now pays rates as low as $25 an hour, sans overtime. Just read Tom the Temp’s blog. And even these crap-jobs now demand 2+ years of electronic discovery experience. With many Top 14’ers getting gut-punched by Biglaw, the situation will grow exponentially worse from Fordham’s underbelly on down thru the lower intestines of Brooklyn, ‘Bozo, and NYLS. Look for a logjam of these grads to start piling up as outsourcing clogs the sewers they once travelled.

Along these lines, we leave you with an old NJ joke (we’re Seton Hall grads, after all):

“Trenton, flush your toilets- Philly needs the water.”

Lawis4Losers aka L4L

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1695190&forum_id=2#18431450)

The squirrel and the schadenfreude

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1695190&forum_id=2#18433852)

I forgot to mention that on "office days" (when you don't have court or depositions, which rarely happens) you have to "Jam." "

Jamming is when you call an insurance adjuster on some bastard "no-pay" case as many times a day as you have to to jam their voicemail box full- you do this by leaving your phone off the hook after leaving your message, and leaving the same message like 10 to 20 times in a row or until the mailbox is reported full.

You see, insurance adjusters get paid crap and usually have like 20,000 files to handle, so you can pretty much never get one on the phone. So to get a callback you have to do everything possible to fuck up their voicemail, like leaving the same message 100 times in a two hour period. My old boss was such a prick that he had a police whistle he would blast into the speakerphone after leaving his voicemail messages. Then when they called back all deaf and pissed he'd say the insurance company must have a shitty phone system and he'll help them sue for their hearing damage. He was a real character.

One other time he started swearing at this one poor adjuster and calling her a cunt and things like that because she wouldn't settle some fender bender case. A week later I was going thru the mail and the CEO of the insurance company had sent this nasty letter saying how his employee was abused and called a c_nt and a b_tch and all these other names. You know that trick where you substitute a __ for a letter in a curse word? So I show it to the boss and all he says is "this asshole needs to learn how to spell cunt- he left all the letters and shit out. What does he think this is, "Wheel of Fortune?"

Oh, there was this other hilarious shyster that used to be friends with my boss. I'll begin by saying that under NYC Sidewalk Law, an unlevel sidewalk slab must be at least 2 inches apart or it's considered "de minimis" and you can't get any $$$ for the trip n' fall. So this clown had a special fake ruler made where one inch was really one half inch, and he'd photograph the defect with the fake ruler next to it. He was smart and knew the city were too lazy/incompetent to actually send someone out there and take their own measurements, so he'd roll into a deposition or court settlement conference with photos showing a two-inch separation (which of course was in reality only one inch, if that) and settle the cases for whatever he could get.

Finally some judge or another lawyer smelled a rat, and his office got raided and turned up the fake ruler and tons of other neafarious frauds. At his disbarrment hearing he tried to claim he bought the ruler at Staples and it was "made wrong at the factory." That dood was like a legend in NYC personal injury. He was later prosecuted for like 200 counts of fraud and now resides in Attica, NY, which is a bit upstate lol.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1695190&forum_id=2#18431559)

Closing Statements laying out your fee, expenses and the clients cut are required in all PI cases in NY. I think most jurisdictions have the same rule. Any of you fuckers work in a jurisdiction with no CS's?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1695190&forum_id=2#18431571)

dude has an amazing gift for writing though

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1695190&forum_id=2#18431766)

'doesn't know anything' but that more docs are on the way, or being scanned/loaded, etc. So you'll leave work at say 9 pm and as you're walking to the subway the agency calls and says "Sorry, the project is over."

See, they can't tell the coders face to face the gig is up, because many of them are insane and will download viruses into the computers, or start screaming/crying/yelling, etc. It can get very messy. So they lie and tell you there are more docs coming, etc and once you're off the property the agency calls and tells you "game over." So if you left your stuff up there, they have security bring it down to you, provided it doesn't get tossed or stolen in the meantime. I have done over 30 temp projects in NYC and every time you get canned it is after work and done via telephone.

http://top-law-schools.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=157855

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1695190&forum_id=2#18431778)

by lawis4losers

From Wikipedia’s “Frauds” article:

Scammers recognize that the victim who has just been scammed is more likely to fall for scamming attempts than a random person. Often after a scam, the victim is contacted again by the scammer, representing himself as a law enforcement officer. The victim is informed that a group of criminals has been arrested and that they have recovered his money. To get the money back, the victim must pay a fee for processing or insurance purposes. Even after the victim has realized that he has been scammed, this follow up scam can be successful as the scammer represents himself as a totally different party yet knows details about the transactions. The realization that he has lost a large sum of money and the chance he might get it back often leads to the victim transferring even more money to the same scammer.

Brilliant, no? After all, each orchard of morons always has a few low-hanging fruit just ripe for the picking. The “perennial” suckers, if you will. As our former president George W. Bush so eloquently put it: “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice- uh, well, uh, uh- it’s not nice to fool people again!”

Consider the typical, hapless TTT law school grad: First she invested 100 K in a worthless undergrad degree like English Lit or Poli-Sci, then compounded this initial mistake by piling on 120 K or more in non-dischargeable law school loans, bought hook, line and sinker the materially fraudulent salary stats of her law school, endured the BarBri blather-thons, walked the hot coal hazing ritual of the bar’zam, and now finds herself coping with $1500 a month loan payments and a total lack of job opportunities. It’s a familar disaster. Like the Mountain Climber game on The Price is Right, she yodeled her way up the debt mountain and has now fallen off the cliff. Yo-da-le-hee-hoo! Thanks for playing! Even document review, the perennial “parting gift” of the law school also-ran, has now been shipped off to India like those factory jobs of yore. As Springsteen sang in “My Hometown”:

They’re closing down the textile mill ‘cross the railroad track

Foreman says these jobs are going, boys

And they ain’t a comin back

That said, we recently learned here at Big Debt that a new genus of parasite has mutated within the infectious Petri-dish of the law. This nascent strain of law school “after-scammers” are breeding like salmonella in lukewarm mayonnaise. Our friend & fellow blogger Tom the Temp dubs this new (and apparently, now viral) bug the “Solo Practice Cheerleader Crew” (see Tom’s thoughts on these pathogens here):

http://temporaryattorney.blogspot.com/2009/09/more-solo-cheerleader-shysters.html

The solo practice pipedream is nothing new to us here at Big Debt, having wreaked its way through our document review projects for the better part of this decade. All us old time coders remember the so-called “solos” on project who were “just having a slow month” and ended up in the doc review gulag “for a short while.” Curiously, those “slow months” stretched into years as these folks popped up again and again on projects like those old character actors from the 1940s gangster movies. Like bad pennies, they were always back in Biglaw’s pocket sooner rather than later. It wasn’t by choice, either.

