As McJagger Says...

Isn't it a Murphy's Law that you always want what you don't have, the grass is always greener, or something like that? Well those trite sayings have never been so true as with me. When I was practicing law I would look at people working at their jobs, my legal assistant, a clerk, a banker, whatever, and envy their 9-5. They could come in 5 days a week, do a fairly unchallenging, stress free job for 8 hours and then go home. I always figured they had lives, they had families they actually got to spend time with. They ate dinner before 9:30pm. Even though their paychecks were far less than staggering, I envied the free time those people had.

But now that I work as a career service counselor in an unchallenging, stress free 9-5job I find myself envying others yet again. Not that I want the life of a practicing lawyer again, hell no. But one of my coworkers who hails from top 100 firm world is now finding herself traveling frequently to conferences, hobnobbing with the hiring partners of top 100 firms, going out for cocktails and using their guest offices. So as my life becomes filled with baby preparation and I won't be reacquainted with a cocktail for another 7 months (at least), my coworker's travels sure sound sexy. Her Friday night involved a hiring partner hitting on her and offering her a job, my Friday night involved cooking dinner, taking a nap, and watching tv on the couch. It's not that my life is awful, or that I'm really complaining about it, I'm not. I'm merely highly aware of the differences as she regales me with tales of her exciting business travel.

I have always wanted the happy family; a great husband, nice house, some dogs, and a kid or two. I will have the whole picture next spring when our little one joins us and I couldn't be more excited. But while most of me can't wait for the world of stay at home mommy-dom, there is a part of me that is screaming "wait! i want the sexy professional life still!" Since I don't live in a major metropolitan area I know I cannot have both.

So I am embarking on a new mission, a new lesson (which is going to be damn hard): learning to be satisfied. Every time I think about things I want or wish I could have, I am going to make myself also think about two things that are really great about my life as it is and be excited about how it will be. The grass won't be greener on someone else's lawn, instead we'll all have AstroTurf.

Why didn't I think of this?

Find it at www.catchingfireflies.com (just stumbled upon this website and this fabulous product).

Florida Education is Broken...so just ignore it and build something new

That seems to be the mentality of Charlie Crist and the Florida Republicans. Florida's public education is one of the worst in the country and the best solution the Republican-run legislature can muster is to spend more tax dollars on McKay Scholarships to send some kids to private schools since the public school they're zoned for and previously attending is crap. Under this theory, a small portion of kids are able to go to "better" private schools on the tax payer's dime, while the problems of public schools are ignored and the majority of kids are stuck with mediocre educations. Instead of spending the money to fix the education system which services the majority of Florida children, Crist would rather let a few students attend the private school of their choice...oh yah, and those private schools have no oversight from the State and don't require FCAT testing so who really knows how good of an education they're providing in return for our tax dollars.
The one smart move Crist made this year (aside from getting the hell out of the Republican party) is to veto Senate Bill 6. This lovely bill would have tied half of teacher's pay to student test scores and new teachers would be hired with no chance of tenure. Don't get me wrong, I think ineffective teachers should certainly be given the boot, but more reliance on a ridiculous standardized test is not the way to accomplish that goal. The teachers at schools that currently under perform (almost always those in the low income areas) already have a hard enough time working with students who may not receive 3 meals a day and who have little parental involvement in education. So your pay as a teacher would primarily depend on whether you were lucky enough to get a position at a good school.
It seems like Florida's solution to its education problems is to find scapegoats and avoid the fixing the real problems. I suppose Florida Republicans don't care if Florida's public schools are abysmal because their kids go to private schools, and thanks to Crist and McKay Scholarship funding they may not even have to pay as much for that privilege.

Now how much do you want to drill, baby?

