bicoastal March 4th, 2007
“The popular notion that law school is an exceptionally stressful experience for
many students has been substantiated by longitudinal studies (Benjamin, Kazniak, Sales, & Shanfield, 1986; Shanfield & Benjamin, 1985; Sheldon & Krieger, 2004). Indeed, the emotional distress of law students appears to significantly exceed that of medical students and at times to approach that of psychiatric populations (Dammeyer & Nunez, 1999).”
– Sheldon, Kennon M. and Krieger, Lawrence S., “Understanding the Negative Effects of Legal Education on Law Students: A Longitudinal Test and Extension of Self-Determination Theory” (July 2006). FSU College of Law, Public Law Research Paper No. 206 Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=913824
bicoastal March 3rd, 2007
Yesterday a group of lawyers and law students at an eastern law school sat down to talk about working and living on the west coast. The lawyers all worked in California, and the students were planning to move out west for work. One student asked whether it was difficult for students raised or trained on the east coast to move out west. The lawyers made some interesting observations:
- It’s not that different to work as a lawyer on the west coast, particularly in a large firm. People work just about as much, and the amount of work depends far more on whether the lawyers are unionized (as they apparently are in some legal aid offices).
- Eastern aggression turns into western passive aggression. Which is preferable?
- If you’re a plaintiff side attorney then you’d rather deal with defense counsel based in San Francisco than with counsel based in LA. As one participant said “You can just hear in their voice right away if they’re not based in San Francisco.”
bicoastal December 17th, 2006
David Zaring and Bill Henderson are writing an article on how legal associate satisfaction correlates with geographical location, and they’ve posted the table below on their generally excellent Empirical Legal Studies blog.
They conclude, “The most striking feature of this table is that, in ALL categories, working conditions appear to be better in the smaller corporate law markets.”
