i like the work far more now than ever. i make somewhat less money; you've never heard of where I work; you've never heard of my clients; i no lnger get treated like royalty because of where i went to law school. so it's by jettisoning many of the things that are actively aspired to that the job has improved, at least for me. but i'll say again: some people are ideally suited for the longterm at a big firm. you don't hear about it because the reasons they like it ($1 millionish/yr; their orders are followed; they're just good at it, far better at it than most) are considered indecorous to talk about. similarly, there are many people in my position, who find it perfectly enjoyable to research, write and argue utterly insignificant briefs. it's a purely internal satisfaction, that doesn't lend itself to envy or bragging. so complaints are both overrepresented, and tend to be inaccurate. most people who don't like the job just blow at it.

there's infinitely more to say, about the things that come up here all the time -- how your law school affects things, what's good/bad about the job, whether it is in fact the ideal calling for the risk averse. most broadly, though, unless you're one of the more obvious dolts here, it can't be said law school is the categorically rotten choice it is sometimes portrayed as. there are certain grating features. somehow all the wit and sharp insight you find here, and that i found in law school, evaporates as people start plotting how to conceal every true aspect of themselves, beginning with the interview. additionally, it is predominantly a job for people who have enjoyed, and tended to be good at, the relatively solitary pursuits of careful reading and complex analysis; yet for some reason, too many obviously bookish people claim a destiny in the flash and dazzle of the courtroom, or purport to be driven by an avarice that will never be satisfied in a world where lawyers will never be the richest people around. if more people just came out and said they secretly enjoy the search for the perfect case, or they find an immense comfort in staying close to the skills they excelled with since kindergarten, there would be a truer picture of something that's a good choice for a smart person who really isn't a risk seeker. and that's despite some really abysmal aspects that could also fill many future posts.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=154271&forum_id=2#2402286)

Was the transition something you had always planned? Or did something just pop up and you decided to go for it?

Any regrets?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=154271&forum_id=2#2402358)

principal regret is that, knowing i wasn't staying there forever, i spent huge passages of time doing absolutely nothing; truly -- like playing minesweeper, posting here, and just not even showing up (i never worked a single weekend day) if i could have back that time, i would have done more to gain a deeper understanding of things i now try to take more seriously, and know i would enjoy more if i was as adept as at those things i know well.

same with law school. although in both instances i was focused and engaged far more than some people. i had an infantile reaction to coming to terms with not being supreme court clerk caliber, and was periodically indifferent. but unlike people who were only chasing money, for instance, genuine interest, even if not driven by genius, kept me from total alienation. so it's a qualified regret, at most.

put it ths way: this is not the sort ofthing you can enjoy while being mediocre at it. if you're not outstanding at least in some narrow aspect of it, it's a life of unrelenting torment. a not small number of people forever occupy the essential station of a first year associate: making and fixing mistakes, then making the same mistakes again. they save their jobs, in an environment wher egetting fired virtually requires your consent, basically by becoming a standard corporate lackey. that works, i suppose. far better, though, to live and die but how good your work is than whether you reliably are the one to tell the deadwood partner his wotthless ideas are enlightening. that's why if you're any good at it at all, all this stuff about "face time," not wearing a black suit, or prefacing everything you do outside of work with "i don't want to, but i really should" . . . all that is practice for a kind of sustaining failure that certainly is an option many people take.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=154271&forum_id=2#2402448)

this is really all about how, if at all, HYS students are different, in reality and by perception. the topic is taken up on this board, in varying degrees of seriousness, and constantly of course. i went to 2 of the 3 HYS schools, so i've got plenty of ideas, though not about how much of it is reality and how much is perception, beyond what's objectively knowable. what is at least roughly objectively knowable is that HYS are distinguished most consequentially at the high and low ends of their distributions, both in relation to all other schools, and even among themselves. specifically, the "top" of their classes include more people who arrive at law school closer to the 4.13/180 ideal, and depart closer to the S.Ct. clerk ideal; not necessarily the smae people, partly because of the second distinguishing feature. there's less deadwood at the bottom of the class, less than even a virtually indistinguishible school, like columbia.

