In the last post discussing the Japanese embrace of all things A.I., one of the commenters mentioned that Japan’s ratio of engineers to lawyers is 10 to 1, while the U.S.’s ratio is the reverse: 1 to 10. Because I have a special contempt for most lawyer chicks which impels me to fuck them hard, deep and violently until their gratingly argumentative masculinized tough girl exterior lies in a wet spot of pent-up orgasmic release on my bedsheets, I was curious why this is so.
My first guess is similar to what commenter ‘agnostic’ wrote about the Japanese possessing an IQ profile that favors visual-spatial reasoning over verbal fluency. If this is true, we should expect to see disproportionately more Asian-American engineers than lawyers, including second and third generation Asian-Americans, compared to the rest of the U.S. population. Lawyers, for reasons unbeknownst to me and at odds with the objective evidence concerning their contribution to society and the rigor of their curriculum, have higher status in the U.S. than do engineers, so if the highly pragmatic Asians are choosing engineering over law in spite of all the social pressure to do the opposite then that would suggest an ingrained mental proclivity for the hard maths.
Another possibility may be that homogeneous societies, like Japan’s, don’t need as many lawyers because the trust factor is stronger. When everyone looks like everyone else strangers are more apt to trust one another and work cooperatively, negating the need for lawyers. Corruption is lower so the courts are less involved in business transactions. A Harvard study has even shown that more diversity reduces civic-mindedness.
Is the U.S., the premiere multicultural experiment on the world stage, overburdened with lawyers because of its diversity? Is trust so low that recruiting an army of lawyers is the only way anything can get done here anymore?
To answer this, I’ve put together a chart comparing the number of lawyers per capita to the level of diversity for each state in the U.S. The second column is the Diversity Index for the year 2000 and it is based on a Census algorithm. The higher the Diversity Index number of the state, the more likely you are to run into someone from another race or ethnicity there. The lower it is, the more the entire state will look like an extended family backyard BBQ. The third column is number of lawyers in each state per 10,000 residents as of 2001.
| STATE | Diversity Index 2000 | Lawyers per 10,000 Residents |
| ME | 0.07 | 9 |
| VT | 0.08 | 8.2 |
| NH | 0.10 | 7.7 |
| WV | 0.10 | 8.8 |
| IA | 0.14 | 6.2 |
| ND | 0.16 | 4.4 |
| MT | 0.19 | 8.5 |
| KY | 0.20 | 7.1 |
| WY | 0.21 | 8.3 |
| SD | 0.22 | 5.8 |
| ID | 0.22 | 6.1 |
| MN | 0.22 | 11.2 |
| NE | 0.23 | 8.3 |
| WI | 0.23 | 6.8 |
| IN | 0.25 | 6.9 |
| UT | 0.26 | 9.1 |
| OH | 0.28 | 8.6 |
| PA | 0.28 | 11.9 |
| MO | 0.29 | 10.9 |
| OR | 0.29 | 7.9 |
| KS | 0.30 | 5.8 |
| RI | 0.32 | 9.1 |
| MA | 0.32 | 14.5 |
| TN | 0.35 | 8.2 |
| AR | 0.36 | 5.3 |
| MI | 0.36 | 7.8 |
| WA | 0.37 | 8.7 |
| CT | 0.38 | 14.3 |
| CO | 0.42 | 13 |
| OK | 0.43 | 8.1 |
| DE | 0.44 | 18 |
| AL | 0.44 | 9.4 |
| NC | 0.46 | 8.2 |
| VA | 0.47 | 9.5 |
| SC | 0.48 | 8.4 |
| MS | 0.50 | 7.6 |
| IL | 0.50 | 14 |
| LA | 0.50 | 11.1 |
| AK | 0.51 | 8 |
| GA | 0.52 | 12 |
| FL | 0.52 | 11.7 |
| NJ | 0.53 | 11.7 |
| AZ | 0.53 | 8 |
| NV | 0.53 | 10.4 |
| MD | 0.53 | 9.4 |
| NY | 0.57 | 20.4 |
| TX | 0.61 | 9.5 |
| NM | 0.62 | 6.9 |
| CA | 0.67 | 10.9 |
| HI | 0.73 | 9.5 |
| DC | 0.56 | 276.7 |
I’ve separated DC from the main list as an outlier. 277 lawyers per 10,000 residents! In distant second place is New York at 20 lawyers per 10,000 residents. Now I know why I can’t get away from dating lawyers in this town. They’re everywhere. The overwhelming lawyer presence goes a long way toward explaining why DC is the toughest city to game chicks. No wonder there are cat adoption shelters on every corner.