Armed with a flimsy stack of Vista-Print business cards and a “prestigious” midtown Manhattan mail-drop address, these usual suspects were always “open for business,” such as it were. You’d sometimes hear them on the phone in the vestibules, bickering over some rinky-dink traffic ticket or small-claims case. One particular guy nicknamed “ShitFingers” liked to operate his side practice via cellphone while dropping heat in the restroom stall, giving “toilet law” a literal dimension. His clients must have thought one of those Civil War re-enactments was going on while he discussed the retainer.

Later, you’d go to wipe and find he’d captioned draft briefs on the Charmin and hidden a stapler under the toilet tank. I often wondered why he didn’t just tape his law degree up in there alongside the stall’s graffiti. No one would’ve cared. This was, of course, in the SullCrom basement, down amid the boxes. Those were the days, young grasshoppers.

As mentioned supra, these “solos” had little more to show for their 7 year education than those pathetic Vista-Print cards. They were curious spectacles in themselves, these cards, featuring the obligatory “Esq” after the last name, coupled with the redundant “Attorney & Counsellor at Law” directly beneath in bold font. Sometimes they’d even slug it “The Law Office of Mr. Loser Solo, Esq, Attorney & Counsellor at Law, JD, LLM” and other such nonsense, as if listing every permutation of their “title” would somehow confer respect.

It didn’t. When the bowel movement was over and the business cards put away, he went back to being Temp. Coder #670934, like Superman doffing his cape and becoming Clark Kent. On payday, he drew the same $21 an hour as the rest of the losers.

But again, we think there really was something to these business cards, something quite profound. A fire within, perhaps? Like the tiny American flag that John McCain & his cellmates stitched while inside the “Hanoi Hilton”, the cards represented pride and honor and-dare we write-loyalty to a system. A system that (like McCain & his cellmates) had ruthlessly screwed and exploited them, but a system for which they harbored latent pride nonetheless. We often wondered what pleasure was drawn from seeing one’s own name followed by “Esq.” as opposed to Temp. Coder #670934, or prison inmate, or midget porn director? Of what did these coders dream? Did they stare into the alkalide glow of the monitor and see not a Global Broker Dealer Sub-Agreement but instead a plush corner office, complete with mahogany desk, silk drapes, and Cartier fountain pens? The law school sheepskins proudly framed on the walls? Were the images real and concrete, or lacy and vague at the edges like a sitcom’s dream sequence?

We’d rather not know. Here at Big Debt, we find these “solo law practice” pipedreams rather comical, and somewhat akin to delusions. To paraphrase Nietzsche, “if you stare too deeply into the monitor, the monitor will stare into you.” So it goes. As the SullCrom partner once told a peskily querying coder “We’re not paying you guys to think. Just click, and click fast. There’s too much fucking around down here.” Right after that, some old coder farted.

But we digress. Our first snowfall in NYC was just last week, yet shitlaw firms have been reporting severe, isolated blizzards since the 4th of July. This often culminates in the phenomenon known as a “white-out.” A white-out occurs when the quantity of incoming resumes exceeds the toner capacity of the fax machine.

Like hurricanes, scientists are studying the “life cycle” of the typical NYC whiteout. Its root causes, if you will. The “chain of events.” They tell us it all starts with a craigslist ad, calling for some no-fault/landlord tenant/personal injury/_________(insert shitlaw practice area here) associate, with 0-2 years experience. Usually the salary offered will be south of 40 K, but much “experience” is promised in lieu of monetary remuneration. Court appearances and depositions are often mentioned, as well as “motions.”

Upon pressing the “post” button and placing the ad online, the white-out phenomenon unfolds. Within seconds, the telltale ring of the fax machine sounds thru the office as the resumes start shooting in. Building slowly, like a dynamo whirring up to speed, the ring soon blares into a continuous, screeching din like a submarine’s “torpedo” alarms in those old WWII movies. Upwards of 75 resumes a minute have been reported, and often the hapless secretaries are dispatched to find milk crates, empty wastebaskets, and other vessels to absorb this incoming resume avalanche.

But there’s no taming this feral beast. As the toner bleeds dry, the print becomes fainter and fainter, until the boldfaced “Cardozo Sports Law Journal” and “Top 46%” boldfaced type dissolves from a scream to a faint whisper. By the ten-minute mark, the fax machine pages emerge blank and unblemished, the shitlaw credentials unprinted. The toner is empty. Yet onward the onslaught continues, page upon empty page pouring into a vortex of abject nothingness. This heart of darkness is pure white.

(A nostalgic digression: Our old NYC personal injury firm was notoriously cheap, and bought those knockoff Canal Street toners that left your motions looking like a charcoal briquette had been rubbed across them. A judge once charitably compared them to cave paintings, and asked if I’d scrubbed a chimney with them).

But let’s get back on track: Below is the website link to the new “Solo Practice University”, complete with ringing customer endorsements:

http://solopracticeuniversity.com/

God, I haven’t laughed this hard since George Carlin kicked the bucket. Is Carlton Sheets this huckster’s uncle? Don’t laugh. I can easily see these solo-practice shysters taking to late night TV to hawk this useless drivel. You know, like those investment scam “informericals”…..