partly because the perception of how much all this matters is in such obvious disproportion to how much it actually should matter, it is almost self-executing that people who go to HYS will be unburdened by what i've identified as the impediments to law firm work being satisfactory: all of which can be summarized as a perpetual and illusory prestige chase. bringing it around to an example, i'd say it's pretty close to a categorical imperative that at least the possibility for satisfaction where i work now (and innumerable similarly anonymous places) is massively greater than at stroock or cadwalader or(you get the idea). and eveything i'm saying is based in the propositon that, assuming all my premises, almost without trying any HYS student/graduate will make the job choice that favors internal satisfaction, as opposed to the one made chiefly to make marginally more money (more than negated by various forms of disutility) or be able to say you work at a "vault-100" firm.

that's a laborious set-up for a simple question, the essence of which is: what proportion of HYS students effectively defy the easy availability of making the self-fulfilling job choice that is typically denied to those who go to bad schools, and requires at least an act of dissent from the dominant ideology by those who go to even very good schools? the short answer is not many; not a large proportion. i was impressed by the people i went to school with, by how smart they were academically, and in deploying themselves to their maximum work satisfaction.

whether this means HYS admissions actually selects people with the subtle will to choose in a self-actualizing way; or people who simply exploit the natural advantage of going to HYS; or people who are just lemmings,like every other law student is unclear. i've seen evidence of all three reasons why HYS prople generally make what i'm holding out as the "right choice(s)". particularly interesting, for instance, were the number of people i met with c.165 LSATs who you'd swear had that 178-without-preparation sharpness. on the other hand, it's relatively easy to be indifferent to law firm rankings if you've experienced the astonishing prerogative and silly awe that commonly accompanies having attended harvard, not to mention a law school some people think is clearly better than harvard. i might be that sort; maybe i'd be working at latham right now if i'd gone to columbia, instead. but there are also plenty of people who turn down latham for quinn emanuel just because that's what stanford people do; or cravath for patterson belknap, because that's what yale people do; they are garden variety followers, but fortuitously so. at least there's no one to follow to cadwalader.

one way or the other, the majority of my class -- a considerable majority -- goes the route to what you've called "self-reflexive contentment." maybe not immediately, but eventually. and consider this: how much easier it is for me to tell classmates what i'm doing now when, at the same time, they're telling me they've left cravath for . . . i have no fucking idea. what i do know is that even though there's probably the opportunity to leverage their cravath past to compensate where their work comes up short in the new job, that's not what's going on. instead, they've absorbed the moves, manner and words of the most extraordinary people they worked with at cravath, and they're applying it in an environment where that level of excellence is rarely seen. finally, they've achieved the most pedestrian aspiration: being judged in the present tense, and solely on the basis of their work. cravath doesn;'t come up; H- Y- and S- bombs are no longer dropped.

for me, I can illustrate this with a couple of loose and extended anecdotes. a long time ago, i visited cornell law school out of, i can admit now, the fear i wouldn't get into any of HYS, and with the intention of building the eventual cover story that i had developed an immovable affection for cornell, thus making it a better "fit," and thus also prompting me to commit the ultimate act of large-mindedness by ignoring law school rankings, and "choosing" cornell over harvard. (we hear some version of that one most days here.) but i knew i couldn't fake it entirely, so i asked a standard-issue ambitious asian girl about how many people sought clerkships out of cornell (my proxy at the time for a more "academic," and thus better, law school population). she scorned the mention of clerkships as antithetical to the true mission of any right-thinking cornell student: not just a firm, but an NYC firm. of course there are exceptions, but in our own minds we fortunately don't have to make socially acceptable qualifications in deciding what we like and what we don't. and for me, cornell was a place where there was an intolerably high incidence of students who i imagined interviewing with a roster of firms, all somehow certified as "prestigious," and picking the most highly ranked one. (the exact same method that, when applied to picking a law school, i'm implicitly saying leads not merely to "greater opportunities," but to the path of authenticity and virtue; so you'll not want to over-value anything i say just because i've taken the time to write a ridiculously long post and embraced things thought to be good and sound). anyway, to me HYS represented freedom from that bondage i picked up on at cornell. so when i applied to law school the time i really meant to go and finish, i applied only to HYS.

