Author: TSA Press

I was looking for anything. I was doing temp work at first, and not as an attorney. Then I worked for a nonprofit. Finally, I cold-called an ex’s father who worked in the industry and eventually got a job with the government.

I think it stunted what I wanted to do. I was hoping to pay off law school debts right away and get into investing. Instead, I was just treading water.

— Nick Walstra, a 2010 law school graduate, commenting on the desperate lengths he had to through to get a job as a member of the “Lost Generation” of older millennials who graduated in the wake of the recession. For what it’s worth, Walstra says he’s “pretty satisfied with the way things ended up, now that [he’s] practicing law.” He now works for the state of Ohio, and has five figures of law school debt he’s hoping Public Service Loan Forgiveness will erase.

Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

According to data collected by U.S. News, what is the average cost of tuition and fees at private law schools for the 2018-2019 academic year?

Hint: You’ll pay less at public schools — there, the average in-state tuition and fees are $27,591 and $40,725 for out-of-state students.

See the answer on the next page.

It’s almost the end of the year, you’re barely holding on, but a $25,000 bonus looms on the horizon. You should delay your lateral search and collect your bonus, right? Absolutely not; now is the best time to initiate a lateral search, especially if you are unhappy with your firm. That yearly windfall may make you temporarily complacent, but here’s why you should not leave your lateral search until after you collect your bonus.

1) All of your colleagues are already looking. Yes, every time you knock on their door and your hear them say, “I’m gonna have to call you back,” or, “Let me circle back up with you later,” they were on the phone with a recruiter (probably me) discussing your dream job. By the time you start ramping up your search, they could be finishing their callback. Stay ahead of your peers by prepping as soon as possible for a lateral move.

2) If you feel that you are ready to explore other opportunities, your bonus should not change your mind. No matter how large that number is, it should not sway a decision you have been thinking about for a long time. In the long run, a better fitting firm will pay dividends in multiples of any potentially lost bonus.

3) Take a look at these numbers: The conventional wisdom is that associates don’t move until they get their bonuses, and then positions open up. While this is true to a degree, the numbers don’t lie. Here, we can see that firms are continually opening positions based on needs, and the “bonus musical chairs” may not affect firm hiring as much as we all think. More positions were opened in January and February than were opened in April-May. The numbers show that demand is relatively stable throughout the year, contrary to conventional wisdom.

4) On average, it takes about two to three months from search to hire for an associate lateral. However, it can take up to six months for more difficult searches. You don’t want to be stuck in a miserable job for an entire year longer. The end of the year was time to take stock of your career, but if you didn’t do that while you were home with friends and family complaining about your job, it’s not too late. By the time you finally summon the will to respond to my email, you may be sitting at your desk, ordering on Postmates thinking, “If I can only make it till my bonus in 2020.” This may seem like it’s not that far away, but by that time, you could have easily integrated yourself into a new firm or in-house position.

5) You’ll get to leave like a boss… on your own terms. What’s better than pocketing a five-figure bonus check and dropping the mic briefcase on the way out. If you plan properly, you can ensure that there is little lag time between receiving your bonus and starting at your new firm. Or if you feel a little burned out, ask your new firm for a few weeks off before you start and spend the bonus on a trip to Australia, or the next Fyre Festival if you feel like you have cash to burn. They are usually pretty accommodating about lateral start dates.

Matt Ritter

Ed. note: This is the latest installment in a series of posts from Lateral Link’s team of expert contributors. Matt Ritter is a Principal based in California where he focuses on moving partners and associates into prominent positions with elite firms and companies throughout the U.S., with a focus on the California and New York markets. Matt has a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and was a corporate associate at both Kirkland & Ellis and Mayer Brown in NYC. Matt has also toured as a comedian, and wrote and produced a few hit TV shows…now he’s trying to help lawyers find their dream jobs! I guess you could say he’s not your typical recruiter. 