Imagine Susan Carter Liebel, CEO of Solo Practice University, reclined on a beachfront patio in Miami, the jade green waters over her shoulder and the shills facing west. Perhaps a dwarf or two, fanning her with palm fronds. Everyone sports a tan. Sunshine, smiles & sunglasses abound:

SCL: “Tell us about your experience with Solo Practice University, Shill #1”

Shill: “Susan, I can’t thank you enough for these wonderful Solo Practice Univesity materials. Two years ago I was sweating in the Paul Weiss cockroach basement coding documents for $21 an hour. That’s right Susan, a LICENSED NY ATTORNEY making $21 an hour.

“Dear God, surely you jest, Mister Shill?”

“I wish I was kidding, Susan, I really do. Sadly, that’s the going rate for doc review in NYC.”

“But at some point, that changed, didn’t it? Tell our audience here what happened?”

“Well Susan, after getting home from Paul Weiss at 2 am with my eyes weeping blood, I switched on my 13 inch TV to watch Gilligan’s Island when I caught the end of your program here.”

“You mean “Solo Practice University”?

“Yes, and it was a moment that changed my life. Like a revelation, a God coming down to Moses, it all fit suddenly together. Everything was made clear, the solutions to all my problems and the answer to all my prayers. The “Ten Commandments” of Solo Practice U” touched my soul!

“What happened next, pray tell, Mister Shill?”

“First, my neighbor started screaming about the extension cord I’d strung across the fire escape to steal his electricity, since mine had long since been cut off for non-payment. After he settled down, I had my roommate hold the rabbit ear antenna while I took down the toll-free number for Solo Practice University! After a few minutes I thought, “Gee whiz, why have I been reviewing those Global Bi-Lateral Broker-Dealer Sub Agreements for Paul Weiss at $21 an hour, when I can do it just as well myself for $950 an hour?

“And tell us, Mister Shill, how things have worked out since that call?”

“Susan, I’m just so happy I’m almost speechless. These tears are the tears of sheer ecstasy, by God. I swear I haven’t wept like this since chopping a bushel of onions at my old Gray’s Paypaya side job. Now, thanks to Solo Practice University, I have my own solo boutique doing Sarb-Ox compliance and multi-international securities work, and my biggest decision is choosing what color Ferrari I want next. Me and the Goldman Sachs gang, who are now clients of mine, are partying balls out with Derek Jeter & some hookers in a couple hours. And Susan, you see this watch? See it? This watch cost more than a year’s tuition at Seton Hall. That’s who I am, and these loser coders I worked with are still nothing.”

Cue the toll-free number. So it goes, beachcombers. You can almost smell the Coronas.

Note that none of the solo-practice cheerleaders actually practice law themselves, just as Carlton Sheets never sold real estate and Ron Popeil never ate a rotisserie chicken injected with chunks of raw garlic. Instead, they peddle the idea of solo practice as a kind of elixir, a “snake oil” or tonic if you will. Like the patent medicines of the 19th century, they’re palliative treatments for the JD pox, not cures. They make outrageous claims and far-out promises knowing full well they can’t deliver. And shit, why not? As we wrote in the intro, someone gullible enough to waste 100 K+ on a TTT law school surely won’t mind parting with another $595 to learn the “inside secrets” of Solo Practice U! The typical TTT grad blows more than that a semester on Rule Against Perpetuities study-aid puzzles and other accessories of the lawschool scam machine.

But the truth soon sets in. Like the Wizard of Oz, the curtain has long since been pulled back on the charade of solo shitlaw by consumer-friendly websites like Legalzoom. The public know full well what a worthless “product” most shitlawyers peddle, and the jig is now up. It sure don’t take 7 years of schoolin’ to cut n’ paste some janitor’s Last Will & Testament together or grovel before some lowlife traffic court judge for a point reduction. Anyone who can read can now pretty much solve their own legal problems by downloading a few boilerplate forms, doing some quick Googling, and pulling the old cut n’ paste. They surely couldn’t be any more incompetent than the typical recent law grad, unless of course their case involved a “fertile octagenarian” or other bar exam trivia. Opening a solo shitlaw office in 2010 is like opening a typewriter repair store in 1993- your product is already obsolete. And no, we don’t want to hear about your uncle/neighbor/dad’s college roommate who made millions in the 1980s on whiplash cases. That horse has long since limped off to the glue factory. Maybe Grandpa Kettle made a living shoeing horses, but that doesn’t mean my spiffy new blacksmith shop on the NJ Turnpike will become a going concern. Times have changed.

Funny too how the “solo university” hucksters have mimicked the TTT law school website template. It features all the lame, hackneyed buzzwords like “networking” and “professional connections,” the usual “success story” shills, and even a spiffy section of “faculty” bios (btw, the faculty member on the upper right corner of Solo U looks like he just swallowed a quart of bong water). Funniest of all is the “virtual law office” faculty chick- (she’s second from the right, bottom row). Does this virtual practice come with virtual clients and a virtual paycheck? To be fair, many lawyers do practice in a virtual way, but the problems is that these “lawyers” are located in Mumbai, Bangalore, and other Third World sweatshops and charge $25 a week to churn the same cut n’ paste shitpaper as Joe Schmoe Esq. down on Main Street USA. All with the American Biglaw Association (ABA’s) full blessing to boot. Let’s sing the “ABA Outsourcing Theme Song” to the old Gilligan’s Island tune:

“No dues, no exams, no background checks, not a single CLE, like Robison Crusoe, it’s primitive as can be.”

And like Quinnipiac Law School (Susan C. Liebel’s former employer) you’ll be pleased to know that Solo Practice University’s entrance standards are “virtually” nonexistent! She has indeed learned well. Just fork over your credit card number and $595 later you’re on your way to Solo Practice nirvana. And away we go!

Doc review will look like a night on the town once you get a few “rubber check retainers” for some serial drunkard’s 4th DWI, or sit in some kerosene-reeking trailer park signing up an SSI disability scammer with bulging spinal discs, or chew No-Doz until 4 am filling out the 84,578 pages of HUD-1 dreck and title work toilet paper for some $300 fee residential real estate closing.

