Archive for November, 2009

A common thread amongst the “law scam” blogs (the roster of which does not include this blog in my opinion) is how every e-lawyer, without fail, attempts to reveal to the uninitiated the folly of attending law school. Thread after thread on JD Underground bemoans that the practice of law is akin to a huge gamble with a massive house edge. You gamble money that isn’t yours to get into an oversaturated career path with little choice of happiness or success that TV has told you is but a degree away. The schools and loans are set up to perpetuate one another at the cost of students who don’t realize that where you get your license from does kinda matter, and if your grades aren’t really good you’re at a massive disadvantage. Don’t get me wrong, I agree with a good portion of this. But it’s nothing new. A relative who is an attorney told me, when I announced I was going to law school, to “not do it, unless you spend the next 5 years at the gym and look like a model.” Well one can tell from my previous post admitting my weight that I’m probably not one of those. Everyone, to the man (or woman), then says “Don’t go to law school” to the next bunch. How much of it is just a generational thing and how much of it is real is a question I cannot answer.

So the e lawyer is best described by our duly elected president. During his campaign he went on to describe some Pennsylvania voters as bitter, clinging to guns and religion. I’ll rewrite that part here:
” You go into some of these websites and law blogs on the internet and talk about the practice of law, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 10 plus years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these lawyers are gonna find employment and they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to JDUnderground or Tom The Temp or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-law school sentiment or anti-ABA sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” (i’m a political junkie so i thought it was appropriate). The point being, that some of this is reflexive and nothing new. Now, as for whether or not I would do it again if I had the chance.

I fell into law school like most “lemmings” who see it as a easy button for success. I orginally wanted to be an astronaut. Yeah I know. I took hard sciences in high school, and attended a reasonable state University to study physics, as they had a good program to get a BS from. I could succeed there and move onto a good PhD program and be on my way. However, I was immature. I decided it would be a good idea to enjoy my first year on my own getting to know people and have more fun than study. I got involved in student government at this fairly large school, and completely fucked up my studies. Attending an 8am calculus class taught by a Chinese TA seemed like a logical thing on paper. In practice, not so much. So I, as Mr. Ayn Rand Physics major/philosophy minor, had to find a way out of his current educational situation, exacerbated by losing a scholarship and not really getting laid much at all (making all the partying a total waste, I know). I withdrew from the school and came home to attend a smaller private university. There, I decided oh hey I could just go to law school. My advisor at the small local school was wary, but then when my LSAT came back with a 160, attending law school seemed more realistic, despite my 2.8 ish college GPA.

So the small school advisor got me into a regional private TTT law school, despite the fact I had no real appreciation for law. It was “something to do.” Now, things have since changed in some ways, and stayed the same in others. Law is still “something to do” but it is something I find intertesting, and is rarely the same thing twice. I learn something new all the time. I’m lucky to have a job that doesnt involve me being a document coder. I meet inteteresting people and once in a while my cases get some local media attention. I’ve met the woman I want to make an effort to marry due to this TTT. I also got very very lucky (depending on how you look at it) to have financed the whole fucking thing and gotten my private loans paid off due to some inheritance. So, in short, I might actually win this bet, but I did it by splitting 10’s, hitting on 19, yelling for seven at the craps table, and basically being the worst gambler in the world.

I think I am in the right career for me. I would do it again, but I would do it radically differently. However, that’s only assuming I would still meet the reason I’m trying to move to Jurisdiction X. She has been through a hell of a lot with me, and I would not like to contemplate the “would i do it again” option if she were not involved in the equation somehow. My first change would have been dumping the TTT and going to the top 50 law school who waitlisted me and then gave me an acceptance right before orientation. My second would be playing less counterstrike and paying more attention my first year. Then I would buy old barbri books, sit with a bar tutor to learn to write essays, and crush the exams. Would that guarantee a different outcome? Well, nothing is certain but I would likely have a greater chance to be in a different area of law, living in a different city, and possibly making more money. But then I wouldnt have the great friends I do, and a girlfriend who loves me very much.