Since Sarah Palin first uttered that ridiculous battle cry, "drill baby drill", Americans have ignored those little things called facts and rallied to put an oil drill off every coast in the country. These ignorant demands had become so loud that even Obama caved and blew off his campaign promises for increased environmental protection and opened waters off the north coast of Alaska, the southeastern Atlantic, and the Gulf. While this move made me see red, the red-state Republicans were begrudgingly saying Obama had come to his senses. All was right in this hypocritical, instant-satisfaction society of ours.....until this past week.

Now, as we all know, millions of gallons of oil are pouring out of the blown up oil well heading swiftly to the Gulf coast. Only now after 11 men are dead and we have an environmental catastrophe with no solution in sight are folks starting to see that 'drill baby drill' might not be our saving grace after all.

Sadly, I am not hopeful for change. Obama is still allowing all of the new offshore drilling and once the memory of this tragedy has faded, the rally cry will begin again. The nonsense of all of this pains me. Even as early as 2004 it was well known that domestic off-shore drilling would do little more than take a few cents off at the gas pump. "But even the additional domestic production would not be enough to overcome increased demand, meaning continued heavy reliance on imports, the EIA said. " Associated Press, March 16, 2004.

Republicans are always focused on the bottom line, so I can't understand how once they consider the cost-benefit analysis of off shore drilling that they are still so adamant for it. The cost: risk of similar explosions (they still don't know what caused this one) with an unknown number of deaths, certain environmental destruction, and huge government cost when things do go wrong. The benefit: a very very tiny percentage of the oil we use every day, not likely to reduce gas cost since the oil companies set those prices and keep making record profits.

And if the human and environmental loss and tragedy of this spill don't touch a nerve, just think about the millions of dollars the government is spending on the clean up. All those Coast Guard planes, boats, helicopters, personnel surprisingly are not free. And BP has yet been asked to foot the bill.

Working, but not Practicing

It's true - I got a job! Whatever Deity you choose to believe in has truly blessed me. I had about 6 weeks of life as a domesticated goddess followed by a 3 week vacation of a lifetime (planned and paid for before the hostile takeover of my career), and then started at the new position. In this economy that really is nothing short of a miracle, and believe me, I appreciate just how lucky I am.
So what is this new position that dropped from the heavens just before the new-present shine wore off from the unemployment checks? No details of course, but I will say that I have entered the world of academia as a career services counselor at a law school. Because the position requires a JD, I still somewhat feel like a lawyer even though I no longer practice law (at least until I have to tell a practicing lawyer what I do). Although I can't continue to claim a prestigious job with a sense of self-importance, I love my new job!
I work 9-5, with an hour lunch, no weekends, and if I take a day off I don't have to make up my time. I still catch myself trying to note the time when I return from a meeting or after a student appointment, but then a smile crosses my face as reality hits that there are no billable hours here! A month in, and the hardest part of my job is making sure that I tell students the truth and what they need to know about working as an attorney without scaring the living crap out of them or making them run to financial aid and demand their money back.
Since I don't have tales of practice nightmares anymore, my goal is for future blog posts to reflect on the legal market, legal academia, and commentary on the state of the law and the world. Of course me and tangents are close friends, so you never know.

Vacation time is no time at all

As an attorney your time is only measured in billable hours and it is actually one of the perks of the job that you don't have to clock in or out so long as you bill your hours. So how do vacation days fit into that?

A former co-worker of mine who also left my former firm never took any vacation time in the past year of work. The firm gives 13 paid vacation days to attorneys and staff alike, but the difference is that the attorneys have to make up the billables that they lose in taking those days. I was told by a partner that the firm does not actually track the attorneys' vacation days because it doesn't matter how many days we take so long as we bill our hours. So then, the question becomes...when an attorney leaves the firm do they get paid for the vacation days they didn't take?

If you have to make up those hours you take on a paid vacation day then do you actually ever get paid vacation? Think of it this way: how fair would it seem if my husband, who works exactly 40 hrs per week and clocks in and out in his federal gov't job, had to work weekends to make up for the paid vacation time he took? It's just moving shifts, not taking vacation.

