burritofanatic

Actually, yes: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/12/13/small-bank-in-kansas-...

Last night for me was particularly tough. Coded essentially all day, struggled with a bug for hours, and was still on a caffeine high past midnight. The game plan for me should just be to wake up even earlier and wear myself out through more exercise.

I left law, ended up in QA, and am now a full time software developer. I think being in QA helped a lot when it came to teaching myself - would be employers would be glad you had work experience in a professional software development environment. This will be to your advantage, though trying to go dev from a QA role at the same company may be more difficult for political/business reasons.

I think the thing that got me where I am now within a reasonably time period is picking a type of technology (in my case, it was learning iOS and Git well enough) I wanted to work with, then stick to that until you become employed while attending every hackathon and relevant meetup, time permitting. You'll need projects that demonstrate your aptitude and ability.

If you or anyone else is interested, my story is actually on Codecademy: https://www.codecademy.com/stories/155-from-lawyer-to-ios-de..., and I've even written a book about the transition: http://quitlawandcode.com/

You're going to do fine. I know it seems like such a binary and insurmountable transition, but the more hours and practice you have, the more OOP and other concepts will just click for you. Also, you're not too late! I started at learning at 30.

FYI: I'm terrible at math, though I love learning, and would like to re-visit it when I have some more time (probably when I have high school aged kids).

As a lawyer turned programmer, I've written a bit about this here: http://www.williamha.com/economics-of-software-development-v...

I also did an interview on Above the Law about how some people in the legal profession may be better off in software: http://abovethelaw.com/2015/06/should-you-leave-law-and-lear...

And for the record, the majority of new lawyers in the United States are paid as much if not less than an junior software developer these days.

This is easier than going to Germany and learning German.

In regards to your question as to whether you can practice law in every jurisdiction, I'm starting to see that some jurisdiction are either silent, or prohibit someone with a foreign law degree + LLM to sit for their bar exam. But if you include the ability of reciprocity after admission to the Texas state bar, it opens up a lot of doors.

Author here, the LLM can be used as a bootcamp of sorts on American law for foreign trained lawyers.

Yeah, the blowback couldn't have been easy. Personally, it wouldn't work for my life stage. The pain and stress of making more income enough to service the student loans comfortably is less than the pain and stress of the aftermath of a quarter million dollar student loan default.

To his defense Lee Siegel, the author or the original article, happens to have a different class of loans that's being issued today. His likely don't have the benefits of forgiveness or income based repayment.

Given all the options available to students today, before you decide to default, make sure that you're on your way of your income earning peak potential first - as in, don't default at 26 - right after law school. You may switch careers (like me), and find a new start in job prospects and opportunity.

Original article: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/opinion/sunday/why-i-defau...

This is very cool! Yeah, doing it by hand might not be ideal, but I think you'll probably want to review the submissions anyway. Another thing you can do is maybe setup Amazon Turk to have Turkers verify, but that will cost money, of course.

Thanks for getting back to me Jacob. In regards to note 3, I'm sure you figured it out by now, but I was using the citation from California Appellate Reports as opposed to the California Reporter.

Major fail on my part. I have a habit of not looking at usernames, and I'm embarrassed. My apologies.

I'm sure they've discussed this at length: what is the incentive for a user to annotate case law?

Law happens in such slow motion and not exclusively at the computer that you don't really get the feedback as you would in programming (fixing a bug versus arguing a motion) - which is one of many reasons why Stackoverflow is successful (not that this is really a fair comparison anyway - more of an example). If my immediate success on compiling is dependent on trying out one of these suggested solutions, I'll certainly have an incentive to comment, upvote, and potentially contribute later on knowing how much it helped me.

Yeah, I'm certainly curious about Judicata. For anyone wondering where Judicata is in terms of progress, I found this comment from someone purportedly involved in the startup: "Judicata is very much alive. We're tackling a hard problem, with little margin for error, and focused on doing it right. It's a very different model than most startups, but then again, law is a very different beast." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9528321

That's right, I do remember using their billing product while I was working at a firm - Billing Matters.

Come to think of it, both Westlaw and Lexis Nexis actually have a suite of enterprise software. Even if WL and LN dies in terms of search, they're pretty deeply rooted in the marketplace elsewhere where a lot of money is coming in. I completely neglected this part of their business.

