Friday, October 5, 2007

So this world has left you bare, I'm sorry I no longer care.

Attn Everyone I Know - I'm sick of being told - "You'll pass!" You don't know that. And every time you say it, the Cali Bar Folks feel a sharp pain in their sides and dock me another point off each of my essays. So stop... please.

On the bright side, I won't get kicked out of Biglaw for my lack of billable hours. I just got pulled into a new case that will suck my life away for quite some time. At least after the first 10 billable hours dinner is on the firm. Sadly, I may miss out on my upcoming work retreat at some posh little resort in order to spend an entire weekend at the office. But who really wants to play lawn tennis when you can work on some pimp ass litigation-related materials? Oh right, me.

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Suddenly I see

Apparently we're about 45 days from the bar results. I'm pretty sure Cali is the last one to give them out. At this point I've convinced myself I failed it. I'm not a moron, but then again, I did fuck up that whole lesser-included offense thing. So there's that. The results come out on a Friday. Two days later is my birthday. I'm going to a long lunch that Friday afternoon to start the binge drinking, which will likely continue through the weekend. Awhile back, I asked a friend of mine if I could come visit him over my fail-the-bar-birthday weekend. He said no. Why? Because either I'm going to fail and be miserable the whole time, or I'll pass and make his life look like shit in comparison. (I'm paraphrasing there.) I know I won't want to call anyone out in Cali to hang out that weekend, as the vast majority of my friends are wanna-be lawyers... and who wants to call to report that they have failed the bar? Or call to say that you have passed --- only to find out your friend failed. I'm fucked. But for better or for worse, I've got a bottle of Barolo all lined up for the event.

Today marked the start of the billable year - Holla! Not like this is a good thing, as my department is really slow right now. I have 50 hours of time to use up on research activities that don't get billed to a client but count towards my billable hours, but that will be burned through in a little over a week. 8 hours billed a day BLOWS. I end up wasting an insane amount of time during the day, so I have to pull 10 hour days to get my 8 hours in. My effectiveness rate is increasing, but I still feel guilty when I disappear to go to Starbucks or grab lunch. Granted, I have my nifty blackberry with me at all times, but what if a partner were to walk by my empty office? I'm 26, I'm a profesional, but sometimes I feel like I'm twelve.

I'm starting to think I could get away with never having to buy lunch during the week. There's always a meeting or presentation to go to over the lunch hour, and food is always provided. I could stock up on rolls for the days that don't happen to have a lunch event. It's sad, I make a small fortune and I'm trying to find ways around buying lunch. And not because I want to make student loan payments... because I want to do more shopping at Banana Republic and Coach.

The good news about work is that I seriously love my group... the personalities all match really well, the partners seem to actually like me, and the group is small enough that I'll actually get some billable work from time to time. I did a lot of work for them when I was a summer, so I believe I may have earned some respect back then.

Then again, once I fail the bar all of this goes to hell.

Ah well.