When you go to a music store (for those of us who still buy compact discs), do you shop by date? Walk up to the “New Music” section and purchase, say, the new Neil Young disc, a recent version of Wagner’s Ring Trilogy, a Britney Spears’ latest, the newest speed metal offerings and a just-reissued boxed set of gospel standards all at once? Would you never buy a Beatles or Stones disc unless it was one of those remastered versions you found on the “Just Released” shelves?

Of course not. You don’t shop art as you’d buy milk or meats. Or at least you shouldn’t – if you’re sane. So why do so many people do it online?

Sixty percent of the Net being filled with “expert” advice on how to “Master Online Marketing and get paid six figures!” or “Maximize your social media for optimal business networking!” I run across a lot of articles discussing how to write a “successful” website. The main thrust’s always the same: “Post as much as you can. Post new material all the time!” “Make it pithy and constantly update!” People have died of heart attacks trying to maintain ridiculous posting schedules, working around the clock without sleep. And for what? To satisfy an asinine paradigm – a terrible mass production business model borrowed from the old line media.

Whether something’s “new” or “breaking” is a concern for newspaper writers seeking scoops. There’s no reason on Earth a website creating general entertainment bits or comedy should feel any obligation to flood its pages with constant new material. If what’s written in the site is written well, and timeless, the site should work like a book. The reader can click in, scan the volumes of text and read what he or she likes. The only reason website content producers feel the need to crank out “New! New! New!” shit every day is because they’ve decided, for reasons beyond me, to compete with the 90% of bloggers who do nothing but grab hot stories, comment on them and link other comments about it from people in their network of friends. That’s not an audience – that’s an echo chamber. And lumping that stuff in with actual writer-created material is a horrible confusion of content with amateur editorializing.

Consider Cracked, a comedy website I wrote a piece for a while back. The stories on Cracked written in 2007 are every bit as funny as what was written yesterday. Yet I’m willing to bet most people stumbling across the site today will only read the most recent articles, what’s still linked on the front page. And rather than digging through the archives they’d complain or go elsewhere if new material wasn’t posted on the face page every day. As if comedy has a sell-by date – that a list of the World’s Most Disturbing Sex Toys would have been hopelessly unfunny last March or this coming September but is pitch perfect hysterical and uncannily prescient in May.

What would happen if everybody posting material online suddenly stopped tomorrow? Suppose all the studios quit making movies, musicians stopped putting out songs and publishers stopped printing books? Would there be nothing left for us to read, listen to or watch? Obviously not. The back catalog of art on the planet’s deeper than the Marianas Trench. It stretches thousands of years behind us and if you started absorbing it all today, relentlessly, without sleep, and you lived to be 100, you’d still only ingest a small fraction of what’s available. And yet here we are – almost all of society fixated soley on what came out this week, if not yesterday, this morning or within the last hour.*

There’s an idiocy behind this immediate attraction to the immediate, and it’s the same idiocy that causes us to only shop through the new releases at Blockbuster, as if a movie that came out three years ago has somehow rotted into obsolescence in the intervening thirty six months. Art doesn’t age. Sure, it gets dated a bit in terms of cultural references and scenery, but a good book, movie or article today would have been a good book, movie or article last year or thirty years ago, and it’ll be good next year or thirty years from now. And there’s no reason the Internet shouldn’t work exactly the same way.

So what’s the cure? I think a simple shift in terminology. That we stop calling sites like the ones here at Rudius, or those like Cracked or Bitter Lawyer “blogs.”** Start calling them what they are – “websites.” And make that the default term for every site that creates its own content. Leave “blog” to the link-dump sites, the Perez Hilton and Gawker wannabes and people posting “Have you seen THIS in the news? This is what I think about it! And check out these photos my new exotic fish!” exclamations. (“I call him Panther, ‘cuz of the stripes!”) Approach the content producing sites like books. When we find one we like, maybe stop, slow down, read the back catalog. Take it as a collection of essays, a running memoir or the written equivalent of stand-up comedy.

See, there’s a load of killer material online. But if we force producers of original content to crank stuff out at a furious pace to compete with the chatter of every neophyte gossip columnist with a WordPress page, the quality goes down the shitter. And the more material we consume in “executive summary” bits, the less our attention span, and the weaker our powers of critical and analytical thinking.*** “New” and “good” aren’t automatically synonymous, and if we let the Internet turn into a Cult of the Immediate, which is where Web 2.0′s emphasis on minimalist yawps over detailed or contextualized expression is taking us, we’ll get the same thing we have at Barnes & Noble – thousands of choices of lackluster books on the same limited, trendy topics clogging and crowding out thoughtful material. We’ll have allowed the old media strategy of foisting mass amounts of questionable new product on consumers to keep them buying incessantly to infect the mew media landscape. And give ourselves an even more staggering case of Attention Deficit Disorder.

