So rather than regurgitating something from ATL three or four days after it gets posted I thought I’d share my news and my plan.  I think step one is self-explanatory if you read the title.  The last straw you might ask? One of those canned “farewell” emails that a laid off associate who still believes in the networking fairy sends out instead of putting as many of his belongings as possible in a bag before security arrives.  This farewell was special though.

Was it sarcastic? Did it rip the firm a new one? No.  Was it a stream of consciousness nervous breakdown?  No that wasn’t it. Read on to find out but if you’re an above the fold type person I will give you a hint.  It has to do with the length.   It was exactly three and a half sentences.

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So Benito every now and again adds another blog to the blog roll and one of them is called “Sweet Hot Justice.”  I decided to peruse the blog and what I found was…well I don’t know how to describe it.  It read like a bunch of excerpts from Lisa Scottoline novels, only more risque because it doesn’t have to appeal to the 55+ crowd that constitute 90% of Scottoline’s fans.

This post is NOT another rant about Lisa Scottoline, and it’s also not a call to arms for female attorneys.  I’m not even sure what this is.  So I suppose read on and we’ll find out together.

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I’ll admit it. With my Law School transcript on the verge of expiring I am beginning to get jittery about just letting the damn thing expire. I worked my ass off my first year and though I don’t regret my decision to leave but when I made that decision I always knew I could just go back.

Then there’s the grades. I really WAS in the top 10% my first year and taking orders from associates who haven’t passed the bar and got worse grades is getting more and more tiresome. This goes out to all the under-employed student debtors struggling with whether to play it safe And keep struggling to make ends meet by eating a plate of shit served up by someone who didn’t pay their dues- or doing what you have to do to rectify the situation.

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It’s summer associate season here at my firm.  In this miserable job climate summer associateships are not the paid 12 week booze fests they used to be.  The kids come in knowing they have less than a 50% chance at landing permanent gainful employment…on the first day.  Some even hold on to that precious realism for a full week.  By Week 2 though most are drinking the firm Kool-Aid and are convinced that they will get a job despite the odds.

I used to think “drinking the firm Kool-Aid” was just an expression for swallowing the lies an organization spoon feeds you to engender loyalty until you are tossed out in the street like a self-employed prostitute.  Who says a working girl doesn’t need a pimp?  But then I realized that there seems to be an actual correlation between eating at the firm and swallowing the lies they feed you.

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So we all know how I feel about Lisa Scottoline.  Imagine my surprise when I found out that Benito Mario is facebook friends with “her.”  I put that in quotes because the woman obviously doesn’t check her facebook account and that sad, sad job goes to some low-level assistant at her agent’ agency or publisher.  I REALLY hope that individual does not have student loans because they are about to lose their job, like the Biglaw associate who gets put in charge of exhibits.

Benito says he’s facebook friends with her because she accepted his invitation.  Yes Benito knows its just a sham to sell books that make Nancy Drew look like war and peace, but he has almost zero friends and he takes what he can get…just like people who travel in the middle lane.  Big-nosed hack authors who travel in the middle lane.  Well, when you’re in debtor’s prison, there is no middle lane.

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Like Icarus I haven’t posted in awhile. As we speak Benito is writing a piece about what he and Alpha Man have to do in order to post, no doubt in order to make me feel guilty.  Of course, nobody says anything to Icarus because every time he writes he sounds suicidal and nobody wants a suicide note HE penned to mention them by name.  I can respect that.

So if you follow my posts you know that I have become slowly dissatisfied with my job and am looking for something that demands a slightly better salary.  Does this have to do with my student debt?  It’s a factor, sure, but its more that I’m almost 25 and realizing what kind of lifestyle I want to lead and the income that it will take to support it and lifelong paralegal work just isn’t going to cut it…even if there was such a thing as a lifelong paralegal which it looks like there is not.

So is this just me complaining or does this have something non-tangential to do with student debt?  Turns out that it does…

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Well it looks like my run-of-the-mill post didn’t make the announcements. Whatever. Maybe Alpha Man is right when he says Benito caters to the more “entertaining” writers.  What will he ever do without Triforce? Anyway, Another by-product of tax season is that if you keep your ear to the ground you can find out what the heavy hitters are making. After all who doesn’t xerox their W2 at work? Turns out I am the third highest paid paralegal… and that makes me particularly expendable.

Here’s why. I make what I make because a certain partner, Eric, watches out for me knowing the office doesn’t run without me and in his niave mind I am still one phone call away from being back in law school where he no doubt thinks I belong. But partners have been jumping ship and the days when a partner brought his associates, much less his paralegals with him have long since past. Read on, it gets worse.

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Ugh. The office chatter has already started. It’s the same every year. Right after college hoops ends. If baseball was even remotely exciting that would become the talk of the water cooler but instead it’s taxes.

 First young associates complain about their tax burden, then older associates and young partners concur, comforting them with the knowledge that deductions for houses, spouses and kids are in their future. Conservatives complain about taxes generally while liberals complain about funding wars and bailing out banks. Old geezers whine about having to pay six months wages in taxes for the year.

Please allow me to retort

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This isn’t a religious post despite the title – but it is inspired by the events or rather the premise of Holy Week. For those of you who missed Sunday School and World Civilization growing up it is an accurate statement- though simplified and taken out of context- to say that Christians believed Christ’s death was necessary to pay a debt. People argue about the nature of the historical Christ but one fact is indisputable – that Christ was a condemned criminal.  His most public act was dying. And what do we say about a criminal after his sentence has been carried out- that he paid his debt to society. Debt to society. Debt.

Here at Debtor’s Prison we worry about one debt. Our student debt.  There are many valid reasons for that. But today I would like to make a suggestion that’s fairly radical- let’s not lose sight of our other debts.

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In addition to not being thrilled by about writing this Benito told me less than an hour ago that some big Supreme Court case about trade school student debt was recently decided.  He said maybe Mike Triforce should write it since he was a real lawyer.  He knew it was a mistake as soon as he said it.  Anyway, I apologize for the length of the post but Alpha Man and I have an agreement not to let Mike Triforce comment on anything of substance.

Truth be told, although its the Supreeeeme Coooourt (Woooooo!) the case is actually of very little consequence to most debtors.  Essentially a student who had trade school student debt managed to get the debt discharged but failed to show undue hardship was in danger of having his debt reinstated.  The court ruled that this fact, that the student was never asked to show undue hardship, does not void the contract eliminating his debt.  So what it boils down to is a lender made an accounting error and the Supreme Court said it was too late to fix it. 

Now that I’ve addressed that please read my prepared remarks

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