The coefficient of correlation between the diversity index and the number of lawyers for all states is 0.38, which is a moderately positive correlation. So my theory that diversity breeds lawyers has some merit.
Next: I will discover a correlation between a woman’s career success and how often she bitches about guys.
I found your site on google blog search and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. Just added your RSS feed to my feed reader. Look forward to reading more from you.
– Randy Nichols.
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I’m almost a lawyer, by the way. I have defended sex offenders (mostly presumed rapists) but intend to specialice in tax law. Law is a tough field, full of annoying people. Engineers tend to be much nicer.
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The best math/science students at the HS level in the US are talked into degrees in engineering by teachers, students, friends etc. These degrees are often considered to be the most difficult at a university. While the other 17-23 Year old students are spending most of their time learning how to socialize and discuss in small groups and improve their written communication skills in English classes, the engineers are spending all their free time working on projects, and spending more time with their small engineering groups becuase their the only people that can help them get through the endless work.
The end result is by the time these people graduate college, the engineers are smarter than everyone else, but have no ability to convey their message, and instead go take a job at a company knowing if they don’t work their asses off, they’ll be stuck in a go nowhere job. The lawyers on the other hand work hard in college, but in a less competitive environment and are able to better enjoy the college experience. They then goto law schools, where they spend time with people telling them how great they are and how it’s their responsibility to protect the laws that in turn protect them.
(Note I have an engineering degree and a law degree)
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Many things contribute to this.
Law is still considered a prestigious job. People think that if they go to law school, they will be making 160K as soon as they graduate. This is a completely FALSE assumption (see this lawyer salary chart:http://www.nalp.org/content/index.php?pid=522) but still holds up.
Also, law school is now an acceptable alternative to grad school if one wants to delay the real world a bit. This is why there are tons of idiots practicing law when they really shouldn’t be.
You are not looking at specifics of Japanese culture that lend to a lack of lawyers. For example, did you know that Japan (as well as most other Asian countries) doesn’t have a jury system? This Opinion article in the NY Times does a decent job of explaning why not: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/01/opinion/01precht.html.
Similarly, America is one of the most (if not THE most) litigious society in the world. Americans file lawsuits over the dumbest shit – just watch Judge Judy any given day and you can see a sampling of the ridiculousness that is small claims court. More lawsuits = more lawyers needed to handle these suits.
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I wanted to chime in from yesterday so good thing today’s post relates. First off Japanese society is one greatly based on honor, to do anything that would bring shame or dishonor ones family is a sin greater than child molesting. I mean back in the day people would ritually kill themselves just to bring honor to their family name. With that kind of mentality there’s really no need for lawyers when people would rather die than commit a crime. It’s so safe cops don’t carry guns (I’m pretty sure).
Second, if you think about the fact that Japan had two nuclear bombs dropped on them, the need for engineers, mathematicians and scientist to rebuild the country and bring it to a powerhouse would be great
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P.s
You’re a nerd….. GOTCHA!!!
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note 1: a 0.38 correlation is very, very weak. Where’s my R-squared?
note 2: Perhaps there is a secret confounder in this relationship.
Perhaps lawyers are cogs in our immense legal and political machine, and our style of law and government requires such an abundance of lawyers.