It's really surprising to me that this issue has not gotten more attention. At least an honorable mention of this problem in law school ethics class when they break down exactly how many hours you have to work a week to get 2000 hrs a year.

So what does my former co-worker do? Should he be paid for 13 days that he never took, or can the firm write him off and say too bad if he didn't make his billable requirement for the year?

2 weeks could be 2 years

In the past two weeks since my departure from the world of litigation I have visited with friends, done about 20 loads of laundry, hosted a house guest, and cooked my husband 5 batches of chocolate chip cookies. I am officially domesticated and loving it. After attending an Inns of Court meeting two nights ago, it occurred to me how quickly I forgot about the ball and chain of my old firm and how amazingly fast my brain turned off the lawyer mode. It was like a reunion with my professional life. A little nervous that I wouldn't fit in anymore, anxious to see what had changed, and reminiscent of my past career. Even that sounds like I stopped practicing years ago, when really it was only two bloody weeks! The past two weeks have been lovely, really. Sure, there have been some moments of freak out when I wonder if I will ever work again and feel utterly useless, but mostly I wake up relieved each morning without the impending sense of doom that used to foreshadow my morning coffee with Matt Lauer. Now my morning coffee is two cups and I share it with Kathy Lee and Hoda because I sleep past the real news. So in keeping with my new found light-heartedness and refreshed sense of hope I will no longer write griping, wining, or bitchy posts...or at least try to.

why is burning bridge so bad? there are other ways to cross river than a bridge

Now that I've officially been sacked, I keep being told not to burn any bridges. Of course the sensible part of me knows that I should do as suggested and not haul off on the boss and the people that have made me so miserable for the past two years, but the other part of me really really wants to. And I mean really. In my family if you have a problem with someone you let them know. I cannot even count how many times my brother and I swore at each other and spent hours yelling about exactly how much we hate one another. Now adays my brother and I have really open and honest relationship where we can still yell and swear at each other but we always make up and appreciate being able to wig out on each other. It's so relieving to tell people what you really think, especially if you can use one of George Carlin's 7 words to never say on tv in the process. So if your work is supposed to be a kind of family, why can't you rip into them the same way? Because work is not a family, instead it is a group of people largely pretending to like one another but secretly not giving a rats ass if one of them got hit by a bus on the way to work. True, there is usually one or two people that you become friends with, but the rest of them...feed them to the wolves! Realizing the wisdom in that trite saying however, I have bitten my tongue until it bleeds and instead dream about telling off my boss (really, I've probably had at least 4 dreams where I really tear into him). And because I realize that while yes, there are other ways to cross a river, like making a home catapult, that is much more difficult than using the damn bridge, and so instead I will choose to seek my catharsis through some time honored passive aggressive behavior. I plan to make as big a production as possible when I pack up my stuff this Friday and may even hide something really smelly like a rotten potato or leave a honey trail for ants in my office. And of course I'll finish it with a great big "I know you are but what am I?" while sticking out my tongue as I walk out the door.

I thought the blog needed a law-themed photo. This was the nicest looking Law photo I could find. Enjoy!

So little time, so much to do....switch that, reverse it.

So aside from memorizing the postings on Careerbuilding and stalking Linkedin contacts, what will I do with all this stuff called 'free time' that I will soon have? Well, I've decided to start a blog, inspired by Julie and Julia, chronicalling my journey through the grapes of the world, alphabetically. When I say grapes, of course I mean the fermented ones that come in pretty bottles with labels I can't pronounce. What will I achieve from this quest for wine zen? Scerosis of the liver and an extra 10 pounds....okay, so maybe not the best idea. Perhaps I'll take up knitting.

