My first job out of law school paid a yearly salary of $38,000. No, you read that right. The temp job I worked before going to law school paid more than that. I knew dudes who made two or three times that out of undergrad. This wasn’t the first time I began to think I had made a horrible mistake (there were more to come).
I have a history of poor life choices. Going to law school for one, detailed here. It’s a banger of a post; please read. Here’s another poor life choice: between 2L and 3L, I interviewed at and had an offer to intern at a boutique Boston tort litigation law firm founded by one of the A Civil Action guy’s former partner. They even paid: $15 an hour . . . in 2008! That’s $22.28 now! As an intern!
I didn’t take the job, which is very on-brand for me, opting to intern at the tech company that paid $8 an hour but offered a chance to do the kind of work (intellectual property) I was hoping to do once I graduated and passed the bar. Mainly, I didn’t want to litigate. I wasn’t thinking about the connections I’d make at the firm, and I ended up litigating anyway. Even the woman who offered the job was surprised when I turned it down. After the tech internship, I had no connections and no job prospects, so there you go. Poor life choices gang, rise up!
Back to my first post-law school gig: of course I took it; I’d been ten months unemployed after passing the bar, and was getting marries soon. It was 2010, in the thick of the economic recession. Thirty-eight thousand dollars was more than zero dollars, even though it was a total insult. “Law opens many doors!” Shut up. “You can do so much with a JD!” Get bent. “It’s job security!” Kiss my ass, and I mean that sincerely.
Guess what I did at that job? Debt collection. Yes indeed. I was scum of the scum of the Earth. Lower than low. Ambulance chasers and public defenders look down their nose at debt collections attorneys.
What you do is, when someone can’t pay back a credit card bill or other loan, these big companies take them to court to get a judgment, which means the debtor is legally obligated to pay the creditor back. This in and of itself isn’t a bad thing. Some clients were contractors or building material suppliers who weren’t getting paid, small businesses or doctors or dentists whose clients and patients were skipping out on their bills, and so on. But the credit card companies and auto loan financing businesses would get these massive portfolios of cases and drag all of the debtors to court.
Again, I get this and it is not necessarily a bad thing, beliefs about usury notwithstanding (we’ll get to usury). A large part of my job as a collections attorney was to go to court, meet with these people before the trial—most of which were in small claims court before a magistrate, which was a lot less formal than an actual trial before a judge—and see if we could work out a deal. Other cases were payment reviews for debtors who weren’t living up to a payment plan arranged at an earlier date, or who had just never played and were back to see if their financial situation had changed. Colleagues told me that before the 2008 recession most people would pay on the spot, or at least set up a payment plan. I entered into this world at a time when the vast majority of people could not.
In fact, so many people were on exempted forms of income, or made so little that what they did make was exempt from judgment, that “NATP” became a running joke. It stood for “No ability to pay,” which is was we’d write on the agreements or status updates as shorthand. I’ve never seen so many people on Disability. Most of it wasn’t physical, either. I encountered dozens, hundreds maybe, of twenty-somethings who were on permanent disability due to “anxiety” and stuff like that. I’m not here to bash the poor and indigent. The American system is a joke and doesn’t provide for its own, especially he least. Save your “Bootstraps!” talk for National Review or something. I mean, I actually admire the ability to game the system; if I couldn’t find work no matter what I did, I’d bilk the government teat as well. Maybe they’re the smart ones, and I’m the idiot.
I got firsthand experience with the forgotten and reviled members of society, and while there were many who were actually just refusing to pay, and some who were refusing to work, most were people without the proper credentials to enter into the realm of the privileged. Note that “credentials” are different than “education” because the latter implies intelligence while the former implies having enough money to pay for an expensive piece of paper that you’re pretty much going to get if you shell out the bucks to attend an institute of so-called higher learning. Trust me, I’ve got four of the stupid things.
So I developed a lot of sympathy for people without means. They weren’t bad people. Many worked in jobs or trades that used to pay well . . . when their clients could afford to, say, build houses. Or landscape their lawns. Or needed stuff fixed around their houses. More than one person told me they thought George W. Bush was an idiot, but they could live with that because at least they had jobs during his tenure. Perspective changes everything.
Third-party debt collection firms were the worst. These bloodsuckers buy debts or a portfolio of debts from the prime debtors for pennies on the dollar and then are legally entitled to collect the full judgment from the debtor. It’s like shorting a stock, right? If they can’t collect in full, or at least exceed what they paid for the debt, they lose money. So they’ll do anything to squeeze these debtors.