We found especially amusing the personal injury practice “negotiation” video, because we here at Big Debt are old veterans of the NYC plaintiff sewer. Save your $595, because Professor Law is 4 Losers can tell you everything you need to know about personal injury work in about 12 sentences:

First off, w/out a 7 figure ad budget you aren’t going to have any decent cases, so class is dismissed. Go have a beer. Second, if you do get a fender-bender whiplash case, the “negotiation’ with Allstate or State Farm will go something like this:

Shitlaw Solo: “Hi, I represent Mister Brokedick with a bulging lumbar disc and want to settle the case.”

Allstate: “We have it marked no pay. We will force you to trial and make 12,459 motions a day to bury you in paperwork. If the client had chicken pox in 1st grade we will make discovery motions for the HIPPA authorization for that and also seek authorizations for every other sniffle, sneeze or fart this bastard has squeezed since 1965. If the facilities don’t provide them, we’ll just make the motion over and over and over again until you give up. We have a team of lawyers we pay $5 an hour just to do this from Touro Law School. We know damn well you’re a solo and can’t afford to pay the treating doctor 5 K to testify if it gets that far. And even if you do and you win the trial, it’s only a 25 K policy, so you’ll have made nothing after expenses. By the way, go fuck yourself mister attorney. I am a high-school dropout claims adjuster and make 65 K a year with health benefits and you are a scrounging solo ambulance chaser buried up to your ass in debt!”

Really kids, where are you going to get the $210 it costs to buy an index number, the $95 to buy an RJI (request for judicial intervention), the $500 in photocopying fees to get the medical reports,/MRI films/X-rays, the $200 for deposition fees/transcripts, the $45 for each motion and (if you go to trial) the $5,000 a Board Certified Orthopedist gets for a morning of testimony? Just a handful of fender-bender cases and you’re looking at thousands of dollars in “fronting” expenses just to churn the files. Remember, this is on top of your student loans.

Oh, you’ll have the client pay expenses upfront? Good luck. Most personal injury victims are clumsy, illterate basket cases that don’t have a pot to piss in, but what they lack in $$$ they make up for in street smarts. Ask them for money and they’ll be changing lawyers inside of 30 seconds, probably to a big mill that has the juice to get them a 1-800-Lawcash loan shark advance too.

Wake up. This is the real fucking world kids, not some Erin Brokovich fairy tale. We at Big Debt write of the world as it is, not as we wish it to be. We’re dead serious when we warn you away from the solo practice pipedream. Not only does solo practice shitlaw offer lower hourly wages than mowing lawns and less job satisfaction than stocking shelves at Wal-Mart, it also features another fun thing called the “order to show cause to withdraw.” In law, when clients don’t pay, judges don’t care. You need to formally get the court’s permission to part ways with the non-paying, bellicose, and obstinate scum that constitute the “clients” of most shitlaw offices In the words of one wag, “they have big problems and empty pockets.”

Solo practice university, as we here at Big Debt well know, is little more than a modern-day recycling of the old “snipe hunt” prank. These jokers send the newbies forth in search of non-existent “clients” and wax poetic on the notions of “justice” and “making a difference” while laughing hysterically behind the poor sucker’s backs. I’d bet a week’s worth of food stamps that half these “professors” of solo shitlaw U have an uncle who was claims manager of an insurance company or some other family connection that 99% of the incoming suckers could only dream of. It takes serious money to start a law practice, and don’t let the Solo U cheerleaders convince you otherwise. They’re just salesman out to score a quick buck.

Take this under advisement: A law practice isn’t a shoeshine stand, crack deal, or hot dog cart. You’ve gotta pay bar dues, CLE fees, malpractice insurance, court filing fees, your own health insurance, and a host of other expenses too numerous to list. Student loans are beyond crushing. It’s very easy to get in over your head, and a couple bounced retainer checks will have Access Group’s goons “accessing” your bank account. Short of dropping off $150,000 of seed money on your doorstep, there’s nothing Solo Practice U can do to help you. As the old saw goes, “wish in one hand and shit in the other, and see which one fills up first.”

Like all good salesman, the solo practice cheerleader’s purpose is not to teach you the “practice of law” or “how to network” or any other Oprah-esque, self esteem junkie nonsense. Our society’s nonstop doses of ”feel good” syrup and “you’re very special” candy canes have rotted our collective teeth out already. Most people graduating from law school aren’t special, and aren’t going to amount to a pint of cold piss in this devilish farce of a “profession.” Forty years go, no accredited law school would’ve even accepted the majority of the mouth-breathers enrolled today, and rightly so. Fact is, the ”solo cheerleaders” only want to make a sale, and the #1 key to making a sale is overcoming objections. Consider this snippet:

Solo U Website: “The common preconception among law students is that starting a solo practice is unwise, if not downright impossible. Conventional wisdom says you should work for someone else for a few years to learn the ropes.”

Law is 4 Losers Translation: The common perception is wrong. YOU can succeed where others failed. YOU can beat the odds, YOU can defy the convention wisdom, etc. All you need to do is fork over $595 and the secrets of Solo Practice U will have you minting so much money you’ll need a Brinks truck to escort it to the bank while you follow in your Bentley sniffing blow off the dashboard.

It’s no different than the law school scam itself. These hucksters are so slick it’s as though they were the Valvoline Dean’s own understudies. When kids (and their parents) object to paying a 2nd tier boiler room “school” like Seton Hall $44,000 a year in tuition, the old “Valvoline Dean” Pat Hobbs just grins and points to the “average starting salary” of $125,000 listed in the brochure and extends a shiny pen.

“Dear God”, say the kids, “that’s only the “starting salary!” “Just imagine how well I’ll do 5 years out!” Hobbs flashes his soulless, oil-can grin and in three years the kids aren’t lunching at Sardi’s but instead sucking glue off their food stamps. The snack bar’s been relocated to the shithouse.

Kids, the sad truth is that a JD/law license is nothing special. Any mouth-breathing moron can drool on the LSAT, get admitted to a TTT, sleep thru the so-called “classes,” take BarBri, and get admitted. If the standards for medicine were as low as for law, the typical US life expectancy would be about age 6. Cutting my Inspector Gadget Fan Club membership off the back of the Coco-Puffs box was more of an accomplishment than passing the NY/NJ bars. You might as well frame your driver’s license as hang a J.D. on the wall. It’s as watered-down a credential as there is and getting exponentially worse by the day. You don’t make tomato soup by squirting ketchup into a swimming pool, but that’s about as weak as this “profession’s” flavor is today, thanks to our pals at the ABA (American Biglaw Association), who just accredited 4 new law schools on Dec 5.