Its a question that’s really a lot of navel gazing. But the point really isn’t would I do it again, it’s would I tell others to go, isn’t it? You can get more of that analysis at another blog or site. Here, it’s more about my life as a toileteer and all the perks that come with it. I’ll close with this, I would do it again and I survived a shitty Thanksgiving without falling off the wagon, weight wise. More on that next post. I actually have to work today :/

There are a lot of reasons why being a lawyer is bad for you. First and foremost your choice of career has likely saddled you with 6 figures in debt and incredibly bleak job prospects. But then what happens to you when you get that sweet gig?

Being a lawyer involves a hell of a lot of sitting on your ass staring at a computer screen, either as a document coder in a roach infested slave pen beneath some crushing biglaw asshole factory, or copypastaing another brainless ID motion, or reading tiny script on fastcase and getting a headache as you desparately try to find something on point using such a subpar but really supercheap database engine.

Then you eat. A lot. The secretaries bring in food, clients bring in food, you have 15 minutes to get some lunch before you have to meet the next son of a bitch with no money and a 6 count indictment who wants to go on a “payment plan” so you run to mcdonalds.

There is only one thing I eat at mcdonalds now, just the eggs and a steak patty for breakfast. Its real protein, I’m sure. But it used to be, 2 for 3 big macs, large fries, 10 piece nuggets, or some such, and its easily 1800 calories of pure shit that leaves you hungry like chinese food in 2 hours. Oh and a coke which is more syrup than water. Basically your job is killing you, and your food is killing you, and your debt is killing you, and your shitty clients kill you and laugh while they do it. Its like the guy who can do 4 months in county on his head looks at me and calls me a fuckup.

Add to that the stress and cortisol and you basically turn into a fat sack of shit. Like me. I saw a girl I went to law school at the courthouse. She’s part of the state’s harem of family law bitches. She deals with the most fucked up people in the world on behalf of state agencies who set child support for deadbeat fucks. In law school she was petite, kinda cute, glasses, very quiet. I hardly talked to her but yeah i blew a few knuckle children thinking about how underneath the quiet bespectacled law school student exterior, she was a 3 input cumslut who begged for you to shoot all over her and was insatiable in bed.

Well now she’s just about a perfect sphere. Easily packing 2 bills. God this career can be so destructive to people. Not to mention the alcohol and drugs we regularly do to get by on a daily basis (not me mind you).

What is it I can actually control? Well, I can’t get a job in the jurisdiction I want no matter how hard i try (it seems), and I cant tell stupid assholes not to come into the office because then we wouldnt get clients. I can’t tell Great Lakes to fuck themselves with a dull knife used to cut habanero peppers, but I can control what the fuck I eat and what I do when I get home from work.

I’m a big guy, always have been. I still have a picture of me from prom. 6′0, about 215 pounds. I looked good. I was a social failure, and got practically zero pussy, but i looked good and damnit if i had my personality now in my body then I would be laying pipe like a champ. I came across this photo while moving recently, and I became completely disgusted with myself. Where did it go wrong? I saw a picture of me as a 1L on my student id. I was a little bigger but not by much. I took karate, I worked out, but then as time went on, it started to go downhill. After law school it really went downhill.

I weighed 345 fucking pounds this summer. Can you fucking believe it? I didnt look like some beached balloon whale mind you, but i know what i looked like naked and its a disaster. I finally said to hell with it all about the time i made that post about being a fat sack of shit. Just because i have a shiTTTY career, shiTTTy income prospects, deal with shiTTTy people on a daily basis, doesn’t mean I have to look shiTTTy. I may be TTT for life, but I dont have to look like it dammit. I got on a workout regime, and fixed what I eat pretty well, and have peeled off to 323 pounds this morning. But thats still easily another 80-90 to go. Its the one thing I can do to take back all the bad decisions i made so far in my life.

So gentle reader take this to heart. The practice of law will shorten your life, but it doesnt have to make your ass require its own congressional representative. I’ll link to some pictures for you later so you can track my progress and so on.

I’m trying to relocate from city 17 to jurisdiction X, where i earned my license a while ago. The reason? A woman. Such is life.

The problem is, the woman owns a home in a part of Jurisdiction X that is at least an hour from any major hub of legal activity. Hence practically all of the jobs listed there would involve horrendous commutes. The woman, though, landed a gig at a small law firm that’s fucking walking distance from her house. She leaves the house at 8:55 am every non court day.

