Wow no firsty's

Third, bitch!

fourth

This story can't be true

It did appear in a dead-tree publication (albeit one given away for free).

Actually, its FICTION.

Check out the comments at the site. Lat, don't be a gullible lawyer.

4:46: Then why is it filed under "News and Features"?

Also, as far as I know, the City Paper doesn't publish fiction.

Long story, thankfully I've given up on "working." The end is worth it, though...

It's not fiction. A 16-page complaint was filed in Maryland's federal court. Case # 8:8007cv02261. Greenwood listed as a plaintiff.

4:46, completely pwn3d

What a terrific story!

I GIVE UP: What does pwn3d mean?

Also, what's a TTT as far as law schools are concerned?

I checked and the complaint is legit.

Guess it's true, but its hard to believe how stupid they were.

Old guy is so old he can't use google

Pwn3d = variant of "owned" from the gaming community

TTT = third tier toilet

Pwned.

Funny thing is that typically with a story like this, you should wind up sympathizing with the author somewhat. But not the case here, and that's largely the result of her annoying, wordy writing style. (Which might explain why her writing career isn't exactly taking off). The article was long and annoying and I just wound up wanting to punch the author in the face.

As for her "conclusion" -- also pretty weak and annoying. The more plausible explanation would be that he was trying to scam Sheena too.

It would seem that Arin's identity wasn't stolen (though she doesn't actually say that she determined for sure that it wasn't). And considering how not smart she's proven to be already, I wouldn't be shocked if she hasn't explored that fully. And we don't know that he didn't use other people's info.

Freaking fantastic story.

Eagle at 5:17,
I find your critique wordy and annoying. I want to punch you in the spine. However, after reading it, I sympathize with your family members.

Global Speculator to $14,000!!! Morons.

5:27--You pwn3d 5:17. OMG, LOL.

Hmmm, some law firm named Skadden Arps has promised me a job with significant pay and benefits. I met with several well-dressed people who represented themselves as lawyers at the firm. However, their offices seemed so new - like it could just be an elaborate front they threw together. I think I am going to demand a sitdown with the hiring partner and make him prove to me that this is a real firm.

Eagle - the city paper's features are endlessly wordy, so it's a real testament I could finish this one.

Interesting stuff, and the reason for the scam surprised me. I wonder if he was the same guy who got arrested for securities fraud?

Since they traced this guy to Maryland, it's likely Agora Publishing scamed a bunch of people to write up bogus investment material to use in their newsletters, which are equally bogus.

Spectacular in so many ways...

Sadly, this type of thing happens all the time, but few people take recourse. The victims are usually computer programmers who work for placement services, are placed with legitimate clients of the placement service (banks, insurance companies, IBM) the legitimate client pays the placement service, but the placement service never pays the computer programmer (after weeks of promising to do so once “cash flow” issues are addressed). After a few weeks, the placement service disappears with tens of thousands of dollars of ill gotten earnings. Lawyers have been immune in the past since they don’t work through placement services but looks like this guy found a way to get to them. What is sad is that his scheme, the one that got the lawyers, was so simple- he did not even need to form a placement service and solicit business from legit clients. At the same time, its unclear if he saw any money from this. Sounds he was just nuts.

Sorry, Old Guy, but I'm afraid your comments will have to make sense for you to be permitted to post here.

As a graduate of a second-tier law school working at an elite firm, I feel a little more pressure than the average associate to always be sharp and never make any mistakes (lest some snotty fuck conclude that I do not "belong" at the firm).

Anywhoo, I constantly (but privately) rejoice over the daily evidence that plenty of total idiots graduate from T14 law schools every year.

From time to time, I will indulge a brief fit of bitterness over the missed opportunities that resulted from the bad choices of my (wayward and leaderless) youth.

On those occasions, I imagine how different things might have been had I behaved differently and taken the seat of one of those asshats from Impressive Law School.

At the end of the day, I am happy to have made it past those early stumbles, and considering what my fate might have been, I am quite content with how things turned out.

I don't mind (much) that some people assume I am related to someone powerful or that I was hired for some other “illegitimate” reason.

I have met MANY brilliant lawyers from excellent schools, from whom I have learned much.

Nevertheless, stories like this warm my heart.

6:11: Amen, brother. Good comment.

6:11 - I would suspect that anyone in a T14 law school would be a total idiot. Or perhaps your lenient proof-reading is a reason you do not "belong"?

6:33 - What??

All the lawyers who were scammed by this should lose their law license immediately. What a bunch of retards. I guess this story answers the question of exactly how dumb do you have to be not to be able to get a job from cls.

6:33 -- pwn3d!

In reality it wasn't a scam or a love letter. It was a hair-brained scheme concocted by a delusional loser.

6:33 -- crashed and burned in a spiraling vortex of self pwnage!

6:11- Good comment.

There are many more of us in your situation than the asshatters here care to acknowledge.

aargh - you all had time to read that whole thing? Can someone sum it up for the rest of us?

That was a good, well-written story.

However, the author should have known that Craigslist employment opportunities generally = scams. Oh well.