A lot of lawyers these also go to help fuel the corporate machine.
Or maybe somewhere not so long ago the US government decided to subsidize the lawyer production machine, just like it did the doctor production machine. So we have an unfortunate surplus.
I’m just pushing you, Roissy. You are a worthy intellectual adversary.
PS: Male lawyers are the same as female lawyers. I’m glad we can both give them the yin they need to their yang.
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Having lived in Hawaii, I would have not in a million years guessed that it’s the most diverse state in the country– everyone looks Asian of some sort or another and seems to be related to everyone else. Is this diversity by square area?
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(arg– ignore the square. just, “area”)
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How many times does it need to be said that correlation is not the same thing as causality?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation
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Honestly, the out of control prestige has a lot to do with the people attracted to law school and how much they trumpet being a lawyer once they get out. They are their own best PR machines for the profession.
Most people who go to law school do so as a last resort for prestige. They are people who are vaguely clever but without any real hard talents, so they figure why not law? Or they are often people who were in more rigorous professions and wanted more prestige with easier work. Or they couldn’t make the cut in med school or business school or something else along those lines and they feel it’s their last chance to be important. For these reasons, they go overboard in representing law as some incredibly intellectually rigorous vocation and the law school curriculum as rocket science. It’s nothing of the sort. But because it’s the last chance for the prestige they so desperately want, lawyers tend to build up the intellectual demands of their profession to delusional levels. And because many nonlawyers don’t understand what being a lawyer actually entails, they buy into it too, adding to the prestige. Engineers on the other hand don’t go around trumpeting the intellectual merits of their field every chance they get like lawyers often do.
Truly intellectual people tend to be bored senseless by law if they choose it as a profession. Lawyers love to paint the bar exam as the hardest thing on the planet, but it really isn’t. At the top schools there is a near 100% bar passage rate (not an exaggeration) showing that for truly smart people the test is a joke. Meanwhile, people I know who work in real estate and accounting offices with former lawyers in new careers often tell me that the lawyers are the ones failing the real estate exams and cpa exams the most and often getting the lowest scores, and that includes the ones who passed the bar exam already. (Of course this is anecdotal evidence, so make what you will out of that)
I think the issue here is not just trust and honor in Japan vs. lack of trust and honor in America. I think it’s a question of naked ambition, individuality and hunt for personal glory vs. work ethic and drive to challenge yourself. In Japan, personal glory and naked selfish ambition are outweighed by work ethic, working as part of a group and being the best at something challenging. They are more concerned with being part of something bigger than themselves and not rocking the boat than standing out from a crowd, blatant social climbing and being famous or powerful at all costs. In America on the other hand, our ambitions routinely outweigh our actual talent or work ethic. Fame, power and wealth are a birthright. And that is why I think there are so many lawyers in America vs. Japan, because it’s the career of choice next to reality show contestant for people whose ambitions of wealth and power far outweigh their actual talents, intellectual aptitude and work ethic.
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Asia has an interesting shortage of skilled workers…and lawyers.
That may or may not support the theory that homogeneous populations require less lawyers. For one thing, they are desperately looking for more. For another, their education system led to this debacle since there is little emphasis on lawyering in Asia.
Having lived in Hawaii, I would have not in a million years guessed that it’s the most diverse state in the country
I’m guessing diversity in America means “non-white.” Since whites comprise most of the country’s population (for now), anyone else is a minority and contributes to the “diversity score.” Asians are somewhere around 4-5% of the population and are mostly in Hawaii and California (and major metropolitan areas).