I suppose it would teach them the bare minimum to where they'd be at a teachable state on the job and potentially contributing soon thereafter, but yeah, it has to be pretty rough for both parties.

Agreed! This particular quote: "Income is not something that employers or the government ration out to you based on a rigged system. It is a something you generate yourself. It is the byproduct of your hard work, combined with learning and mastering the system itself. Even the system itself is subject to your control if you choose."

HBO has a documentary on the so called called Cannibal Cop, who was convicted for conspiracy, a so called "thought crime". He never really acted out on the underlying criminal act in question, and it's difficult to say if he conclusively took a substantial step in furtherance of the crime with someone else. Though, much of the evidence that did stack instead him included chats and search queries from Google.

I always thought that the crime of conspiracy was ahead of its time, but I really don't know how it fits in today's context where everything can be tracked. Not that conspiracy shouldn't exist, but that the world has finally caught up to the law.

You do have a point.

Learning new technologies may not be as dramatic as a shift though. I don't fully buy into the 80/20 rule, but a 5 year .net programmer would probably be proficient in Python in a matter days. OOP and CS fundamentals don't change (along with the basic principals of laws) between languages. You're also likely just dealing with business requirements and people. But, I guess we won't know for sure until all of us around here get old, or much older.

You aren't Jared Sinclaire are you? http://jaredsinclair.com/about.html He's a registered ICU nurse who became a developer - I thought this transition is more unique than mine.

More than a quarter of licensed attorneys who graduated from law school in 2000 are no longer actively practicing for a myriad of reasons. A significant number from my year, 2008 hold jobs that don't require a law degree.

These articles should give you a glimpse into the situation. There were several others I really like from over the years, but I can't seem to find them at the moment.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/27/business/dealbook/burdened...

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2015/04/30/job_market_fo...

I don't believe the general job market for nurses is as bad as it is for attorneys. People also have a great difficulty accepting a potential sunk cost, or refuse to believe that there's greater opportunity elsewhere once they have both feet committed somewhere.

An ebook that'll function as a guide as to how to quit law and code based on my experience.

http://www.quitlawandcode.com

The New Yorker had a good article that covers her background. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/12/15/blood-simpler

I immediately thought of Ray Kurzweil when he played music that was written by a computer he programmed in 1965 in which he demonstrated on the game show I've Got a Secret. I'd say with all of these responses, we've progressed quite a bit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4Neivqp2K4

Nooooo!

Drops to my knees, camera zooms up and out. Roll credits.

I have a law degree, and I live in Los Angeles. I still don't think it's too common though - I haven't met anyone else.

Ugh, when I lived in San Francisco, I concluded that the burritos were pretty awful when compared to burritos from the south, particularly San Diego - as far as 'American' style burritos go. Granted, this isn't the typical SF burrito, but my heart sinks each time I hear anyone rave about any burrito from the mission of the rest of SF.

Before anyone gets combative, yes, I also must admit that the basis for comparison isn't equal, because they're of different styles.

Yet there are hidden gems like like CUNY Law, which really should get more looks, particularly if a student is truly interested in doing public interest work. http://www.law.cuny.edu/admissions/tuition.html

Though I don't truly regret going through law school then transitioning after, I really should have looked at financing the education like buying a home with a 30 year mortgage. A 20% downpayment would have defrayed quite a bit of the cost, and the path to saving that money would have given me time to consider the decision further. This doesn't have to be the rule, but it's an excellent guideline for anyone making such a big financial investment.

Location: Los Angeles

Remote: Currently

Willing to relocate: Amenable

Technologies: Objective-C, iOS, Python, markup (HTML, CSS, JS), Google App Engine

Resume: https://www.linkedin.com/pub/will-ha/26/95b/1a4

Email: williamgazillion@gmail.com

I was always under the impression that they're Django/Python. Can anyone confirm?

Although I was pleased to see my favorite taco shop's burrito represented, I'm upset that a place like Cancun or Farolito has a higher rated index.

Excellent! People writing important papers really should be using Git. When documents are extremely complex, previously removed portions can have pertinence later.