One thing you can do is attach wages. To do that, you have to explain to a judge that the person can pay, but chooses not to. I’d meet people who drove nicer cars than mine, had their nails done, were dressed well, had diamond rings, designer purses, the latest iPhone, and so on, were working, but cried poor. In those cases, the judge then will order someone’s paycheck garnished, which means that the court takes a cut right out of a person’s paycheck and gives it to the creditor until the debt is paid. You can also get a warrant called a capias, which means something like “seize the head.” It lets you pay your fifty bucks or whatever to a sheriff who serves the capias, meaning this person has to show up to court to pay up or explain why they can’t. For $150 you can even have the sheriff arrest the person and bring them to court in handcuffs. And of course, any fees are tacked on to the judgment. The state has to wet its beak and pass the cost along to you, which ends up with the debtor who’s already in a pretty bad state. Crap always rolls downhill.
Remember I talked about usury? In addition to any interest applied by the original creditor, the courts allow pre- and post-judgment interest. Admittedly, in my state it was only twelve percent per year, but that adds up when you can only afford to pay $200 per month on a $10,000 dollar debt. Better to at least try to claim disability and go for the coveted “NATP.”
I used to have dozens upon dozens of cases at some of the busier courthouses in the bigger cities. I’d show up like a total dork all clean-cut in my suit and tie, everyone there glaring at me because they knew I was the asshole who’d start calling names one-by-one to talk to the debtors before the sessions began. Everybody hated me, and I couldn’t blame them. I wasn’t the debt holder, but I represented them. When you’re a lawyer, your client’s interests are supposed to be yours, even if you think your clients are evil. One time I stopped at a Greek diner in one of these cities and chatted a bit with the owner. When he learned what I did, and what type of law, he stopped polishing the coffee mug he was working on and said, “And you’re a Christian and you do this?”
Yeah, pal. Yeah. I still think about that.
One day in court I saw a man dressed like a biker who owned a garage roll into the session: t-shirt, leather vest, arms covered in tattoos, pompadour, big sideburns. Dude was trying to collect some bills customers of his didn’t pay and handled the cases himself; you’d see a lot of that. I looked at him with envy. Imagine being able to come into court dressed like that, or just work dressed like that? What life choices did he make? I wonder how he’s doing? Where is he on the status totem pole? Being a business owner has got to be pretty awesome. I know many men who never went to college but just built something and are doing very well for yourself. Sure, you get your “hand dirty,” but that’s what most men want to do. The easy life is for suckers like me.
People of all races, cultures, and walks of life got to talk to me and express how much they hated my clients and/or me. One man with a cane who needed a Spanish interpreter told me he didn’t even see me as a human, just a suit without a face. I felt that one deeply, because that’s how I felt too.
One guy, a black guy, wanted to pay off his debt in full. He was pretty friendly, and he was ready. He had his check book, said he had come into some money, and just wanted to wipe the whole slate clean. As someone who could’ve very easily been on the other side of this transaction, I understood, and I was eager myself to see what I could do to help him. I tell you, I’m too much of a pussy to be a lawyer.
The rub was, I was covering a case for another law firm. We had this thing where the firms in this space would swap cases. Say, if I was going to be in Courthouse X at Y time, I’d take everyone’s cases so they didn’t have to send an attorney, while other firms going to Courthouse A at B time would take everyone’s, and so on. It was much more cost-effective than paying a private coverage attorney who might charge $50 bucks or more per case, but it ended up with us doing a lot of unpaid labor. Sometimes at a session I might only have five cases from our office and 75 from another.
Remember: I wasted three prime years in my twenties studying to do this.
Back to this guy: I called the firm and the lady who handled negotiations said she’d accept a certain amount, which represented the absolute lowest percent they’d take to settle the matter in full, but asked me to “see what you can get from him.”
I did not like that. I felt so slimy. I gave the guy a number higher than the minimum as a starting point. I know, I know, first rule of negotiating is you let the other person make the first offer. What can I say? I did tell you I was a bad lawyer.
This guy, I’ll never forget this, this guy balled his fists, closed his eyes, raised his face heavenward, and with tears in his eyes whispered “Those motherfuckers.” But he wrote the check that I took and sent to this other law firm to send to their awful client, wondering how I ended up in this position.
Remember: $38,000 per year. And I had to drive to multiple court session per day. I was in the car three, four, five hours per day. I ballooned up to almost 300 pounds, especially after my son was born. I was a very athletic person before this. I was social. I had friends, hobbies. I did stuff. At this job, I sat. I sat in a car. I sat in court. I sat in an office. If sitting is worse for you than smoking, as they say, I wonder why I didn’t start huffing down a pack a day. How could that have been any worse? Remember, friends: don’t go to law school.
