Posted in BigLaw, associate life, law firms, lawyers & depression, money, soul's needs, tagged pessimism and lawyers, creativity, Martin Seligman, Authentic Happiness, Positive Psychology on July 15, 2008 | 5 Comments »
When I was thinking about leaving law, I focused a lot on all the things I would lose:
Money
Status
Long hours
Working weekends regularly
Achingly boring work
Colleagues who were anything but collegial
A known career [...]
Posted in BigLaw, associate life, billable hours, law firms, lawyer layoffs, money, tagged associate merit pay, Sonnenschein Nath Rosenthal, TR Shine, working rich on June 17, 2008 | 2 Comments »
So Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal axed 37 attorneys not long ago. Plus another 90 or so support staff. If you are one of those people and reading this, my condolences to you. Getting laid off sucks, no matter how bad the job.
[Aside: Don't miss this funkalicious article in the WaPo written by a guy who [...]
Posted in career tools, money, tagged Career Track, functional resume, JD, transferable skills on May 13, 2008 | 4 Comments »
So the question of whether to dumb down your resume came up on the Career Track chat on washingtonpost.com. Specifically, the question was whether to leave off advanced degrees.
Here’s the short version of the debate:
I was having trouble getting a job and so began leaving off my MA thinking that employers would think I’m too [...]
Posted in BigLaw, associate life, lawyer dysfunction, lawyers & depression, money, soul's needs, tagged Amelia Rawls, Ivy League, mean people suck, soft skills, Yale Law School on May 1, 2008 | 6 Comments »
My new hero for the day is Amelia Rawls. She is a 1L at Yale (don’t roll your eyes yet), and wrote a piece that appeared in today’s Washington Post about whether Ivy grads are, well, nice people or not. Now, she isn’t making a completely broadbrush statement that everyone who attends an Ivy isn’t [...]
Posted in BigLaw, associate life, law firms, lawyer dysfunction, lawyers & depression, money, tagged emotional dysfunction disorder, homelessness, Starbucks on December 27, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
When you’re in an environment that devalues emotions and morals, and holds up money and winning at all costs as its aspirational goals, it’s far too easy to absorb that way of thinking. So how do you combat the creep of emotional dysfunction disorder?
Even if you don’t suffer from EDD, the old “good works” [...]
Posted in BigLaw, associate life, lawyer dysfunction, lawyers & depression, money, tagged Douglas LaBier, emotional dysfunction, empathy on December 26, 2007 | 1 Comment »
I love it when my instinctive beliefs about the nature of humanity are borne out by other people’s research. To wit: an article in the Washington Post on Emotional Dysfunction Disorder. In a nutshell:
People who suffer from EDD are unable to step outside themselves and tune in to what other people experience. That makes it [...]
Posted in BigLaw, associate life, career tools, money, tagged holiday parties, layoffs, networking on November 29, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
Part 2 in a series.
Finances are only part of the action plan when layoffs are looming. Perhaps more important is getting your network up and going.
What’s that? You have no network? Oh, pish tosh! You do, but you call them friends and acquaintances. You may think they wouldn’t be willing to help you. For now, [...]
Posted in BigLaw, associate life, billable hours, career tools, law firms, lawyer layoffs, money, tagged layoffs on November 28, 2007 | 1 Comment »
Part 1 of a series.
So Thacher Proffitt has finally admitted that it will lay off associates early in 2008. I was in practice in the early 1990s, when the economy was sucking and firms were taking the then-unheard of step of laying off associates. At first (a small history lesson) many firms did not [...]
Posted in career tools, lawyer dysfunction, money, tagged alternative legal careers, shame, thrift stores on November 20, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
Shame is the great enforcer of norms. Naturally, shame is rampant among lawyers.
Shame can really warp your decision-making process if you are not keenly aware of it, and sometimes even if you are. It creeps into your life in ways small and large. Particularly if you are from a dysfunctional family (so many lawyers are!), [...]
Posted in BigLaw, associate life, law firms, money, tagged AmLaw, associate surveys, Hildebrandt, lawyer satisfaction on November 12, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
So I finally got around to thinking about how Hildebrandt can come out with a survey that suggests nearly 95 % of associates are not unhappy, let alone miserable. Their exact finding is:
In the region of 45% of associates are highly satisfied with their work, another 50% are more or less satisfied, and only [...]