Most of our lives are spent grappling with, fearing and resenting deadlines. Why limit the material we read for pleasure with artificial ‘freshness’ criteria? There are pages behind the face pages of websites, and all of the material’s free. Why pinball around cyberspace, conditioned in the crassest Pavlovian sense to only consider what’s “NEW”? Whatever we think we’re missing, this is the Internet… If there’s a monkey typing out the next War and Peace on a Blogspot account somewhere, it’ll still be around tomorrow, next week and forever after that.
______________________________
* It’s as if people don’t realize “New!” is often just a cheap, easy way of differentiating the common thing they’re being offered from the thousands of other things already out there exactly like it. Beyond discussion of emerging technologies and breaking news stories, is anyone saying anything hasn’t been said somewhere else before?
** Though Bunny’s site may have “blog” in the title, it’s anything but one.
*** Chief among the myriad bad management policies leading to the collapse of so many banks and corporations is the obnoxious, imperial belief of many managers that all they need to understand any issue, however complex, is a bullet-pointed “Executive Summary” of its elements. Look at the history of flame-outs like Stanley O’Neal at Merrill Lynch and James Cayne of Bear Stearns and you’ll see people hopelessly unaware of the nature of the businesses their companies were engaged in at the street level. Any fool buying a house in the last five years could see that underwriting standards had all but vanished. Except, of course, the fools at the helm of many banks reading executive summaries from lieutenants telling them everything was fine.

Author’s Note: I said I’d start offering shorter posts as described in the piece I put up Monday. I forgot, however, about this little gem I meant to put up a few weeks ago.
A couple of months ago, in the context of a quasi-investigative look at “Pick Up Artist” culture, I wrote a review of The Complete Asshole’s Guide to Handling Chicks. I picked it as my favorite book in the genre because it wasn’t actually a pick-up guide at all. It was funny satire of pick-up guides, laughing at a subject that deserved to be laughed at. I also found it hysterical that loads of readers bought a book with that title thinking it was an actual, earnest pick-up guide. It seemed ridiculous anyone could reach that assumption. Amazingly, disturbingly, many did. From hardcore PUA adherents upset at the book’s lack of serious strategy tips to fulminating feminists foaming-at-the-mouth in response to the book’s obvious conceit, it was clear: This was a deeply misunderstood text.
At the time, I thought about riffing on the subject of satire and allegedly “offensive” humor. Why some people get satire and some people don’t, or don’t want to, and what the difference is between the camps. Why some people can laugh at anything, while others have such hard-ons for their personal sacred cows. And what all of these biases say about their private neuroses.
My theory was that nasty satire can be disconcerting for certain audiences. Reality the’s punchline, the gag never ends, nothing’s held above reproach, and there’s no obvious Fourth Wall between what’s joking and what’s serious. It makes a person who likes to keep high boundaries between the funny and the serious work for the payoff. And in a meta sense, it says, “Everything’s a joke” (or at least everything about the subject at hand). I think that touches on truths about the absurdity of our lives a little too closely for some. They get the payoff and don’t like it very much.
But that’s a hell of a concept to flesh-out on a website’s brutal deadlines, and I wound up lashing a pile of pedantic gibberish onto the page as I tried. Kind of like the pedantic gibberish in that last paragraph.
Thankfully, I got this email a few days later. It’s from Dan Indante, one of the authors of The Complete Assholes’ Guide, and he wrote what I couldn’t, along with many other amusing things that ought to be said. This is untouched, used by permission and yes, we’re 99% certain it’s from the real author.

(more…)

