I don’t know anything about ‘lawyer fuckery’ but I do appreciate this take. Out of curiosity, what in particular are some of the things that come off as ‘low end fuckery’?
As the economy contracts, so does the legal market, just with a small delay. So as things really hit the skids around 2008, the legal market hit a death spiral around 2009. And while things ticked up a bit, the legal market never fully recovered. I don't think it ever will.
A big part of this is the drift away from billable hours. Enormous firms thrived for decades billing their top clients for as many hours as possible. Young associates served as worker bees, making a generous salary but required to clock tons of time for the client to stay on track. This system meant law school grads could expect to enter a lucrative job after graduation, which, while demanding, put them on pace to pay off their six-figure debts.
The recession changed things. Large firms were wary of taking on young associates for several reasons. First, they worried whether they could afford to keep the bills paid if their billable hours didn't spike back up. Second, many senior attorneys who would've moved on stuck around because of the retirement money they lost in the recession. Third, the large companies who the firms were billing started seeing things differently. They increasingly relied on in-house counsel, and in situations where they needed outside help, were less enthused about billable hours. Why not negotiate a price for the service up front instead of letting a firm run the meter? Finally, technology has changed the value of the work. Many things you could bill for in the past are now easy to accomplish with command+F, or can be done for pennies on the dollar in India.
Things quickly got ugly in the law schools. Firms recruited less so the competition for spots escalated. But the law schools, who wooed professors from firms and high profile government jobs, needed cash to keep the bills paid. So while there were less and less legal jobs, the size of law school classes stayed the same, or grew.
There are creepy people in every profession. But many people go to law school because they have a liberal arts BA and no idea what to do with themselves. And some of them have no interest in the work, but think they'll get rich. So, picture it: a generation of greedy, grasping people, who thought they'd make big racks, wandering into a bad market with upwards of $250,000 in debt. Desperation is sky-high.
We all grew up in a world where law meant you were set for life, and things have changed. For most people, it's a middle class job. So, amid this grim picture, a lawyer suing Jamie Thomas for taking his money and never delivering the collectible (
) skateboards he paid for is very tame.
Thank you for watching my TED Talk.
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