The Unemployed Lawyer doesn’t hate law firms. We established that yesterday. That doesn’t lessen my overwhelming anger and bitterness at the current sorry state of things. Nor does it lessen my hope and belief, not so much in human decency, but in the primal urge for survival of the species.

I am bitter that I cannot possibly hope to get a job while everyone else is being fired. At least not in the city where I live. I am bitter that my life will change from what it always used to be and that I must part, will-I, nill-I from the people I have loved.

I am bitter that my friends are so bitter, and so frightened for their children.

I am extremely bitter and very angry looking over this week's pieces on Above the Law. One piece addresses a new set of mass firings and the one that follows is filled with cries of dismay from employed people, with health insurance, some sense of job security, and a bi-monthly paycheck that for the lowest-paid amounts to $160,000 a year and for the highest-paid, about $300,000, that they won’t get bonuses this year or, heaven forbid!, their bonuses will be smaller! There have been similar pieces in the American Lawyer and the National Law Journal.

Bonuses are wonderful things. I certainly enjoyed mine. But bonuses are just that—bonuses. A bonus is something extra. It is something over and above. It is more than due or should be expected in terms of regular compensation. A bonus is not an entitlement.

I can’t help but be bitter that all these people who have so much, who have everything I and so many others want: a place in the world; good work to do and good company to do it in, a salary, health insurance, and other good things beyond measure, should fixate and complain about bonuses when all of us unemployed are about to be tipped off the edge of the world. It’s quite a bitter pill to take[3].

I know that just one of my bonuses years ago would have paid my secretary’s salary for at least half a year. Start thinking creatively! I know that’s a process generally frowned upon in legal circles, but now’s the time to break that habit of disapproval.  That would be the spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down [4].

I said yesterday that this disaster is nobody’s fault. Today I say that the fix for this disaster is within everybody’s power, if you will only think outside your box and work together for the common good. I mean this for staff, associates, and partners. If you will all change with the environment, you can change the environment itself.

We all know that Associates’ Committees have a certain amount of power. Use it. For those of you who still get bonuses, inform the firm that you reject the bonus in favor of saving law firm jobs. Demand proof that your fun money did, indeed, go to save a job.

Consider taking an across the board salary reduction. You, too, staffers. You’ll still be making a ton of money and you’ll retain all your benefits. And, boy oh boy, will you look like the ultimate team player!  You know why? Because you will be.

Partners, you know what to do. Give it up. Let go. Follow the lead and join your team. Take less, and provide just enough transparency to demonstrate that you are taking less to support the firm along with everybody else. Show how your take-home cuts have gone to save a job. What a team you will have when everybody is truly part of it and everybody has sacrificed something to be there! Your law firm will work, will have incentive to work, and will be able to offer clients a competitive fee structure to bring their outside counsel budget dollars straight your way. You will start making money again.

For this plan to work, though, everyone must play. Aha! First-Years! You thought I didn’t see you over there and more or less out of the news for now. Partners, you get in here, too. You are all suffering  from  O.J syndrome, which afflicts the patient with the incomprehensible belief that he or she can commit a perfectly outrageous and  dangerous act in the blaze of the public eye, then simply walk away unnoticed. As this week has proved, you may get to do it once, but no more free tickets after that!

$180,000?????? I ask you, $180,000? $160,000 is bad enough when you’re firing everybody else, but $180,000? Assuming that each of the really big firms hires about 50 first-years, the $20,000 raise per first-year amounts to $1.1 million dollars. Think of how many jobs you could save with that. The starting salary is simply too high, especially now. Especially when you probably have to fire old employees to bring on new ones.

Someone’s going to have to make the first move on this one. You can’t afford it. You can’t bring in a return on your investment at this astonishingly high price. I hear from a trusty source that many big clients won’t let law firms use first-years for doc review because the billing rate is too high. Imagine that. Instead certain companies use contract or temp attorneys (that means you and me, boys and girls), for whom they pay about one-third the billing rate of a first-year.

I see messages from first-years all over the place, worried that firms will withdraw their offers. I hope they just come at you with a lower price. I hope you take it. You’ll still have a job. You’ll still make tons of money. You’ll pay your loans. You’ll find your partner. You’ll buy your house. If you want kids, you will have them. And with luck, because you took a lower offer once upon a time, you will never know what we unemployed who are here know now.

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious![5]

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[1]    And I said, My strength and my hope is perished from the LORD: 
        Remembering mine affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall.
        My soul hath them still in remembrance, and is humbled in me.
        This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope.
        King James Bible, Lamentations, 3:18-21
[2] Mary Poppins, Walt Disney Productions, 1964, directed by Robert Stevenson, starring Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dike.
[3] id.
[4] id.
[5] id.

Author's Note: I'm sorry if I caused offense by quoting the Bible and Mary Poppins on the same page. None was intended. That's just the way my mind works.