far more than law school, i see the big law firms as fungible. after law school, the few firms with anything like the HYS sheen simply weren't easily available to be. partly by inference and partly on the basis of what actually happened, i can tell you i either got offer or could have from the following firms: mofo, howard rice, pillsbuty, latham, irell, quinn, kirklan & ellis, skadden, cleary, hale& dorr,akin gump, arnold & porter, etc. -- but NOT keker & vannest, munger, cravath, williams & connally, or even ropes & gray, where i got a unique callback but no offer. at the rest, i knew enough not to try. so i ended up working at 3 firms from the former group. at the one i actually worked at after law school, i sought out work with the more influential partners, who i'd say were virtually indistinguishable from those at the places i didn't have the option of working at. i found that its relatively easy to plagarize the ability of those more intrinsically able (in this instance, smarter) than me. you can't do the same thing in, for example, sports, or many other jobs. in law you can.

then i made the move to an unknown beverly hills firm 1/4 the size of the smallest summer associate class i was a part of. now, therefore, i'm basically hitting AAA pitching, with a good deal of major league experience under my belt, not all of it on the bench, but never as a superstar. in that is perhaps the fatal flaw in all of this for some people. still, there is no question that part of this newfound satisfaction derives from putting myself up against a generally lower level of competition, both within my firm and in relation to opposing counsel. it just isn't that often in adult life that you can exploit the same advantages you did when there was no way you weren't going to get the highest grade on a HS algebra test. not infrequently, though, I now win motions i shuoldn't win -- and I win easily, inevitably -- only because oppsing counsel is way, way dumber than me. it bears saying that people who get 155 on the LSAT also tend not to notice important things, comically misuse words, and top out their logical aptitude with easily eviscerated reasoning. likewise, there will now be times when i have a celebrated idea or or simply know something that would be no better than a middling idea ,or something everyone knew at my old firm. those are the sorts of things you can't take too much stock (or any, really) in, though, or else you've fallen not only back into specious prestige chasing, but a rigged and phony version of it. additionally, e.g., i'm no longer on the receiving end of the scrappy sole practitioner who wants to prove (and usually does) he can beat the guy from the fancy firm,who went to the fancy school. countless times at my old firm i got taken apart in discovery hearings by one of those scrappy plaintiff's lawyers who didn't eat if he didn't get my documents. now, i can work a similar angle myself: pouncing on a lazy latham lawyer, so lazy he didn't even bother to look me up, and see if he should maybe expect something different from the work he'd seen produced my predecessor, who happened to have gone to loyola, and also happened to have written execreble briefs.

in all this, you must see how all the the puerile where-you-went-to-school gamesmanship still has play, less so, but with what tends to be a defensible connection to reality.

anyway, that's a very long answer to a short question. beyond high school, i've gravitated to schools where i come as close as possible to being the dumbest person in my class. that worked out in law school, by the end of which i think i was less dumb, not least for having been around people who tended to execute the surprisingly difficult task of picking the right job.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=154271&forum_id=2#2403013)

Do you think this kind of thing can apply to corporate people or are there no such TTT little pond areas for them to go and pwn?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=154271&forum_id=2#2403099)

i like your style. you always have been a fave poster, but i really dig the panache displayed on this particular thread. very well done.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=154271&forum_id=2#2405996)

EDIT 03/25 @ 3pm

Or maybe not.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=154271&forum_id=2#2402141)

you.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=154271&forum_id=2#2402795)

im just messing around.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=154271&forum_id=2#2402804)

fyi, im taken and he'd beat you up. and i am ugly.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=154271&forum_id=2#2402825)

im pretty ugly irl. probably average or below average.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=154271&forum_id=2#2404990)

Thanks for the interesting reply above.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=154271&forum_id=2#2404197)

i just noticed that someone else, my very favorite LS girl, is now a professor at a pretty good school. there was something very erotic about screwing that much intelligence.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=154271&forum_id=2#2404930)

1. doing interesting, substantive work that 2. has real impact on real people where 3. I'm always on the "right" side of the case and 4. get to learn from a close relationship with a very eminent person 5. who treats me well 6. for 40ish hours a week at 7. a very nice salary with 8. terrific benefits.