Hilarious story, but you should delete the reference to the Indian lesbian in the quotation-- it kind of ruins the punch line.

6:11,

I can sympathize, but for what it's worth, life wouldn't have been any easier if you had gotten into Impressive Law School :(

Still dealing with that inferiority complex, eh, 6:11?

to 5:55 - back when I was a computer programmer before the tech crash, I actually moved states for a consulting gig accepted after a phone interview - everyone knew this could happen with intermediaries, and I thought about the risk and knew how to deal with that eventuality.

Because everyone also knew the solution - not to work a second after a missed payment - a solution that many ignored, hoping for the best. As Cramer always said, accounting regularities == sell. In this case, the scammed people accepted too much time risk.

If by wayward and leaderless youth you mean not doing well on the LSAT...

I agree with 8:56. The reference to the Indian lesbian in your tipster's comment totally ruins the punch line.

SCAM CORPS TO 190!1!

Must be a different Old Guy. This old guy is a computer security expert and would school you kids on ANY technology, any day of the week. Ask some defense attys what it's like to go against me on the stand. I would have you looking so stupid you would slap your law professor. Anyway, l337 5p34k went out last year...n00bs. Jump in an IRC channel and maybe you can pick up a thing or 3, on the latest and greatest. Oh, BTW, your IT departments really do read your email and then post them to some very well known Tech sites...hahahaha

Old Guy-

I was wondering why law-student-dominated sites like ATL and greedy are literally the only place I ever see leet speak.

Dorks.

Is Arin Greenwood the real L2L?

That whole story could have been summed up in one quarter the space.

At one point, I thought it was a joke being played on me. What a waste of time. Only fiction is drawn out to that length...

This goes to show that there's a huge divide between school smart and street smart. I'll take the latter any day of the week.

And as for the dickbags who still (pathetically) like to brag about what law school they went to and talk down to other "lesser" graduates, think about this - I had a blast in high school and college instead of living my entire life with my nose in a book, dreaming of an Ivy League education; got into a top tier but not top 20 law school and had a blast there too, happy to not have to deal with back-stabbing book-stealers; and ended up at the exact same firm as you making the exact same salary.

So...what complex?

The previous comments are missing the point; I find it interesting that the protagonist was from Columbia Law School. Why did she have such a hard time finding a job? Is this an omen of things to come for the lawyers in Big Law? The upcoming crash will send you scurrying like so many rats deserting a sinking ship in search of a job that provides you with some money, any money.
I find it interesting that the posts calling for increases to $190K have drastically reduced now that the market is shaky and bonuses have been reduced correspondingly.
May you all live in interesting times.

i don't get it. she's 34? has she ever practiced?

forgive me but i couldn't read her navel-gazing writing so i may have missed some important details.

her website said he "novel" is finished. imagine this article only longer and worser.

The fact that she went to CLS ~10 years ago (she's 34) won't help her get a job at a big firm. Especially since she spent the last 6 years on Saipan writing a novel and doesn't know what a fixed income instrument is.

Wow, she is a great author. That was a great article, how could you find that boring? You people are so vapid. It is true, there is a complaint. Lat should post the complaint.

She does violate Strunk & White's cardinal rule: "Omit needless words!"

It isn't vapid to say that she could have written a much tighter article.

I have a friend (also a lawyer) who nearly got scammed, but when the "company" gave her an offer without an interview and she realized they had no website she got suspicious and poked around til she realized it was a scam. She had found that job posted not on Craigslist, but via email forwarded to her from two law schools' (one top 10) CSOs. Scary...

11:56 et al.,

Creative nonfiction is not brief writing. Yes, she could have conveyed the facts with fewer words, but the style and voice of the piece made it much more interesting to read than a bland recitation of the bare facts would have been. Personally I look forward to reading more of her work, including that novel that she will hopefully get published.

It is funny that someone said she won't get a job with a big law firm. I don't think she wants a job with a big law firm. I think it is correct to call complaints vapid when people are reading them for tightness and with an eye to strunk and white. It is not a legal article or brief, it is a story. That is why I find these comments comical.

You could, of course, sum up her article in one sentence.

I worked for a company for two and a half weeks that didn't exist.

10:27 am wrote about being "happy to not have to deal with back-stabbing book-stealers" at his law school...

Does this *actually* happen at any law school? Seriously, I have yet to hear anyone from any law school give a first- (or even second-) hand account about books being stolen, pages being ripped out of hornbooks, etc. Yet that anecdote get used constantly by people to convey that it never happens at their own school.

Let's put an end to this law school legend. I'm sure it has happened somewhere, at some point. But it is far from regular or common.

P.S. -- How cute that Arin's friends (or Arin herself) have come here to defend her writing... It's one thing to argue that the article isn't poorly written; it's another to say that it is so good that it has inspried you to want to read more of her work. That's pushing it.

2:16,

I've never met Arin, but I would in fact like to read more of her work. Sorry if you find that so difficult to believe.

Also in response to your post, I have at least a second-hand story about pages being removed from books at a (gasp!) fourth-tier school that a friend of mine attended. But it never happened at either of the schools I attended.

personal experience: pages were torn from several books used in group assignments at the law school i attended.

writing class profs. threatened to suspend all grades unless culprit was unmasked. they must have been bluffing b/c i received my a+ on schedule (and never turned myself in).

