Hi,

I’m currently studying for the LSAT and I’m 26. I wanted to ask about how you as a woman feel that you are treated and/or perceived when you get pregnant and are a lawyer. Just looking for experiences, not judgement.

Thanks!

Any info is appreciated. Thanks!

At my firm the paralegals draft the facts section of the complaints and it’s blatantly obvious one paralegal is using AI.

I view complaint drafting as my responsibility as an attorney but I don’t know if paralegal is doing this in other cases handled by attorneys who only rely on the paralegals.

Do I just go along with it and reword as necessary, or do I bring it to paralegal’s attention that she’s going to get herself and someone else in trouble because of it? It sounds computer generated. It’s not ethical in my opinion and now I don’t know which of these facts are AI creations and which are real facts from client file.

List your top 3? Any to watch out for? This is my first time hiring outside the firm.

I practiced debtor's bankruptcy for about 3 years, so I have no shortage of stories where clients shot themselves in the foot and decided to get angry at me about it.

What comes to mind most, though, is a story from after my switch to the creditor's side. I'm the bad guy now, but I try to work with people to the extent I can, especially if they're polite and reasonable.

I calculated a payoff on a judgment because we had a judgment lien on a house that would be sold soon. The seller of the house calls me. She couldn't be more sympathetic; she's an old lady crying on the phone, recently lost a some family members, can't afford to payoff the full lien amount because she needs the money to also pay off her medical debt.

I tell my client that we should probably cut her a break, but we'd need a copy of the HUD statement to know the numbers before we can decide. After all, if she's walking away from closing with $150k in cash then we're probably not cutting much off our ~$11k lien. Client agrees.

I call the borrower back just to give her a heads up that we'll need the HUD statement so we can make an informed decision. The tone changes completely. She is absolutely enraged, starts screaming at me and saying how awful we are. I tell her "hey I understand you're in a really stressful time, but if you keep being nasty with me then my willingness to work with you on this is going to run out". Rather than taking the second chance, she proceeds to keep screaming at me. We ended up cutting some of the balance off, but not nearly as much as she would have gotten had she not started screaming at me.

Anyone have any suggestions for licensed attorney side hustles/ part time jobs? Need some extra cash to help with loans and some credit card debt. Links or apps would be great!

FYI: Brand new licensed Texas attorney

Chance to go in house with a bank in a trust advisor gig. I’m considering. I know the area well. The manager is an acquaintance I know to be a great person. Has a sales aspect for incentives and bonus but comparable salary to what I’m doing now.

Anyone have advice?

I was a municipal attorney for 15 years and retired early. I’ve spent the last six years traveling full-time on our sailboat up and down the U.S. East Coast and the Bahamas. I always wanted to be a prosecutor, and have my eye on a large city D.A.’s office that hires fresh out of law school grads. Since I’ve been out of the field for six years, I’m a combination of fresh but experienced. Any thoughts on whether I’d have a hope in hell of making it past the gatekeeper and getting an interview? It’s a $1,000 gamble because that’s what it would cost to be admitted in the state.

I passed the DC Bar a year ago and just completed the first year mandatory course this week. They went over the pro bono requirement which says to donate 1% of your income or $750 if representing a client pro bono isn’t feasible.

Representing a client isn’t feasible to me as I don’t live near DC and I’ve been working in a JD-Advantage career since graduating.

My question for members of the DC bar: do you submit proof of donation to the bar? I didn’t see a place to do so on the website. Also, I don’t have $750 to donate at the moment (my elderly pet has been having health problems), so is it acceptable to donate what I can?

I had been practicing ememployment litigation for about 10 years as a true solo. I was talking to a colleague on my floor and was told she transitioned to ep about 3 years ago and loves it (from other litigation work of about 30 years). She was sick and tired of the fighting and found ep much more pleasant.

For anyone who has, how is the transition from litigation to estate planning? Is there a steep learning curve? Is it something you can do without getting trained under someone else? Any recommendations on how to educate myself on how ep works? I am also seeing a lot of ads on social media for seminars on it. Would you recommend it? Any insight would be much appreciated, thanks!