In the middle of my first one, I said to myself, "What's broke here, and why am I fixing it?" I mean, where's the down side? So I signed up for another round.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=154271&forum_id=2#2404492)

3. You're always on the "left" side.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=154271&forum_id=2#2404510)

Anyway, when I next go hunting for jobs, I may be emailing you.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=154271&forum_id=2#2405703)

You could probably get a pretty sweet tenure track position at a decent university with your credentials.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=154271&forum_id=2#2405786)

If he won't repost it, I have it saved somewhere and can post it.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=154271&forum_id=2#2406716)

rk has to repost it.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=154271&forum_id=2#2407936)

How did it happen that making the tired claim that this ghetto shithole is UNDERrated became the signature conversation piece for people who desperately want to be thought smart; really, really smart. smart people love "rigor" and Chicago is full of it; it must be, what with its hair-splitting number grades, punishingly low enforced mean, and oppressive course load. Chicago boosterism usually comes in the form of a comparison with the appallingly UNrigorous Stanford or Yale -- gradeless, abundantly pass-fail, unserious; students who do nothing and know nothing. Chicago: graded, competitive, serious... That it's really just a ruptured ego rehab clinic for Harvard rejects is a fact not emphasized. I have seen a homely Chicago girl, deep into her second year, still spontaneously weeping upon Proustian recollections of the stiff NO Harvard sent her, in brisk three-week turnaround time from the point her doomed application was deemed complete. Happy December, chickiepoo. Then the Yale axe fell, as it does. Welcome to the New Year, dipshit. January passed; February crawled by with those joyless acceptances that only accentuated the horror of Plan B: Georgetown, which is a "Law Center," a failed euphemism if ever there was one. Next: woeful Cornell. Oh, what a very bad school. And -- what do we have here?!? -- a Boston University full-ride. Ummmm, no. On second thought in stead of BU I'd prefer the f free roasted dogshit mignon with a pus reduction sauce and a heaping blob of earwax garnish. Thank you no. I am woe. Add to that the fact that the imbecile whoalways posts about how Sean Hannity is a "serious thinker" just got into Harvard. Time for you to start some damage-control posting here, on the PR board, pretending to seriously consider this BU affront. You wave the flag of thrift and test out a quaintly anachronistic abhorrence of debt. Substantively, you add in some tommyrot about how BU's "really strong in ...'international law,' whatever the fuck that is. BU? Yeah, right. But you need something that gives the illusion that Georgetown, if it comes to that, isn't the three years incarcerated in a smegma chamber that it is. So good, so fine you'll drop the cash dollars despite that lovely gift from BU. You're forming a cover story; something to puff the very real and very nauseating prospect of joining 600 other defeated mediocrities at ... fuck, no ... Georgetown. And you thought going to college at Penn was bad. . Still, there are two more to hear from. Two more law schools ...There's that late April Stanford rejection (inconsiderate bastards) which at least affords you ample time to manufacture the next layer in the cover story: e.g., a strict policy against California, a suburban aversion, a preference for bigness, all of which eliminate Stanford from the sweepstakes. Be sure, too, to ridicule their tepid 25-75 LSAT %ile, too. Kill it dead, if you must. Maybe you thrust out of your frozen horror by sending off one of those strategic "withdrawal" letters, the way all those clowns do when Harvard puts them on hold ... ".you cant't fire me ... i quit! " Adios, Stanford. Suck my cunt, you no-SCOTUS-clerking/dike-dean-TTT. ... die, die, you gravy-sucking pig. .... and now, then, there is just one. Chicago. The Law School. Chicago does do that pathetic yield-maximizing stall, so February passes, March crawls. They haven't the nuts to try the ricockulous move Stanford does. So they write. Ever rigorous, The Law School requests the pleasure of your company. Not so fast . No decision has been made. They want to inspect you in person. The "evaluative interview. Looking for people skills. And evident thirst for knowledge. The life