Lateral Link is one of the top-rated international legal recruiting firms. With over 14 offices world-wide, Lateral Link specializes in placing attorneys at the most prestigious law firms and companies in the world. Managed by former practicing attorneys from top law schools, Lateral Link has a tradition of hiring lawyers to execute the lateral leaps of practicing attorneys. Click ::here:: to find out more about us.

Pete Williams, NBC’s justice correspondent, says that Ruth Bader Ginsburg has undergone more treatment for cancer.

She had out-patient radiation treatment for a malignant tumor on her pancreas. The treatment started August 5th. A bile-duct stent was put in place.

The Court says that there’s no evidence of cancer elsewhere in the body, and no further treatment is needed at this time.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg is not going anywhere, as long as she is alive.

I’m going to go drink heavily now. Actually, screw it, I’m sure I still have some opium hidden around here somewhere.

Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and a contributor at The Nation. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.

At this year’s ILTACON, taking place this week in Orlando, Above the Law’s Kathryn Rubino sat down with ETL member Wolters Kluwer to talk about innovation within the industry. Their conversation explored the imperative of pursuing innovation at all levels and across all categories, whether its the small tech startup or the partners at your own firm, in order to create and foster ideas.  For Wolters Kluwer itself, current innovation initiatives include efforts to take the company’s highly regarded traditional content and align it with the practitioner’s workflow, to help save time and increase accuracy. This focus echoed and underscored our other conversations at ILTACON 2019, which also put an emphasis on pushing process into workflow. Tune in below to hear more!

In a world of “do more with less,” corporate legal operations teams are often faced with an increasing contract volume but with no additional resources. Whether you use a homegrown or an older solution that’s just not working anymore, or you have no solution at all, chances are that the growth in your contract volume and complexity are difficult to manage and resource intensive. Join us for a webinar that will focus on:

– Why you need a simple, yet scalable, solution that you can configure and maintain on your own;
– How consumer-style business tools are revolutionizing the operational experience; and
– What AI is NOT capable of, namely, the replacement for your contracting expertise.

Click here to learn from our panel of experts on Friday, September 27, at 1 p.m., including Stephanie Corey, a widely respected veteran in the legal ops field and co-founder of UpLevelOps, and Matt Patel, a CLM solution expert with over 15 years of experience in CLM technology and co-founder of Malbek.

Basketball star and former white Jesus, Larry Bird, is very popular in his home state of Indiana. He’s not just a man, he’s a brand, and has a vested interest in how he’s portrayed.

Jules Muck is an Indianapolis based street artist. She makes, you know, art. Her current thing is to make photo-realistic building murals of real people and adorn them with fake tattoos. Which, okay, I guess, sure, why not?

One of her installations is a drawing of Larry Bird sporting a number of tattoos that he, somewhat obviously, doesn’t have in real life. Her Bird has a spiderweb tatt and a tatt of two bunnies have sex (a call back to one of her other installations) and a face tattoo of a cardinal. If I were Bird, that cardinal would really piss me off because Bird played for the Indiana State Sycamores and the Boston Celtics and ran the Indiana Pacers and NONE OF THEM use a stupid cardinal like a heathen from Kentucky or St. Louis.

But for Bird’s lawyers, I guess it was the bunnies thing. From ABA Journal:

Bird’s lawyer, Gary Sallee, explained his client’s objection in an interview with the Indianapolis Star.

“”Larry’s position is he has elevated himself from where he began to where he is now through a lot of hard work. He has developed a brand that is marketable and he needs to protect that brand,” Sallee said. “The mural, as originally painted, was a departure from that brand.”

To avoid litigation over, like, street art, Muck agreed to remove most of the tattoos.

“Larry deserves some sort of prestigious mural,” she said. “That’s not my calling. That’s not what I’m here to do. I just wanted to have a little fun.”

Do not disrespect Larry Bird in Indiana. It’s never worth it.

You can see the original painting here.

Larry Bird mural with tattoos of mating bunnies and spider web brings objection from his lawyer [ABA Journal]