Monday, December 20, 2004

 
I went to a partners-only Holiday Party last night at a colleague's house. The host was a relatively new partner, a young guy. He's a little too ambitious for his own good. He wears nice suits. And helps keep the shoe shine guy in business. That's how you can tell someone cares about their future prospects. They get their shoes shined. It's already obvious he's gunning to run the firm one day. Hence the partners-only affair. He wants as much face time as he can get with the rest of us. Lord knows it's not because we're a fun crowd to spend time with. Especially not the Tax guys. Although I got some advice at the party on how to structure one of my investment portfolios that may end up saving me a few thousand dollars if I can get it done by the end of the month. It was a nice evening, except somehow one of our "senior counsel" showed up. He was once on the partner track, but never quite made it, and so he's just been hanging around the firm ever since. I feel sorry for him. He's obviously jealous of the rest of us. Why else would he show up at the party? We make more money, we get more respect, and we have a significantly greater fraction of a secretary than he does. Significantly.

Comments:
I'm just not buying the tough nose attorney persona. I think you're trying too hard.
 
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
 
AL, That was a good attempt but you gave away too much of your identity. (Maybe best to stick with what you know after all.) Kudos to you for a great blog - you are clearly a very talented writer.
 
I like the percentage of a secretary line. Does this refer to time or actual body parts? And if body parts, dare I ask which parts are assigned to whom?
 
Thanks for posting again, these stories are great breaks for those of us watching our professional futures crumble in the face of this first year exam onslaught. What's wrong with the tax guys? Too otaku?
-another 1L
 
But whose secretaries are better looking?
 
Oh. My. God. Senior counsel are like soooo disgusting. Get your disgusting filthy failure OFF of me and OUT of my office. When I became an associate at my awesomely prestigious firm, I signed on to a lifestyle that doesn't include any failures. Or fatties. Why doesn't AL's firm send that failure to the slaughterhouses so he can do something useful, like feed poor people, or at least fire him so that the associates know the very high standards at AL's firm? I sure don't want my classmates at my firm thinking they can get away with less than 1000%! That would make ME look bad, like I joined the wrong firm or something.
 
5:26: All you revealed by your comment was how much you fear failure and how much you're projecting. Have you ever heard that saying "What we hate most about others?"
 
7:20 may be a pollyanna, but 8:51 is a goon. 9:00 is something lower, and 5:26 is just a sycophant trying too hard to sound like AL. Wake up: AL's probably some lawyer with a penchant for spinning a decent yarn. The problem is the 5:26's of the world, who think he's, like, for real, and, like, feel vindicated by him. And now they'll go try extra hard to act like Anonymous Lawyer, who is probably just a figment of Anonymous Blogger's imagination.

5:26, you're like a cheap self-serving cad who feels validated by watching George Costanza. Wake up and smell civilization, jackass.

And 2:06, I think you're right. Time for a hiatus or something, AL?
 
what's even better than all these responses to 5:26 is that none of them recognized that 5:26 was mocking AL.
 
AL seems to talk about tax lawyers a lot.
AL, are you a tax lawyer?
Is this blog a cry for help from personality that's spent years drowning in the Code?
 
TO: 7:20, 9:21, and 7:41
FROM: 5:26
RE: You are worthless.
________________________________________________________

7:20 and 9:21: You people can criticize and moan and groan all you like, but you woke up stupid and worthless and at the end of the day, you'll still be stupid and worthless. I work in Djan, Swift, Amodest & Proposle's _most famous and prestigious department_. (The fact that you don't work here means you're stupid and worthless, and that you know you're stupid and worthless. And if you've never heard of my department, you must be even stupider and more worthless than I thought. QED.)

7:41: You've got me all wrong: I love AL (or at least I love his practice. The actual AL, frankly, I think we could all do without.) He's very established and pretty famous in my practice area. I like to watch him work. (Although, I _could_ do better. If you read the comments, its clear he's got too light of a touch.)
 
AL-trying to hard this time. better blog next time please.
 
12:27: I won't eat my young, but touche.
 
This is a great, wicked site. I just spent most of the day wasting my time reading it at work, before I go take my Ethics exam tonight. I'm an evening student, a "3E," in my 40's, so I doubt I'll ever be working at a firm like this one. But I'll keep in touch.
 
To 5:26, this is 7:20. I see... you're lacking something somewhere (check just a little below your belly) and the only way you can make up for it is by saying "I work in Djan, Swift, Amodest & Proposle's _most famous and prestigious department_." Either that or you got turned down by one too many chicks and now your trying to heal your bruised ego by boasting about where you work. LOL.

Is that all you can say about yourself? Obviously this is why you are afraid of becoming senior counsel; you define yourself entirely by your work. Make sure you find an office at least as high up as AL's, it'll make killing yourself that much easier after you realize your life is completely shallow.
 
correcting myself; "your" = "you're"
 
Partners only party? How pretentious!! Why not have a party for people over 6'4"? That is about as meaningful as a friggin' "partners only" affair. Was it black tie optional? How self-important did everyone appear to be?

What a sad, sad state of affairs.
 
Dear 7:20,
Have you ever read a book in your life?
I'm suprised that you're able to type these messages.
Here's a link to the firm's websites, you thick sod:
http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html
Lighten up.
 
1:15 -- some of us enjoy poking dummies with a sharp stick. It proves how much better we are than the hoi polloi. And you've ruined it. Way to go.
 
It's alright if you:re a 3L at Harvard, you still got the sense of it and that's what counts; but it's a little presumptuous that writing like Bret Easton Ellis will get you a movie contract ...

Anyway. I once hired a guy who really shined his shoes. Man, what a mistake!! The dork was only worried about shining his shoes. He could spell alright, but he didn't have analytical skills worth zip. A totally useless dork.

Rule # 1. NEVER hire someone who spit-shines their shoes, even if they're an ex marine!!
 
"Alright" isn't a word.
 
I once worked at a defense firm for a snobby, sneaky, whiner of a partner. After about a year of working for him I was fed up with the lameness. I showed up at a firm get-together and got drunk, and eventually started making jokes at his expense. He pulled me off a big case the next Monday with a poor explanation; a couple of months later he had one of the other partners fire me. Typical of him, he didn’t want to do it himself. I went to his office and knocked on the door and he wouldn’t answer.

I can’t describe how good it felt to leave that joint. When I came to clean out my desk no one wanted to look me in the eye and ducked into their offices when they saw me walking down the hall. I cheerfully made it a point to greet everyone I saw.

I was freaked out when it first happened but I realized on my way out that leaving there was the best career move I ever made, and I didn’t even have to make it. I also got lucky in that I sent out a resume and got an interview the next day, and they hired me on the spot.

It took a while to work through it- it shook my self-confidence a lot. But that’s been taken care of by my success in law since getting canned from that snooty sweatshop. If you’re in a place where everyone gets freaked out about invites to boring parties, ask yourself if that’s really the right place for you.
 
The fellow with the overly shiny shoes, if he has a "Palm-Tree" haircut, could well be an undercover COP.
 


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