It was bad enough in law school having to sit through "intellectual exercises" thrust upon us by overly-zealous students who think they are now qualified to teach the class. However, you could understand their zeal just a little bit because they drank the same Koolaid as the rest of us and thought that there was still time left to work their way up the ladder and get that letter of recommendation from Professor Ascot that will give them a prestigious clerkship with Federal Judge Senior Status.
What I don't understand is attorneys who are well-established shit law attorneys who think that shooting their hand up and asking bizarro pseudo-intellectual tangent questions during CLE being given by the one Cooley Grad who wasn't working as the parking lot attendant at the hotel is going to finally get them places.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Friday, October 15, 2010
S**t Rolls Out the Door
Tonight, I was reminded what a terrible, terrible place shit law can be.
And sometimes, the shit overfloweth so much that it needs to be swept out of the door.
Literally.
An ex-paralegal shared a story of one firm that she worked at for several years. As is typical with the power structure of a sizable percentage of shitlaw firms, the firm is helmed by Dickensian misers who earned their money -- not from their vast and impressive legal knowledge that set the wrongly accused free and set new precedent that left the Supreme Court stripping themselves down to their tighty whiteys and 18 hour support bras -- but by selling a large volume of services with reduced overhead costs and a sizable markup.
One weekend, the gods didn't feel like there was enough shit law being created in the office. To fill the quota that made the difference between whether the boss would go to Cancun or to New Zealand on the latest biannual vacation, Osiris thundered from beneath, causing the sewer to back up and create a mess in the hall and kitchen.
When the mess was discovered the following Monday, it was not a special cleaning crew with rubber suits and special chemicals that were called to remove the biohazard that lurked in the hallway. It wasn't even the managing partners that threw themselves upon that stink bomb of a grenade while chivalrously saving the ladies from harm. Yes, mes amis, why on Earth would you call a professional and unnecessarily pay more money to clean out shit you are already paying a support staff $10 an hour who are already pros at taking your shit and shoveling it out the door onto unsuspecting clients? Yes, why not? The office staff comes properly equipped for the job of sewage removal since they each have two working arms to work mops and brooms. Women are genetically engineered to clean sewage because they have cooked and cleaned since caveman days. They also have special E. Coli-resistent high heeled shoes that will provide the backs of their legs a two inch separation from the waste even though their leather-covered tippy-toes dance so tantalizingly close to that corn and peanut riddled graveyard of feasts from days gone by.
Ah, but only if we had the ability to shovel a pile of this effluent and trot it before a room full of aspiring 0 L's! It's time for them to see the physical evidence of what most of their working careers are going to look like. Maybe 5 members of their little group will be running about the halls of Congress or taking a break in the firm gym at 3am when they are in between writing their 8th summary judgment for the day. The rest of them will receive the honor of working in portable buildings or offices that look like they are the waiting rooms of 3rd world physicians.
That is, if they find a job at all.
"Sirs and madams. Do you see this bucket of pallid water with what looks like coffee grinds in the bottom? This is what the staff of a law firm actually cleaned off of the floor of their office after the sewer decided to make a deposit and the lead partners decided that hiring a professional crew of cleaners was not in the budget. They were given the choice of finding another job or taking a mop in hand and getting to work. The good news is that their mopping activity meant that they got to delay going to the dry cleaner's to pick up the boss's suits for a little bit. And before you tell yourselves that you need to shovel a little shit at the beginning of your career to 'make it' within the law and that you have to do this sort of thing to prove your worth as a valuable employee, stand not amazed when a contributor to the clean up effort quit at some point in the future when they found another job and were replaced by somebody who agreed to work $3 an hour less than they were making. Have a nice day."
And sometimes, the shit overfloweth so much that it needs to be swept out of the door.
Literally.
An ex-paralegal shared a story of one firm that she worked at for several years. As is typical with the power structure of a sizable percentage of shitlaw firms, the firm is helmed by Dickensian misers who earned their money -- not from their vast and impressive legal knowledge that set the wrongly accused free and set new precedent that left the Supreme Court stripping themselves down to their tighty whiteys and 18 hour support bras -- but by selling a large volume of services with reduced overhead costs and a sizable markup.
One weekend, the gods didn't feel like there was enough shit law being created in the office. To fill the quota that made the difference between whether the boss would go to Cancun or to New Zealand on the latest biannual vacation, Osiris thundered from beneath, causing the sewer to back up and create a mess in the hall and kitchen.
When the mess was discovered the following Monday, it was not a special cleaning crew with rubber suits and special chemicals that were called to remove the biohazard that lurked in the hallway. It wasn't even the managing partners that threw themselves upon that stink bomb of a grenade while chivalrously saving the ladies from harm. Yes, mes amis, why on Earth would you call a professional and unnecessarily pay more money to clean out shit you are already paying a support staff $10 an hour who are already pros at taking your shit and shoveling it out the door onto unsuspecting clients? Yes, why not? The office staff comes properly equipped for the job of sewage removal since they each have two working arms to work mops and brooms. Women are genetically engineered to clean sewage because they have cooked and cleaned since caveman days. They also have special E. Coli-resistent high heeled shoes that will provide the backs of their legs a two inch separation from the waste even though their leather-covered tippy-toes dance so tantalizingly close to that corn and peanut riddled graveyard of feasts from days gone by.
Ah, but only if we had the ability to shovel a pile of this effluent and trot it before a room full of aspiring 0 L's! It's time for them to see the physical evidence of what most of their working careers are going to look like. Maybe 5 members of their little group will be running about the halls of Congress or taking a break in the firm gym at 3am when they are in between writing their 8th summary judgment for the day. The rest of them will receive the honor of working in portable buildings or offices that look like they are the waiting rooms of 3rd world physicians.
That is, if they find a job at all.
"Sirs and madams. Do you see this bucket of pallid water with what looks like coffee grinds in the bottom? This is what the staff of a law firm actually cleaned off of the floor of their office after the sewer decided to make a deposit and the lead partners decided that hiring a professional crew of cleaners was not in the budget. They were given the choice of finding another job or taking a mop in hand and getting to work. The good news is that their mopping activity meant that they got to delay going to the dry cleaner's to pick up the boss's suits for a little bit. And before you tell yourselves that you need to shovel a little shit at the beginning of your career to 'make it' within the law and that you have to do this sort of thing to prove your worth as a valuable employee, stand not amazed when a contributor to the clean up effort quit at some point in the future when they found another job and were replaced by somebody who agreed to work $3 an hour less than they were making. Have a nice day."
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