Writing from Behind Enemy Lines

I am camped out in my fox hole of an office, alternative rock and the space heater blaring, daring anyone to knock on the door. Last Friday I officially became a POW of the law office. I was given the ultimate PFO (please f-off) and told I had two weeks notice, things just weren't "working out" (code for the boss took a bonus and bought a new BMW so we can't afford associates). Because I must squeeze every last cent I can from this fortress of desperation, I am forced to show up every day until next Friday, working to close cases and keep a low profile as my status as enemy combatant requires. This place for which I used to have mixed emotions of pride, belonging and loyalty tinged with resentment has become my jail cell. With an air of superiority and pity my soon to be former coworkers viligently try to ignore my presense (although their social awkwardness did not allow for much meaningful interaction in the past), and while this should bother me the only thing I can think of is my pending release. Sure, I'd love to punch half the office in the face and have a good Lewis Black style rant, but of course I can't do that since one day I may need something from my captures. My confinement will end next week and I suppose my sentence here will be what most call "good experience", but for me it will have been an exercise in frustration and join the list of things I can say I did without any desire to do it again. As I clean out my desk, leaving only spilt Splenda packets and business cards, I can't help but be excited by the rush of relief and the knowledge that I am the one getting the better end of this deal and will be the one feeling pity for those I leave behind.

Ponies and boarding school are privileges, not healthcare

I keep seeing all sorts of rubbish about healthcare being a privilege and not a right. Of course this dribble comes from the savants at Fox news, Rush, and the nonsense e-mail forwards I get daily from my grandfather.  It's rather telling that all the people saying that healthcare is a privilege are conveniently the same ones that would have no problem paying cash for doctors visits, but take full advantage of their employer-paid health insurance. I'd like to see how their opinions would change if they were suddenly poor and they or their children were sick, I'm sure then they would insist that they should receive all the treatment in the world.  These people should watch Trading Places again, only imagine themselves as Dan Ackroid...they already detest the Eddie Murphy's of the world.

If I never hear the word bailout again...

I am so sick of hearing the word "bailout", could the brilliant minds behind Fox news surely not come up with a catchier phrase by now? If we are to live with the word bailout for at least another 6 months then I think we should be clear about which bailout we so ardently disdain. Is it the bank bailout, the insurance bailout, or the auto bailout? 

While I think the CEO's of the auto industries and their henchmen deserve a sound flogging, I don't so much mind bailing out those companies. I think the difference for me is that the folks working at the auto industry are members of a dying breed of blue collar workers. There's been a recent shift in America, away from the blue collar jobs. Blue collar jobs are no longer good enough for the average American, perhaps rightly b/c most blue collar jobs don't provide a living wage, so all those immigrants that get such a bad rap are more than willing to take those jobs. The auto industry has held strong though. Its an industry that employs large numbers of non-college degree holding people, pays them well, provides health insurance and retirement. 

If the auto industry fails and all the workers loose their job they can't just go out and find another job welding doors, or whatever the specific task they are trained to do is.  If a trader looses his job, or banking officer, they have higher education and transferable skills, eventually they'll find something else. 

So perhaps its not such a bad thing to try to save the jobs of hundreds of people. Even though they don't make a ton of money or have college degrees, we should still try to help them put food on their table and keep them off the dole. 

The Hamster Wheel

Like most kids, my brother and I had hamsters when we were little kids.  Mine liked to escape into my parents' closet a lot, but they both really enjoyed running on their little wheels (or at least we thought they liked it, they were probably cursing us from the sheer boredom).  What does this have to do with anything you ask? The other day I was talking to a coworker, a newer associate like myself, about the never ending tasks.  You trudge through a response to a motion to dismiss, only to have to start drafting discovery requests and then start right in on the next motion response for another case.  Being an associate attorney, well hell, any attorney, is exactly like being that hamster. No matter how hard you run or how hard you work, you're still in the same place you started at the end of the day. You never really do accomplish anything. You don't get to wipe your brow after a hard week and feel a sigh of relief and a sense of accomplishment.  There's no time for that.  Instead, when you finish a big project, maybe one you're even really proud of, you have about enough time to take a quick breath, a bathroom break and get another cup of crappy coffee with fake creamer before you have to read more cases, write more memos, and talk to more clients. And just like the hamster, you're on that wheel alone.  No one to talk to, no one to commiserate with, no one to work as a team with you.  It's just you and the wheel, 50+ hrs a week. 