Read: Part I, Part II, and Part III.
Yeah, yeah… I’ve held you here long enough. Time to leave, get on with the graduation pictures, pack up the car and bolt. But don’t be in such a hurry. While I’m rambling here, take some photos of the buildings, the trees. Feels like you can’t get away fast enough right now, but trust me – you’re going to miss this place in a couple months.
18. There’s no virtue in sacrifice.
That’s just something we tell people to make them feel better about not being able to have the things they think they want, another of the endless rationalizing tautologies we use to turn our lack of something into a benefit. There’s no morality in the concept of consumption. The only rule is this: If you can afford it, or handle it, and you want to have it, go ahead and buy it, eat it… fuck it. Just be aware, the law of diminishing returns kicks in awful quickly. Quantity’s never going to be quality, and on the buying end of the spectrum, the more you get addicted to the kick of smaller repeat acquisitions, the less cash you’re going to have to buy the big ticket items actually worth owning. If you always wanted a second home at the beach, putting plasma screen televisions in your bathrooms isn’t going to scratch that itch. Twenty day trips to the Jersey Shore don’t equal two weeks in Bali. All those substitute impulse purchases do is siphon away the money you might have been able to stockpile to get what you really want. So yes, though there may not be any virtue in sacrifice, that doesn’t mean there isn’t wisdom in it.
19. Early in your career, a lot of you will be prisoners of a false meritocracy. No use in getting mad about it. All you can do is work through it.
The kids with degrees from the highest ranked universities are always going to get the best jobs coming right out of school. This is going to anger a lot of you who, due to factors beyond your control, like a lack of money for the astronomical cost of private college tuition, won’t be able to compete right out of the chute. Get over it. None of that’s going to change, and as much as you feel uniquely slighted, it’s nothing personal. Business doesn’t have the time to vet every warm body sending in a resume. Like any rational consumer, it defaults to brand reputation, and Brown beats Ball State every day of the week. That and a fancy name will always provide insurance for the people doing the hiring. The Human Resources monkey playing gatekeeper at Big Company, Inc. has a singular goal – keeping her $85k desk-warming gig to retirement. When a candidate from a highly ranked school turns out to be an idiot, she’s got a built-in excuse – “But he went to Amherst!” If you didn’t, the best you can do is claw your way up the ladder and, to borrow from Bill Murray’s speech in Rushmore, “take dead aim” on the kids sliding by on credentials. We’re in a merciless new economy. Value’s paramount, and the days of pedigree trumping production, and protecting poor earners, are fading. However gag-inducing the exercise might be, open your mouth, self promote. Be a noticeable asset, ready to grab the slot above you as the paper tigers get axed. And they will.

(more…)

Read: Part I, Part II.
Look, dude, you can scream “Whipping Post!” at me all day long, but this is a commencement spee – - No, I’m not doing “Paint it Black” either. Security?
Okay, where are we? Right. Getting near the end, the “penultimate” part. …Where the fuck’s my glass?
12. Beware of these words: “New Paradigm.”
The minute you hear them, if you work or hold stock in the area of the economy they’re being used to describe, start looking for a new line of work, and liquidate your holdings. There’s no clearer harbinger of doom than that twenty eight year old wunderkind CEO touting how his industry’s “evolved beyond” the grasp of the pitfalls that felled similarly exploding sectors in the past. History doesn’t predict the future, but gravity rules all. From its literal application to the planes in the sky to its quasi-metaphorical impact on every business that has ever existed, There Is No Perpetual Climb. What rises peaks and collapses. The trick, of course, is winning the game of musical chairs – riding a thing to the top and parachuting before it all goes to shit. People will talk up projections, and most that’s dressed up guesswork, or intentionally circulated rumors. There’s only one sure truth. At the pinnacle of what’s about to cave, you’ll always hear the following: “This time it’s different.” And that’s when you’ll know it’s not.
13. Sophistry’s the new logic.
You’ll meet a lot of folks at work who like to argue, and you might still harbor the notion that through a debate, people can learn from their opponents’ views, have their own assumptions and impressions challenged, broadened or perhaps even changed entirely. Disabuse yourself of that delusion. Today, from the infotainment pimps on TV and the Internet to the creep in the break room who likes to argue politics, everybody’s an advocate, and advocates don’t “debate.” Advocates play to win, and language is a limited, simple medium. As the popularity of AM talk radio proves, any idiot with fifth grade English skills has a sufficient stable of rhetorical tropes, vague synonyms and dodgy phrases with which to duck, shift, weave, reverse, modify, revise or reconfigure the structure or substance of an argument enough to always appear the victor. As annoying as these types will be, and as much as you’ll want to beat them on the merits, just walk away. Shake your head, smile and thank God you’re getting laid enough not to care.

14. If the business doesn’t make you money while you’re sleeping, it’s not a business worth joining.
You want to know why doctors, lawyers, dentists and accountants drink so much? Because they’re their only revenue stream. When their hands aren’t moving, engaging in variations on the same five or ten tasks they’re licensed to perform, they’re not making money. And what do they have to sell when they’re done? Goodwill? If your business doesn’t produce income while you’re away from it – if you can’t retire from the thing and draw cash out of it based on your equity after you’ve tired of working in it – it’s not a business. It’s a profession. And a profession’s a way of life. And nobody, unless he’s stark raving, card carrying, four star certifiably goddamned insane wants to make the filing of taxes, prosecution of lawsuits or running of efficiency models his fucking way of life. Ownership has its privileges – chiefly, most importantly, avoidance of indentured servitude. In most cases, no hope of equity = no hope at all. If that’s your condition, you’re probably going have to find a Plan B. Start thinking early.

