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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   12673 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 1, 2025

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Probably, but not as a lawyer. And once you are so far down that path, you've taken on a lot of financial-temporal-moral debt that creates path dependance.

If he had the ability to finish law school at all, he has the ability to do some job in the economy. But rather than looking for a profession that he could perform well in, he was allowed to drift into a profession despite failing (under even circumstances) every test designed to filter for the talent required to perform well. Now he's likely in significant debt, he's three years older, and if he tries to do anything else it's understood that he failed as a lawyer.

Someone who can't function within time limits is never going to do well in a business built on billable hours. A lower pressure role, or one where having one great idea every week is better than doing 50 hours of competent drudge work might be fine.

As a lawyer, there's plenty of smaller niches lawyers can fall into that don't go bonkers over billables in the same way the big firms do. For example, plaintiff's-side firms doing most of their work on contingency, or in-house regulatory compliance practice work.

I had a friend who I know worked at small firm in a pretty small 'big city' doing what sounded to me like paralegal work (filing forms on evictions, repossessions to the court). She said she made $50k a year but liked it because she didn't have to get clients. I think she got her grandma to foot the bill for law school (and wasn't paying her back any interest). Lived at home, and just consumed media and hated Trump, would wonder why she had no friends and would call me with grievances from her childhood.

I knew a guy who worked at a specialist firm which almost exclusively dealt with gas station franchising and environmental cleanup/compliance work. Didn't make BigLaw money, but did a lot better than $50k/yr. There's lots of weird niches of law you can get into and pick up specialist work without stressing about billables. Not saying that having craptastic time management will be a good thing, but it won't be as automatically fatal as it would be in BigLaw, Insurance Defense, etc.

People need to be weeded out as fast possible. Relaxing standards push off the ultimate failure until after someone is pot committed.

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