of the law is the law itself. It seems you've fucked up; quite possible3 when the went "behind the numbers." Maybe those two essay paragraphs about why the 171, exactly where you topped out in Kaplan, is a truer measure than the 164. maybe it was two paragraphs too many. You weren't an auto-admit. So off to the "evaluative interview," and you give them not much to evaluate. You stay on message, though: owing to its RIGOR, Chicage is now, and ever was, your FIRST CHOICE. Tell your audience what it wants to hear. Then they decide, engaging the only evaluation that matters in this gig. Looks like they can break even with your sorry ass. Median-wise, your 171 nullifies the 159 URM from Howard they took yesterday. They'll swallow your 3.46; sometimes that's the price of a yield-lock, and you're that. (No one's swallowing the Howard guy, if you catch my racy double entendre.) These admissions guys talk, as you suspected, and you wisely decide against telling them it had come down to Chicago or Harvard for you; first versus second choice; no choice at all. Never get caught lying. Bad idea, even worse than telling that stupid girl from Emory you were "a Kennedy." These things get found out. Like they say, no sense lying about your cock size. Turns out you didn't need to fake a bidding war. The usual stampede of all Chicago's best admitees are going to Y and H and S without so much as the courtesy of telling C to go pound sand. Why tell them what they already know? They need to fill place #143 of their famously teeny-weenie class. The assumed occupant got unheld at Harvard this morning; never so relieved, he had the audacity to ask Chicago for his deposit back. They don't need these headaches. You're in. They write, very pleased to offer admission; then a recital of just how "keen" the competition was for the few precious "seats" in the class of 2006; and, finally, a paragraph celebrating the legal profession with a toploftiness and richly felt purpose so precisely at variance with reality that you are unsettled by the suspicion that you might be the target of a satire so subtly corrosive that you will never connect it with the despair that will progress, exponentially; beginning as a persistent annoyance progressing into a pervasive physical and mental crapulence and ending in the crippling burden as lumber and writhe and tumble toward the epiphany. What epiphany is that? That this "career" of yours --BIGLAW! -- has somewhat less to recommend it than residence in the "shoe" at Pelican Bay. For now, though, the seed of tragic hopelessness finds expression in the "Law Discussion Area." You post -- IN AT CHICAGO -- and, without overtly lying, you manufacture the entirely erroneous impression that you "chose" Chicago, being also the originator of the CHICAGO v. HARVARD and YALE v. CHICAGO threads, under various of your insipid monikers, all selected from either Pulp Fiction or Friends. Be careful not to ass fuck your credibility, though. The purported Yale turn-down is a tough one to pull off. The "New Haven's-an-armpit" trope just doesn't pass the ha-ha test. It's too puny a reason to toss away a lifetime of being supposed a genius ... fuck it: always good to give your fabrications a little populist tint, not to mention a dollop of truth. Join the commiseration thread of Yale rejects; pretend to be sad for that Nuisance turd; be one of the masses for once. Getting rejected isn't the same thing as not getting in, You merely did not get in. You claim to have been wait-listed; and, with admirable maturity, you hold out no hope. Remember, too, this lie must be built on several fronts. Lard up the Harvard thread with grave concern about big classes, low morale, faculty acrimony, and speculation about a precipitous US News ranking drop. Throughout April, you go political, fulminating about Tribe and Dershowitz and how Duncan Kennedy drives a far-too-expensive car. to be a genuine socialist. Chicago's "conservative climate" is just a better fit for you; marginal cost curves figure in your every analytical moment; you read Posner opinions on the crapper; Coase is as important as Socrates. There is that little stinging glitch, though. Somehow Stanford neglected to process that request to quash your application, which is not favorably acted upon and this is memoriaized in a letter that suggests the Stanford Admissions Office ignores their LaserWriter Pro's TONER LOW warning. On May 7th they regret to inform and wish you well at any of the scores of other law schools that, they assure you "offer excellent programs of legal instruction." (Which, you have no doubt, they