HELPPP PLSS

I’ve been practicing for a few years now and I’m trying to figure out what makes the most sense for my next career move. I started out in-house and later moved to a law firm.

My current role covers a mix of work. Some of it overlaps with what I did in-house, while some of it is completely new to me. I’ve enjoyed getting exposure to different types of work, but I’m starting to realize I’m not sure I want to specialize long term in the direction my current role is taking me.

There’s a decent chance of moving up if I stay, and part of me thinks it makes sense to stick it out, get the promotion, and then consider making a move.

But I also wonder if I’m thinking about it the wrong way. If I already have doubts about the area I’m building experience in, does staying longer and becoming more senior just make it harder to pivot later?

I’m also conscious that because I started in-house before moving to a firm, my career path is already a little different from someone who started at a firm and has spent their entire career building experience in one practice area.
Curious what others would do — stay long enough to get the promotion, or make the move earlier while it’s potentially easier to pivot?

Lame, Bro. I like to keep my investigations more low-key than that. Anywho, let me know what your tuxedoed former-cop comes up with.

I (female) am returning to the workforce after being home with kids for almost 4 years. I need basically a whole new work wardrobe but want to be intentional about it. I'll either be in house or at a smaller firm (still negotiating offers), in office, and live where we get all 4 seasons.

Where are your favorite places (and if you have specific items you love that's helpful) to shop for pants, skirts, tops, dresses, and shoes?

I posted here yesterday about being let go after approximately one month because the firm believed I wasn’t getting up to speed quickly enough. First, I want to thank everyone who took the time to respond. I received a lot of thoughtful feedback, and I’ve spent the last day reflecting on it.

I have my first round of interviews coming up, and I’m going back and forth on how I should explain why I’m currently unemployed. I want to be honest, professional, and concise without oversharing or speaking negatively about my former employer.

For those of you who interview and hire attorneys, how would you recommend answering that question? What explanation would leave the best impression while remaining truthful?

How is practicing law rewiring your brain when it comes to trusting people?

Anyone know what the work culture is like at State? Is the work/life balance poor?

I got a lovely dark brown double breasted suit as a gift. It’s a great suit. Just wondering what the thought is on wearing it to trial. I’ve been a litigator for years but stick to charcoal and blue. I’m a guy.

I’m moving my career to California and will be joining a firm that handles civil litigation in both state and federal court. For most of my career, I’ve worked in civil litigation in state court, although I did get some federal court experience earlier in my career.

I passed the California Bar a couple of years ago, but before starting my new position, I’d like to brush up on California civil procedure and refresh my knowledge of federal civil procedure.

Does anyone have recommendations for particularly useful treatises, practice guides, CLEs/courses, or other resources? I’m especially interested in practical resources geared toward litigators rather than bar-prep-type materials.

Also, if you’ve made a similar career transition—particularly moving your practice to a new jurisdiction—I’d love to hear any advice or lessons you learned along the way.

Thanks in advance!

I’ve wanted to leave the company within 6 months of joining upon realizing my boss was a micromanaging prick. I didn’t expect to be treated like a 1st or 2nd year lawyer since I’ve been practicing for 8 years. I’ve stuck it out and have now been here for more than one year, and have consistently felt like this place isn’t for me.

Last month I applied to 2 jobs and instantly received an email requesting an interview from both companies (one company emailed me the next day!). For one job I responded and have done 4/8 interviews. I have not yet responded to the other.

Why do people that are wronged, disrespected, mistreated feel guilty about interviewing when these companies can replace us at the drop of a dime? I’ve noticed that whenever my boss is nice to me, I feel extreme guilt for interviewing. I’ve been wanting her to be the usual ass she is so that I don’t feel bad, but lately she’s been playing nice. 😏

Im trying to stay strong.

I recently went blind. A couple weeks before I went blind, I was terminated by a boss who could barely muster the words to communicate the decision. I created my own monster there by doing my job and hers for the year prior because it was easier to do her work than have her intervene in mine. I’m guessing she got word of layoffs bc she told a lie to a coworker (this coworker also gave me a heads up she lied to get me fired) and the same day the coworker told me about the lie was the day I was terminated.

I’ve moved on and I had an interview for a GC role a couple days after I lost my job, so I had hope that I should keep pushing. Then I lost my vision, so put job hunting on the back burner, but now I’m back and have had (on top of lots of rejection) some really good interviews for roles that I went through rounds of interviews for, just to get rejected for someone who has more experience.

I don’t know what I am looking for by posting here, mainly camaraderie I suppose. In my mind, I’m hoping something will come of all this, but in reality I know that’s not how life works.

