I've gotten so many emails wondering where I've been. Oh wait, I've gotten none. Dear readers, our time together isn't over. In fact, it's just beginning.
It's the end of the year. According to most, the end of the decade. Although, I'm pretty sure that I learned on Jeopardy! once that the new decade won't start until 2011. We've been in a nasty recession and the legal industry has been hit hard. Layoff watch. Unemployment. Salary cuts. Canceled Holiday Parties.
Have your other benefits been changed at all for the upcoming year? Has your health insurance changed? Firm-sponsored life insurance? 401(k) matches? Fewer lunches on the company dime? What other cuts are you facing? Are there any other little things that your firm has done to cut costs?
My health benefits have gotten obscenely bad. I have approved pharmacies. Nothing is really covered now but doctors and certain meds. Nothing else has changed yet.
ReplyDeleteHeard LSC cut retirement contributions
ReplyDeleteThis has nothing to do with benefits because I haven't graduated yet. Anyway...I hate law school, to the point I get depressed going to school/class and I envision my post-law school life as a dreadful existence. Are these feelings normal??? Did anyone have the same feelings and does it get better??
ReplyDelete--My apologies for whining. I didn't want to ask some of the attys I know for fear that I would have shut the door on any future job prospects I had through them.
3L
@11:27 - I liked law school and I hate being an attorney with every ounce of my being. This is usually the part where people assume that I am a slacker or something. I'm a top performer and good at my job. I simply hate my job. If I could go back and warn law school me, I would tell me to get the hell out.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, law school and practice are nothing alike. Have you clerked or worked at a firm? If not, I recommend it to ensure that you don't hate your post law school life. By 3L, I don't think it is unusual to hate it. It's not the real world, at all.
Good luck.
My firm is trying to cut my benefits by taking away my chauffer driven town car.
ReplyDeleteWTF Mortimer.
No changes, well, accept for things out of the firm's control. Health insurance rates went up about 10%. Ironic, I now pay more for health insurance for my family than I do my mortgage. But, it's awesome coverage and after shopping around, there wasn't really any better options available.
ReplyDeleteA little aside - I'd rather pay $1200 for AWESOME health insurance than have the mother-f^c&!ng government interfere.
Otherwise, all is normal.
small firm = no health insurance, no benefits whatsover.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you can afford stellar coverage at 1,200. What about the rest of us hardworking folks, who don't make as much as you, you self centered nitwit?
ReplyDelete9:20 - stop whining peasant. This isn't the proletarian blog. Go bleed red somewhere else, like the Las Vegas Red Sun.
ReplyDeleteTouche'. I suppose I will continue to siphon your tax dollars when I got UMC for care. Of course, the cost is higher to you becuase I have no plan to lower costs with the providers. KTHX
ReplyDelete11:27 - I feel for you. Be creative. At the risk of sounding California hippie-ish, I'd recommend this book.
ReplyDelete@ 11:27:
ReplyDeleteI agree with 7:24, except for the fact that I hated law school, too. Likewise, I feel I'm good at what I do, graduated towards the top of my class, law review/moot court, and receive good feedback from the partners. However, I just hate it.
@8:41
I would rather have Great Britains health care ANY DAY over paying for my "top notch" health care. Also, your "go to the LV Sun" argument was pathetic and indicative of somebody who can only argue through emotion.
I wonder what LU's take is on this?
ReplyDelete"Benefits!? Be lucky you have a job and maybe a desk to work on."
So LU, how is the plantation going?
9:20 / 10:00 -- thats spoken like someone who's never been to hospital in the UK. if you have, i guess it wasn't for breast cancer treatment because you're still alive. you started with the emotional argumentation -- a guy who works hard to provide health insurance for his family is a self-centered nitwit? project much, gov?
ReplyDeletequality of treatment i've received, by country:
1. USA
2. Canada
4. Russia (yes, 4 comes after 2 in this instance)
9:20 here not 10:00.