So every day for me its more of the same: browse craigslist, lawjobs, indeed and the job bank I managed to get access to at a law school in Jurisdiction X. Step 1. Draft a carefully crafted cover letter focusing on that specific firm, always mentioning some aspect of the website for said firm. Step 2: edit my resume to highlight the areas of law I have practiced in that best harmonize with the target firm’s practice. Step 3: Email Step 4: Pray for mojo.

Well these tried and true steps have largely felt like kicking dead people and waiting for someone to kick back. It’s been a vortex, a black hole of shit into which I spend nearly 20 minutes on each resume and cover letter, and never even get a response.

Well fuck me if there wasn’t an epic confluence of factors that led to this:
“Smith” County small law firm (smith not actual county name mind you) seeks Junior Associate 2-5 years with varied practice background. Apply with recruiter at dumbassrecruiteremail@yahoo.com.

Well this is some luck! I happen to fit the bill, and the woman lives in Smith County, so I fire off my resume and another cover letter.

Phone rings 90 seconds later. It’s the recruiter! Holy shit! He and I talk, and he says my salary demand is what they’re looking for and I seem to be a good candidate. He tells me the name of the firm, tells me to go check out their website, and he will pass me on to them.

I check out the website. DOUBLE Holy Shit! This place is right down the street from my woman’s law firm! We could do romantic lunch fucking! Perfect! Then I go to look at the partners in the firm. TRIPLE Holy Shit! Three of them have licenses in Jurisdiction X and where i am from! QUADRUPLE Holy Shit! They all went to TTT’s and one of them is a graduate from MY TTT!!!

Well I do a little cosby-show-style dance and think to myself that my ship may have finally come in and I’m thrilled. I mean, it’s an alumni from my TTT! My salary demand is reasonable, and I’ll be living minutes from work!

Well its thursday, the recruiter I assume sends my resume onto the firm the next day, and I might hear something next week. The recruiter gives me his cell in case I need anything.

Well a week passes. I call in, asking if he has heard anything. “Oh I will call you dont worry.”

Another week passes. I shoot him an email. He’s out of the office.

Another week passes. I shoot him another email. He doesn’t respond.

Another week passes and i never hear from anyone again.

Fuck this gay earth. Anyways this is what the unemployed are going through so I should be thankful for my little shitlaw shop. It could always be worse.

I frequently namedrop JD Underground and Tom the Temp. It’s because of those I ever found out about the original toiletlaw.com site. I assumed this would be a narrowcast blog towards the bitter law students and grads who know what toiletlaw really means. However, it appears some are not familiar with the jargon of the bitter lawyer. I guess I will give you the basics. Take it with a grain of salt though, since I’m not as hardened and jaded. In fact this is probably the only post I’ll ever make about this kind of thing. Anyways, it all starts with the TTT.

TTT (Third Tier Toilet)
A Third Tier Toilet (or TTTT for fourth tier toilet) usually refers to any law school that is ranked in the Third Tier (100 and up) by US News and World Report. I’m not sure where it came from, but I saw it first used to describe my law school on JD Underground. Nowadays, the snarkiest and most bitter JDUers and Tom the Tempers use it to refer to any law school outside the top 50. All TTT’s have the following in common nowadays:
1. They are ghastly expensive
2. They hype aspects aside from their US News ranking
3. They try to not tell you exactly how many grads of a certain class are actually working as lawyers full time
4. Employers look at them and laugh.
5. Their primary advice in the career center is to “network”
6. Their grads very rarely if ever get into “biglaw”
7. Most grads are document coders or unemployed and well over 6 figures in debt.
When you graduate from a TTT, you feel like you wasted 3 years of your life and you will spend over 30 of the next years paying for it. TTT’s are primarily concerned with making money to perpetuate their existence and are therefore incentivized to take in as many students as possible despite the New Orleans Hurricane Katrina like oversaturation of the legal market. I got waitlisted at a top 50 tier 2 law school, but was accepted immediately at the TTT. I sent off my TTT deposit, and in between signing my lease and moving to the TTT town, the tier 2 school called and said they had room for me. I shrugged and said too bad, so sad. If I didn’t go to the TTT I wouldn’t have met the reason I am trying to break into Jurisdiction X and leave City 17 behind. I would also probably be 80K less in debt. My TTT law school is respected in City 17 and most of my state, but the 2nd tier school would be more respected nationwide.

