Hey guys,

I am in my final year of law school and I wanted to ask

What can I do to get ahead of the curve?

I want to make my own firm

That's my ultimate end goal

I just wanted to know how I can make the transition from Law School to actually being a lawyer easier?

I’m a relatively new attorney working at a civil lit firm. My cases are assigned. My clients constantly express their thanks and appreciation to me. Generally, they seem to really like me. I do have an extensive customer service background.

Are there particular areas or jobs I should consider to leverage this strength?

I imagine this strength is useful in all areas, but I feel my customer service skills are far superior to my legal research, writing, even oral advocacy. For that reason, I really want to lean into it. I’m also not a huge fan of litigation. I would prefer a transactional role or something involving administrative hearings and the like.

Thanks!

Can we all just take a moment to laugh at the fact that we passed the exact bar she failed?

This is not to say anything negative about other people who didn’t pass that particular bar because surely you did not lie about it repeatedly on national television.

She failed my bar and then went on national television to lie about it. A lot. 😂

What fields of law do you see being AGI and ASI proof?

What do you do when a court schedules a hearing that conflicts with an important personal event—here, a child’s graduation. Do you just swallow it in the name of professionalism?

You get a rape charge, you get a rape charge, post hoc withdrawal of consent means jail for you!

1) Seems illegal if that matters at all anymore (lol)

2) Has she seen gas prices? $10 is like, "Here's some money. Go see a Star War" energy.

Please excuse my grammar and any typos

Several months ago, i started my first job at a small law firm. Health insurance wasn't offered at the time I was hired, but my boss started the process a few weeks after.

She had me fill out an application for a quote and a few days later, she told me the premium amount for employee coverage only. I then asked about adding my spouse on as well. She said she'll look into it and get back to me.

In the meantime, I was struggling at work. My boss didn't want me to leave the office for lunch, she kept calling me slow, she kept track of me with cameras she had all around the office, and she even scolded me for not being friendly enough (there's so much more, but just know, I desperately needed this job and had no intentions on leaving as soon as i did). I broke down and decided to put my two weeks in and my boss was PISSED and told me to just leave that day. I've been doing appearance counsel work to stay afloat.

Later in the week on payday, I quickly became aware that the monthly premium was $1200 for me and my spouse. My boss covered $400 and the rest was deducted from my check.

I've reached out to the insurance broker and my employer and they're telling me there's nothing that they can do... I've been going back and forth with them all week and they seem to be annoyed with me, but I'm the one that's out $800. I even called the insurance company directly and they informed me that a retroactive cancellation is possible, but my employer has to send the request. I told her this and now she's ignoring me.

I hate to burn bridges, but wtf?

So I'm currently mentoring various students at my firm. I half fell into this roll and now effectively am in charge of the program with a dozen or so answering to me. I'm struggling with finding a balance of I want to teach these kids work life balance, take off work when you're sick, be people, demand respect and have dignity, but also do a good job. I want them to feel valued and comfortable but a few of them lately have just not been doing their work, like at all.

I'm talking not answering their emails, ignoring deadlines, ect. I'm struggling because I've tried talking to them and not seen changes. I don't really know how to handle this entirely because in the past frankly the student I got were all self motivated. I don't want to be a hard ass / Im just really not good at it. I don't want to cut them loose but also I feel like they just aren't listening to me and i worry part of that is because I try to tell them to take care of themselves and balance everything. Like Law is so toxic and i struggled through so much abuse and harassment coming up I always promised myself I'd be better if I was in a position to do better. I don;t want to just crack the whip.

So advice from those managing teams and balancing similar?

The hits just keep coming.

I’ve been seeing many posts online from licensed attorneys spreading misinformation about there being a difference between the terms lawyer and attorney. They claim that a law school graduate who is not licensed to practice law can call himself a lawyer in the United States. While I realize in some dictionaries a lawyer is often referred to as “someone who is trained in the law” and the humanity in us wants to give a respectful title to people who have not passed the bar exam yet, in many jurisdictions, it is plainly illegal to hold yourself out as a lawyer or an attorney when you are not licensed to practice law, which typically includes passing a bar exam. In my jurisdiction, the terms are used interchangeably and the unauthorized practice of law is a felony.