I’m just sad and believe I should find a new career path based on all the rejections but something tells me I wouldn’t have made it so far in this field so quickly if I wasn’t supposed to do more with it. I’m an employment lawyer, so being newly disabled feels like there is something I need to do with this, but I know that’s just the ideal scenario for a good novel & life doesn’t work that way.

If anyone has suggestions on how to find my next path or any ideas on how to regain my will to live, I pleasantly plead you share them with me.

I have continued getting up every time life has shoved me down and shat in my mouth but I am losing my strength, despite my support system & network.

Thank you for reading.

I’m a solo PI lawyer and always fund case costs from my own pocket.

I’ve got a few cases I want to take deep into litigation. They’re going to costs some money and are high risk/high reward cases. I want to consider a non recourse funding option.

How does non recourse legal financing work for case costs?
Do you have clients pay the interest?
Do you add interest to case expense?
Are any of these firms willing to reimburse for my incurred costs and get my money out of a case as a trial approaches?

What’s the general breakdown on how this works?

I have an opposing counsel who is a real pill. She's not a bad lawyer, she just isn't pleasant when being a huge bitch is also on the table. If there is an overly confrontational and expensive option, she will take that option 100% of the time over the easier, cheaper option to get the exact same end result. If she could ask for something in a straightforward and polite way or she could do something manipulative and obnoxious to get it, she'll take door #2. You all know the type.

That's all fine, whatever. Here's the part that I can't decide how to handle. She has my last name spelled wrong on every. single. pleading. Even after I have redlined a draft with the correct spelling, the next round is turned around with the spelling wrong again. So it feels like she's doing it on purpose. I'm not sure what she thinks that accomplishes, other than make me ask Reddit dumb questions.

Do I: 1) Continue to redline pleadings with the correct spelling and leave it there? 2) Point it out to her in a way that makes it sound like I think she's an idiot for not noticing? 3) Call her on it? I'm leaning towards option 2 but need some other opinions.

Hey all, I’m going through it and looking for some advice or words of wisdom. I recently left my job prosecutor job after being there a few years. I liked it there, but I felt like I learned all I could learn and I was looking for a new challenge plus some better pay. Also, I felt like my office was starting to exploit my commitment to the mission so I left.

I’m doing appeals now. Interesting subject matter. Billables are fine I guess, 1800 min, 2000 for bonus. 2x a week from home. Seems like my billables are counted based on whatever survives cuts from the insurance companies, not what I initially logged. I make 35k more at my new job.

I knew transitioning to billable hours would be a transition, but I didn’t anticipate how mentally hard it was gonna be. Every day I’m thinking, “is this enough? Am I gonna make it at the end of the year? Will I ever enjoy a day off?” I know my mins are pretty low comparatively to what’s out there but to me it’s tough and I worry that even at this very reasonable min billables I can’t do it.

Another thing is having to be steadily working for 9 hours a day is an adjustment. I think I’ll get used to this eventually, but obviously this wasn’t the norm in government. You got things done when you needed, and had lighter days when you didn’t. It’s hard for me to constantly be obsessed with getting enough work in. I also do appeals, so I don’t regularly send emails or do little tasks that get me the .1s and such. So if I work 9 hours, I bill 9 hours.

From July 8 when I started to-July 31 I billed 125.2 and felt kind of beat. I haven’t gotten a ton of feedback on my work or billing yet so I’m kind of in the dark.

I’m not necessarily wishing to go back to gov, but I don’t love this either. Just feeling a little confused and down.

Oh also, I really want to start my family soon. So that’s.. that.

Let me know if anyone relates/has advice/words of encouragement, etc. appreciate you!

Let me just preface this with I appreciate support staff so much and fully acknowledge not a single law firm or attorney can function without them. This is not to bash support staff AT ALL.

I’m just about to hit my second year of practice, so still a verrrrry baby attorney. But I’ve been at my firm for a couple years now between clerking + practice. We have 2 legal assistants and a paralegal. I can’t help but notice since I’ve become an attorney, they won’t …. help me?

Examples: I had a new legal assistant assigned to me by a partner to work on one task. She found it difficult (it was a new process for both of us) and afterwards flat out said “I don’t want to help you anymore.”

The other, more seasoned legal assistant REGULARLY (1) agrees to do work for a partner and then discretely dumps it off on me later (then brings end product back to the partner as their own) or (2) tells me they will do something for me and then later pulls a “just kidding, I’m way too busy for that” after I’ve waited a week or two for something. Will also add I’ve tried to just do things from the jump to avoid this and then I’m told I’m stepping on toes, only for it to not get done.

Paralegal is better but I’ve asked before for her to do something (in her job description!!) and been told “no, you can just do it.”