I haven’t even gotten into the wonderful world of dealing with different types of judges. That’s very inside baseball. I wanted to talk about the nitty gritty, the kind of fun and exciting work that you, too, can do if you ever enter into the exciting and rewarding field of the law! And with the American economy still being awful and usurious, there’s no shortage of people with no money for you to harass, but legally.
I did this for four years.
Men go into certain fields for the status. Law is one of them. The sad fact is that, in modern America, a man is just the content of his wallet. Nothing more, nothing less. Nobody cares about your spiritual development or how much of an asset you are to your community, unless it’s bringing in lots of money. To paraphrase Alec Baldwin’s character from Glengarry Glen Ross: “Nice guy? Doesn’t matter! Good father? Who cares!” Something like that. People say they care . . . but they don’t.
Men always jockey for status. It’s our nature and it’s natural and a good thing. Hierarchies are necessary and natural. But there were other ways to be useful, to be measured as a man, and still be able to take care of yourself and yours. No more. Our culture is purely material, transactional. He who dies with the most toys wins, etc. and so on. That’s not just meme-level anti-Boomer stuff, because nearly everyone internalizes this ethos regardless of age. We suck it down with our mother’s milk in the USA. So if you can’t get status from something other than your credentials or your occupation or how many zeroes are in your paycheck, you’re out of luck, friends.
Economics rules all. In my collection days, I encountered plenty of minorities, sure. But that was in cities. Remember, I worked in a state that, as of 2017, was 68.8% non-hispanic white. In the rural areas, I encountered the lowest of the low on the status totem pole: poor rural whites. Everyone hates them. And yes, it’s hatred, not just “not caring.” Books have been written about how awful this group of people is. Never a thought for why they’re in such bad shape. “We gave them a program but they just don’t vote for us because they’re racist.” Fact is, most everyone was doing poorly. Most of the country looks like those downscale areas and not the cities where the credentialed are doing just fine.
I’m digressing. The point is, law, finance, consulting . . . these are the types of things that provide status without merit (paraphrasing former lawyer/disgusting womanizer Tucker Max from this interview). I say this because these professions don’t really create anything of real value. It’s paper value, now digital, ephemeral. At least paper is a thing. They don’t invent or build or fix a single thing.
Back to debt collection. That job made me realize how messed up our system is. The scales truly came off of my eyes. Like I said, I never had the temperament for law; I cared too much. And that’s not a humblebrag—it’s a bad thing. Collecting debt made me feel like Matthew before he met Jesus: “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” You and me both, Matt.
I got out of that ten years ago, but I am still thinking about it, obviously. Some things stick with you. Some choices alter the course of your life many ways. What if I didn’t take that job? Where would I be? No one knows, but I did take it and here I am. My advice for young men: avoid the status game if you can. Just don’t play. But if you must play, go for the gold every time. Anything else is a waste. Make good choices and seriously think about their long-term consequences . . . and go into something that fits your temperament. It’s no fun being a square peg in a round hole your entire life, believe me. Still, if you play the game, take that money and run. It is the measure of a man, after all whether we like it or not.
- Alexander
Thanks for reading. Some experiences stick with you, and debt collection was one that stuck with me. Kindly subscribe and share if you enjoyed this post. Also, check out my books here, and you can also support this publication buy buying me a coffee at Buy Me A Coffee. As always, thank you for reading.
Don't take it personally, we legal aid / public defender types look down our noses at all other lawyers - it's all we have, since there's no money & even the people who skip on their debts think we're worms.
This resonates with me. I was a smart kid who didn't take care of his mental health and went off the "smart person" track. I got accepted to Purdue despite not really completing my senior year of high school. Made some stupid choices at Purdue and ended up going to Purdue Calumet (Purdue NW now) in Hammond, IN. Hammond is not a great city and I had to drive 30 min. just to attend. I met people that I never would have if I stayed on the "smart person" track.
Right then I realized what people talk about the Cycle of Poverty. People are not educated enough to "play the game" and any mistake financially or legally ends the game and saddles them with 10's of thousands of dollars of unbankruptable debt. (Student loans can't be bankrupted. Hello usury!) People also got arrested just for having pot in their car which wasn't even theirs. Those days in prison were enough for them to miss several tests and fail those classes. Many people who wanted to graduate and were smart enough to do it, didn't because of this. I could practically write a whole novel about that experience.
So I sympathize with the alternate life path problem. I also made some bad decisions that have really hurt me as well. I also understand what it is to see poor people up close and be forced to understand what they go through. There are huge financial and legal barriers in place to keep the poor people poor and it is there on purpose.