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T: You hit the nail on the head. Our society rewards individualism over greater good. Glory for yourself is often all that matters for most of us. We’re cultured to believe that the best thing a guy can do to meet women is have a lot of money and a high prestige job, rather than have a high personal value and ethics/morals. It’s no wonder that there are so many more patients with mental disorders in a society where success is measured in terms of prestige of job and amount of money made. Obviously not everyone can make a ton of money or have a lot of prestige in their profession, and it’s why these groups fight to ensure everyone knows how hard their job is, or how hard the tests to get into the job are. It’s the same reason that the industry trade groups (read Lobbyists) work hard to ensure the laws help them keep their status levels. Even in sports, we value individual achievements over team goals, I’m not saying this is right or wrong, but for that reason any profession that gives off a high individual success factor (law) is considered higher value or more important than a field where team play is needed (engineering).
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T & instantExcitement: You’re right, but you’re not looking deep enough into WHY individualism and the hunt for prestige. I think Roissy is right that it comes from our heterogeneous society as well as my theory that it stems from the foundations of our government and economy laid 300 some years ago.
Being a lawyer is a meme! Yay Dawkins!
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i find it a bit ironic that some of the commentators in here have mentioned the Japanese ethical code in the discussion. After all, we are on a blog whose author, Roissy, has for a primary objective in life the desire to ejaculate on as many women as he can.
This is about as far away from the austere Japanese ideal as we can go. However, it is not as if modern Japanese follow these ideals – they suffer from similar defects of lust and vanity that Roissy is afflicted with. The difference is that their ancestors had developed such a fine culture that these lackluster descendants are still able to somewhat function.
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T, have you been to law school?
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Roissy, you didn’t control for the j-factor.
Jerusalem Post headline: “Israel is oversaturated with lawyers
“There is one lawyer for every 250 inhabitants in Israel. The end of 2005, counted 33,000 people with a legal practice certification, of which 80 percent to 85% were active legal practitioners,”
so 40 per 10,000.
.0277 % for dc still outdoes it however, scary.
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All of the states with a high lawyer’s per resident index have a large corporate center and federal appellate court. This should explain why there are so much more attorneys. You can’t do corporate or appellate work in Idaho.
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Anon 15,
Are you serious!!!! Japanese people are the freakiest people on the planet. Shibari (Japanese bondage), Bukakie, Sexual manga!!!! Seriously, because the society is so forced to repress outward sexual emotion that energy goes into some of the weirdest places.
Apparently the Japanese samurai where on the forefront of homosexuality and engaged in it with no problem.
If anything Roissy treatment of life and women greatly resembles Japanese men.
“Roissy, has for a primary objective in life the desire to ejaculate on as many women as he can”
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Israel is oversaturated with lawyers
This is a counterpart to the Japanese argument for visuo-spatial importance. Israel represents a country primarily composed of a race(or culture?) that has a relatively high verbal IQ and so this is manifested in their pursuit of law.
No one here has really emphasized the pop-culture obsession with law. I loved the practice and Law and Order growing up. In fact, we had a former Law and Order actor as a serious presidential candidate at some point!
And both the Democratic nominees are former lawyers. Does that not count for anything, or is it just another component of the status-is-king argument?
I suppose back in the 50’s or 60’s when the space program was very important, engineering was high status. But recently, the national drop in science is not surprising, especially given the domination of our government by the religious right in the past administration.
You wonder why people don’t go for engineering? People are voting for droves in candidates that don’t believe in evolution! Considering how many intelligent people have fanatically supported Ron Paul and managed to avoid questioning his scientific beliefs, is it really shocking that law is still so popular as opposed to science oriented careers?
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Mike: Yes, I’m a practicing lawyer.
It’s more of that individual glory and prestige thing. Becoming a lawyer is the easiest way to get quick prestige and build instant credibility for a political run.
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And that political run, of course, is even a bigger expression of extreme individuality and social climbing. Plus it’s a great way to get tons of business if you reenter private law practice or consulting after your political career is over.
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By the way, this is a good article for those who think US inferiority in math is something genetic rather than something environmentally learned:
http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_1_snd-ed_schools.html
Very eye-opening.
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T: Why practice if you have such a bleak outlook on the profession and other practitioners? Or have you found an enjoyable niche?
