I'm going to hazard a guess that things are incredibly different in your country, because 26 with a "PHD in law" would not happen here. Also the level above a J.D. is usually called an LLM. Few American Attorneys bother to go and get it, as it is seen having little practical value if any. I am aware things may be very different in other countries but am completely unfamiliar with the idea of a "PHD in law." I have not heard the term used among attorneys here. In any event I am a practitioner who openly and notoriously regards legal academics as they currently exist in the US as a waste. They don't teach students how to practice law, which is why they go to law school here in the first place. I was considered incredibly young when I graduated law school with a J.D. at 24.
While our countries do operate under different systems, my PhD wasn't acquired in a national university and it is most certainly not a title foreign to the USA. As for your guess, a law PhD can take as little as three years to undergo and I was given the privilege of altogether bypassing the LLM. There is nothing barring someone from attaining a PhD at the age of 25, much as it was 26 in my case.
I shall refrain from engaging in a debate surrounding the usefulness of legal academics, given that I myself am personally skeptical of the area, but there most certainly are rather practical uses attached to the tiles, foremost of which one's prestige; you are presented to the would be consumers under your employer's façade, but, were you to strike it out indepedently or form your own firm, you'd soon understand the merits of academic recognition.
My boss is an immensely conservative, ancient practitioner who simply is so old he doesn't care anymore and hasn't for years. It is likely he will die in his office sooner or later, refusing to leave it and especially refusing to leave his position. He doesn't do very much and hasn't for quite some time. I don't think he's bothered to go to court in a month, and before that he didn't for nearly a year. He also hasn't written or researched anything for quite some time. He signs his name on people's work though. He hires law students and new attorneys who due to the unprecedented downturn of the US legal industry, have no other jobs.
There are no "junior lawyers," here, or in many smaller firms. There's the boss. Then there's every lawyer he hires to actually do things. Then there are some small number of clerks and a secretary. As for who gets his firm when he dies, he will allow it to crumble after he dies as if to allow his ghost to say, "See, it really was me keeping it together. It fell apart without me. I was important." There is no "inheritor" of his firm or clients. He paid to put his son through law school but that guy never even bothered to register to take the bar exam. When asked what he was doing, he replied, "killing time." The boss has been trying to get rid of me for quite some time and has given me all the worst cases or as the secretary said, "putting you on suicide runs." Somehow I manage to win a respectable amount of them, or otherwise come to a relatively favorable result. I attribute this to my having no life and pretty much spending all my time in forgotten law libraries or courting clients.
As for local reputation, these people can't afford it. They are backed into a corner and have no other option. We can't officially say so, but we're the lowest cost option and they figure that out through shopping around. Other lawyers charge at least twice what we do and I've seen them literally charge several times what we do. Respectfully, what you are saying does not apply to those who are so downtrodden that the thought of paying $200 or $300 per hour is unthinkable and not affordable at all.
It seems to me as though it is in your best interest to seek a new firm or, provided that you can take the initial financial backlash, strike it out independently; you've all but compared your current workplace to a sinking veesel.
You and I operate under very different rules and regulations. I cannot promise or imply a result based upon past performance because each case is different and doing so would very possibly result in "misleading" advertising ethical issues. Moreover the judges don't follow the law all the time, especially in family and juvenile courts and you have no effective recourse because 80% of cases are lost on appeal, being as they are "within the trial court's sound discretion." That is of course assuming everyday people could afford to appeal. They can't.
That is precisely why you never outright state or imply a guarantee, but rather, use environment and personal reputation to project it in a passive fashion. Still, if you are forced by your employer to accept whatever case comes knocking, I can easily see how that'd severely complicate the whole ordeal and turn any assurances sketchy at best. There are cases which simply cannot be won, in which case I'd outright tell the client that and pursue an alternative path geared towards alleviating the losses.
You and I have vastly different ideas of who "top wage earners" are. Together with your statement about $40,000 not being a large or small amount of money, I assume this might be an innocent misunderstanding of the currency by a foreigner, which is understandable. I have no idea what reasonable sums of money are in Brazil, for example. I would not understand how much people made in salary or how much anything cost in that currency.
You are aware I don't generally like rich people. I am very jaded from my dealings with them. I tend to find the ones I have dealt with spoiled and not used to hard work or improvisation. They have never had to fend for themselves and pay others to do so, or have well off relatives.
For starters, top earners aren't just "wage earners"; the term refers to administrative staff, successful liberal workers and government officials. An executive, while far better off than the large majority of the population, ultimately only occupies an average position in the grand hierarchy. I assure you of which there was no innocent misunderstanding of the currency, although you might have successfully claimed ignorance by my part of the country's economical scenario; I've lived in the US for extended periods of time in the past and my occupation all but leads me to deal with trade values on an sporadic basis.
Likewise, I cannot help but notice your generalization of the rich's general complacence, and while I concur that several heirs do grow up to behave in such a fashion, that cannot be comprehended as a rule. Rather, your last sentence does seem to indicate a bit of jealously, as I doubt there is an actual perceivable problem in the affluence of an individual's relatives or their ability to outsource most tasks. Still, I will be the very first to say your experience is probably limited, specially if based on your professional environment: you claim to offer relatively cheap services at the cost of renown; would any of the truly rich, rather than mere wannabes, opt for that?
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Topic: Things that made you sad today thread. (Read 9704369 times)