bl1y

Douchy Lawyer Dumped
[ABC Episode Guide]

I’d put a spoiler alert here, but it’s reality TV, so who cares?

Douchy lawyer Craig R. failed to secure a rose last night on The Bachelorette (shut up, my mom watches it).

If you can’t tell just by looking at him that he’s a giant douche, you should be able to figure it out by the fact that his favorite book is The Catcher in the Rye.  Great book? Sure.  But, picking it shows the lack of real intelligence needed to go from corporate douche cog to what I like to call “merry asshole.”  Douches are slick and manipulative, while assholes are intelligent and witty.

An asshole doesn’t pick such an obvious book.

Tucker Max is an asshole.  But, if your favorite book is I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, odds are you’re just a douchebag.

Mayer Brown and Simmons & Simmons Face LMR
[Legal Week]

Facing last minute resistance, the merger between Mayer Brown and Simmons & Simmons is off.  Both firms are down in revenue, and it’s not clear (based on my very limited research) who thought they’d be getting the bargain in this deal.  But, the real winners are probably the associates and staff.  Mergers often mean many positions are made redundant and a reduction in headcount soon follows.

K&L Gates Wants TV-Quality Lawyers
[The Careerist]

K&L Gates Chair Peter Kalis shared his thoughts on what type of associates he likes to see at the firm.

I like someone who’s iconoclastic–smart, sassy, and a bit edgy.

I don’t want malleable. I want formidable.

My guess is the people who do the actual recruiting at K&L Gates, and who directly supervise these associates are sticking with the traditional model of hiring risk-adverse research drones.  Some who’s smart, edgy, and formidable isn’t going to go into a job where they get to waste their weekends doing due diligence on a deal that’s likely to collapse Monday morning.

Things You Can Do With a Law Degree: FML
[New York Law Journal via Law.com]

A new article from Katherine Frink-Hamlett, president of Frink-Hamlett Legal Solutions Inc., has three possible alternative careers for recent JDs: Procurement, Compliance, and Law Firm Administration.

While these careers are frequently referred to as “alternatives,” the truth is that they simply represent the range of professional opportunities available to attorneys.

Unfortunately, the first two options, procurement and compliance, offer much of the same office drudgery bullshit as law, but with far worse pay than a big law job.  Also, the positions generally require some experience working in that position, and 3-5 years of work in the relevant industry.  If you went straight to law school from undergrad, scratch these off your list.

And, law firm administration? Yeah, it’s everyone’s dream to be the person who makes sure first year associates are up to date on their CLE credits.  How many people are going to be satisfied working as mere support staff to their preferred profession?  Want to be a doctor? Why not settle for being an insurance claims specialist!

Blame it on the Juice (Vendors)
[The Guardian]

Venezuela is facing a severe food crisis as the government continues to scoop up private farms and then mismanage them into the ground, and allow tens of thousands of pounds of food imports to rot in government warehouses.

Hugo Chavez blames people who sell meat at market prices for the country’s woes and is declaring war on capitalism.  In America (Proper) the evil capitalists are big bankers and oil tycoons.  In Venezuela (Lesser America) the evil capitalists are butchers and family farmers.  The penalty for selling good at market price in Venezuela is confiscation of your business and 6 years in prison.

So, why am I discussing this here?  Well, it’s a pretty retarded legal system that puts you in jail for selling meat at market price (which, by the way, is only about twice the artificially low government mandate), but more importantly, I’ve just encountered too many law students and lawyers who are ardent supporters of Chavez and communism.  I seriously know people who keep pictures of Chavez in their office.

I just recently finished up reading Assholeology by Steven Green, Dennis LeValle, and Chris Illuminati (yes, that’s his real name).  As the name implies, the book is a study on assholes, who they are, how they operate, and why it works.

The book is insightful and funny, but a bit thin.  At 208 pages, it’s already a bit of a lightweight, but even a lot of those pages are filled up with key phrases repeated in big offset text, like you’ll see in articles in magazines, and each chapter comes with a couple pages of recap, in case you couldn’t remember what you read a few minutes before.

