Normal Not Wanted

Unemployed, Staff Attorney, In-House, Biglaw Associate, Partner

jailemange — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 17:35:59 +0000

The title describes briefly the pathway taken by Sam Smith in his legal career. He began his career as an unemployed lawyer in Washington, DC. He had just returned from an internship with the Parliament of the European Union where he was responsible for researching and drafting a report on the state of legal affairs with regard to the family unit in Europe. That year (2004) was the International Year of the Family and the UN was preparing to adopt a resolution on the family. His research was cited at a conference in Doha, Qatar where the resolution on the family was drafted.

A few months after passing the bar exam, Sam was offered a staff attorney position with the law firm of Covington & Burling in Washington, DC. He began work and within a few months realized that he had to find something else. Staff attorneys are universally treated like second class citizens by partners, associates, paraegals, and just about everyone else at biglaw firms. He interviewed with several government agencies and corporations and finally accepted a position as associate general counsel for a company called Prosper, Inc. in Provo, Utah.

After a year as in-house counsel, Sam was ready to go back to a firm. He interviewed with two big name firms on both coasts, Perkins Coie and Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft. Ultimately he decided to accept an offer as an associate from Cadwalader and soon found himself in Charlotte, NC. The economy began to tank within the next year and Cadwalader began to struggle due to its practice focus on mortgage-backed securities. Within a year and a half, Sam Smith was laid off along with 95 other attorneys.

In January of 2009, Sam began work on a web-based project that he hoped to launch into a full fledged business. The name of the project was a website called Rate a Partner (www.rateapartner.com). The site grew exponentially in popularity amongst young, affluent lawyers and quickly began to generate income from advertising. Despite this success, Sam still wanted to put his expertise to work in the legal field. So in May of 2009 he launched the Law Office of Samuel R. Smith, PC offering legal services to closely held businesses, entrepreneurs and high net worth individuals.

That’s just not normal.

Digg.com is Stupid, Diggnation even more Stupid

jailemange — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 05:20:27 +0000

Isn’t digg.com supposed to be about good news rising to the top through a democratic type system? In reality digg.com is just a community of hardcore weasels who play the system with their digg friends and networks in order to promote trash, not news. There is nothing special about the articles or videos that rise to the top. They’re not particularly interesting. Often, they are crude, obscene and utterly senseless. In fact, the only way for an article to actually make it onto the front page is by playing the system. Numerous blogs have posted “how to” guides for getting your articles dugg on digg. All of them have one thing in common: trickery!

Real news that is impactful, engaging and insightful may occasionally make it to the top on digg but that is probably due to some internal monitoring by Kevin or his ilk. Certainly they can digg articles and certainly they have the ability to add votes to articles that should gain popularity. Once I posted a breaking headline newstory about Barak Obama’s campaign victory in Iowa. It received 3 diggs. Of course, CNN, MSNBC, FOX and all the news networks were talking about nothing but this article. The article never reached any level of popularity on digg. Maybe Kevin doesn’t know about Barak Obama (He is the current President of the United States of America).

As soon as I finish this article I am going to post it on digg. Watch out! It might get a ton of votes just for the irony. But, more likely it won’t get any votes. Not because it should, but because I won’t try to play the system. And I won’t ask anyone to digg it!

rateaPartner.com and the Non-normal Beginnings

jailemange — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 21:35:52 +0000

After getting laid off by Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, former associate Sam Smith set out to do something he really enjoyed, building websites. He tried a free forms website which had too much competition and not enough growth. He tried building a link website which got traffic but no loyalty or stickiness. Now he has ventured into something he knows a little about…law firm partners.

On Monday February 23, 2009 rateaPartner.com went live. This is a site where you can login in and search for partners at law firms where you work or used to work or would like to work. You can write reviews, give a five star rating or just browse reviews and ratings left by others. It is very simple to use.

So you must be thinking “what is so non-normal about those beginnings.” Well just the fact that you have an associate from a big law firm who basically leaves all that money and prestige to start a fun website with questionable revenue sources. But hey, way to go!

Premise – everyone is a little weird

jailemange — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 07:04:45 +0000

Warning! Some basic concepts of logic will be required to process the contents of this blog. Logic rule #1: If A=B and B=C and C=D then A=D.

Everyone is unique. Most of us have ten fingers, ten toes, two ears, two eyes, etc. but no two individuals have the exact same genetic makeup. We are all unique. Unique means “not typical; unusual” according to my secret online dictionary source. As you probably already guessed “unusual” means “weird” (among other things). Based on this astounding collection of definitions we can conclude that everyone is weird.

Proof: Everyone will be A; Unique will be B; Unusual will be C; and Weird will be D. A=B, B=C, C=D so A=D

One example: I was standing on a train platform in Brussels when a man dressed completely in white clothing came and stood next to me. He seemed completely out of place and disconnected with the surroundings. He got on the train with everyone else when it arrived. Since the train was full and I was not in a hurry, I waited by myself for the next train. When it arrived I got on the train and sat down. Before the train stopped at the next platform I looked up and saw the man in white standing less than five feet from me. He was looking at me. I thought to myself, “that is unusual.” But what I meant was “oooh there is something freaky going down.”