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Does 401k count as savings?
Additional Posts in Small Law / Solos
Do solos get to write off pro bono work at all?
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Yes because us solo and small practitioners aren’t 2400 hour a year golden handcuff wage slaves.
This is exactly why I’m a solo!!! I worked in house as a paralegal while going to law school at night and even that made me want to never work for anyone ever again.
Mentor
I feel I can’t relate to a very large amount of this industry. I’m poverty poor, been for years, with health problems, and always between contract gig attorney jobs. Always been. I’ll never have that typical strong career in law. I’ll never experience life the same way everyone else seems to around me. That’s something I just have to accept and move forward with though.
Mentor
Bold of you to assume I haven’t tried that one yet! It’s been 3 years between 2 states and I’m about to be couch surfing without any money left. I feel I’m beating a dead horse trying to make this work. Can’t afford to move somewhere better, I don’t have family or anything elsewhere that can house me. Poor health makes it hard to do anything involving travel or court, no car either, no side change for insurance and nowhere to park here even if I had one but there’s a bus that goes through town I use to get around. Haven’t been able to find any small firms to take me but I find a contract gig every handful of months or so to just get by on rent with, then SNAP covers food. That’s all I got though.
What’s your advice for staying out of a mental rut facing these challenges?
Yes. Same here. So many people sound miserable and cranking out hours for someone else. I’m sitting back thinking that I work about 20- 40 hours a week and make about what a partner at a large firm makes. But my income can go up and theirs can go through a committee (or something... I don’t know how that works). They use terms like “first year associate” as if that means they are still in law school. Meanwhile, I’ve got a bar number and a law license, so it’s time to go make money. They get yelled at for being late or not bending over backwards to accommodate a client. I told my associate yesterday that he’s not coming in for another 7:30am meeting and they can take some time off work if they want to meet with him.
I guess maybe I get the words they are using but I don’t know why people are keen to sign up for that. I make no pretense that they would approach me, but if BigLaw approached me about working for them, I’d turn them down flat. That sounds miserable.