my husband is great!

there, i said it! and i don't feel bad for saying it, why should i? but the truth is i don't get to say it often enough. when friends call and ask how my husband and i are anything beyond "good" is just way too much. its the unspoken rule among women friends - we're there for you after a breakup, when you're sick of yet another fruitless blind-date, and we're thrilled when you get engaged, but we don't want to hear more than a fine or a good when it comes to a successful relationship.  we women love to kvetch, and its not nearly as interesting when things are going well. i feel bad talking about how great he is to my single friends, because then i'm rubbing it in. i can't talk about it to my engaged friends because then i'm taking away from their great moments to come or passing unwanted advice, and i can't even talk about it with my married friends because if their husband hasn't been mr. wonderful too then i'm saying my husband is better than yours.  i think we should say it more often, to our friends and to our husbands. lets throw out that crappy stereotype that husbands can never live up to wives' expectations, that we can only talk about them when they're doing something wrong. 

let me be the first to start: i love my husband, he's great! he's thoughtful, he's considerate, he's always putting me first and making sure i always feel like a princess. he makes me accountable for my actions and encourages me to be my best. that's just the short version....sorry, its not as interesting as if i was dishing on some terrible, 'you won't believe what my husband did today' story. 

if there's a blog on the internet but no one reads it, how do you know it's a blog?

i started this thing with the hopes that someone would enjoy my ramblings and maybe it would lead to enlightenment, or at least a fun job opportunity. then i realized the only person i was really comfortable with reading it is my husband. i felt a little dorky honestly, i mean, blogging is so 2005! does anyone actually read these things anymore?! well apparently they're not gonna read this one because i can't find it on google, and i even went to the second and third page of results - something i never do (does it really count if its not on the first results page?).  only time will tell...maybe this blog will fade into the white noise of the internet...and maybe it will one day show up on the first results page of a google search. 

the standardized b.s.

at the end of the day at the office i found myself chatting with my boss, the named partner, and another senior associate.  somehow we were talking about the bar exam, and then the lsat, and then standardized testing in general. i have a rather strong position on standardized testing. i understand its a necessary evil but i feel that if we're really gonna do it in this country then we need to do it right and do it fair. so i refused to take the s.a.t. prep course or even study at all for it in highschool. i took it twice, getting 10 points difference between the two sittings - i was meant to get a 1310.  then it was time to take the lsat.  again i refused any overpriced prep classes. i figured that i wasn't all that wild on the idea of law school anyhow, i had better things to do with what little money i had, and if i couldn't get a high enough score on my own then it just wasn't meant for me.  kaplan offered a free lsat practice exam so i took that, never having seen an lsat before i was surprised, as were the kaplan folks, at my score.  i borrowed a three year old prep book, took some practice tests and sat for the exam. i got one point higher than the practice exam! i proved my point twice - there's a reason for standardized tests. they may suck to have to take and not be perfect, but they do try to level the playing field. what turns the playing field into a huge frickin mountain are the prep classes - only the wealthy folks get to do those. 

so back to the chat at the office - yes, i actually said the condensed version of my standardized test history and policy. only to then find out that my boss took both the s.a.t. and the lsat prep courses. so the moral of this story is that i think prep classes are evil and i'm a jackass.

The Truth Shall Set You Free...or Ostracize You Forever

There is talk in the legal world of a woman who graduated from a law school up North and dares to speak out to persuade people not to go to law school.  This is blasphemy! What do you mean law school isn't the greatest thing that ever happened to you?! This woman graduated with the huge loans that most do (somewhere in the ballpark of $100k), searched the market and realized that she could get a job that would maybe pay off her loans in a 80 yrs and she would have to forsake any family and social life to practice law. She did the impossible - she said no! So now she speaks out about the overpopulation of lawyers and the reality of the career, that guess what? it's not all that great. 