ToiletLaw aka Shitlaw
From what I recall, the term Toilet Law originally came from the idea of toilet law firms, which was a phrase to the best of my knowledge coined by http://nycinsurancelaw.googlepages.com/ They use it to refer to ID (Insurance Defense) firms mostly out of New York City and its surrounding environs. In fact, a lot of these terms are coined by New Yorkers/Bostoners, because you can probably hit 6 bitter/unemployed law grads from one of the myriad law firms in those metropolitan areas. Toilet Law firms in reality practice all manner of areas, but are identifiable by horribly low wages, poor working conditions, uninterested/cruel employers, long hours, meaningless copypasta of shitpaper (shitpaper, shitlaw, toiletlaw, such colorful euphemisms – shitpaper being used to refer to boilerplate motions used in Insurance related cases which in most instances vary only by caption) and have high turnover rate. Well, they did until unemployment has scared everyone into clinging desparately to their ever decreasing salaried positions.

Anyone who practices in a toilet law firm practices “shitlaw” by definition. Shitlaw is basically anything that isn’t “Biglaw” or “Midlaw.” It’s an elitist or bitter term, for certain, but I basically interpret it to mean anything that requires the representation of individual human beings as clients. If you represent faceless corporations and handle Mergers and Acquisitions, SEC, Commercial, highbrow sorts of stuff (which I honestly wouldnt do unless they backed the brink truck up to my door) you’re not doing shitlaw. Divorces, DUIs, auto accidents, landlord/tenant, Misdemeanors, Felonies, bankruptcies, this is basically “shitlaw”

And then there is the
Toileteer
Using the above definitions you would understand the following: Toileteers are TTT grads/shitlaw practicioers who push shitlaw in their toilet law firms.

In conclusion, this is all common jargon used by people who like to drone on and on about the “Law School Scam” and will engage you in debate about how law schools are all designed to make slaves out of people by saddling them with insurmountable debt, promising them 150K salaries they could never possibly earn unless they hit the lottery, and in fact give them questionable job prospects in a market where 45K to start even in high priced places such as Manhattan require 6-8 months of resume spamming to hopefully one day get before unemployment benefits run out after your loans start coming due 6 months after graduation. God forbid you be a multiple time test taker.

I generally beleive that going to law school was a good idea. I enjoy most of what I do though I really do despire certain clients and secretly wish they would have large anvils dropped on their heads. However in retrospect I should have abandoned the law school deposit, not taken possession of the apartment or paid the security deposit, and hauled my ass to the tier 2 school despite the protests of my family. (I went to the Tier 2 for some ungergrad and partied my way out of a physics scholarship) However that would also mean I would never have met the future Mrs Toilet Lawyer or ever had the joys of being in Jurisdiction X even though most people do not want to be there. Your mileage will vary.

For more information, check out:
http://www.jdunderground.com
http://temporaryattorney.blogspot.com

Its school. I meant law school when I was writing about TTT. I could use a fucking editor I swear.

Thanks to the nature of my practice, I’m pretty much a realist when it comes to practically everything. However, when it comes to chicks I had a hard on for, I always held some sort of idealistic view that they will always be as hot as I imagined when I was having “Willy time.” In my dreams, they’re just as hot as when I met them and took the express monorail past the transportation and ticket depot straight to friendland. They’re snarky but cute with full bouncing breasts and perfect lips and horny as fuck. Odd though they stay the same age as when I developed a fantasy about them. So there are high school girls, college girls, and law school girls who never aged, who I just wish I could plow on a nightly basis. The thought that they would change in any way shape or form is beyond me.

Ho Ho Ho high school reuinion should have changed some of that for me a few years ago. Our high school class president (whose graduation speech I wrote) was a cheerleader and cute as hell in high school. Well when the ten year reuinion came, things changed. She had an ass you could park a small car on top of and had popped out at least one kid and married some short balding fat schlub. When I saw her I was halfway through my third double beefeaters, but even in a drunken haze I could still tell she had really let herself go.
(Interesting side note, the ugly girls get FUCKIN HOT AS HELL. Case in point, this short mousy girl who looked like gollum with a wig in high school had turned into a smoking hot fucking nerd who moved to NYC and got a good biglaw job.)