(more…)

Read Part I.
Alright, where were we? Right… more ways to make the corn-holing you’re about to receive in the real world a little less shocking.

6. Nobody likes a moderate.
Heard any good talk radio disc jockeys fuming about how both sides of an issue have good points? Pundits on television railing against the unreasonableness of the lunatics at the extremes of a debate, screaming about how we need to compromise? Fuck no, you haven’t. And you never will. People don’t want to bend; they’d rather fight to the death. And more than any of that, they like to hear their own voices, and a lot of them want to lead you – get you behind their movement or ideology, get the high that comes with power. They’re suspicious of anything moderate. It questions their essential fiber, threatens their revenue streams. You know the people I mean, the ones who talk in terms of “evil” and “sacred,” with their “heavens” and “hells,” the “infallibility of the market,” or the “crisis of wealth disparity.” The crusaders who like to brand skeptics “moral relativists.”
Now, I’d like to tell you to hold to your rational instincts, always see both sides of an issue and refuse to pick a side out of laziness or opportunism. But that isn’t how the world works. Everyone claims to be a live-and-let-live kind of person, but deep down inside, most of us are closet egomaniacs. We’re certain we’re right about everything, and we want everyone to believe what we do. Most people like to do business with people they think they understand, and if you want to make money, you’re going to need these types to think they know your “code.” The fastest way to do that is to join something – pick a side and pledge allegiance, at least superficially. All that angry young man crap about never selling out your beliefs? That’s fine and dandy if you have a trust fund. If not, always remember – whatever group you join, make sure they have open bars at the meetings. You’d be amazed how well a triple Stoli kills the urge to cough “bullshit” through your hand during the speeches.
7. Break everything into pieces, and only handle one at a time.
Most of what passes for intelligence in this world isn’t intelligence at all. It’s compartmentalization, the process of making things small. Perception’s reality in the average organization, and a man who’s rarely or never in error is always perceived to be smart. If you think in big pictures, it’s easy to make mistakes – you’re dealing with a lot of moving parts. But if you break down every issue you’re debating into little pieces, each of which you can opine on discretely with no risk of being wrong, you’ll look like a man with brains. Ever wonder why the people with the fanciest degrees speak simply and deal with small steps in a project rather than tackling it all once or discussing it conceptually? They got those fancy degrees because they were expert students, and expert students learn early – probably from essay exams – that you can be dumb as a brick on the big picture and practical application of knowledge but still get an “A-” if you can analyze a dozen or so finite pieces of an issue individually in a simple, confident fashion. Some would say this is a variation on the old advice, “K.I.S.S.” Right acronym, but they’re one word off. If you don’t have the balls for decisions, and most of us don’t, the rule is “Keep It Small, Stupid.” Win the little battles on the narrow fields you define and leave the serious thinking for the seriously intelligent people.
8. Don’t expect to create much or do anything of any real consequence with your career.
The business of America isn’t business, it’s process. Save drugs for fictitious diseases, books about teenage vampire cults and fantastic credit vehicles, we don’t really build or create much of anything in this country anymore.* On one hand, we find ways to extend what ought to be the simplest of transactions into an endless stream of procedures, allowing armies of middle-minded middlebrow middlemen to eke out mid-level salaries doing middling tasks in a chain of artificially necessitated steps no effective mind could ever hope to justify. On the other, we craft “deals,” rollovers, trades, swaps, buyouts, mergers, refinancings and restructurings out of which we wring “fee income,” future tax credits and one time profit bumps by larding up companies with debt. I’ve no issue with any of this, of course. Hell, I generated most of the down payment on my house suing and defending people for violating the fine print of provisions, covenants, doctrines, assignments, addendums, indentures, pledges and clauses in this cash-out-of-thin-air system. But if you asked me what I did, what was my career achievement, what on earth would I say? Boxes of time sheets? How would I even describe what I’d done? “Bickered about verbs and nouns in form documents? Glad-handed clients, argued technical garbage in front of bored judges and dutifully collected checks?” The simple reality is, there are seven billion people on the planet, and there’s only enough meaningful work for about a hundred million of us. The rest of the population works at Nerf jobs in Whiffle professions, providing McServices nobody will remember next week, let alone twenty, fifty or a hundred years from now. Legacy’s the ultimate luxury, a fixation for the very lucky few. The best the remaining 99.999% of us can do is put on our finest Academy Award performances and milk the Matrix for the maximum cash we can suck from it.