For a real laugh to ring in the new year, feature this: Solo Practice U now offers gift certificates for that “special” loser in your life. I’m not making this up:

We’ve had many requests from non-lawyer spouses, parents, girlfriends and boyfriends and even lawyers themselves who have wanted the option to purchase the ‘gift of education’ for the lawyer or law student in their life. Now you can do so and just in time for the holidays or even a ‘passed the bar exam’ present or simply because you want to help someone kick start their career in solo practice. They are good for any occasion and available year-round.

Wow. Talk about a lump of coal in the old Xmas stocking. Maybe a better gift would be a tighter-fitting garage door so the carbon monoxide doesn’t escape while your resident loser-lawyer does himself in. Hell, would you rather be dispatched with the quick choke of exhaust fumes or the slow strangulation of starting a shitlaw “practice” with Sallie Mae riding shotgun? And you really have to chuckle (or wretch) at the “requests from spouses, parents and girlfriends” pouring into good old Solo Practice U. Like Al-Anon families, these folks are collateral damage in the law school bloodbath. It’s hard for laypeople to comprehend just how utterly hopeless and abysmal this industry has lately become, especially with noxious drivel like Boston Legal flooding the airwaves 24-7. Let’s be perfectly clear: For most, a law degree confers nothing but a lifetime of non-dischargble debt, sporadic and miserable employment, stress, bitter disappointment, and wages well south (after loans are deducted) than that of a truck driver, garbage man, or bricklayer. These “loser” grads aren’t just statistics, lest we forget. They’re real people-our friends from law school, from projects, from practice.

Here’s a fact: law school salary numbers aren’t exaggerated or puffed or coiffed or stretched. They’re outright lies. I’ve been in this game 5 years and can’t name a single attorney I know making more than 60 K. Not one. This is in NY City. Almost everyone I know is either unemployed or working in some doc review boiler room for embarrassingly low wages and no health insurance. Most are already so jaded and ground-down by this perpetual misery that they just plain want out. Who can blame them? Only a true sociopath could take any satisfaction or pride from the mind-numbing boredom, vapid make-work, elitist pricks, gutter wages, crushing stress, and complete ethical cesspool that is the “practice of law” in our time. It’s nothing more than a giant Ponzi scheme with a tiny handful of “winners” and rapidly growing hordes of very pissed-off “losers.”

Rather than piss $595 away on a worthless Solo U pipedream, I suggest that all shitlawyers send their families the link to our blog (as well as others in our blogroll at right). Encourage them to read the many horror stories and shattered dreams posted in the comments section and elsewhere. You are not alone. Unlike Solo Practice U, we charge no tuition and make no false promises. We’ve rubbed the law school lamp too, and no genie was released. Our only goal here is to kick the oinking snouts of the law school pigs who grow forever fatter at the federally-backed tuition loan trough. These swine squeal and bleat about pro-bono work while collecting their six-digit paychecks and jacking up tuition at 5 times the rate of inflation like the hypocritical limousine liberals that they are. We here at Big Debt would like to wish all the absolute worst on them, their families, and their health for 2010. It’s past time these shysters reap some of the misery they’ve sown.

The only surefire cure for the “disease” of a J.D. is to run fast and far from this swirling sewer of an industry before you are sucked down the toilet with the other “solo” rabbit turds. If you’re on unemployment in NJ, you qualify for free tuition at any of the community college tech schools. Our advice here at Big Debt is to roll up your sleeves and load up your toolbox. Thanks to a generation of propogandist “college for everyone” drivel, there’s an acute shortage of HVAC repair techs, plumbers, electricians, and other skilled tradesman. Don’t believe us? Call a plumber and a lawyer and see who can get there first. By the way, ask the plumber if he’s willing to install your faucets “pro bono” because you have no money. After all, running water is surely as important as your legal problems (and plumbers are VERY expensive), so just tell him he should do it for free in the public interest. Try the same thing with your auto mechanic, roofer, HVAC guy, and electrician. You’ll quickly find that only the “law” is so fixated on the merits of giving expensive professional services away to deadbeats for free. Here at Big Debt we’ve long argued against any and all pro bono work. Why? Because by so doing, one reinforces in the public’s mind that the service provided is worthless. This is especially true when rendering an “intangible” product like law, one that looks to a layperson like nothing more than a stack of very boring paperwork. (Imagine that!)

In summation, starting a “solo practice” in 2010 is like selling saltwater on a lifeboat: people are already surrounded by an infinite quantity of this worthless and unpalatable resource. Drinking that saline-soaked Kool Aid will kill you faster than thrist. Just open up your hometown Yellow Pages and count the 500 or so pages of desperate solo shitlawyers begging for DWI, real estate, personal injury, and other “common folk” law. When you’ve finished that assignment, we recommend a “bonus tour” of craigslist’s legal services section, where the truly desperate bottom feeders hang out. Like catfish, these barristers subsist on a steady diet of legal excrement, the carrion every other lawyer has already turned down. Some of these “craigslisters” will even shovel your snow or clean your gutters during your free 7-hour consultation. When you’ve completed this “lawyer-counting” assignment, ask yourselves how many lawyers you (and your family) have needed in your life and divide this by the number of lawyers you’ve counted in your area. Lawyers aren’t much for arithmetic, but this is what’s known as “doing the math.” And unlike Solo Practice U, these numbers don’t lie.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1695190&forum_id=2#18433523)

I'd buy it. Hell, it'd become an instant classic, among lawyers anyway. Consider how many people you know who've read weaksauce stuff like One L.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1695190&forum_id=2#18433664)

The talk above about how K lawyers suck ass and fuck themselves is true. I had dinner with a partner at the biggest law firm here in town, and she told me that when they're looking for associates, they would be completely willing to consider people who'd worked for them on K basis with no "ding" for being a K lawyer.

