greed is good, redux

A word to the wise: don’t take up law as a second career. In fact, steer clear of uber-corporate America (via TigerHawk) :

So, the Anonymous Lawyer gets an email that complains that big corporate law firms do not want to hire “nontraditional” — meaning second-career — graduates from law school. AL’s response is, I’m afraid, brutally true:

My comment? Your e-mail proves the point. You were reading the National Law Journal. And then you took the time to e-mail me. That’s time you could have been billing clients. That’s time you could have been working hard and making partners money. But you weren’t. You were slacking off, just like everyone your age does, with their “children” and their “elderly parents” and their “doctor appointments.” Young associates don’t read the National Law Journal. They use it to wipe themselves after they go to the bathroom in their office trash cans because they don’t want to take time out from billing clients to go to the bathroom. Young associates don’t think about whining to someone like me because they’re too busy knocking on my door and asking me how they can make my life easier and my clients happier and my contractor richer.

It’s not my fault, or the fault of any of my colleagues, that you decided to go to law school. It’s not our fault you got into debt. It’s not our fault you want a job you can’t get. Baseball players can’t get jobs after age 40 either. It’s the same thing here. Your skills may or may not deteriorate (I can argue both sides of that), but your stamina certainly does. Your energy does. Your drive does. If you’re just starting out at age 40, you know you’re never going to get to the top, so why even try. You’re complacent. Not because you’re choosing to be, but because you’re too old and experienced in life not to be. Young people don’t have perspective. They don’t understand that the kinds of things we demand from them are pointless and not worth getting all worked up about. They don’t get that we’re not going to fire them. They don’t get that most of the pressure they feel to stay here all night is pressure they’re putting on themselves and that the consequences for living a normal life are all in their head.

True in your field? Discuss.