As licensed attorneys, I don’t think we should be spreading misinformation, misstating the law, or misleading the public about whom they can get legal advice from.

In what American jurisdiction in the present day can you legally call yourself a lawyer when you haven’t been admitted to practice law without engaging in the unauthorized practice of law?

I started at new firm 2 weeks ago. I am a fifth year. My group is two partners and me. One is a micromanager, that wants to know what I am doing at all times. The other does not check in with me at all.

The micromanager likes to give me last minute assignments that she wants done in an hour or two.

The other one has given me three different things to draft for cases that have a long procedural history.

Everything single time, it takes me longer than whatever time they estimate should it take me to complete.

I told the micromanager that I work best if I know what I need to get done the day before, so I can budget my time appropriately. She didn't like that. Says litigation is last minute as though the only things we handle are emergency applications.

The one that ignores me, doesn't answer when I email her with questions, and when I walk into her office she switches the subject.

The two of them also have these meetings and conversations without me, about me, assignments, and what I should or should not be doing. Then one of them comes separately and starts talking to me about whatever they discussed as though I participated in the meeting when they have not even emailed me to tell me what they decided. So of course, I am lost at every conversation.

I am so annoyed. I really like this firm otherwise. But if things keep going this way it will not turn out well.

I am just venting but would appreciate suggestions.

Hello all,

I've been solo for a year now. My website runs on Squarespace an costs about $36/month; however, I'm ready to take my firm to the next level (i.e., make sure my website looks as good, or better, than my competitors).

Does anyone have experience moving off Squarespace to something better, hired a team to take care of it? If so, what kind of costs am I looking at. I heard someone in my circle recently mention paying $300/month for a professional website. I have no interest in that, and I think they're getting scammed.

I'm very open to recommendations, people other solos or small firms have worked with, etc. I would greatly appreciate it.

I’m a young female attorney. I’m working at a mid size firm and there are two female partners that go out of their way to be cruel to me. I ask them questions and they don’t provide answers and then get mad when i should’ve known something that they never told me. They’ve never once made me feel included during our group meetings and just overall seem to ignore me when they can.

I’ve only been at the firm for six months and luckily there are other partners I work with that are lovely.

Have any other women experienced this at work? My boyfriend says they’re intimidated by me because i’m pretty and young but I honestly think that’s bullshit because these women were lovely to me during the interview process.

Looking for solidarity or advice.

I’m a senior attorney in the NY court system and have been at my office for eight years. Two years ago, my longtime supervisor retired, and a colleague took over. He’s intelligent and capable as an attorney, but management hasn’t been his strength, and the office has steadily deteriorated.

Since my former supervisor left, several employees have retired, one passed away, and two transferred. I’m now the last person remaining from her team. I also feel like I’m being pushed out, but that’s a separate story.
I have an interview tomorrow for a position in another part of the NY court system, doing essentially the same work. I genuinely enjoy the work itself; I’m looking for a more collegial environment with effective, supportive leadership. Basically to get away from my toxic boss. I’m overworked, and unappreciated here.

If they ask why I want to leave my current office and join theirs, how can I explain that honestly and diplomatically without criticizing my supervisor or sounding negative?

Any advice on framing my answer. Thanks

/s if it wasn’t clear.

Notwithstanding my choice of flair, the title is 100% true. I am drafting a title opinion and Nimrod Pumphrey did in fact own Greasy Run in the 1840s. I thought the names were interesting and wanted to share, that is all.

I sometimes wish I would’ve gone to dental school. None of the dentists I know work Friday - Sunday, they make good money, and when they’re done for the day, they’re done without thinking too much about what’s ahead

I do not know if recruiters monitor this sub. If they do, don’t do this or let your clients do this.

I applied to an in-house role with a nearby corporation that seemed interesting. I had an interview scheduled with the corporation’s HR person. That went well, so they moved me on to an interview with the GC.

That also went well, so they wanted me to interview with other executives and scheduled three Zoom meetings over two days for an hour each. I think great, this is the final round. Nope, next they want me to block out three hours of time for in-person interviews with the GC and more executives. Now I am getting a little annoyed, but I assumed that would be the final round. Later, I get a call asking if I also have time for an additional Zoom interview in the following days with someone that was unable to make it to the in-person interviews.