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Roissy- What gross overgeneralizations do you have about women who are both engineers and lawyers?
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I lived in Japan for a bit. I don’t know if I can speak to their visual-spatial reasoning but the Japanese consistently apply a high level of precision and meticulousness even to the smallest tasks. That kind of cultural quirk lends itself well to engineering disciplines but perhaps it does have some basis in the population’s IQ profile. They also have a tendency to categorize and organize. Almost everything is broken down to a technique that is mastered or perfected. On the other hand Americans today are loose, sloppy, and even lazy with a rather perverse pride in showing off that they have innate abilities which allow them to transcend hard work.
Japan continues to be a very homogenous society somewhat leery of gaijin outside of the major cities and I agree that the lack of diversity foregoes the need for arbiters, i.e., lawyers contrary to what we find in the US. However, I can’t help but agree with those that fault the US’s obsessive status seeking. The US never had a feudal system like Japan or Europe, so Americans are less content with knowing or accepting their class and instead strive to reach the upper class as a proxy for lacking nobility. I believe this is well documented.
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Said Gannon:
I’m almost a lawyer, by the way. I have defended sex offenders (mostly presumed rapists)
Ha ha, that’s a hoot!
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“I guess that explains why she’s 31 and still unmarried.”
You sound like Half Sigma today and he sounds like you..
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Roissy and T both have good points. I will try to fuse them: Law School is the respectable profession of last resort for the quantitatively challenged, intelligent young graduates of American universities who have no specific skill-set and no unique drive to do something interesting (peace core, phd, start a business, etc…). They are typically people who were grade-gunners in a soft liberal arts undergraduate curriculum- History, English, Politics, Sociology, Psychology. This is why there are so many females going to law school these days. They are not achieving success in the American math/science academic system (for whatever reasons) but they are smart and hungry and have something to prove. Thus, having somewhat of the fire of hillary burning inside them, after enduring the law school curriculum, the bar and come out with ginormous egos- professional degrees, 6-figure salaries and a total disdain for men less educated and successful than they are. Thus, Roissy’s experiences with ballcutter lawyer chicks.
But man, the pendulum swings:
Unfortunately, things go awry after passing the bar and starting at their law firm jobs in major metropolitan areas, when they are instantaneously the least appealing women in the game: working long hours, put on weight b/c they are not hitting the gym, now in their mid-late 20s, not as hot as the young college-aged girls; their dating market has shrunk considerably (remember, they can’t date guys making less than 160k or meat-heads b/c they are “smart”). Suddenly they are having weird fantasies about the 50-year old partner they work for at 10:00PM while they are still at the office, while their male counterparts are texting every hot college girl, hipster chicks and latina secretary (anything that moves, in other words) when they get out of work.
So the lawyer chicks, even the hottest ones, end up praying for flings with true alpha, but eventually settle with betas: usually a jewish male lawyer. And an in-house legal job b/c they cannot make partner at a law firm.
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Mike, I’ll let you in on a little secret. Among us lawyers, behind closed doors, a lot of us have a bleak outlook, except for the ones who are just hooked on the reaction that they get when they tell strangers they’re lawyers, and no one likes them. Most recent study mentioned in WSJ said that 40% of practicing lawyers wouldn’t recommend the field to someone else. When my colleague showed me the article the first thing he said is “Can you believe it’s that low?”
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Larry Summers nailed it. Bravo. And he’s so right, even most of the male lawyers don’t want to bang the female ones except the superbeta ones who are still socially challenged even with 6-figure salaries.
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Wow, that was a sexist and racist screed. Well, what else should I expect from Larry Summers?