ReplyDeleteI reserved my right to be emotional. I'm not blasting you for getting ins. for your family. I'm blasting you for expecting that everyone else has the ability to do the same or put up with s**ty coverage.
You are self absorbed because you ONLY care for yourself and family when it comes to an issue that effects EVERYONE.
Also, let's not get into a battle of statistics. Each side has plenty.
My office has excellent benefits. My favorite bene? I bang all the hot young employees half my age. Then if I need to the doctor I just pull out my wad a hundys. Cuz I'm rich byotch!
ReplyDeleteI don't mind paying taxes so the uninsured can get coverage at county hospitals. (That makes me a liberal.)
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, I don't want to hear the uninsured complaining about the long waits or anything associated with free health care. Similarly, I don't want to hear them complain about people who have great coverage because they can afford it. (That makes me practical.)
Let's put all this in perspective. Benefits are important when they are necessitiers like health ins, or, unless you want to work until you're institutionalized, or you marry exceptionally well, a pension plan. The rest is frosting. It's a nice way of getting something of value w/o paying income taxes on it. My first priority is to pay my mortgage and feed my family.
ReplyDelete@ 11:17 AM
ReplyDeleteWell, the answer is simple, offer every benefit out there, 401K, IRA, Med/Vision/Dental, Supplemental, life insurance, and maybe even car insurance. Just make sure the bastard that wants it also pays for it. When someone wants me to pay for a benefit that they would not even spend their own money on, well, dat ain't rait!!
So, sure make it available, that's it. You'll see who cares and who does not. If it is an issue for the employee, you just raise their pay to compensate for the premium. But if you offer it to all, the ones that would otherwise get it through their spouse would sign up to your "free" plan. So put that burden on some other employer that is dumb enough to offer full benefits, like the County. See who is serious about it, then up the pay to compensate the employee for the premium if they really want or need the benefit.
Hey, pick up your lip off the floor. This is standard "Chisel 101".
I feel a litter stupider every time I read a post from LU.
ReplyDeletere: 12:54's comments
ReplyDeleteI am sick (pun intended) of people, and the media, using the words "blasted" and "slams". As in "so-and-so slams such-and-such's whatever" or "so-and-so blasted whoever about whatnot"
Said misuse of words is disingenuous and can be cured (pun again) by reviewing a thesaurus or dictionary.
@ 7:24--Thanks for the comment
ReplyDeleteI've had a judicial externship and a clerkship the past 2 summers and both were good experiences. However, during the interviews for both jobs and while working the attys made sure to remind me just how much they hated their profession. One comment during the interview: "Are you sure you want to join this profession?? There's still time..."
Anyway, I just wanted to get some more insight from actual attys, thanks again.
7:27 PM - My heart aches for you.
ReplyDelete@9:20, 8:41 here...sorry be a little late to your pity party, had work to do rather than babysit.
ReplyDeleteActually, between my health insurance, mortgage and student loans, that totals about 65% of my income. And, we're a single income family of four - my spouse doesn't work. Do I like paying $1200 for insurance? Not particularly. But, I like a "government run" alternative even less.
I'll continue to manage while knowing that I can see any doctor I like, any time I need to, get whatever prescriptions I need without having to have the blessing of a backwards bureaucracy that is only dedicated to providing lip service to people more worried about whining about what they don't have than those willing to be grateful for what they do have.
I'm far from wealthy. I don't drive a fancy car, nor do I have a fancy house (most of the pole polishers here would mock my modest existence). What I do have is a job I like and the ability to make choices.
I've chosen to allow for my health care expenses in my budget, so before you get all high and mighty about your inability to have what the oooh, so uber wealthy me has, be careful assuming too much.
8:58 - you are cool. Don't let the pinkos get you down.
ReplyDelete8:58, you've bought into the propaganda that the United States has a great health care system. According to the National Institute of Medicine study, 44,000to 98,000 people a year DIE from medical mistakes (yes, medical mistakes, not just bad outcomes)in this country. Those figures have been cited as being a very conservative estimate and do not include those who are left with life long problems as a result of medical mistakes which is a significant multiple of those statistics.