BUT (big BUT she said) most K lawyers fuck themselves by acting like little kids. She said she couldn't tell you the number of times they'd found out their K were doing stupid shit. One time they checked out where the K attys were and the fucking room had shoeprints like FIVE FEET OFF THE GROUND ON THE WALL, lights had been busted out, found out they were throwing frisbees, etc.

So yeah, most K attorneys I think say "fuck the world" and that attitude really fucks them even more.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1695190&forum_id=2#18438313)

Exactly. For example, at the shitlaw personal injury firm I worked at, you are sent to court the very first day of work with no guidance or instruction whatsoever. Sure it was only a preliminary conference and a motion that stipped out, but understand that no one has the time or inclination for hand holding & formal training in shitlaw. You're just thrown to the wolves & it's sink or swim.

At this shitlaw office the partners were very macho and viewed asking questions as a sign of weakness/incompetence. The trial partner even told me he "doesn't like being asked a million questions" and mocking shit like "are you suckling babies gonna come in here every 5 minutes and say "Mr. Partner, my pen ran out of ink- should I get a new one?" He said "learn by doing."

I was stuck in front of the notorious NY County Judge Ira Gammerman (known as Get 'Em Picked Gammerman" one day and a case we wanted to adjourn of course wasn't. I called the office to say I'd be gone all afternoon as we were slated for jury selection at 1 pm. I kinda hinted at like "er, what do I do?" but the partner just said "OK well start picking then" and that was that.

So I had to "wing" it, and actually did OK. My adversary was a nice guy and actually gave me some tips (he was from NYC Law Dept and could've given a shit less about this loser case). That was a good thing, as I had no idea how many preemptory challenges I had, or how to use them, or really how to do anything. I was only admitted to the bar a few weeks earlier and had done nothing before this gig but doc review.

Of course a day or two to learn the law and prepare would be nice, but that's a luxury you won't have in shitlaw. Like McDonald's, they make $$$ on volume and there just isn't any time to properly prepare or work up a file. You just have to wing it and hope for the best, and get whatever $$$ you can before moving on to the next case.

Given the above, try and find a shitlaw place that will let you shadow some lawyers in shitcourt and spend as much time at the office as possible and "learn the ropes" before bar admission. It really will help a lot getting that first personal injury, landlord tenant, or other shitlaw gig. This is a far better use of your time & effort than writing on to Sports Law Journal or some other joke law review wanna-be rag and studying the 2 L bullshit, which is 10 X more boring than first year. Treat your shitlaw internship like a full time job and avoid even going to class or studying altogether. It's almost impossible to get lower than a C- in any lawschool class, even if you don't study at all. There were 2 and 3 L classes where I literally never went to a single class and couldn't pick the prof. out of a lineup. Just pick up some study ads and cram the night before, toss in some buzzwords, take your C- and say fuck it.

I was downright incredoulous to see 2 and 3 L friends who struck out at OCI still studying balls and outlining like it was first semester of One L. These fools just didn't get it that the contest was over, and no matter how many times they checked their ticket, they didn't have the winning numbers. For shitlaw no one ever asks about grades or where you went to school, because most shitlaw "lawyers" are businessmen first and foremost. They spend 100% of their time networking with runners, designing ads, and hustling for files. They're smart enough to know that the "law" is a joke and can be cut n' pasted by any mouth-breathing monkey. There is no research and absolutley no original writing- every single pleading and motion is pure cut n' paste.

In the extremely rare event that a shitlaw case is worth appealing, the savvy shitlawyer farms it out to a per diem (usually a single mom type or retiree who works from home), gives them the file, and a few hundred bucks later gets it dropped off and filed. There is no time whatsoever for associates to do this type of work, since you're in court every morning & at depositions every afternoon. Shitlaw (esp personal injury work) is a real grind, and exhausting with all the running around etc.

My typical day was getting up at 8 am, shower & suit up, get on subway to court in Brooklyn, Bronx, Queens, or Manhattan around 9:15 to 9:30, then running to the 5 or 6 different courtrooms where we had motions or conferences scheduled. You find your case on the calendar outside the courtroom, circle the plaintiff's name, and write your cell # over it so your adversary will know that you are somewhere else and can adjourn it if you can't make it on time or call you to see when you'll be down. Everything is heard on a first-come, first served basis. This isn't "court" like on TV, it's a tiny room with 50 to 100 people reading newspapers, yakking on the phone, talking about last nights Mets game, etc. Most shitlaw motions and conferences are heard by clerks who sit at little card tables. The judge usually never leaves their office- if something is really important you have to ask to see them and get called back there, which can take a loooong time. They are usually very pissed off when things can't be settled or worked out and they have to get involved, so best not to make a habit of bothering them with nonsense.

Usually court wraps up around 11 to 12 noon. Then a quick lunch and off to one of the stenographer offices at Diamond Reporting, Veri-Text, Dietz, or the other shithole broom closets for a deposition. You have to spend at least 1/2 hour prepping the client and getting them ready to answer questions, tell how things happened, etc. Usually they don't speak English so you have to call the office and have secretary interpet via phone while you prep (can't use court interpeter b/c it breaks a/c privilege). Also these "preps" (wink wink) often skirt the boundaries of.... well, let's not go there.

Understand that when you meet the client is the first time you've even heard of their case- as I said, there's no time for preparation or file review or anything like that. You meet them there at the reporter's office, they tell you the story, and then it's off to the races. At most you'll have a copy of the complaint but that's about it.

These depositions are sheer torture, with idiotic questions like "what part of your left foot first came into contact with the puddle of urine you slipped on" and "were you wearing flip-flops or Roman Sandals", shit like that. Then all their medical treatment and aches and pains, etc. Usually the clients fuck up the story since most of them are complete retards, and often they get that "retard anger" after half hour or so and start making threats and calling your adversary a "motherfucker" and just rant that "my shit fucking hurts asshole and I want big money for dis" and so on. Pretty much a complete circus.