Asian societies favor the medical, scientific and engineering disciplines b/c their culture is more collective-focused than individual. Someone else pointed this out above. Japan has a near-reverence for technology, even in popular culture: their anime is full of robots, mechas and outerspace battles. We revere the individual in our popular culture: from the American Revolution, the western cowboy, rambo and jerry maguire to John McCain. We worship money and individuality, and our courts and legal systems have grown around the complexity of our markets and businesses. Thus the lawyer class has grown to protect the needs of the financial superstars- the hedge funds, the investment banks and private equity shops, while the engineers, designers and architects are deemed mere laborers who scurry about behind the scenes, laying the groundwork for the true stars of American culture and society.
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academic, you will be surprised to know that many of the “financial superstars” at hedge funds and IB’s are engineers and or scientists. Many areas of finance have become so quantitative that they in fact require advanced degrees in Physics, Applied Math, or Econometrics. Few are qualified to hold positions as quants.
I recall reading an article recently where lawyers lamented their lower status in NY, as the wealth of finance professionals so dwarfed their own that they felt they were 2nd tier upper class citizens. I laughed as each lawyer, making a quarter of a million a year, whined about how they can’t keep up with the quants. Of course, I’m one of those quants.
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I recall reading an article recently where lawyers lamented their lower status in NY
There was a NYT article about doctors and lawyers bemoaning their lowering professional status.
Asian societies favor the medical, scientific and engineering disciplines b/c their culture is more collective-focused than individual.
I think you are giving too much credit to the Asians’ work ethic and “collectivist” mentality. Asians are not all hard working by nature. It’s more the culture and upbringing than the genes.
Many Asian Americans are also status whores. The Asian culture in general venerates status, and kids are told from a young age that they need to amount to something so that they don’t dishonor the family.
That’s a substantial difference. Rather than being told that they’re little superstars worthy of the world, Asian kids are beat down into a little pulp and must demonstrate their worth before their parents say a single word of praise. At least, that was common among Asian American children upbringing in the past.
Even after Asian kids manage to get some accomplishments, the parents still have some harsh words about how so-and-so (a world-famous child genius is often cited) is much better, or how the kid only got into Carnegie Mellon when the other Asian kid got into Harvard, and so on and so forth ad infinitum.
Many areas of finance have become so quantitative that they in fact require advanced degrees in Physics
Funnily enough, many areas of advanced physics have become so theoretical that they sound like flat out mysticism these days.
The other funny thing I find is that just about everyone here either knows a lawyer or more, dated a lawyer or a few, or is a lawyer.
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As someone with both degrees, I think a key point has been missed…Engineering should have become more popular, especially computer science/engineering after the .com revolution in America….AND IT DID! High school kids across America decided they wanted to be Comp Sci or Comp Es and start the next .com. Then they got to college, had their first engineering course, and were weeded out. Engineering doesn’t work taught in big mass groups, it’s difficult material in math, sciences etc and there are huge lab requirements for small labs. The universities in response to the high number of applicants made the the weed out classes increasingly difficult and a great many of these people left the field.
Someone above mentioned that people with engineering degrees often leave the field…Yup, eventually you realize that if you have good communication skills that being an engineer doesn’t pay as well as your college buddies, who had much more fun in college than you. A number of us end up in Business, Film, Law etc.
Law school was a great route for me and a number of other engineers because we were smart, had decent communication skills and wanted more individual glory. I don’t work as a Lawyer now, but the idea that I would be rewarded for a good job, rather than depend on others made it an easy decision for me. The lack of trust between people here is the real problem. Engineering projects are always done in large groups, and if one person fucks up big time then you all do, and vice versa if one person really does a kick ass job, it will usually get spread amongst other people. If you grow up in our (American) society you learn to appreciate and value individualized attention.
Note: I no longer work as a lawyer or engineer
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Maybe I should chime in, since I’m probably your only reader currently in Japan.
DF’s right. Japanese people are uber meticulous. Attention to detail and adherence to rules is prized waaay above initiative and creativity, which doesn’t necessarily seem a horrible thing when it comes to lawyering. *However* that doesn’t mean Japanese people aren’t lazy. Strict adherence to rules and refusal to be creative, adapt, or modify behavior is also a higher form of laziness. I have about 30 Japanese people under me and I see it every. single. day.