ReplyDeleteTo put that into perspective, that means every day in this country, the equivalent of 1 to 2 DC-9s full of passengers and crew die every single day in this country, year after year, after year. Yet, somehow, we as a Nation accept that as being okay. Do you honestly believe that if 1 or 2 DC-9s crashed and burned every day killing all passengers and crew aboard, that after 3 or 4 days the citizens of this country would do anything other than demand the FAA and the airlines heads be on the chopping block?
Moreover, to think that this country has the greatest health care in the world is another piece of propaganda you have been sucked in by. The United States has a higher infant mortality rate than some third world countries, including Cuba, and the US lags far behind other developed countries in that category. The US also lags far behind in life expectancy as well, the US is number 50 in the world in terms of life expectancy.
Do you relish paying almost $15,000a year for health care that is not even in the top 50 in the world?
@ 4:45 PM
ReplyDeleteWe've never heard that before. There is a club in here called "I Read LU Posts, Therefore I Am Dumber". Looks like you've joined.
2:27 PM, I entirely agree. It's shocking to me when people say they'd prefer U.S. medical care over treatment from the U.K. I THOUGHT it was widely known that doctors and health care providers make massive amounts of mistakes and as lawyers, many of us should know this better than most!! It's incredibly difficult to win a medical malpractice suit even when it's quite clear there was indeed malpractice, simply due to doctors' SUPER special standard of care that ANY reasonable doctor would have taken that action.
ReplyDeleteNot only are there an insane amount of mistakes made, but insurance premiums (like paying $1200 per month for what... Z-packs every couple months for the kids? asthma inhalers? birth control? BASIC HEALTHCARE THAT EVERY HUMAN ON EARTH SHOULD HAVE A RIGHT TO?) are so incredibly high because healthcare providers milk the hell out of the insurance companies!! Ask any doctor or nurse - if a person walks in and is paying cash, the doctor finds what's wrong with that person in the quickest way possible because that doctor has a duty to treat that person, and he's not going to conduct a bunch of pointless tests because he doesn't know if they'll be paid for. Now if that same person walked in with health insurance... the doctor will conduct every single test possible remotely related to the person's illness, necessary or not, because he wants all that money from the insurance company.
My insurance isn't bad. I'm not married. I pay very little in premiums and my co-pays aren't bad, but they add up because I have health problems. But the doctors can't seem to find the root of my health problems and keep running all these stupid tests that show nothing. I've even called the doctor out on whether the test is necessary but HEY why not... I'm not paying for it. So basically, @8:41, paying a Wal-mart employee's salary in health insurance, is actually paying for all these ridiculous tests to be run on me for absolutely no reason. Thanks buddy. But actually... I'd rather just skip to the one test that pointed to what's wrong.
11:27 and 7:27 - I go sooooo discouraged when I was in law school too... and actually before I even entered, because I also met attorneys who said they hated it and questioned why I entered!
ReplyDeleteLaw school is ROUGH and everyone on here is right when they say it's so different from real life.
I just barely graduated and passed the bar, and I actually LOVE practicing law. Of course, maybe some of the lawyers on here might say that I'm just not jaded yet - I can't speak for them because I'm so brand new. BUT I've spoken to quite a few lawyers and there are those who have been practicing for 20+ years who still LOVE coming to work every year, and those who HATE it.
I believe you just need to find your niche in the law. Don't settle for an area in which you're unhappy. Those miserable people who are questioning why you chose law are the people who settled in an area they don't like. When I was in school, I externed, worked, and volunteered in as many areas as I could before I graduated so I could try things out, and I highly recommend it. By the time I graduated, I knew what I definitely did NOT want to do, and I knew the areas I loved so much that I had a hard time choosing the one I wanted to practice in.
Good luck!