#real lawblr

[vividstardustrevolution]

Disabled people (both people with physical disabilities and people with psychological disabilities) should be able to get housing, food, medical needs, etc met without having to work or stay in school. ...Okay, really, everyone deserves access to free or affordable housing, food, and medical care, but disabled people ESPECIALLY deserve it because if I, a law student with "low support needs" autism, depression, GAD, OCD, and ADHD, cannot afford to take a break from school and take a semester off because I'd have to start repaying my loans because I had to drop down to three credits last fall and because I would have to get a job, so it wouldn't really be a break (which, I have had one job in my life, and I'm not fully convinced it wasn't a fluke, and also, trying to maintain a job when you have disabilities is difficult), I can only imagine that disabled people with higher support needs are even more fucked than me when it comes to being able to get housing and food and medical care without much, if any, funding.

Yes, Medicaid, Medicare, Food Stamps, and housing programs exist in the US, but, uh, I hate to break it to y'all, but that doesn't fully fix the problem, at all. There are a lot of old apartment complexes that are straight up inaccessible if you use a wheelchair. I'm living in one now. Applying for Medicaid and other programs can be a pain in the ass, especially when you're disabled.

"Just live with your parents!" My parents were emotionally abusive and emotionally neglectful, transphobic, and they literally harassed me so much during my 1L year that I still have nightmares.

"Live with a roommate!" I tried to. It went fucking terribly.

"Are you really disabled if you're able to be in law school?" YES. YES I AM.

Actually, on that note, law schools and the law profession need to become more accommodating for disabled people ASAP. Buck v. Bell needs to be overturned. Courts should be wheelchair accessible. Having to get past seven plus different forms of ableism just to graduate and pass the bar is ridiculous. Seriously, can we get some resources for disabled people in law school and the law profession, please?

Disabled rights matter, and we have every right to be able to live in peace and get our needs met, regardless of our support needs, disabilities, or anything else.

[apleasurableillusion]

I’ve never considered myself as someone who’s a lawyer because they love the law but I do really love being part of a profession that has existed for 1000+ years and that you can see the care that others put in before you.

Like I googled a legal term (hotchpot) and found out that its first recorded use was 1292. That’s wild. That’s me and some lawyer in 1292 reaching out across the centuries to come together and have the same problems and the same solutions.

Idk it just reminds me of what is great about humanity.

[themirokai]

Sending this one around again because we’re trying to work with a regional authority that was created by statute and I have to read its establishing legislation to figure out the mechanics of what we need to do and it is a 91-page pdf with no section titles so I have to read some of every fucking section to see if this is the part I’m looking for.

I have gone so far as to clear papers off my desk that have been there for literal years to avoid working on this.

Reading a 195 page contract because big companies hate little companies. Soundtrack:

It’s not really that big companies hate little companies. It’s that big companies take everything that ever happened to them and every thought their lawyers ever had and shove it all into one Standard Agreement and then when a little company comes along and says “excuse me, this seems a bit excessive and largely inapplicable to the services we’re going to perform for you” they say “DO YOU WANT OUR BIG COMPANY MONEY OR NOT?” and the little company sighs and says “yes, fine, alright. lemme just make sure there’s nothing in here that will bankrupt us.”

So. Doing the “will this bankrupt us” check.

[ziggyevenstar]

court employed lawyer off duty!!🎀🍃 i feel so laid back now compared to when i was in law school and reviewing for the bar. am i really living a happy lyf???

[lawschoolruinedme]

Potential Client: Why should I pay for this? What's the difference between your services and these online AI tools? Me, a Lawyer with ~10 Years Experience: First of all, my hallucinations are managed by medication

[lumiy-a]

sometimes i think the main skill an attorney has to develop is how to write in a way that allows them to say, five years later, “i never wrote that” when being accused of having written exactly what they wrote

[shadowed-yet-vibrant]

Today, our firm hosted a CLE about mental health and substance abuse in the legal profession. It was a well-done presentation, trying to fit the breadth of a decades-long systemic issue into a neat PowerPoint while keeping it at only one hour long (not .1 more or .1 less).

It feels like a pointless uphill battle. You're asked to make 2100 billed hours per year (or more). As a junior associate you need to achieve perfection - but you don't even know where the standard is, not yet, you're too new and you're trying your best. You're asked to attend non-billable CLEs and networking events and participate in bar associations and look ahead to business development and go out with your colleagues and socialize with clients in non-billable events and. and. and. You know who at the firm is an alcoholic - maybe you are too. You laugh at jokes about online gambling - you know the partner who gambled away his last paycheck, and he's laughing. You know who's filing for their third divorce. Who's about to lose the kids. Who missed their son's state-level championship game because they had a call with a prospective client (he won't forget, he'll never forget).

But they ask you to take care of your mental health (but you're chastised if you don't respond to the 1am email from the partner within 10 minutes). But they ask you to take care of your physical health (but there's a beer fridge in the break room). But they ask you to practice well-being (but they expect you on-call 24/7). But they tell you to get enough sleep (but the junior associate got less than an hour because of the partner's poor planning). But you need to look out for signs of mental health concerns in your peers (but you're also thinking about dying).

I could write a novel on this. Many attorneys have written similar ramblings, articles, studies, surveys, so I don't really need to. It's a problem. But there's been no real attempts at change. Sure, yes, there's awareness. But billable demands keep rising. So do standards in not just federal court, but state court. But you're at a firm that pays so well you'll endure whatever demands they put on you because that's just too damn good to lose. But you feel like shit every day. But- hey, well, the partner has been doing this for 45 years now. Why can't you?