Usually after a few cigarettes you limp back to the office by 4 pm, just in time for "calendar meeting" where you get the next day's assignments and scratch together whatever shitpaper documents you need for court. If there's time you make a few phone calls and try to settle some turd cases that the partner left on your desk with a huge "S-ASAP" written in sharpie, which means settle this crap ASAP over the phone for whatever you can get, since it's not worth going the $250 to file a complaint on. Usually you can get $500 or even $750 on these depending on how shitty they are. One we had that was really funny was a homeless lady who walked on foot up to the Wendy's drive-thru window and tripped while getting her food. She got a few bruises and Wendy's forked over $800 bucks to make it go away (they are self-insured so they really don't fight any but the really big claims).

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1695190&forum_id=2#18810574)

Lol, spot on.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1695190&forum_id=2#18813807)

Recently the school earned the ABA’s first-ever CDRTC designation- Certified Doc Review Training Center. In conjunction with the NALP (National Association of Lawyer Placement), the ABA conducted a “straw poll” of schools with, as outgoing ABA president Carolyn Lamm put it, “special emphasis on supplying heavily indebted, supplicant individuals who will work 19 hour days performing Biglaw’s electronic discovery.” NYLS topped the poll by a wide margin, sending as many as 84% of its graduates directly from law school into temporary contract work at AmLaw 100 firms. The term “salary” was subsequently eliminated from the school’s employment metric in US News, as over 90% of NYLS grads are paid hourly wages without health insurance or any semblance of job security. Rates range anywhere from $14 an hour for entry level, all the way to $32 an hour for those with exotic foreign language skills such as Flemish, or fluency in those weird clicking noises made by African tribesmen.

To celebrate this nascent distinction, Dean Richard “Tricky Dick” Matasar recently sold the law school’s facilities on Worth Street and relocated the institution to a formerly abandoned underground parking garage. Luckily for NYLS, several late 1990s grads had been “squatting” in the facility long enough for the school to color an adverse possession claim and take legal title to the garage.

“We felt the lack of sunlight and severe temperature fluctuations added an additional layer of preparation for document review,” Dean Matasar was quoted as saying. “As doc review typically takes place “off site” in broom closets, basements, furnace rooms and such, we felt this move provides an excellent ‘in the trenches’ experience for our students.”

NYLS has long been at the forefront of electronic discovery education. In 2009, the school took a radical step and eliminated the traditional first-year curriculum of torts, civil procedure, contracts and property, replacing them with doc-review software platform training. To pay for this conversion, the school rasied tution to an eye-popping $45,000 a year. A first-year at NYLS can now look forward to being trained in Summation, Concordance, Ringtail, and other Citrix-based review software. The legal writing program was replaced with a course on inexpensive take-out food menus and “99 cent store nutrition,” both important study areas for future Biglaw temps.

In a move that rocked the legal world, NYLS recently began awarding food-stamp applications in lieu of diplomas. In addition, the school offers “affordable” CLE classes on important document review topics such as suicide methods, food bank shopping, constructing tent shelters, and maps/direction to free clinics and soup kitchens.

“We want our young doc reviewers well-equipped to survive in the NYC area on $21 an hour, Matasar said from his plush office at Access Group, a predatory loan-shark operation with collection powers a Mafia don could only dream of. Matasar serves as Chairman of this “organization,’ which supplies a bottomless pit of high-interest, non-dischargeable private loans to NYLS students.

The school’s name is an interesting story in itself. For those grads who desired employment outside the NYC area, it was imperative that a name be chosen that might hoodwink non-NYC employers into thinking it was a more prestigious, well-regarded facility as opposed to a mere “diploma mill.” Several possibilities were floated, among them the “Larry M. Cardozo School of Law,” the “Columbine Law School,’ and the simple “Forham,” which merely deleted a crucial consonant.

Ultimately, “New York Law School” won the day, as it offered the maximum amount of bogus “prestige,” and the school’s downtown Manhattan location further bolstered the ruse, as does the “encouraged” resume abbreviation “NY Law School.”

The role of Indian outsourcing in doc review doesn’t worry NYLS, as its grads work so cheaply that “sending work offshore really makes no economic sense,” said Matasar. “Just yesterday, we posted an ad for an unpaid doc-review internship and had to call NYPD for crowd control assistance,” the dean said. He added that the school encourages local Biglaw firms to offer rock-bottom doc review wages to recent grads, as “the added interest and penalties due to our student’s loan defaults are good for Access Group, and what’s good for Access Group is even better for my wallet.”

Recently, the school also launched an LLM concentration in Insurance Defense & Personal Injury Law. This one-of-a-kind program prepares students for the abject disappointment of earning less money than Allstate claims adjusters, most of whom have at best a high school diploma. Other topics include Cut n’ Paste motion practice, begging for adjournments, and how to juggle 600+ files a week while moonlighting as a stripper.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1695190&forum_id=2#18810577)

thank you for this important contribution, brother

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1695190&forum_id=2#18810694)

At this shitlaw office the partners were very macho and viewed asking questions as a sign of weakness/incompetence. The trial partner even told me he "doesn't like being asked a million questions" and mocking shit like "are you suckling babies gonna come in here every 5 minutes and say "Mr. Partner, my pen ran out of ink- should I get a new one?" He said "learn by doing."

I was stuck in front of the notorious NY County Judge Ira Gammerman (known as Get 'Em Picked Gammerman" one day and a case we wanted to adjourn of course wasn't. I called the office to say I'd be gone all afternoon as we were slated for jury selection at 1 pm. I kinda hinted at like "er, what do I do?" but the partner just said "OK well start picking then" and that was that.

So I had to "wing" it, and actually did OK. My adversary was a nice guy and actually gave me some tips (he was from NYC Law Dept and could've given a shit less about this loser case). That was a good thing, as I had no idea how many preemptory challenges I had, or how to use them, or really how to do anything. I was only admitted to the bar a few weeks earlier and had done nothing before this gig but doc review.

Of course a day or two to learn the law and prepare would be nice, but that's a luxury you won't have in shitlaw. Like McDonald's, they make $$$ on volume and there just isn't any time to properly prepare or work up a file. You just have to wing it and hope for the best, and get whatever $$$ you can before moving on to the next case.