I’ve been fighting in the trenches doing criminal defense for just over two decades. Lots of highs, a couple lows, and made a decent chunk of money along the way. Also made a decent name for myself. But things got real tough these last few years. Changes from the pandemic, along with a new generation of judges (who frankly suck at being judges), and a sense that the business of crim defense was changing along with the knowledge I didn’t want to change with it, got me thinking real hard about whether I wanted to do this anymore.

Unbeknownst to anyone other than my wife and parents, I’ve been planning an exit strategy for the last 6 months and I pulled the trigger this week. I’m out of the game. Completely done. I’ve got a couple other streams of income and after doing the math, I realized I no longer have to kill myself doing something I no longer love.

I see a lot of young lawyers here who are looking for a way out. Get a couple years experience, hang a shingle, do a good fucking job, and save money.

I’m about 10 years into solo practice doing transactional work for SMBs and real estate. I’m basically maxed out for personal output and am feeling like I have just built a well-paying but consuming job, not a business. Meanwhile, I have clients that have slowly but surely grown their businesses over a similar period of time to the point of some scale and leverage. Doing less “in the business” and more “on the business”, as they say. I have two part-time paralegals (one for each core practice area) but it really hasn’t freed up time. If anything I just push more work through, bill some more, but sometimes wonder if the questions, occasional fumbles, and added admin is worth the stress of more volume and marginally more money.

All that said, I may just be doing this wrong. Has anyone figured out a way to scale a small transactional practice aside from the usual model? That being hire paralegals, try to find a promising junior, and basically hand-hold for theoretical gain. Maybe there’s work that scales or leverages well? Subscription models that really work? Fractional GC structures?

I see so many very senior lawyers grinding away with no real leverage into the twilight of their career. Hopefully there’s a better way. Has anyone managed to become an “owner” rather than chief employee of their firm?

Thanks!

What happens when opposing counsel falls off the face of the earth? Case was dismissed (Dec ‘23) because he was supposed to file the paperwork (from Aug ‘23) but disappeared. It’s a custody case. One parent is in OR and the other is ID. Case is in OR. Tyia

What’s the chance of Clarence Thomas retiring before 2029? The supremes may have to decide is POTUS can pardon himself.

Hi all,

I’ve been practicing in my jx for a few years and I’m ready to make a move into a new state. I’m looking primarily at the Chicago area. I’d really like to apply for admission to the bar now so I’m closer to having my license when I’d actually start a job, but I’m spooked by the fact that the C+F questionnaire indicates that they’ll verify my employment history via emails. My firm doesn’t know I’m looking and I’d like to keep it that way.

What have other folks done in this situation? It looks like the file processors’ contact information is posted on the IL bar website; would it be out of line for me to reach out and ask if I can verify my current employment another way (pay stubs, etc.)?

Any other experiences with processing time for admission by motion in Illinois would be welcomed, too!

Is there a document out there somewhere with a master list of ways to describe tasks in time entry software? I feel like there has to be something.

So I am a lawyer with four years of experience. I have two companies on retainer with a very very minimal retainer of INR 15,000 per month where I am handling everything in house for both of them. Any and every legal issue, drafting , vetting and negotiating contracts, internal documents, everything.

It has been 6 months now with these companies. I am a litigating lawyer so 90% of my time goes in litigation with other clients.

Now I want to revise my retainer with them or revise the terms that filing of any cases before court won’t be a part of ny retainer. I know that they won’t agree and most likely they will drop me.

On one hand I like the variety of work and on the other hand I simple don’t care because if they drop me, I will have enough time to concentrate on clients who pay me and treat me well.

My employment contracts a blanket restriction on rendering legal services outside of my job as an associate lawyer.

Keen to move into solo space in the future and want to get experience by doing pro bono and potentially some work on the side.

From experience, how strict are biglaw firms when it comes to doing pro bono or work on the side that’s in a completely different field. I.e I do commercial contracts but would be interested in doing criminal, family or immigration work on the side and covering it with separate malpractice insurance.

Hey everyone,

I’m currently at a crossroads in my legal career, and I’m hoping to get some advice from others who have been in similar situations. For some context:

I’ve been practicing law for about 5 years, focusing primarily on wills and estates. I’m at a firm now, but lately, I’ve been feeling stretched pretty thin. The workload is tough, and despite being here for a while, there hasn’t been much growth on the admin support side, which means I’m juggling a lot of the day-to-day stuff myself. I’ve reached the point where I’m questioning whether this environment is the best fit for me long-term.