do. What they don't offer, is really the only important thing Stanford does offer: the opportunity to sit for three years with your thumb up your ass, comatose, and still get the job you'll have to bust nuts to get coming from whichever craphole you end up at.) It's sealed. An ugly, styleless maroon CHICAGO LAW, Champion sweatshirt has arrived, per your online order. You wear it, eliciting congratulations from the babe you want to rail. She's so happy for you, and you're so wrapped up in the fantasy of creaming on her tits you nearly miss perky aside that her boyfriend remains in the throes of elation from his admission to Yale, back in January. Throughout the summer, you bookmark links that embody the wisdom US News lacks. Your are heading off, soon, to your own first choice, which also places first in a ranking produced by the rigorous methodology conceived by a statistician from the University of Maryland Baltimore County. That Harvard tied for #14 undermines your confidence in the ranking diminishes the likelihood it will supplant US News' preeminence. So you go. Your Hyde Park apartment is actually rather nice. Your housemate went to Harvard College. One night, instead of jacking off before sleep, you register as an active component of your self-conception the notion that, transitively, your housemate's undergraduate credential nullifies the Harvard rejection that left you lusterless and unlaid at your senior prom, -- and has persisted as a gnawing ache, going on five years. You are now on equal footing with a Harvard graduate. Should your law school prowess exceed his -- say a 75 in Torts to his 74 -- you will once and for all flick away the scab of that Harvard wound. First cut is the deepest. As it turns out, your housemate is an engaging, witty fellow. He's porking the big bosomed lady with the Dutch accent. Wow! He offers to you, his new chum, the story of his own execution -- by lethal injection -- as expected, he painlessly relates, by the HLS admission staff. You pretend to explore what might have caused things to go awry, flatulating the usual fatuousness about Harvard being excessively "numbers driven," the "arbitrariness" of it all, dangling the threat of going on at some length, when he offers up the only information you genuinely care to know about him: : 178/3.34 ..Of course some one will inevitably have the 6th percentile college GPA in every HLS class; probably not a white guy from Greenwich, though. Friendship is built through reciprocity. So you tell your own story. You attempt to weave compassion into the telling of your story, being careful not to appear boastful about not just possessing, but discarding something he does not possess. HLS. Dreamy, So, your story: the grueling back-and-forth ... one day it's Chicago, the next Harvard; the hardest decision you've ever made; that feeling of immense responsibility to yourself; discovering and summoning the emotional maturity to pierce the specious veil that is prestige. With the bearing of a battle weary soldier you tell what it is to do something rarely done -- circumnavigate the Earth, dunk a basketball on a regulation hoop, turn down Harvard Law School . You picked Chicago. You chose, you adorable little existentialist. You are not exposed, chiefly because this a shared lie, Community glue. (Postscript: Throughout the 1Lyear you and your housemate discover much commonality, He, too, prefers the Stones to the Beatles. You both smoke pot. neither is circumcised. You've each fucked 5 girls; gotten head from several others. Each of you applies to transfer. He gets into HLS. He turns down Harvard Law School. Of course no two people are exactly alike. Your desire to transfer wanes around the time Stanford and Yale's decisions on your transfer applications reach you by mail. You begin the CHIGAGO 1L TAKING QUESTIONS thread. One of your alter ego monikers asks simply: how do you like Chicago. You love it. You wouldn't go anywhere else and, you note, there were other places you could have gone. Same for your housemate. He transfers to Yale.)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=154271&forum_id=2#2408218)

Simply amazing.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=154271&forum_id=2#2408413)

Well done, sir.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=154271&forum_id=2#2409227)

it's not that far off from reality either.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=154271&forum_id=2#3515272)

I've got to get in on that secret-signal thing for interviews.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=154271&forum_id=2#2409242)