Douchebag Finds Self Jobless and in Debt, Blames Law School

We like to pretend we've got ideas for books and movies (self delusion is one of are strong suits).  One book - "How To Go Broke on $200,000 a Year"  - half written in our head (we'll finish it as soon as we figure out how to not end up homeless on half that) plus we've got a movie about a guy who receives text messages from his dead father.  It's called "Heaven Sent." Yeah, that's right.  (You can't tell us people with really poor taste in movies wouldn't flock to see that sappy piece of shit.) 

So when we came across this New York Times article discussing the scourge that is law school, it made us think that another one of our ideas might actually have some merit.  For those who are too lazy to read it (we highly recommend taking the time), the point of the story is there are too many law schools, many of which fudge graduate employment statistics to entice students to enroll (and take out loans), spitting out ridiculously high graduation classes to flood the already depressed legal market.  Now, these newly minted JD's who can't seem find jobs, are pissed:

There were fewer complaints about fudging and subsidizing when legal jobs were plentiful. But student loans have always been the financial equivalent of chronic illnesses because there is no legal way to shake them. So the glut of diplomas, the dearth of jobs and those candy-coated employment statistics have now yielded a crop of furious young lawyers who say they mortgaged their future under false pretenses. You can sample their rage, and their admonitions, on what are known as law school scam blogs, with names like Shilling Me Softly, Subprime JD and Rose Colored Glasses.

We can certainly understand why they'd be pissed.  At this point in our career, we're quite disillusioned and equally in debt.  But you can't just blame the law schools for your problems like its some ponzi scheme perpetrated by Dean Madoff.  Maybe schools do crappy stuff (like hiring alumni to work temp jobs right around the time hiring numbers are due) to get those 99%'s, but isn't cynicism the #1 trait of budding lawyers?  We doubt that finding jobs is the real issue that's driving unrest in the legal profession though since the majority would apparently do it all over again, anyway, betting on one very expensive lottery ticket:

There is no shortage of 22-year-olds who think that law school is the perfect place to wait out a lousy economy and the gasoline that fuels this system — federally backed student loans — is still widely available ... Independent surveys find that most law students would enroll even if they knew that only a tiny number of them would wind up with six-figure salaries. Nearly all of them, it seems, are convinced that they’re going to win the ring toss at this carnival and bring home the stuffed bear ...

It's not just getting a job that's the issue.  It's the lack of fulfillment in the profession itself.  The problem is the people, like us, who go to law school thinking that The Law would be "interesting" or "challenging" or some other bullshit like that who end up disappointed.  You could give every single of of us a job at a huge law firm tomorrow and not much would change.  We didn't fully understand what we were getting into.  Law is for realists.  It's serious shit.  And to succeed, you need a plan, there's not just going to be a job waiting for you on the other side.

The first question on the LSAT should be what your career goal is and if you answer something vague like "I want to help people", you're forcibly removed from the test facility and banned forever.  You can't just go to law school because you hated your major in college, had no job prospects and figured, what the hell, we like school, might as well continue, assuming that, even if you don't like practicing, a law degree could never serve as a detriment.  Yeah, um, no.  Do that and you end up like us at a weird crossroads, wondering where the hell we're supposed to go next.  Maybe the overabundance of law schools, means that more people who don't quite understand the deal are finding there way into the system.  But that's not the schools fault, it's our fault. 

(If you want to hate on law schools for something, go after them for not stressing practical skills enough so that graduates who happen to find the job market not accomodating will have some of the skills they need to start their own law firm or work for a small business where there isn't a partner to teach them how to tie their shoes.  Being a new lawyer is like being thrown out in the Arctic without any clothes - if you can't find somebody to take you in and teach you how to survive, you're dead.)

That brings us back to our other book idea - "The Big Book of Consequences" (subtitle "Things That Could Have Been Brought To Our Attention Yesterday") which would explain up front what comes of all those decisions that people make that don't seem like a big deal at the time but end up screwing you 20 years later.  You know, like going to more school just for the heck of it.  (Of course, it'll be short and have lots of pictures.)  Maybe, a book like could keep people from making mistakes like we made and spare everyone from having to listen to us bitch and complain. 

But at least we take responsibility for our issue.  We work, pay our bills.  All that important stuff that responsible people do.  It sucks but its life.  So you can understand why we'd lack any semblance of sympathy for the guy the Times picked as the face of this story - Michael Wallerstein (we'll use his full name on the very real chance he has a google alert set up on himself).  It's not law school that's the problem, Mr. Wallerstein, THE PROBLEM IS YOU.

IF there is ever a class in how to remain calm while trapped beneath $250,000 in loans [from law school], Michael Wallerstein ought to teach it.

Wow, this guy must have a bunch of useful tips to pass on, ways to take productive steps to dealing with debt problems, like exploring debt relief programs, creative ways to make money, etc. 

Here he is, sitting one afternoon at a restaurant on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, a tall, sandy-haired, 27-year-old radiating a kind of surfer-dude serenity. His secret, if that’s the right word, is to pretty much ignore all the calls and letters that he receives every day from the dozen or so creditors now hounding him for cash.

Or not.

Sample Syllabus for "How To Remain Calm While Trapped Beneath $250,000 in Loans" from Full of Shit Douchebag University

Week 1 - Dying Your Hair That Sandy-Brown Color
Week 2 - Finding Your Inner Surfer Dude Serenity.  Sample text: "Dude!" by Pete Carroll. 
Week 3 - Learning to Radiate
Week 4 - How  I learned to Stop Caring About My Responsibilities And Love The Ignore Button On My Cell Phone

Perhaps we're being too harsh.  Maybe something really bad happened and he just can't pay his bills.  Let's read on.