Given the above, try and find a shitlaw place that will let you shadow some lawyers in shitcourt and spend as much time at the office as possible and "learn the ropes" before bar admission. It really will help a lot getting that first personal injury, landlord tenant, or other shitlaw gig. This is a far better use of your time & effort than writing on to Sports Law Journal or some other joke law review wanna-be rag and studying the 2 L bullshit, which is 10 X more boring than first year. Treat your shitlaw internship like a full time job and avoid even going to class or studying altogether. It's almost impossible to get lower than a C- in any lawschool class, even if you don't study at all. There were 2 and 3 L classes where I literally never went to a single class and couldn't pick the prof. out of a lineup. Just pick up some study ads and cram the night before, toss in some buzzwords, take your C- and say fuck it.

I was downright incredoulous to see 2 and 3 L friends who struck out at OCI still studying balls and outlining like it was first semester of One L. These fools just didn't get it that the contest was over, and no matter how many times they checked their ticket, they didn't have the winning numbers. For shitlaw no one ever asks about grades or where you went to school, because most shitlaw "lawyers" are businessmen first and foremost. They spend 100% of their time networking with runners, designing ads, and hustling for files. They're smart enough to know that the "law" is a joke and can be cut n' pasted by any mouth-breathing monkey. There is no research and absolutley no original writing- every single pleading and motion is pure cut n' paste.

In the extremely rare event that a shitlaw case is worth appealing, the savvy shitlawyer farms it out to a per diem (usually a single mom type or retiree who works from home), gives them the file, and a few hundred bucks later gets it dropped off and filed. There is no time whatsoever for associates to do this type of work, since you're in court every morning & at depositions every afternoon. Shitlaw (esp personal injury work) is a real grind, and exhausting with all the running around etc.

My typical day was getting up at 8 am, shower & suit up, get on subway to court in Brooklyn, Bronx, Queens, or Manhattan around 9:15 to 9:30, then running to the 5 or 6 different courtrooms where we had motions or conferences scheduled. You find your case on the calendar outside the courtroom, circle the plaintiff's name, and write your cell # over it so your adversary will know that you are somewhere else and can adjourn it if you can't make it on time or call you to see when you'll be down. Everything is heard on a first-come, first served basis. This isn't "court" like on TV, it's a tiny room with 50 to 100 people reading newspapers, yakking on the phone, talking about last nights Mets game, etc. Most shitlaw motions and conferences are heard by clerks who sit at little card tables. The judge usually never leaves their office- if something is really important you have to ask to see them and get called back there, which can take a loooong time. They are usually very pissed off when things can't be settled or worked out and they have to get involved, so best not to make a habit of bothering them with nonsense.

Usually court wraps up around 11 to 12 noon. Then a quick lunch and off to one of the stenographer offices at Diamond Reporting, Veri-Text, Dietz, or the other shithole broom closets for a deposition. You have to spend at least 1/2 hour prepping the client and getting them ready to answer questions, tell how things happened, etc. Usually they don't speak English so you have to call the office and have secretary interpet via phone while you prep (can't use court interpeter b/c it breaks a/c privilege). Also these "preps" (wink wink) often skirt the boundaries of.... well, let's not go there.

Understand that when you meet the client is the first time you've even heard of their case- as I said, there's no time for preparation or file review or anything like that. You meet them there at the reporter's office, they tell you the story, and then it's off to the races. At most you'll have a copy of the complaint but that's about it.

These depositions are sheer torture, with idiotic questions like "what part of your left foot first came into contact with the puddle of urine you slipped on" and "were you wearing flip-flops or Roman Sandals", shit like that. Then all their medical treatment and aches and pains, etc. Usually the clients fuck up the story since most of them are complete retards, and often they get that "retard anger" after half hour or so and start making threats and calling your adversary a "motherfucker" and just rant that "my shit fucking hurts asshole and I want big money for dis" and so on. Pretty much a complete circus.

Usually after a few cigarettes you limp back to the office by 4 pm, just in time for "calendar meeting" where you get the next day's assignments and scratch together whatever shitpaper documents you need for court. If there's time you make a few phone calls and try to settle some turd cases that the partner left on your desk with a huge "S-ASAP" written in sharpie, which means settle this crap ASAP over the phone for whatever you can get, since it's not worth going the $250 to file a complaint on. Usually you can get $500 or even $750 on these depending on how shitty they are. One we had that was really funny was a homeless lady who walked on foot up to the Wendy's drive-thru window and tripped while getting her food. She got a few bruises and Wendy's forked over $800 bucks to make it go away (they are self-insured so they really don't fight any but the really big claims).

HTH

http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=163652&start=100

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1695190&forum_id=2#18810813)

I did this all 2L and still going into end of 3L. I have a gig lined up that's not BIGLAW, not SHITLAW, but [would out self]. He offered me a deal for next year that I was happy to have in the back pocket. I agree with the 180 TLS poster on this--CLASS IS FUCKING USELESS. If you struck out at OCI 2L, it's over. SHADOW A SUCCESSFUL SOLO! That's school. And if lucky, get paid to do it. Take your B-'s in stride.

It's like the wu-tang double cd...you don't need school. follow the shitlaw guy and learn the fucking ropes. When you actually DO pay attention in class/seminar or hear people talking in the common areas you have one head up--you realize the people around you who interned at fed judges and shit...don't know anyfuckingthing. They live in a delusional world where the law matters. It's all about "is the client presentable?" "Does he have too many child support orders on him?" "do we need a Polk?" "is it in a minority heavy county or one with white collar moms?" "did you dink all the asians?" and so on.

One piece of advice--didn't get BigLaw? Learn spanish. get dat rosetta stone.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1695190&forum_id=2#19552316)

This is where those "soft skills" are fucking handy. I am latino so, basically, they believe whatever bullshit I feed 'em since one of their own who never rip them off, right? And while I always am looking out for their best interests (win the case, get paid--we both win), but these folks are mighty fucking depressing to say the very least.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1695190&forum_id=2#19553694)