(more…)

So you’re graduating from college, or maybe grad school. Perhaps you were even dumb enough to have gone to law school. And somewhere in the next three or four weeks, they’re going to put you in a cheap black robe, stick a flat, pointy hat on your skull and seat you in alphabetical order with a bunch of your peers, to listen to sage advice. Some captain of industry, shoestring Kennedy or fading middle-aged celebrity’s going to tell you where you’re headed, what you’ll see… what you ought to do. He’ll throw around words like “dare” and “strive,” and tell you to chase your passions. He’ll tell you life’s a “journey,” liken it to a trek up a mountain, a sea voyage or some historic Roman battle. You’ll sit there through a blinding hangover, stanching an urge to vomit, tuning out most of the words. You’ve heard it all before, the customary overtures and slogans, the charges to go out and “make a difference.” Yeah, yeah, yeah. Leave the world better than I found it. Check. Never lose a sense of wonder at the majesty of humanity. Indeed… And you’ll probably ask yourself, Why all the saccharine bullshit? Why not give me some real fucking advice?
I’m with you, kid. I thought exactly the same thing. The only interesting comment my university commencement speaker offered was, “Always be prepared to change professions. Try everything. Life’s short.” I never forgot that instruction; probably never will. Maybe that was a good thing, maybe not. But in the spirit of offering some similarly memorable advice, something that actually addresses the world you’re going to encounter, the people you’ll have to manipulate for the rest of your career, here’s the commencement address I’d give if I had the podium at your school. The one you’ll never, ever hear.
“Don’t Be the Punchline”
Good morning. I’d like to start by noting, you’re all fucked. The Market’s going to 6000 this summer, unemployment is headed to twenty percent and I think there’s a good chance we’re going to see widespread rioting in the streets before this thing is over. Mutant armies irradiated with dirty bomb fallout, dogs and cats living together… everything but the Rapture. My advice is buy a gun. Something automatic. And get some big dogs. You’ll need them to guard the compound. The good news is you won’t have to pay back those student loans. The bad news is you’ll have to turn tricks for Spam, candy corn and toilet paper, our new forms of currency. I know, I know… How bleak. But you can always look on the bright side. Speaking in the Confucian sense, you’re as wealthy as one can be. These are indeed interesting years. Here’s to surviving them.
Okay. Now that I have your attention, let’s get serious. I’m going to break this down to a series of discrete points, the only conceivable arrangement in which I could hope to impart advice on as general a subject as “How you ought to live your life.” Here we go:

(more…)

I keep getting emails from people asking whether they should go to law school given the lack of jobs in what appears to be a long term economic correction.¹ Apparently, despite what I’ve written about here and in the book – my cosmically Wrong experiences in the profession – I’m still considered a valid source of advice on the career.

My simple, general answer for prospective law students? Pretty much the same advice you’ll get from everybody who’s been in the field: Unless you know what being a lawyer involves – and I mean really understand how stressful, yet simultaneously dull it often is, and what it’s like to work around the “unique” personalities, or lack thereof, drawn to the field – and still want to make that your life, do not go into law.²

But that’s just an issue of “fit,”a concern for years gone by, when the risk in the investment was much lower. Now, in this economy, the economic concerns are far more important. You have to ask yourself, when you get out of school in three years, regardless of the depth of your commitment, will the law be there for you? As business dries up across the board and the companies “Law, Inc.” depends on for its survival pull back on the fees they’ll pay, will the over-leveraged firms you’re hoping to work for have gone the way of so many hedge funds and banks imploding in this storm?³ Will the pay freezes turn to cuts? Are the kids sitting in Torts and Con Law right now victims of the worst case of bad timing in the legal profession’s history? Paying the highest speculative price for an asset just before the market for the thing crashed straight through the floor?

These aren’t hysterical questions. The model of Law, Inc. – the mid to large sized regional, national and international firms topped with a minority of exceptionally paid partners overseeing legions of well paid associates, with lockstep salary increases funded by consistent rate increases foisted onto clients – is dependent on a persistently expanding economy. Hell, the whole structure of these firms, their shift from traditional professional partnerships to corporate platforms, grew out of and was created to capitalize on the last quarter century of sustained, seemingly limitless growth, from the market boom in the eighties through the tech bubble, through the recent mania fed by housing values.

And that’s all over now.

As the stranglehold of this correction tightens and the businesses that feed Law, Inc. continue to collapse, contract and cut costs, prospective law students need to consider some serious questions about the future of the legal industry before they spend money on the degree.