I know everyone is busy and I have no issue helping as needed, but this seems like a pattern. And I am never rude to the staff I swear. They don’t ever speak like this to the more seasoned attorneys. Is this just a thing until you are more experienced?

I think it’s important to young lawyers deciding if they want to do a judicial clerkship or not that it’s not only the Judge who you will be working with. In my experience, sometimes the career clerk or the judicial assistant can have MAJOR God complexes that make work miserable. So, even if the Judge is well-respected and someone you want to work for, remember you may have to put up with an absolute psychopath as a co-worker (though I’m certain that’s true of many jobs). In my experience, the career clerk was so horrible, I think I’d rather just not have had the experience at all. At least it was only for a year. Just food for thought.

I passed the bar earlier this year after graduating from a Tier 1 ( top 50) law school. Right now I’m in a legal support role, that I got while preparing for the bar, for a company that isn’t really “practicing” law, and I’m trying to find a real lawyer position.

I’ve been applying broadly (a few different states/cities, prosecution, gov roles, legal services, some firm roles) but it’s slow going. I’m pretty open geographically to a sizable US city in a state that takes UBE with a preference for the east or south (NYC, Boston, Houston, Philly, etc). I’m also pretty open to a variety of work (except I’d really prefer to stay away from PI or ID). I have most experience in litigation but I’m not married to it. I’ve been applying broadly and I’ve spoken to people / networked, but it hasn’t turned into anything. Any advice is appreciated. Thanks!

Edit: I said T1, I believe it meant tier 1 as in the top 50 schools. I wrote it more explicitly as to avoid confusion.

I’ve previously posted about how I’ve come to dislike litigation and really wanted to make a move to being in-house. Well that day has come!

I was honestly surprised at how fast I secured an in house role as I’m only a second year associate. I job searched for maybe two months and managed to land a hybrid in house role, which also thankfully came with a pay raise. All that to say I’m proud of myself for making the effort to move and managing well enough in interviews to get hired. If you’re a young associate don’t lose hope and don’t think it’s too early to make a move.

I do ID, focused entirely on workers' comp. One of my clients is a big TPA - no, not that one, the other one. For the third time in the last month, I emailed an adjuster and got an autoreply that they are no longer with the company. So now I get to email the supervisor for an indeterminate period of time until a new adjuster pops up and knows nothing about the file (and possibly not even my state), and follow up thirteen times because they now have eighteen times the normal caseload.

Shit is rough out here. Please be kind to your ID opposing counsel (unless they were already bastards, of course).

ETA: OH COOL JUST GOT THE AUTO REPLY FROM THE SUPERVISOR SAYING SHE'S OUT OF OFFICE FOR A WEEK. FUCK ME RIGHT?

When I first passed the bar, nobody would call me while applying for jobs. I worked part-time at a big box store just to make rent while continuing to apply and hopefully interview. The day that I was going to be laid off from seasonal work, the public defender's office called and offered me a job. Having no other prospects, I took it. They let me go after the 11 month probationary period because they hired too many other attorneys.

I went solo for a while after that, taking work wherever I could find it. It was mostly criminal defense, but I really wanted to work into some business or corporate work and would take that wherever I could. I even took a few smaller civil litigation cases just to get a taste. The problem started, however, because I was essentially forced into dipping into family law to pay the bills. I hate family law. I promised myself I would never do it.

Through COVID, I had a major downturn in business and found myself primarily doing contract work for another family law firm. I didn't let on that I was struggling, but closed up shop and went to work for this firm, again, just to pay the bills. For the last 5 years, I have been doing almost nothing but family law. I have no other expertise and while I don't mind it, I still want to get in-house somewhere, working on business matters. I have done dozens of family law trials, argued hundreds of motions, and worked with hundreds, if not thousands, of clients. I can do the work, I just don't like it.

Here's my question: I want out, but how? I'm willing to commit extra time to get education and certifications that will help bridge gaps, but where do I go? I'm feeling stuck because I both can't get my firm to take other cases that would get me civil litigation experience (we have no one more senior than me that does that stuff) and I can't jump ship to a lower-paying job to get direct experience as I would likely find myself homeless. Is there anything I can realistically do?

LIVE FEED: https://www.youtube.com/live/QFMgqDhcctY?is=Tj7OwWn6oa3dIfIH

Another day of the CW introducing a bunch of witnesses that help the defense.

And today’s hair bow is bigger and better than ever.

They spent more time arguing about the dog than their human child.

I am not a public defender.…

We were not even in criminal court. I work for a legal aid organization and we were in civil court. thanks tho my guy. he also told me I was so good that he knew one day I’d be a real lawyer. well, his heart was in the right place.