Homogeneity in Japan isnt so much a factor in lack of lawyering, and there is probably less civic niceness as you might imagine. Japanese people are way less likely to step up and prevent an injustice from occurring (say, for example in public) than an American. A more likely reason for less lawyers is the tendency to settle outside of court. There are a lot of social rules governing “crimes”, like if I hit you with a car, then I “should” pay a certain amount of money and be really apologetic. Also, Japanese police can hold anyone for 21 days without charging them, which is why they have such a ridiculous conviction rate. People will confess just to get the fuck out. Additionally, when they look at America’s love of litigation, to Japanese folks it looks like we can’t handle our differences like adults.
Japan is experiencing a shortage of lawyers though, and court cases regularly drag out for more than a decade. This sort’ve exacerbates the problem — if you’re not a wealthy company or hospital or whatever, you simply can’t afford to go to trial, so you have to settle or the company/hospital will drag you through the mud and bankrupt you. I know someone who’s father died in a case of gross negligence at a care facility. When the family told the hospital they would sue, the hospital simply said “Go ahead,” because they knew the family couldn’t afford 10 years of litigation. No law firm wanted to take the case either. Only after threatening to contact the media did the hospital settle — $30,000. I told my friend that if that had happened in America, there would be lawyers waiting for them at the hospital. I have some gaijin friends right now who owned a club and are dealing with some litigation because people were dancing in their club after 1am (there’s a law in Japan that says there is no dancing after 1am. They only enforce it when they feel like it.) Anyway, after holding them in jail without charging them for 19 days (they got out early because of a holiday), they’ve been going through litigation for the past 2 years. It consists of going to court once a month for 1 hour. Nothing gets solved.
While the lack of lawyers in Japan is nice, the judicial system is not geared towards the little guy, which is just fine by the people up top. In Japan, the pendulum is sort’ve on the other extreme, and less lawyers means less justice.
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instant Excitement brings up a good point. One major reason why there are less engineers than lawyers isn’t just a matter of desire, many of American students just can’t cut it. I remember in my freshman year of college, there were tons of people going for engineering but almost no one saying they wanted to be lawyers. By senior year, after being weeded out of engineering and everything else along the way, there were suddenly a ton of people who now wanted to be lawyers as they approached graduation.
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To what extent do our engineers and lawyers on this thread agree/disagree with Roissy’s earlier assessments:
(*Refresher: Roissy posted a few months ago about sexual excitement and long-term dating potential for a number of professions, including lawyers and engineers)
Engineer (0.00001% of all women)
If there was ever an occupation created solely for the benefit of a man’s intellectual strengths, engineering is it. So right off the bat you know that any female engineer will be weird. Not necessarily assertively masculine like the female lawyer, but not typically feminine either. Female engineers are the Holy Grail of male nerddom. Every nerdo anime fanboy with Dungeon Master on his resume dreams of meeting and falling in love with a cute nerdgirl WHO IS EXACTLY LIKE HIM so that his autistic social retardation doesn’t get pushed to the breaking point like it would with a normal girl.
Minus: fornication mysteriously happens in between lengthy dissertations on string theory.
Plus: she can assume sex positions within a millimeter of spec.
Sexual Satisfaction Rating: 1/4th erection
Long Term Potential Rating: 5 carats
and
Lawyer
Amoral alpha males with vaginas. Their yin is so deeply buried they spend all their free time (2 hours per week) fantasizing about a powerful dominant man releasing their inner woman. This is your cue to ratchet up the assholery. Outside of i-bankers and fashionistas, you will not meet a more materialistic or status-conscious chick than a lawyer. When she inevitably starts talking about what law school she attended and politicos she knows, put your finger up to her mouth and say “shhh… stop. from now on we will talk about happy things. tell me only the good things that come to mind about your childhood.” Most lawyer chicks have large clits which they use to pin you down on the bed. Making love to a lawyer means facefucking her till she pukes a little. The gods of karmic retribution will be pleased with this. Lawyers are always fucking over everyone else so this is your chance to return the favor. Proceed with great relish.