I don't know who Arin is. I just like her story, and find the comments comical, which is why I wrote my comment. I doubt she has even visited this website.

2:50 -- You probably also like that Rao book that Lat has been peddling on this site.

3:11 -- what "tier" law school? Based on 2:50's post, it would appear maybe the book/sheet-stealing happens at lower-tier schools where students really have to try to distinguish themselves. Which would be interesting because the oft-told legend is that it takes place among uptight ultra-competitive students at T14 schools.

Since when was Strunk & White limited to legal writing?

who uses a moniker like that? what a d-bag.

2:16,

I've heard a few second-hand accounts of pages being ripped out of books put on reserve for a class, actual hissing in class at students trying to answer questions from the prof, a general understanding that it would be pointless to ask anyone other than close friends to share notes, etc. All of those accounts came from people at 3rd or 4th tier schools. At my school (top ten), there was none of that. It is my impression that it is a much bigger problem at lower tier schools. One reason may be that being at the bottom of the class, while bad anywhere, is really bad at a TTT. A friend who went to a 4th tier school in California said that he assumed the hiding of reserve-books, etc, occured because the bottom 10 to 20% were told not to come back after 1st year.

4:16 pm -- reasonable explanation. Which still means that the perception of the ultra-competitive at T14 schools resorting to this behavior is unfounded.

Are you really denying that top 20 law schools are uber-competitive? Seriously?

Oh, and it's "her" law school - not "his." Douche.

Are you really revealing to us all that you don't know how to read? Yes you are.

Obfuscation on your part does not equal a lack of reading comprehension on my part.

So, to be clear, you do agree that the schools at the top of the top tier are extremely competitive? And, by extremely competitive, I mean more competitive than, say, schools in the lower half of the top tier. Right?

And besides being marginally interesting, how students at 4th tier schools would eat their fellow students' livers if it meant a chance at a job interview is entirely irrelevant to the quality of life at schools at the lower half of the top tier.

So c'mon, now. Stop being a typical lawyer and making things more complicated. It's a very simple proposition: Quality of pre-firm life: higher; job: same; salary: same.

Done.

The question was simple: at what schools do students tear pages out of hornbooks? So far no one has provided knowledge of it happening at a T14 school. Period. If you didn't understand that the question was focused on that specific issue, then your problem is either reading comprehension, or (gasp) you were being a "typical lawyer" and chose to make the issue more complicated. Relax buddy; it's not a law school exam -- no need to try to "spot the issues." Just read what's on the page.

No one said tearing pages out of a hornbook = more competitive, or less competitive. But the fact that a lot of you seem to think that happens at T14 schools shows you are misinformed.

And if Loyola 2L is to be believed, then your same job, same salary theory doesn't hold for *many* lower tier students.

Finally, your "his" vs. "her" law school comment still makes no sense; no one has any reason to know what sex you are based on the post I was responding to. But thanks for clarifying.

Assholes-- no one tears shit out of books at law schools anymore because of three developments that have revolutionized legal research in the 30 years since Scott Turow wrote "One L":

(i) fucking computers;
(ii) the fucking interweb;
(iii) fucking on-line research providers (i.e. Westlaw and Lexis).

Now, SHUT THE FUCK UP!

It's nice to see they're still teaching how to desperately hold on to losing arguments and be a toolbag while doing it at the "good" schools.

Why were we talking about tearing pages out of books in the first place? Oh yeah, because it was in the context of discussing whether or not top twenty schools were more competitive than lower ranked schools. So the question really was about competitiveness generally and not the super-micro issue of page tearing.

As for the his vs. her comment - I was correcting a faulty assumption you had about the gender of the speaker. Considering your comments here, I'd imagine you'd be pretty used to being corrected by now.

Chip on shoulder must be cutting off circulation to brain.

The issue I focused on was intentionally specific and narrow, and clearly so to those who responded to that specific question. My question wasn't even confrontational. I didn't address your broader point, and I couldn't care less about your broader point. What we do know, however, is that you made the assumption that T14 students steal each others' books; so far no one has supported you on that.

The more you belabor this, the more you reveal that you really do have a complex...

Must...have...last....word.....no....matter..what....

i want to let you guys know that the story is true; i was hired for the global specualtor as an admin assistant a 2 months ago. I was promised 3500 per month. a money that i never received. I know Arin , I know all the people he is mentioning in the stoy i left my old real job for this job, i worked for one month and i never got my money- thank god that i was lucky enough to get another job in my city- blieve me guys i fell into a depression i had no money, i was going crazy because i had to pay my bills and my rent... i just feel very sorry for all my x-coworkers they are a group of smart and professional people that i enjoyed working with. Arin you are really brave- I went to my local community channel and talked about wat happened to me with TGS in the bilingual channel. I really wish all my x coworkers the best of the luck ; It was really hard for me to find another job but more than that it was even harder to trust people and companies again.

confidential: Arin is female. Nice try. Go back to wanking off.