1. Will there still be $145-160k starting salaries?
Yes. But probably not for you (and not just because you’re the sort of slacker who enjoys reading this site). There will always be a handful of firms lavishing unique associates – people at the top of their classes from top ten law schools – with enormous starting packages. But that was a thin slice of the market when things were good, and it grows more and more selective every day this malaise continues. Unless you have the good fortune of meeting exactly the criteria mentioned (both a high class rank and graduation from a top school), you should not assume your salary will even approach those numbers.⁴

2. Will a decent candidate still be able to at least get a six figure starting salary?
Technically. In a markets like New York, San Francisco, Washington and Los Angeles, yes. Cost of living requires firms in those cities to offer six figure starting salaries. In cities like Philadelphia, Baltimore, Miami and Cleveland, salaries will roll back a bit more aggressively. I think some firms will try to crack the six figure barrier, but they’ll have problems. It’s a psychologically significant threshold, and the fear of brand damage resulting from the perception a firm is hiring lower grade associates will probably force most of them to hold the line at $100,000. There will, however, be exceptional compression at those firms, with minimal yearly raises.⁵ And I say a decent candidate will “technically” be able to find that starting salary because, while those positions will still exist, there won’t be near as many of them available as there were in years past and the competition will be fierce.

3. Will the “lockstep” pay structure that contributed to the mass salary increases of the past remain industry standard at larger firms?
This will cut in three directions, I think. Some uniquely resilient firms will retain the lockstep structure, wherein every associate in a given class year receives the same base salary and range of bonus. Below those firms, a second tier of firms will claim to hold a lockstep structure while secretly employing a more subjective pay system (this has actually been going on for some time already). Others will openly adopt a competitive system rewarding people on an individual basis. The exceptionally skilled and those able to bring in business will be groomed and rewarded early, while “service” lawyers will be paid as little as the firm can negotiate or the market will tolerate and be shunted toward support roles more quickly than they were in the past.

4. Will the legal market come back?
Yes. It will. But it won’t look like it did before. Corporations will not forget the lessons they have learned during this downturn, and one of those will be just how much leverage they have over their lawyers. The flat fee structures being negotiated, radical discounts on invoices being given by firms in exchange for desperately needed work and discovery by corporate clients that they can do in-house at a fraction of the cost much of the work outside counsel performs at a steep hourly rate, often with mixed results, does not point to a rosy future for firms. The Information Age has been exceptionally unkind to the practice of law, as a lot of the mystique behind what a lawyer does has been washed away and the work shown to be in many cases fairly rote toil billed at an astonishing premium. Given this confluence of fee-depressing factors, I’d say, on average, lawyers will see their income flatten or decrease by 10% to 20%, and the value of their services downgraded by about 15% to 30% over the next decade – a decrease akin to, though not quite as sharp as, the drop in doctors’ compensation over the past fifteen years.

5. Are any firms safe?
Yes. Small firms with low overhead and labor costs are positioned a lot like their local counterparts in the banking industry. While the larger outfits took on more risk and are consequently struggling, the small shops tend to service a loyal clientele with whom they have long term relationships. Small business contraction can hurt them here and there, but generally, these outfits will survive.⁶ As will boutiques in recession proof areas like intellectual property and, of course, bankruptcy.

On the other side of the market, though many people seem to predict this economy will hurt the biggest firms most, I think it will ultimately help them. Sure, they’ll post some nasty layoff numbers at the outset, but that’s mostly a function of their size rather than any unique vulnerability. And as our domestic economy remains cool, the truly massive international firms will be the only ones providing a one-stop-shopping platform to corporate clients looking for profits from foreign markets or to outsource operations abroad.⁷ I think where these huge firms had a majority of the high end Fortune 100 business before, going forward they’re going to gobble up almost all of that market.

The precariously-positioned firms in the coming years will not be the thousand lawyer monsters with offices from St. Petersburg to Riyadh to Hyderabad, or the generalists servicing the immediately local economy. The firms most likely to implode, or be forced to level draconian pay cuts and all but devolve into something similar to large “insurance defense” shops are the regional firms.⁸ The two to four hundred person outfits with five or six floors of high priced office space and a pile of satellite offices spread across one or two nearby metropolitan areas are going to run into problems. They don’t have the money or diversified platform to seriously compete with the firms in the global market and will be forced to fight over a shrinking pool of regional business. I think we’re going to see a half dozen or so more regional firms implode before this downturn is over.⁹

So to get back to the initial inquiry, is law school right for you? Well, I think that’s the wrong question for the moment. You don’t have the luxury of deciding based on whether the career will make you happy anymore. The right questions are, “Can you afford to go to law school? Does the career make any economic sense?”

