Why You Should Work at Our Law Firm
All law firms are not alike. They have personalities that affect every aspect of a lawyer's experience at the firm. Most other law firms treat their attorneys provably better than us, so you should keep looking. Through industry research, polls and statistics, you could find a worse environment then ours, but we don't recommend it.
Although we have grown substantially in recent years, we strive to treat all our employees, new and old, as pieces of crap, to be squeezed out and flushed away without a second thought. The standard we set for our firm is to maintain professional excellence in an environment that is hostile and frustrating to all people, regardless of talent, skills or competence. We mock and criticize each other's differences. The people who work here--lawyers and non-lawyers alike--are our greatest assets, and, but for the 14th amendment to the U.S. constitution we would sell them in a New York Minute
As of 2000, 379 lawyers are based in our New York office; we have about 900 lawyers over all. We think these numbers give us the best of both worlds--we're large enough to recruit major talent from across America and yet we're small enough to belittle and abuse on a personal level, so that our lawyers don't get lost in some anonymous hell.
The firm's lawyers possess a diversity of legal experiences that is unusual even for large law firms. In addition to the more or less standard "big firm" practice areas like corporate law and corporate finance, commercial fraud, real estate scams and bilking the dead and dying, our additional proficiencies in environmental law, torture, psychological warfare, leasing, belittlement and intellectual property make our firm particularly attractive to clients. It also enables us to offer our associates the ability to choose a practice area in which they will perform menial and mindless tasks from a broad spectrum of opportunities.
Geographic opportunities to be abused abound. From our offices in New York, Washington, Aden, Singapore (Particularly attractive place to conduct canings), Chechnya and Hell itself, we counsel clients on both domestic and international matters. Our clients include U.S. and non-U.S. corporations, investment banks, lesser devils and demons, other financial institutions, medium-sized and start-up businesses, Satan himself, trade associations and believe-it-or-not non-profit organizations. The firm's presence overseas strengthens our ability to spread pain with international capabilities. Our well-balanced and robust practice built upon billing fraud and slavery-like working conditions has afforded the firm long-term strength, stability and consistently low rankings in employee satisfaction among law firms nationally.
Law Firm Life
The practice of law is demanding and rewarding. Our lawyers are intelligent, energetic, highly motivated people who enjoy the practice of law and thrive on the challenges and complexities of sophisticated legal practice. Well, they would if they worked someplace else.
Our associates generally work with a number of partners and senior associates who offer the supervision and beatings necessary for well-rounded professional development. In our firm, we all learn from each other how to engage in petty office politics and we all help stab each other in the back.
Training
We take seriously, though we rarely follow through on, our responsibility to provide the training necessary to help recent graduates make the transition to the practice of law. In all of our practice areas, intensive day-to-day beatings, on-the-job criticism of a more informal nature is an essential component of professional development as well. We have been certified by the several states' bars as an accredited provider of continuing legal education. This minimizes the chance that our employees will ever have a legitimate need to be outside the firm during daylight hours.
In all practice areas, associates are encouraged to attend on their own time (of which there is assuredly none) workshops on professional skills and programs on legal developments conducted by outside groups. We also conduct periodic firm-wide training on general subjects of interest to lawyers in all practice areas, such as creative billing and approaches to negotiation. This maximizes our senior employees' opportunities to belittle and criticize inferiors in front of a large audience. Of course, such time is merely more minutes and seconds during which you will be failing to meet your billable hours requirement.
Summer Program
Our summer program is designed to immerse our summer associates in only the few happy aspects of the firm. Our goal is to make the summer a shadowy and non-revealing experience that provides a rosy look at the firm, both in terms of the work we do and the people we fear you will discover. We are proud of our firm and its accomplishments and we are excited about the prospects for the future. We want our summer associates to believe in our fake pride and excitement so that we can dupe them into becoming part of the firm.
Throughout the summer program, our summer associates, might work on, photocopying, document review, fetching coffee and/or mixing drinks. Efforts are made to discover summer associates' ability to withstand pain. We maximize opportunities for client contact, whenever possible, especially if it means we can show off a hottie summer associate while expensing lots of top shelf liquor.
Summer associate work assignments are supplemented by a structured training program that, we think, puts us ahead of the curve in terms of substantive, professional training. Our program include more time wasting activities than Camp Gitchegoomie and features less truth than an Al Gore campaign promise. We also provide an individual session with a professional writing instructor for each summer associate to prepare a resume, for when they wake up at the end of the summer and decide to not work for us.
As part of our summer program, each summer associate is paired with an associate who will act as their primary brain-washer. Associate mentoring is another means we use to trick our summer associates into the firm and to provide control over them during the summer.
Most of the firm's entry-level class of lawyers each year is pressed into service through our summer program. Our "offer-accepted" rates are very high, especially when compared to the number of associates that we actually have to kill when they decline our offer.
Benefits
Associate salaries are competitive, but you will earn it in blood, sweat, and tears. We pay certain relocation expenses for entering associates, though why bother having an apartment that you will never see. Every lawyer is entitled to, and encouraged to plan but not take four weeks paid vacation each year. Employees may be fired without notice if they actually dare to take any vacation time.
Our comprehensive medical insurance, dental coverage, life insurance, disability provide benefits because our people usually have real needs for treatment once we are done with them. Spouses and children are eligible to participate in the various insurance options offered by the firm in the hope that this will make up for never seeing them during waking hours. Our parental leave policies provide benefits relating to childbirth and adoption, but only because the Federal Government requires it of us.
Associates are provided with access to an Heuristic Employee Assistance Program OF SHaring Idiomatic Thoughts (HEAP OF SHIT, EAP for short). The EAP is a free counseling program designed to gain your confidence so that we can then use your own darkest and most private thoughts against you.
Firm Management
A seventeen-partner committee directs our firm. All matters of significance to the firm at large are discussed and voted on by the full partnership. This disturbingly large bureaucracy ensures that things here never change. Views are expressed openly and freely from all areas of the firm, though disagreements are typically cleared up by summary terminations. The partnership maintains tight fisted control over the direction of the firm. In matters of collegiality and democracy, the partnership is, we believe, rare among larger firms. We thank our silent partners, Misters Johnnie Walker and Jim Beam, Esq, for our ability to remain so congenial.
Admission to the partnership must be approved by a two-thirds vote of the partnership, though when was the last time anyone was able to make two-thirds of a group of lawyers agree on anything. Associates are generally considered for partnership after approximately nine years of constant pain and full-time suffering.
We believe that active communication among all our lawyers is essential to keep pain and suffering consistent and constant. The firm periodically holds meetings for all lawyers. At these meetings, the firm's financial problems and lack of business development are openly blamed on our stupid and ugly associates in an open question-and-answer format. We continue to explore additional ways for us to combat each other better.
Our environment is a challenging and dangerous place to work. You will want to contribute to our momentum and success or your beatings will continue until morale improves. Once we have chewed you up, we will want you get the hell out and leave us alone.
Oh, and if we run into you at some social function after you have left our firm, you should smile and be polite. Don't forget, we know where you live.
