While I Was Sleeping

I spent a bit of time today catching up on blogs I haven't read in weeks, and in some respects it feels like I missed a lot—discussion of Senator Wellstone's tragic death, lots of thoughts on upcoming elections, the Microsoft anti-trust indecision, etc.—in other respects, not so much. The more things change...

Really, it looks like some of the biggest news in "blawgdom" recently has been "girls club." Check out Alice's thoughts, as well as her link to this great summary of the first episode of the show. Even Professor Cooper is somewhat sad to see the show has been cancelled, since it provided good fodder for teaching.

On a more sobering subject, Cooper links to Dahlia Lithwick's recent column in Slate, "Free the Baby Lawyers!". While it's good to be reminded of why I don't ever want to work for a firm (even though I realize I may have to, maybe, for a little while), it's scary and sad to get this inside look at big-firm life. According to Lithwick, after associates at Clifford Chance were asked for suggestions on how to improve their lives at the firm, all they could come up with was a lame "more perks and toys" response. Lithwick writes:

Associates in law firms knowingly sign away their health, leisure time, and relationships for a monstrous salary and hefty bonuses. This is not news. What is news is that the associates at Clifford Chance ask for both too much and too little. They want law firm life to be about more than just the commodification of their time, even when it is. And yet faced with an opportunity to reclaim their lives, they are willing to settle for a "hi" in the hallways and a better-appointed cage.

I see the beginnings of this myopia in my students every day. They seem to have no sense of a life or values outside of work and dollars. Somehow our culture seems to have produced a generation that has never stopped to ask the big metaphysical questions: What is the meaning of life? Why am I here? What is my purpose on this planet? Or if they have asked those questions, all the answers seem to be translated into dollar signs. (The decline in paper delivery boys and girls carrying their own papers must have something to do with this. It's like a cosmic connection, I tell ya.)

The comments following Lithwick's piece are also very enlightening, as "baby lawyers" rant about the hardships of paying for law school and the Faustian bargains they've made with firms to do so. See also this discussion among associates—especially this post from a teacher-turned-lawyer who says the pressure in teaching is greater than he's ever felt as a lawyer; amen to that, brother! And also this inspirational post and the thread that follows it—such comments give me hope that I'm not being completely naive to think I can avoid the young lawyer's Faustian bargain by taking advantage of my school's LRAP.

The discussion on Slate seems to rage on. See, for example, this thread that suggests that, in real terms, NY associates who make $125k/year are really making the equivalent of $42k/year, when you've accounted for all the time they're putting in. Or this advice: Don't go to law school. Hmmm. The replies to that one are more encouraging.

Posted 01:51 PM | Comments (1) | law school

State of the Union

This morning when I was out walking the dog, I saw my neighbor delivering newspapers. This neighbor is probably 11 or 12 years old, and every morning he gets up to roll and throw his papers. But he doesn't get up alone; one of his parents also gets up with him to drive him along his paper route. The family owns a Toyota Corolla, a Ford Explorer, and a restored 1940s Ford pickup. It's usually the dad who drives on the paper route, and he usually drives the Explorer, but sometimes the pickup. The kid sits in the back of whichever vehicle, the vehicle's tailgate up (in the case of the Explorer) or down (in the case of the pickup); the kid's legs dangle outside the vehicle as it moves down the road, so he's always ready to spring out and deliver a paper to the next house when the vehicle stops. But I've never seen him spring. Instead, he waits for the vehicle to stop, then typically reaches slowly for a paper before he saunters up to the door to drop the paper, then return slowly to the vehicle. I see this nearly every day, and I'm reminded that this is what we've come to as a people: We use our least fuel-efficient vehicles to drive our kids around their paper routes so they can make $5-10/day. I wonder: What is this paper boy learning from this experience?

Does this matter? Maybe not. Perhaps it just strikes me as significant because I actually delivered newspapers for nearly 10 years—from age 9 to age 18. During that time I always had at least one morning route, sometimes two; and for a couple of years when I lived in Iowa I had both a morning and an evening route (two different papers—the Des Moines Register was the morning paper, and the local paper, the name of which now escapes me, was an evening paper). And I'll admit that there's no way I could have delivered papers that long without lots of help and encouragement from my family. For many years, in fact, my mom and sister also had paper routes, so we'd all get up together and help each other to get our jobs done. Sometimes my mom would drive me to the start of my route, which was about a mile from my home. My mom also provided vital help with collections and keeping the books for my routes, so I couldn't have done it without her. Still, the only days I accepted a ride around my route were when the temperature was less than 40 degrees below zero (that usually happened a few times per year in Wyoming), or when I was injured and unable to walk or bike the route. So I know I sound like an old goat to be even talking about this, like the cliche of the old man complaining to the younger generation, "When I was a kid we didn't ride busses, we walked to school—uphill both ways! And we liked it!" I don't mean to sound like that. But still, these parents driving a lazy looking kid around his paper route every day just strikes me as a sad waste. I really think the whole Protestant work ethic is overrated, but still....

Posted 12:35 PM | general politics