Despite the warning I offered at the beginning of this piece – the one about only going into law if you really, truly know you’ll love it… the one thousands of lawyers give to prospective law students every year – most people go into the field solely for the money, thinking it’s the quickest or only way for them to lock down a fat salary. And as I said, yes, if you get into Harvard or have a full scholarship that still holds true. But if you don’t, and you’re going to be one of the thousands of people graduating from Just Another Law School, the previously limited justification for spending $100,000 on the degree has all but evaporated.¹⁰

The only way you’ll ever be able to repay that money and have a decent standard of living is by making six figures straight out of school working for Law, Inc. The problem is, Law, Inc.’s business model just imploded, and unless something radical – miles outside the universe of likely probabilities – occurs, it’s not coming back in one, two, three or even ten years. This isn’t the end of it by any means – more a long overdue period of desperately needed creative destruction. But it’s safe to say that the firms left paying top dollar after this purge is over will be exceedingly selective, more so than ever before. And this will leave most new law school graduates in a very nasty labor market, facing three stark options:

1. Work like a dog at a mid to large-sized teetering regional shop, if you’re lucky;
2. Build a book of business in near poverty for several years at a small firm; or
3. Unemployment.

Of course, there are numerous other non-traditional courses, but let’s face it – if you’re considering law school at all, let alone asking me whether you should attend after seeing the endless stream of articles in the papers all but eulogizing the profession, you’re not one for charting new courses. These are choices I see most new students receiving in exchange for three years in school and $100,000 in loans. You do the math from there.

Postscript:

For further reading, consider the following sources:

Bitterlawyer – Primarily a humor site, but both the text of and comments in response to the articles in the “Advice from an Ex-Bitter” section, as well pieces like “I’m Deciding Between a JD and an MBA” and “I’m Considering Law School” give you an idea of what lawyers themselves think of the future of the career. (Yes, I’m listing these guys first because I work with them from time to time and I like them.)

Above The Law – Run a search on the words “Pay freeze” or just read any random pages from the past four months. Every other article discusses some aspect of the industry downturn.

ABA Law Journal – Read the “Special Recession Issue” and punch the word “layoffs” into the search engine. Excellent overview on where things seem to be headed.

Jdunderground – Read any of the random threads talking about job prospects. This site is filled with stories from generally upset and demoralized lawyers who can’t find work, can’t get paid enough when they do and have an axe to grind with their law schools for not leveling with them about the cut-throat nature of the legal job market.

The End of Lawyers? – This is a book I haven’t been able to read yet, but I figure is worth suggesting. The author is highly respected and the blurb on Amazon.com describes a text covering all the crucial issues:

The End of Lawyers? is the much-anticipated sequel to Richard Susskind’s legal best-seller of 1996, The Future of Law. Ten years on, and half-way towards the twenty-year vision he set out, Susskind takes stock of progress, introduces vital new emerging technologies, and envisages even more radical change to the legal world than before. This is a world in which, at least in part, legal services are commoditized, IT renders conventional legal advice redundant, clients and lawyers are collaborators under the one virtual roof, disputes are dominated by technology if not avoided in the first place, and online systems and services compete with lawyers in providing access to the law and to justice. For the conservative legal adviser, the message is bleak. For the progressive lawyer, an exciting new legal market emerges.

________________________
¹ I say “correction” rather than “depression” because I think depression is too strong and it suggests an abnormal adjustment, whereas the present circumstance is an unwinding of leverage to rational, normal levels.
² Because to succeed in the profession, at least on the litigation side, you will have to make it your life.
³ The firms you’ll need to work for to pay off the staggering debt accrued at a school tacking its tuition increases to the yearly rise in associate compensation.
⁴ If someone from career services tells you otherwise, point him to this site. I’d love to hear why I’m wrong – particularly from a person lacking the capacity to work outside academia.
⁵ I say “probably,” however, as I have heard talk about some firms in Philly peeling back starting salaries to $90,000 and making up the difference by offering a much more lucrative bonus structure. I don’t think that’s possible, but I’m sure if management could make it happen, they would.
⁶ Problem is, unless you have your name on the door, you can’t make any money in those firms. Some of the places pay a kid out of school $50-75k.
⁷ No, “international” does not include regional outfits with pictures of nominal “London Offices” prominently displayed on their websites.
⁸ “Insurance defense” = Industry term for firms specializing in defense of non-complex tort claims and insurance coverage cases at below market rates, consequently employing a below market compensation structure.
⁹ I’m not sure Wolf Block will be the last regional to go over the falls in Philadelphia. The city’s economy could barely sustain the number of lawyers it had before the downturn (a quick comparison of the size of associate classes and partners at Philly firms between 2001 and today evidence that a lot of them have cut all the fat they can). Hopefully, I’m missing something.
¹⁰ Some argumentative sort will send me an email explaining that this has always been the case – that it never made sense to go to law school if you didn’t get into one of the best ones. This predictable reply, though appearing an insightful criticism, is actually untrue. In the past, talented lesser credentialed lawyers who stuck with the job could vault up the industry ladder after distinguishing themselves in their practice areas for a few years. Now, however, with the increase in competition for jobs at all levels of the spectrum, every employer can be more selective, pretty much erasing that track.