All over the news people are outraged because the woman who had the octuplets already has 6 kids and in this economy its a crime against society to bring more kids that you can't afford into the word. Most folks agree, at least to some degree, with that idea. So what's so different about what this lady is saying? There's too many lawyers already, so why encourage more people to become lawyers to fight for the few jobs there are and most can't afford law school - so isn't that a crime against society too? 

This woman had the audacity to point out the elephant in the room and now she will likely never have a legal career or be able to pay off those huge law school debts.  I had one of those moments myself not too long ago...although with not nearly the same consequences. 

I was at a continuing legal education class for new attorneys required by the Florida Bar last year. During the lecture from the attorney help section (the dept that helps lawyers with substance abuse issues, etc) the speaker asked if you knew then what you know now who would not have gone to law school - my hand shot up. The only hand, in a room of 200+.  So I was asked why, and I said because I didn't imagine a law career would mean sitting behind a desk for 10+ hrs a day maybe speaking with 1 person all day, it was not what I bargained for. The room was silent, aside from a few gasps. When the speaker moved on every other attorney at my table told me they feel the same way. 

So why won't anyone else stand up and say how they feel? Is it that bad to speak truthfully and honestly about being an attorney? I guess no one wants to bust the myth Grisham did so well at inventing, no one wants to let on that its really not that cool, not like Law and Order at all. I guess it'd be like seeing James Bond filling out paperwork about his last mission, sorta takes the sparkle out of it. 

In the beginning...

A long long time ago (o.k. really more like 5 years) a naive sorority girl was about to graduate a state university with  dual major in International Affairs and  French.  After an enlightening trip to the career services department where I learned I could use my degree to be a airline ticket reservationist, librarian, or foreign service officer, I realized I needed to join the masses in grad school. I fell for the old line, "you're so good at arguing you ought to be a lawyer"! 

So in my habit of shunning prep classes for standardize testing, I borrowed a 3 yr old LSAT prep book, studied and got a 154.  Three to four rejection letters later I got a package from a little fourth-tier school in Boston ( I didn't even know what a tier was) offering me a scholarship. I had never been to Boston and since I didn't get in anywhere else, off I went! 

Through a housing meeting at the law school I found a roommate who soon earned the named "Vile Karin". When I said I was a non-smoker I assumed that meant all things that could be smoked - I guess the devil's in the details. It was an okay year, my first taste of the Lonely Law (to be defined later) and a pretty wicked cool city. But once I learned what a tier was and that I could never imagine myself shoveling snow or scraping ice off windows, back South I went. I transferred to a small Baptist law school, to the land of turnip greens and plaid bow-ties. I fought with the Lonely Law for two more years and managed to graduate with honors. 

What do you call a med student that graduates at the bottom of their class? Doctor. 

What do you call a law student that graduates in the top 25% of their class with no legal connections? Unemployed! 

Why Pink?

Why the Pink Book of Law? Really, most law books are boring shades of brown, red, blue and green. It begins with what I call "pink books".  A good friend of mine has an affection for fluffy romance novels, think Shopaholic series. The new ones are aimed at women my age - 20's-30's, and although the girls always have envy inspiring careers and wardrobes they always end up with Mr. oh-so-perfect. The covers always are either all pink, or at least 50% are pink. I admit, I enjoy these books to. They make you feel good, inspire you to be a bit more quirky, a bit more spontaneous, and always a bit skinnier. 

During law school I always thought one of these pink books about the law would be great! I could learn about boring things like promissory estoppel, all while enjoying a tale of  new whirlwind romance and a great cashmere pashmina. I hope this blog will tell it like it is, with a little soft fluffy pink-ness. Hopefully some people other than my close friends will read it, maybe I can entertain some folks aimlessly searching the internet on their lunch break...and maybe if I'm really really luck, and God smiles on me...I'll get a job offer to be a bit chubbier, more sane, and more qualified Anne Coulter (oh she really is bonkers!).