So you’d think I would learn my lesson again when I started looking up this girl I met in college and should have banged the drum slowly with, who actually wanted me, but I was too much of a fuckup to seal the deal. She’s on myspace. And she’s turned into a horse. Also married with kids. It’s like once you squeeze a watermelon through a mousehole, you have the right to somehow have your body turn to shit. I guess it’s misogyny on my part, but hey its my blog and I can be an asshole if I want. Right 160? You and me, postin bros.

But no things never change. So its 10PM Thursday night and i get a text from some unknown number “Call me as soon as you get this.” I have no idea who the fuck it is. Well the next day from work I call and ask, and its this other chick from college I had a boner for. Well holy shit I’m halfway there once i realize who it is. I usually catch up with her every 4-5 months or so to say hi. She knows the story and I know she got married and had a kid, but there I am, imagining the night I spent at her place WITHOUT making a move on her, and how she had a decent rack, and well I’m looking for a quiet corner and some Jergens right there in the middle of drafting some old lady’s pourover trust.

She’s in town from out of state for some seminar and wants to hang out. I’m completely down, so we arrange to meet Friday night. I get myself all primped up and just like an asshole I pack a condom in my wallet, thinking I might get some this time if I just try. So when she pulls up in her mom minivan, I’m starting to get a little concerned. Then britney spears pops out. Not the good britney spears. I’m talking about britney circa 2006/2007. My boner dreams deflate. Hard. The whole night nothing happens. I get home and boot up SMUTTT.com and find something worthy of my time.

Long story short: no matter how hot you think she was, she got fatter and nastier. Then again, I should look in the mirror and know that. :/

Not much on the toiletlaw front. RapeBoy pled out one of his two cases in City 17, and sentencing is set for a couple months from now. Going to have to drag the doctors back in to talk about how his brain has been fucked harder than Billed Hourly’s ass after being drowned in hundreds a craigslist trailer trash hooker on a meth binge. North End Boy has seen the light, hallelujah. I didn’t want to sit on a 3 week racketeering trial. My time would be better spent surfing porn or *gasp* actually hitting the gym.

This is literally me with regards to such a facility:

Which brings me onto my next point. My fat ass. Thankfully I’m sparing you people with such a horrible visage. It will replace the whale in your nightmares. I don’t look that bad. In fact a genius client (who wrote 88K in bad checks to herself from her workplace and got caught and I managed to get her non prison sanctions) commented that I looked like I lost some weight since her plea hearing 6 months ago. I thanked her but I havent lost much at all. But I know how much I weigh and I manage to carry it well on a 6′2 frame, but DAMN i need to drop weight big time. I saw my prom photo with this hot piece of ass I got a date with back in 1995. I actually looked pretty handsome. Why it took me to 18 to lose my virginity to a 34 year old mom I have no idea (thanks AOL for securing that. The internet got me laid before using the internet to get laid was cool).

Interesting side note: The chick I went to the prom with didnt fuck me. No instead she fucked another girl I later worked at a restaurant with. More interesting side note: that chick told me about it and gave the sexy details and told me about a sex video she made with her boyfriend during high school. Even more interesting note: I drove 3 hours to her house right after my civ pro exam (which i bombed) to try and get a mercy blow job. I didnt, but managed to secure the video.
Final note: The sex on the video is ok but it contained CLASSIC FUCKING REN AND STIMPY, like 2 hours worth on SLP. Guess which I watched more of?

Anyways back to the story. I need to get my ass back to a gym, and I have a workout plan and diet plan. My ex gf from 10 years ago told me I was hot (and she was a three input whore. Man I loved fucking her. I wish i could have a doover on that relationship) but since then nothing. I need to get that ego stroke back. Also as a side benefit when I get to see my old lady (who lives in another Jurisdiction I’m trying to find a job in) she might actually want to go downtown on me more. Hey everything has to have an incentive, right? You think I want to get in shape just to get lower insurance premiums? Fuck no, I want to get boned more!

Anyways thus endeth the EN bullshit. Feel free to flame away. Fags.