| Topic Name: |
Medical School or Law School? |
| Message Name: |
Great advice |
| Date Posted: |
10/30/2001 |
| In Reply To: |
Well-intentioned, but wrong - simply wrong. The surest means of success is to emulate success, to duplicate it, to COPY it.
Mr Rhodes advice is to forget about the BIGLAW route and instead go to the smaller firms, learn everything, and then strike out on your own. But this is NOT WHAT HE DID. Why should someone expect similar success, or ANY success, doing something different?? Why?
First, he was Editor-In-Chief of his schools' Law Review. How many are there for each law school? One at any given time. Odds are it WON'T be you....
Second, he had a partial and then a full scholarship. Not very many law students will be lucky or good enough to merit that. Law schools make money by charging tuition. Most graduating law students will face a MOUNTAIN OF DEBT. Trust me, it's bigger than a breadbasket....
Third, he worked at BIGLAW for four years. He was IN THE ENVIRONMENT. He had ACCESS to clients, paperwork, procedures, partners, knowledge, contacts that small-firm attorneys DO NOT HAVE.
Despite knocking the prestige of BIGLAW, he HAS IT. It is to his BENEFIT. In sum, he has a "pedigree" of success - a track record. No client has asked where he went to school? They DON'T NEED TO.
This is a well-intentioned post but logically it makes no sense.
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| Message: |
I think the confusion may be coming from two different threads that are at work here. My overarching theme is that going with a big firm is not the only viable choice, contrary to what one might think from reading the bulk of the posts on this board. However, many new attorneys feel that they must go to a big firm because of the MOUNTAIN OF DEBT, as you put it. So, my first point is that if you decide up front that you don't have to go to a big firm, then you don't have to go to an expensive prestige school, and you don't have to acquire a mountain of debt -- scholarship or not. Point two is that even if you do go to a "third tier" school, your ability to work at a big firm is not gone, you just need to distinguish yourself.
Now we switch to the small firm career track. I think it is fair to say that based on one's experience, one would do it differently. If I had it to do over again, I would skip the big firm, or perhaps of limited it to just two years. Your statement "He had ACCESS to clients, paperwork, procedures, partners, knowledge, contacts that small-firm attorneys DO NOT HAVE" is wrong, and that's my point. I lost ground by being at a big firm because you don't learn real law there. Access to clients is meaningless, because those cients don't move to a small practice. After two years at a big firm, my forms consisted of dozens of summary judgment motions based on ERISA preemption. Not real useful to a small firm. My big firm experience contributed nothing to my own practice, except, perhaps, to provide an insiders view so that I could later beat them. OK, my former firm occasionally sends me cases, but that's less than 2% of my practice.
If you want to go to a big firm for a year or two to get some quick income, that's not a bad way to go, just understand that that is not the ONLY way to go, and use that time to start preparing for your own practice.
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