Mr. Wallerstein, who can’t afford to pay down interest and thus watches the outstanding loan balance grow, is in roughly the same financial hell as people who bought more home than they could afford during the real estate boom. But creditors can’t foreclose on him because he didn’t spend the money on a house.  He spent it on a law degree.

Except for the fact that, while people lose their houses, he gets to keep his law degree, eat lunch with his sandy-brown hair and surfer dude serenity and bitch to the New York Times.  Seems like he's doing just find.  Maybe we should all stop paying our bills.

WHEN he started in 2006, Michael Wallerstein knew little about the Thomas Jefferson School of Law, other than that it was in San Diego, which seemed like a fine place to spend three years.

The Big Book of Consequences - Chapter 12:  Choosing A School - Don't be a dumbass and pick a school solely based on the climate.  The end.

“I looked at schools in Pennsylvania and Long Island,” he says, “but I thought, why not go somewhere I’ll enjoy?”

Because then you'll have a degree from a school that's 3,000 miles away from home which dramatically decreases your already slim chances of getting a job because no one you apply to will have ever heard of it, and if they have they probably think is in Virgina anyway?  Other than that, we can't think of a single problem with your logic.
   
Mr. Wallerstein is chatting over lunch one recent afternoon with his fiancée, Karin Michonski. She, too, seems unperturbed by his dizzying collection of i.o.u.’s. Despite those debts, she hopes that he does not wind up in one of those time-gobbling corporate law jobs.  “We like hanging out together,” she says with a laugh.

Awww, isn't that cute.  It's a shame that working will get in the way of their hanging out.  Thankfully the rest of us that hate our partners and can't wait to spend 12+ hours a day out of the house away from them.  We hope it rains on their wedding day.

If love paid the bills, these two would be debt-free tomorrow.

And if terrible lines could kill, this article would be a serial killer. 

But it doesn’t, and Mr. Wallerstein has no money in the bank, no assets and — aside from the occasional job as a legal temp — no wages to garnish. He and Ms. Michonski live rent-free in a nearby brownstone, in return for keeping an eye on the elderly man who owns the place.

Again, why are we supposed to feel bad for this kid? 

“Sometimes the banks will threaten to sue,” he says, “but one of the first things you learn in law school, in civil procedure class, is that it doesn’t make sense to sue someone who doesn’t have anything.”

Is there any doubt why people hate lawyers?  Smug little shit.

WHEN Mr. Wallerstein started at Thomas Jefferson ... [h]e borrowed so much that before the start of his first semester he nearly put a down payment on a $350,000 two-bedroom, two-bath condo, figuring that the investment would earn a profit by the time he graduated ... Instead, Mr. Wallerstein rented a spacious apartment. He also spent a month studying in the South of France and a month in Prague — all on borrowed money.

We hate to belabor the point again, but WHY SHOULD WE FEEL SORRY FOR THIS GUY!!  Admittedly, you need to borrow money during school since you can't work due to the academic obligations, but if you borrow so much that you can BUY A FRIGGING HOUSE maybe you should take a step back and examine your thought process.  And perhaps he'd have had an easier time getting a job after school if he worked instead of dicking around in Prague and Cannes.  If you want to be able to do that crap and not owe a shit ton of money then go to a cheap school, save your money, or be born to extremely rich parents.  Your choice, dude. 

Today, his best guess is that he should be sending $2,000 to $3,000 a month in total, to lenders that include Wells Fargo, Citibank and Sallie Mae. “There are a bunch of others,” he says. “I’m not really good at keeping records.”

Ugh. 

AS a student, Mr. Wallerstein assumed that the very scale of law school — all the paperwork, all the professors, all the tests — implied that pots of gold awaited anyone with smarts, charm and a willingness to work hard. He began to doubt that assumption when the firm where he had interned told him that it hadn’t been profitable for two years and could not offer him a full-time job.

Welcome to the real world, jackass.

Mr. Wallerstein and his fiancée moved back East after graduation, and he landed a job at a small firm in Queens. He says he was paid $10 an hour and worked for a manager who seemed to have walked straight out of a Dickens novel. Over a firm-wide lunch, as Labor Day approached, she asked employees to thank her, one at a time, for giving them the holiday off.   “When it was my turn, I said, ‘Labor Day is about celebrating the 40-hour workweek, weekends, that sort of thing,’ ” Mr. Wallerstein recalls. “She said, ‘Well, workers have that now so you don’t need a day off to celebrate it.’ ”  He lasted less than a month.

Ohh, poor baby.  Did you have a mean, mean boss?  Surely, nobody else in the world has to deal with such atrocities as thanking their boss for a day off just so they can have the money pay their bills.  Thank god he got out of that hellhole while he still had a chance.

MR. WALLERSTEIN, for his part, is not complaining. Once you throw in the intangibles of having a J.D., he says, he is one of law schools’ satisfied customers. “It’s a prestige thing,” he says. “I’m an attorney. All of my friends see me as a person they look up to. They understand I’m in a lot of debt, but I’ve done something they feel they could never do and the respect and admiration is important.”

Who doesn't respect somebody who can't hold a job and refuses to pay their bills?  He's a regular American hero.

Unless, somehow, the debt just goes away. Another of Mr. Wallerstein’s techniques for remaining cool in a serious financial pickle: believe that the pickle might somehow disappear. “Bank bailouts, company bailouts — I don’t know, we’re the generation of bailouts,” he says in a hallway during a break from his Peak Discovery job. “And like, this debt of mine is just sort of, it’s a little illusory. I feel like at some point, I’ll negotiate it away, or they won’t collect it.”

"A little illusory"?  Oh fuck you.  If you value your degree so much, then what exactly is the basis for thinking you shouldn't have to pay for it?


He gives a slight shrug and a smile as he heads back to work. “It could be worse,” he says. “It’s not like they can put me jail.”

If, only.