In case you haven’t kept count, I have now done at least 9 interviews. I say at least, because I may have also lost count after 10 hours of repeatedly answering the same questions for different people and 2 hours of commuting. I could understand this odyssey if I was interviewing for the actual GC role and not one that reports to the GC.

And through all of this, only the GC has questions that are specific to the role. If your executives want to ask the same generic what is your greatest strength/weakness questions, get them all together and streamline the process. After all, I do have another job that I need to keep up with in case you decide to hire someone else.

Of course, they could not give a specific timeline for their decision process. So now I just wait to hear if they have made a decision. Or maybe I’ll be ghosted. Who knows.

Despite initially being AI-skeptical, I have to admit that they're getting better and better at legal research and drafting. They still don't replace human lawyers, but if you're not using AI to do your dirty work, give it a try and see if it works as well for you as it's been working for me.

At my current firm, we have a contract with Harvey which (to my understanding) is supposed to be totally confidential. We can upload client documents and ask it to draft or answer specific questions. But I am about to transition to a smaller firm that I do not believe has a similar AI contract right now. More to the point, I want to use AI to do some of the daily admin stuff that I hate to do.

For instance, it would be great if Claude could read my email and give me calendar updates, remind me about upcoming deadlines, flag things for me that I've missed, etc. However, most of the tools that would help me do those things on Claude require me to agree to give the app access to "everything on my computer." To my mind, that is very obviously not something I can do while still following the rules of confidentiality.

However, and perhaps surprisingly, there are "legal" skills available to download through the Claude skills directory that also require me to grant access to "everything on my computer." And they have 1 million+ downloads. So clearly there are a bunch of lawyers using this "legal" skill and just giving Claude access to everything on their computer. Why and how is that allowed?

Plz, I am not looking for a fight on AI, I am looking for lawyers who actually use AI who can help me think through whether it is actually possible to give Claude access to my emails and calendars without completely obliterating my good standing with the bar association (lol).

CiteProof (getciteproof.com) — paste a brief, it checks every citation against CourtListener/GovInfo and flags what needs a second look. Free existence + identity check, no signup. $49/brief adds quote verification with side-by-side passages, pin cites, and a downloadable Verification Record.

Design decisions I'd like pressure-tested:

- Deterministic by rule, not by vibe. Extraction and lookup are fixed pipelines — no model ever sees the brief. The tradeoff: parser flags can still be wrong, so they're shown for inspection rather than hidden.

- Limits stated on the page, not the pricing page. No good-law verdicts (points at Shepard's/KeyCite instead), no regulations or state statutes, secondary sources named by kind but not checked. A false clean (bad cite marked verified) is treated as the top risk everywhere.

- Measured, not promised. Accuracy page carries dated numbers with caveats (0 false cleans on 17 holdout items, reported as a bound with the rule-of-three, never a rate) and unfiltered user reviews, 1-stars included.

Specific questions:

1. For the Clio/MyCase/Smokeball users here — the integrations import matters straight from the matter. Does that match how you'd actually use it, or is browser-paste the real workflow?

2. Is $49/brief vs. $199/5-pack vs. subscriptions priced sanely for solo/small-firm work?

3. What's the missing capability that would make this a must-have rather than a nice-to-have?

Tear it apart — the harsh comments are the useful ones.

This is about clients who need a lot of handholding. I'm good at litigation but am an introvert and not really a "people person." I tend to do really well with clients who are interested in their cases but informed enough to know how the system works and trust us to move the case to resolution. But the clients who are constantly emailing and calling on petty issues make me nuts, and I have a hard time hiding my frustration.

Although I didn't love my time in insurance defense, it generally did not involve "needy" clients. The adjusters for the most part let us work, and the insureds usually remained uninvolved, apart from responding to discovery and sitting for deposition. So, how do you deal with challenging clients? Make a paralegal or someone else the point of contact to address issues that don't need attorney attention? I won't label this a rant but my patience is being tested. Thank you.