by Yonina Rosenbaum
I just read an article in the Wall Street Journal called “Tough Times
for Big Law” by Elizabeth Wurtzel. (It was actually printed in
December but I am still reading through the stack of papers, articles,
and New Yorker magazines on my desk that grew, unread, during exams.)
The article is available here:
http://www.online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704240504574586431109327544.html.
Ms. Wurtzel discusses the trend of some big law firms offering
incoming associates a lump sum to basically disappear from the year.
In particular, she zeroes in on mega-firm Cravath, which offered the
class that joined this year $80,000 not to work, though they would
still get benefits and student-loan payments. She does not dwell on
the wisdom of this decision, or on what put the firm in this situation
to begin with. Rather, she focuses on the incoming associates who did
not take the offer, calling that decision disturbing. Ms. Wurtzel
continues, “If even one person said no to $80,000 for bubkes, I’d
question the sanity and intelligence of that sole handout. Cravath
recruits the best and the brightest kids from the most highly ranked
law schools—and given $80,000 and a dream, all many of them could do
was report to work on Monday.” When she phrased it that way, it had me
wondering what I would do if offered such an opportunity.
Then, the piece de resistance—you know the author is about to hit home
in a WSJ editorial when she quotes the Supreme Court’s King of
Sprachgefuhl. “Recently, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said:
‘I worry that we are devoting too many of our very best minds to this
enterprise.’….These top-notch law grads…may actually be idiots who
lack imagination underneath it all. Maybe they just don’t have enough
vision to know what to do with $80,000 worth of free time.”
Ouch. She had a point though. I had to wonder whether so many law
students are so programmed to follow a specific track that they could
not think outside the box—even when they were being paid to do so and
had an in-the-box job lined up at the end of the year. I could picture
myself traveling or volunteering abroad for a year, which $80,000
could reasonably cover.
Then again, as a couple of people responded to Ms. Wurtzel, many law
students actually want to practice law and don’t want to wait. Even if
they might have tried to find another way to do that during the year
off, their job prospects are so flimsy in this economy, can you really
blame them for taking a safe route? Then there are those who feel like
they have to start as soon as possible, because making a six-figure
salary is their fastest route to pay back their student loans, with a
going rate of $40,000 a year for tuition.
It seems like a vicious cycle. And I’m willing to bet a whole of
people go into Big Law as “due diligence” in order to pay back loans
or get the so-called experience needed to qualify for the job they are
really after. I would not want that kind of debt hanging over my head
the rest of my life. The fact that the dilemma is there to begin with
is the real problem. Is there any way around this? If I was offered
$80,000 for the year, maybe I would spend the time trying to find out.
