I’m coming off the best summer I’ve had since the one before college. Finally my life has direction again. I feel like the rich kid who joins the army in defiance of the father turning his back on the family shipping business or whatever. Now that everyone is saying don’t go to lawschool it is the sexy rebel’s choice again.

I have borrowed so much money it’s criminal.  My bank account looks better than it ever has. I routinely spend more at coffee shops in a day than I used to spend on food in a week.

I love how I am treated.  Here’s a tip kids: nobody cares what you’ve done it’s all about what people think you are going to do. I’d rather be a high schooler with No. 1 potential in basketball or football than be a lameduck President. Conventional wisdom is still that my classmates and I are collectively doomed, but me personally? I could be making $200k in NY in three years and everyone from baristas to bartenders seem to know it.

But there’s also more. I studied that chart Alpha Man posted. It’s all over the net. I’ve read comments here and on other sites and suddenly I realized what Triforce was referring to – the scam he pulled that he won’t write about. Touché Triforce, I know you pretty well and I wouldn’t have thought even your miniature effiminate poodle-looking dog would have stooped that low. You looking for a job Triforce? In five years you could be working for me.

This is the last post by our guest columnist Tom Wick.  We wish him the best in establishing himself as an author and thank him for his contributions to this blog.

So it’s almost labor day or depending on how quickly Benito’s admin is posting things perhaps even past then…so this will probably be my last regular post. Thank you to all the automated phishing programs that left comments.  So I wanted to do two things: leave you with some kind of departing word of wisdom and talk about the scam blogger who recently revealed her real identity while simultaneously trying to hock a self-published book.

The first part easy. Success is like a wave, once it reaches it’s foamy peak, it’s too late to ride it if you’re still on the beach. What I mean is once you’ve read Hairy Potter or Twilight it’s too late to write about sorcerers and werewolves EVEN IF you have a very original take, because your good work is going to get lost in the noise of the copycats. If you’re successful most likely it will be by doing something nobody has thought of or by writing something that becomes timely on the verge of it’s completion. This is more than just being lucky. Ever wonder how the championship hats for the winning team get made in time for the post game interview? Of course the hats are made for both teams ahead of time. If you want to guarantee success you need to take this approach…except for you there are more than two possible answers there are infinite and it’s a book not a hat.

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So my most recent audition was for this pilot playing a college kid who gets recruited by a top law firm without a law degree. I was GOLDEN up until I told the director that basically someone tried to parlay the least interesting 20 minutes of the movie Catch Me If You Can into a series but it’s USA so what do you expect?

So the question on your mind is could I have done it? Of course. Why didn’t I? Simple. Nobody would ever make the offer because of the liability. Imagine getting sued by all your clients at once. Arguably more importantly, without the debt and the time wasted on law school firms wouldn’t be able to control their young employees. If you want to scream constantly at a 21 year-old you better be wearing a drill seargeant’s hat and be able to kick the shit out of him. Otherwise you are liable to get your ass DROPPED.

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I root for Chicago teams because I am a winner. The ’80s Bears the ’90s Bulls and most recently the Blackhawks.  The city is also about winners. Jordan, Obama, Batman (Gotham is based on Chicago) and, well me. I’m Italian and I’ve got connections.

My idiot gf forgot to, get this, mail (not pay, just mail) our last set of bills so my student loan check and a bunch of other stuff was late. Late means fees and if you’re a student loan check it means that my streak several YEARS long has been broken making me ineligible for the September 1st interest reduction. Thanks Princess! So naturally I went on a bender in AC after selling one of her first editions her father gave her online and then saying her drug addict brother stole it. This is going somewhere I promise.

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I love summer. But it doesn’t fool me. I remember last summer when I’d been unemployed for not that long and I had the experience that made me what I currently think of as me. I’d like to call our attention to those of us in Debtor’s Prison who’ve been laid off several times and thus would never bring anything personal to an office or attend a non-mandatory office function even if they were to win the Presidency.

So there I was – well here really but instead of blogging I was looking for jobs when I got an email from a cousin for the perfect job, an adjunct professorship at George Mason. Even better this professor also routinely did legal research/work as a part-time associate at the head of the department’s law firm. Even better they were in a hurry to get someone – a big hurry.  They were willing to take EITHER a JD or a PhD in the final stages of their work or even someone with comparable accomplishments/experience. I had all three and a family connection.

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Well not according to our own personal hit count, but possibly given the amount of attention the subject of “scam blogging” is getting in fact ATL’s own David Lat has just written a post called ” In Defense of Going to Law School ” perhaps he realized that if people really did heed his advice then eventually the website he started would be useless… Bit it’s all good he had a good ride and besides he’s debt free. Though I am not bitter because I’ve gotten laid during the current administration and didn’t just get blamed for killing my mom’s flowers who I don’t live with during the heat wave… OH WAIT.

I guess I should post the link for those of you who stumbled upon this page and have no idea what I am talking about…

http://abovethelaw.com/2010/07/in-defense-of-going-to-law-school/

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Sorry guys! This has been in the queue for a week…

I think all aspiring artists have one thing in common: fear of being laughed at. As far as aspiring writers go I think we are lucky – my rejections come one at a time from individuals I will never see. I can’t imagine being booed off stage and then having to look at classmates and coworkers who were in the crowd.

There is a disadvantage here. It makes it such that it takes an awfully long time to discover how bad your first attempt at writing really was/is – unless you are a literary genius which I am not. Just like your own voice sounds different to you when you’re talking your own words feel different when you are writing.

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Yes I am a 0L.  But isn’t the practice of law all about talking a good game about stuff you know little or nothing about?  I am also a writer, a journalist – and I have spent countless hours with my subject, Mr. Michael Triforce, Esquire.  So listen up, I know what I’m talking about.

#7 Audacity.  If you have followed the first six rules and have had a little luck you should be on easy street. However, that can be dangerous.  We’ve been taught our whole lives that there is no free lunch.  We’re taught to be suspicious of things that are too good to be true.  It’s like in the Matrix – the human mind rejects the utopia.  Do not do that.  STICK to the routine you have established…and because stassis is impossible you need to PUSH that routine just to make sure you don’t start hanging around the office more than is necessary and end up having to work.

Read on for the next two rules

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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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Once I met a man whose fortune was my opposite

My every victory was his defeat

His every triumph foreshadowed my own misfortune

We were on opposite sides of a Pendulum not restrained by impartial Gravity

I called this man my friend

I tried to be joyous as a friend should

As he conquered the world in his own way

Masking my own pain

As my own world fell apart

I called this task my burden

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