A little backstory: I did briefly start my own firm before joining my current one. I ended up shutting it down after a year or so to get the stability of consistent pay—especially with a newborn at home at the time. But now I’m really thinking about going back to the solo route, with the idea of building a firm that focuses on both estates and personal injury.

On the other hand, I’ve been considering in-house roles as well, mainly for the potential for consistent work hours and a shift toward business law/transactional work, which I’ve become more interested in recently. I’m torn between the flexibility and autonomy of running my own firm, the stability of an in-house position, and the challenges of staying at my current firm and hoping things improve.

Overall, my goal is to be comfortable financially in life and achieve more flexibility to travel and live life.

So I’m curious, have any of you been in a similar spot? How did you make your decision? Any insights on going solo again versus moving in-house or sticking with a firm? What are the pros and cons you’ve experienced?

Thanks in advance for your advice!

I’ve been perusing the PLSF snd student loan subreddits to quell my panic a bit, but man, this election result has me concerned. I enrolled in SAVE a while back and have been in forced admin forbearance because of the injunction.

Any other public interest folks doing anything in particular to plan for the worst or are we just twiddling our fingers and hoping we don’t have to be in debt until we die…?

Hi all, I’m currently clerking for a NJ superior court judge. The judge is super amazing and I’m learning a lot of things. Super grateful for the opportunity BUT the pay is shit. Every paycheck there’s a new deduction and after having 2 breakdowns about it, I really need to figure something out.

Before you shit on my planning or budgeting, please note that I was not aware that there would be so many deductions.

Now, after fighting back panic attacks, I decided that either I’ll need to find a part time job or find a full time job and quit the clerkship. Obviously the latter is blasphemy and career ending so that I don’t want to do. Plus I haven’t been barred yet so there’s that.

How common is to get a part time job? What type of part time jobs can I get or would be better for a law clerk? [my judge is very specific that since I don’t get overtime and such I don’t stay overtime or need to work overtime]

I was the lawyer for the deceased and the heirs are fighting like crazy. They want all the records for every file - but I've got too much attorney work product in there. Now I'm going to have to comb through the files and determine what is privileged.

Gah. I'm going to have to research how to handle this as I've never dealt with it before.

A question posed by another poster about setting up shop in a "small town" jogged this question - which has been rattling around my brain for a bit: who, if anyone, is representing the minority business owners who, it seems, are the true "small business owners" in these small towns (at least, here in the Midwest fly-over country)? Every low to mid-priced hotel in a small town appears to be owned by someone of Indian or Pakistani descent. Same is true for many of the gasoline and convenience stores. Many non-chain restaurants are Mexican food and seem to be owned by those of Mexican descent. Nail salons - Vietnamese. This is NOT a knock on immigrant owned businesses --- indeed, I find many of them to be hardworking and sharp business people. But, in these small towns....the few lawyers that remain in town and local largely are NOT Indian, Pakistani, Mexican, Vietnamese, etc. Is this an under-served market? Are there cultural barriers/differences about using lawyers to help say, form business entities, review leases, assist in transitions/transactions?? What are your experiences and interactions like??

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Like, if i wanted to get one as a fun vacation to an interesting US location/school (I am a US lawyer), then what would I actually do with it? Can i use it to switch practice area, or hone my trial skills, or launch an academic writing career? Or is it just a year of nerdy fun?

I have internships in these practice areas but because of visa issues when I had very less time to find a sponsor I ended up taking an immigration law job. Is anyone here actually willing to give me a job in the above areas because I do have transferable skills. I know it’s very weird to post it here.

I'm wondering if anyone has experience with this, or knows about the process. Obviously it depends on the country, but I'm just wondering if it's actually feasible. What's a common obstacle? Do you pretty much have to start over, or does a US bar license hold some weight? Do other countries have their own versions of an L.L.M.?

To clarify, I'm not talking about just being transferred to to an international branch of an American law firm; I am talking about having US bar admission, literally moving to another country, getting licensed as an attorney in that country, and practicing law there.

Any advice? How should I triage? Best organizational tips? How do I make sure as little as possible slips through the cracks? I’m unbelievably overwhelmed and don’t know where to start