Why I Left the Law (1997)
spectacle.org
spectacle.org
This is an apropos description of what a litigator does. They're there when the optimism and hype if a project "to be" gives way to the cold hard reality if a project as it "turned out." I imagine many people find this depressing.
That said, its really fun in its own way. My wife is a bankruptcy attorney, and loves this aspect of her practice. Bankruptcy practice is all about expectations meeting reality. The $40 billion EFH bankruptcy winding its way through the courts was a bet on gas prices going up that hit the reality of fracking driving up supply. Its fun, in its own way, to try and clean up the resulting mess. If I had my way, I'd only ever take cases where things had gone really sideways.
I like taking on projects like this. The client won't fight with you about your bill-rate because they've seen what the result of being cheap is. The bar is set pretty low, it's already screwed up, you can only make it better.
edit: though I bet not dealing with clients that quibble about billing rates excludes lots who didn't learn their lesson the last time
The plan generally starts with a "stop all new work and stabilize" phase; getting code metrics and an idea of technical debt; fixing processes, builds, making sure testing and QA is in place; and so on before any new work is done. Any client that isn't willing to pay for these things is just replacing one bad implementer with another.
I left the profession and took a 70% pay cut my first year out. I'm still happy I did it.
This quote resonates with me because it describes my own flight from the law. On a day-to-day basis, the practice of law is relatively non-creative, rote and ultimately dull, at least when compared to technology and programming. The law just moves so slowly. When programming, thinking about the development of a product, or even running a company, I can explore a dozen or more creative and complex ideas in a day. I also experience feelings of success (and failure) every single day. Litigation doesn’t permit that. The anticipation and excitement of successes and failures are fewer and further in between — even that they can be very big and rewarding when they occur.
The author’s description of dealing with judges and attorneys in New York state court are disappointing. The law has structure and my vision is to map it out with sufficient detail and accuracy that we can put it on “rails,” the way most people assume it works when discussing “the rule of law.” Robolawyer will never be in the cards but it should usually be clear what laws are at issue, what arguments are relevant, and how the balance of past cases have applied those laws to particular sets of facts. Mapping out the law means we can guide reasoning along well worn paths, make it easier to express the logic of the law, and thereby shame “terse, incoherent one paragraph opinion[s]” out of existence.
What makes you think that any other city or state is any different? I've heard a few stories about Oregon that make me think it's pretty much the same here.
I think people would be very wise to avoid lawsuits unless they have a very very strong case. And even then be prepared to lose or to litigate for years.
It's a lot messier than engineering.
Present Day: I left the law because I had no choice.
http://online.wsj.com/news/interactive/LSCHOOL20120625?ref=S...
I'd like to see another table however - which correlates the law-related employment chance with the cost of the law degree. E.g., how much chance of being a lawyer you can buy for $10k?
Too often, local politics gets owned by a single party, and that is rarely a good thing.
Too many people are too consistently party line when they vote in elections. If you live in a R area, vote D locally. If you live in a D area, vote R locally. Just hold your nose and do it.
Once I made the switch I realized the joys of building a tangible product that users get to know and love.
I practice a type of law where I hope I never have a hearing or go before a judge. No one ever told me in law school this was the type of practice I could be one day doing (although if I had taken the right class - Admin Law, it might have seemed a possibility). My practice is almost entirely by fax (and hopefully one day soon some technology from this century). I advocate best by putting pen to paper, well fingers to keyboard, and connecting the dots in a way that someone can read it and say "that makes all the sense in the world, looks like your client should win." Of course, I'm not so naive to be it operates 100% like that but it's how I get to operate my practice and it means I get to really enjoy my work and feel fulfilled.
Here's the shocker - I'm writing to the VA (Veteran's Administration).
EDIT - Caveat - I would still totally leave to start a software company to improve the legal profession. Been teaching myself code for the last couple years and love to just mess around in my spare time. I just wouldn't be leaving because I was disgruntled but because it's a better opportunity.
The issue is that it's economically advantageous to pay a lawyer anything up to $5000 in fees if the result will be a 50% chance that you can net $10,000. So the parties could collectively pay the lawyers $10,000 to argue over who should get $10,000, even assuming everyone is acting rationally and has substantially accurate information.
The waste of resources is inherent to the adversarial process. It's in the same nature as a war but fought with money and time rather than blood. It's the same calculus: The fight is very rarely worth the cost but if you have no soldiers you're a victim to someone who does.