[saul--transman]

"In the workforce you have to argue things you don't agree with"

how about we don't make minority students argue against their own humanity so the white cishets can have a fun little debate about topics that they'd never give a shit about otherwise

[noirandchocolate]

I reviewed another opinion for a judge in a case I worked on, and she not only copied my supervisor on an e-mail glowing with praise for my memo and how quick and helpful my editing was, she asked me to call her just so she could 'thank me properly' for explaining a complicated area of the law she was unfamiliar with and 'making her job so much easier.'

^(^o^)^ I am gooooood at what I do and everybody says so!!!

[apleasurableillusion]

A personal injury lawyer was just sentenced for her misconduct, which primarily arose from a file in which her client suffered a heart attack (unrelated to her work for him relating to a car accident) and was put on life support. Client’s wife (the power of attorney) wanted to remove him from life support but this lawyer disagreed and got an injunction to prevent the removal. She gave misleading information and improperly gave notice. There’s no evidence whatsoever produced that she knew his intentions or that his family was making an unreasonable decision.

There were also issues relating to this lawyer’s husband having a chiropractor business she sent clients to and they overbilled insurance for but that’s a side issue.

Please guess what discipline she received from the Law Society of Ontario

(Decision on my blog if you want more details - I can’t add links to community posts)

Answer under the break if you want it immediately

She got 9 months suspension. Decision in the post on my page

I’m convinced the only way to get disbarred is to steal money from a trust account.

[themirokai]

Sometimes being in environmental law means that your schedule for the afternoon gets completely thrown because a colleague standing the middle of some woods calls to tell you that there’s gunk in the stream and it smells bad.

[ramblingandpie]

I don't often talk about work here but today I moved So Many Things forward! And I successfully navigated office politics to do so!

One of my huge months-long projects is so close to being complete!!!

[lawschoolruinedme]

My lovely partner is in the process of getting a second-law license here in Canada (Ontario), and so I've been keeping an eye on r/ONBarExam to see if there's anything worthwhile to know.

Apparently the only thing worthwhile to know is that the children are even dumber than when I was in law school because I just had to read the sentence "As I understand, with the help of ChatGPT.." with my own eyes

[attorney-anon]

Bug on the Windshield

One of my former bosses often said “sometimes you’re the windshield, and sometimes you’re the bug.”

The practice of law can be great for your self-esteem. A big win can make you feel like you could wrestle God and win. Even a small victory can make you feel like a rockstar and a genius. But the practice of law is also hard, and painful, and soul-crushing. It’s not a profession that easily allows for traditional coping mechanisms; even self-care is just an item on your list that has to be prioritized appropriately.

I went to court today. I was pissed, because I didn’t have time for the hearing due to multiple appellate briefs and a mandamus that all need to be drafted and filed in like a two-week time span, and it wasn’t supposed to be my hearing, but it wasn’t a big hearing. A discovery dispute and a motion to bifurcate a complicated child custody case form a straightforward divorce.

What happened, instead, is a surprise trial-by-ambush on the key issues in the child custody case that robbed my client of EVERYTHING. Over my objections that I had no notice that this was a trial. Over my objections that, because this was supposed to be a short legal-arguments-only hearing, my client wasn’t even THERE. Over my objections (supported by citations to authority) that opposing counsel was LYING about the law.

The court didn’t care. He just wants this case over and done with. He just wants this case off his docket so his stats look better, and this gets him what he wants faster.

When you lose, as an attorney, you have to practice a level of detachment. You can’t cry or scream, you can’t panic even as you’re trying to figure out what to tell your client who is going to lose her child out of nowhere. You have to keep calm and focus on each task at hand as it comes, even if that means explaining why this order needs to be worded differently in order to make things clear for you on appeal, because make no mistake you WILL be appealing. You have to be polite to the opposing counsel who’s only too happy to fuck your client out of a fair trial, because eventually you have to come back to this judge.

Once you leave the courtroom, you can cry in the car but then you have to keep moving. You have to go back to the office and get your next task done, because your other cases don’t stop existing just because one client’s life is in upheaval. You have to keep functioning no matter how many times you are asked to recap the whole shitshow for your boss and coworkers. You cannot tell them to leave you alone and let you process, because the grief you feel isn’t only yours and you owe your client a team that knows what’s going on.

Sometimes, you’re the bug on the windshield. And you don’t get to deal with that, not fully, until the work day is over and your tasks for the day are done.

But once the day is done, then you do have to take a breath and process. You do have to have a drink, read a book, watch your favorite show. Eat something that’s bad for you but that you love. Have the cry you couldn’t have because the drive back from the courthouse was too short. The evening after a hard loss, you cannot work late into the evening. You have to be something other than an attorney, something that fills you without taking just as much, if you want to survive being an attorney.

And then, tomorrow, you have to go back to work and fight the next fight.

[shadowed-yet-vibrant]

Big decisions about abortion and LGBTQ rights make better headlines but SCOTUS just eviscerated the Chevron doctrine and no one but my dork-ass lawyer colleagues knows how immense this is (even if Chevron was arguably dead in the water before, and they just finally pulled the trigger to put it out of its misery).

[saul--transman]

Personal injury lawyers' kids learning to proportion fault by percentage.

Prosecutors' kids learning to accept that innocent people losing their freedom is the price to pay for ordered society.

Public interest lawyers' kids learning to carry the suffering of the marginalized on their shoulders.

BigLaw partners' kids learning from a young age that they exist to keep That Name On The Building.

Litigators' kids learning how to stand up for themselves from their parents only to be shut down with the full force of a Jesuit education and decades of courtroom experience.

Lawyers' kids losing their minds with their parents.