Chazz: I’ll throw in a wedding every now and then, but funerals are insane! The chicks are so horny, it’s not even fair. It’s like fishing with dynamite.
John: Horny?
Chazz: Yeah, crazy horny.
John: I just… at a funeral?!
Chazz: Grief is nature’s most powerful aphrodisiac. Look it up.
John: I didn’t know that.
Chazz: That’s what I’ve learned. Ma, the meatloaf! Fuck!
- Wedding Crashers (2005)
Alright. So I’ve spent a week semi-immersed in PUA culture – from videos of seminars to chat boards to a couple of the alleged “guide” books on the subject. I said I’d pick my favorite PUA book to finish this thing off and here it is: The Complete Asshole’s Guide to Handling Chicks, by Dan Indante and Karl Marks.
I know what some are going to say – “Bullshit. That’s not a PUA book at all.”
Exactly. It’s a joke, a satire of the tenets of the PUA world. But that’s not why I liked it. I liked it because it’s funny. The book reads like a hyper-lurid Maxim article, the sort of material that allows you to shut off your mind and just roll along with the jokes. It’s ridiculous, obnoxious, and considering the subject matter at hand, it strikes exactly the right note. Comes from exactly the right angle, and gives this topic exactly the respect it deserves.
But it’s a little more than that. Surprisingly, as I read the book, I found most of the “advice” in it far more compelling and coherently delivered than any of the Trekkie-talk offered in the serious guidebooks. Where PUA guides wallow in embarrassing lingo – a mash-up of attempted clinical terminology and Tony Robbins self-help pap – in the guise of offensive humor, The Complete Asshole’s Guide makes the same points far more efficiently, and amusingly.¹ Consider these near identical propositions, as offered by The Mystery Method, then The Complete Asshole’s Guide:
A. The Mystery Method:

Congruence Testing
A woman’s number-one emotional priority is safety and security. Above all, she wants a man who makes her feel safe and protected.

B. The Complete Asshole’s Guide:

The Eager Beaver
Even though she’s a hard working chick, she’s still a chick, which means she’s insecure and needs a man’s approval to feel like she’s worth a damn.

“Congruence Testing?” What is this, Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom? (“The female lion stands in front of the male, ‘presenting’ her engorged labia to indicate willingness to mate…”) There’s funny sexist, there’s dumbass meat-head sexist, and then there’s PUA – creepy freak sexist.² And the conceit behind this psycho-babble – that an LA meat market pick-up artist with an affinity for Pirate fashion knows how every woman thinks – stretches suspension of disbelief miles past the concept’s snapping point. Put one of these PUA pros in a New York bar with high powered professional women and, barring predation on a couple horned up cokeheads or half-blacked out grad students, he’s not only going down in flames – he’s getting laughed out of the building. Send a guy in a feather boa and medallions into into the wrong club in Boston and he’s leaving a dozen teeth lighter.
The actual point made in the examples above – that some, but nowhere near all women are cloying, male dependent disasters – is delivered ten times more effectively by Indante and Marks.³ Where you’re laughing with The Complete Asshole’s Guide, but also recognizing the joke has some merit, you can’t help laughing at The Mystery Method. At the fact that his comment is earnest – that the guy actually stands behind such a preposterous proposition.⁴ And that he delivers it like some sort of behavioralist, as opposed to what he is – a shrewd marketer who knows how to Jedi mind-trick LA club groupies. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but let’s be honest – we’re not talking about a D.C. think tank or Mensa meeting there. This isn’t chess with Kasparov. More like checkers with a paste-eating first grader.

(more…)

Hi. I’ve never introduced myself, but you may know a bit about me (or my nipples) from Happy Hour is for Amateurs. I’m “Lisa,” Philalawyer’s wife. He asked me to answer some questions here about The Mystery Method. I was pretty busy, but I read the book and answered what he asked.* Quick version? It started out intriguing, but quickly became torturous. Now here’s the longer version.
First off, is the stuff in the Mystery Method real, or is it half-joking – some sort of “Relationship Enzyte?”
All of the above …and much less.
Natural male enhancement for the soul, with a touch of irony?
Well, you’re on to something. It does give a good pep talk in the early pages, but it turns ridiculous quickly.

Would this stuff actually help a guy pick up women?
Yes. Aspiring magicians and their friends who live in “Magictowns.”
Is that like Chinatown?
A basement apartment just East of Chinatown.

(more…)