Apres Moi . . .

"Show, don't tell." That was the numero uno rule from every creative writing class I took, whether it was the high school creative writing class most students took because it was the easy A, or the ones at Duke which only accepted 15 students out of 300 applications (yes, I'm tootin' my own horn there - wanna make sumthin' of it?).

So, instead of saying "SmallLaw is so fucked," I'll show:

SmallLaw has twelve attorneys including yours truly. For the past three years, SmallLaw has gone through eight attorneys, mostly in litigation. The week I started in SmallLaw almost a year ago was the last week for another litigation associate. Three months later, an associate joined, only to see another associate leave - see the pattern?

I gave notice on May 5th, the same day Newbie started (I was told not to speak with her, but I'll save that for a later entry).

There's another associate who'll be leaving by the end of the month -- SmallLaw has had problems with her hours and reliability, which is somewhat understandable (for a while, she'd e-mail she'd be in the office late morning but never show up), but at the same time, SmallLaw made her life a living hell -- everything was a fire drill, she had to drop projects to work on pressing ones, only to have the projects she dropped turn into fire drills too.

And yesterday, I found out that the transactional associate might be giving notice in the next week.

That's 3 associates leaving a 12-attorney firm in a single month.

Now, 2 associates joined SmallLaw in the last four weeks - but the one who started a month ago already hates it there, and the other received just a taste of Mr. Profanity on her first day, giving her a glimpse of the path to hell she shall tread if she chooses to stay.

"Instant Karma's gonna getcha . . . "