“[A] lot of those pages are willed up with key phrases repeated in big offset text,”

There are a few humorous anecdotes, but we don’t get much insight into the people behind the stories, so they feel shallow and unimportant.  The stories about famous assholes are much meatier, because you’re likely to know a bit about the person and their personality.

With three authors working on the book, it seems like they should have been able to come up with a lot more to say, though I can’t really imagine what.  Maybe there just isn’t a book’s worth of insights into assholes.  For $9.32 (on Amazon) you can’t complain too much though.  I’d have appreciated a shorter, tighter text, but odds are that wouldn’t have passed muster with the publishers.

You can listen to Phila Lawyer, Dr. Rob, and Some Crazy Cat Lady chat with Chris Illuminati on Here’s What to Think.

The big take-away is that being an asshole, and not simply a jerk or a douchebag, is that it requires a lot of skills and smarts.  An asshole has to be able to back up what he says with either knowledge or (preferably) talent.  No one would be a fan of Dr. House if half his patients died.

This is a lesson that’s probably lost on a lot of the wanna-be assholes (Tucker Max fan boys, I’m looking at you).  If you’re not witty, full of facts, and able to pull your ass out of the fire, then you’re likely just a jerk or a douche, or an internet troll, not a merry asshole.

Another morning of trawling the internet has found yet another silly girl with dumb ideas about dating, this time a 20-something writer living in LA, blogging about her non-relationship with an aspiring director (read: bus boy) who kissed her one time.

Here’s the pertinent information:

“I discovered he had a longtime girlfriend back on the east coast. Then when that ended, he had a new girlfriend here in LA … all while I was patiently waiting for him to come around and declare his love for me.

“My friends told me he was a jerk, he was using me, that I deserved better.

“I confronted the fact that I didn’t know a heck of a lot about guys and the signs that a guy doesn’t want a relationship (with you). I read a few books and decided to forego men for awhile. If a truly worthy guy comes along, he will have to pursue me now. I’m over making the most effort, for settling for way less than I deserve.”

This is a classic example of a girl ignoring extremely obvious signs that a guy isn’t right for you. In this case, there were two:

1. He’s in a relationship with someone else. Okay, sometimes a guy is in the process of ending a bad relationship, and you can push this one a little bit, but come on…the guy breaks up with his girlfriend and then gets in a relationship with someone else who isn’t you. You’re clearly not near the top of his list. It’s time to move on.

2. All your friends think he’s an asshole. If none of your friends like him, it’s a good sign that you’ve put blinders on to some very obvious problems. Unless your friends are bitches, they’ll make an effort to like the guy you like, so the fact that they hate him is pretty damning. Some girls try to get around this clear problem with two stupid tactics. First, they’ll point out that all of his friends say nice things about him. No shit, they’re his friends, they’re not going to try to get you to dump him, they care about him, not you. Second, they’ll point out that one or more of their friends does like him. But, these friends are usually the girls who pick one asshole or douchebag after another. The fact that they like him should be a sign NOT to date him.

Our silly writer girl doesn’t stop at swooning over Mr. Doesn’t Give a Shit About You, she has a completely stupid response to the rejection. She turns to books and then to swearing off men. Both are bad moves.

There is nothing you needed to learn from a book. Everything you needed to know about this guy was obvious from the start, you just chose to ignore it. Get your head out of books and back into the real world. Pay attention and make smart decisions.

Swearing off men is also dumb. The problem here wasn’t men, it was that you acted foolishly. Swear off acting foolishly.

And this nonsense about making men come after you now? From the way you tell the story, you didn’t really pursue this guy. “Patiently waiting” is not the same as putting forth a sincere effort. All you did was wait around for him, but now you’re trying to use your failure to attract a guy by doing nothing as a way to make yourself feel better about continuing with the same passive, lazy strategy.