Sexual Satisfaction Rating: 4/5th erection
Long Term Potential Rating: don’t be a masochist
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This is something I have to correct. Yes, having to little lawyers means less justice. But that does not necessarily mean that having too many lawyers like what America has means more justice. It just means a different type of injustice.
For those in this comments section who claim that lawsuits and court cases grow due to the complexity of capitalism and that the current size of the legal class is needed to make capitalism run smoothly obviously do not understand the issues involved in tort reform, shareholder’s suits, securities litigation and pharmaceutical plaintiff’s firms. The increase of lawyers, court cases and suits stifles capitalism, it does not “protect” evil corporations and keep the little guy down.
Two great articles to read about this, especially the first, which is jaw-dropping:
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/11/13/8393127/index.htm
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/11/legal_troubles_mount_for_edwar.html
What many of these plaintiff firms do is search the papers for a stock price drop or a study that had a slight side effect. No matter how flimsy the evidence, once they find something they can remotely sue for, they decide to go around and hunt down anyone who is a shareholder of the company or who used the drug, hence those bulk emails we all get asking if we used such-and-such drug and want to join a lawsuit. Once the firm gathers a class of plaintiffs, they start a lawsuit on “their behalf” for a 1/3 cut of whatever they win. Most companies end up settling the case for a huge sum just to get rid of the nuisance lawsuit, the plaintiff’s law firm takes one-third of the settlement, divides the remaining amount between the huge class of plaintiffs usually resulting in a whopping $2 or less share of the settlement per person. Meanwhile, this makes research and drug development extremely expensive for corporations and they end up passing the buck down to the consumers in the form of higher prices.
The corporations aren’t helped, the little guy isn’t helped, only the lawyers, both the ones who initiate the extortion suit and the ones being paid by the corporations to defend against the suit.
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Hm. Lost my last comment. Rather than retype it, let me just provide this link for people who think our current amount of lawyers exists to help the corporate big shots and help capitalism run smoothly:
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/11/13/8393127/index.htm
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VK
If you note in my post, I mention that the Japanese are no longer able to uphold their ancient culture, they are now more perverted than people like Roissy. I didn’t say it strongly, but I agree with you on that point.
As for homosexuality, the source for most of Europes ideals, the Greeks, were known for homosexual activity, even in the prime of their civilization. The current exorbitant decadence, exemplified by yourself and Roissy (hence the reason for my interest in this blog) has very few redeeming values. Even the Romans in their fall still had some fine elements of the old culture.
Anon 15
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Ah the irony of Roissy’s complaint. On the one hand, he denigrates engineers because they cant get laid, on the other hand, he laments the lack of engineers in America. Well, when the American culture glorifies skirt chasing, when being cool is whats needed, nerdy subjects like engineering will not do for Americans, thus foreigners will pick up the slack, even at the great risk of being seen as dorky.
The other thing is, the foreigners (with the exception of the Japanese) are probably just fine with marriage as an option for sex, and are not too concerned about “notch counts.” Also, they know that their communities will be able to get them a wife, so they are in no rush to become “popular” or “have game” like you dumbasses are obsessed with.
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Actually, Hope the really theoretical aspects of physics (read quantum field theory) are now becoming part of economics. It is only mysticism to those who don’t understand the equations behind the broad concepts (not accusing you of this) and a lot of it is disregarded because it was previously impossible (recently the multiverse theory was pretty much proven after being ridiculed for a long time).
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There’s a very cool BBC documentary about particle physics called “The Illusion of Reality.” It’s a real shame that this stuff will never be more popular than a video of Britney Spears flashing without her panties though.
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Pfah. Instead of comparing us to Japan, with its Asian ethnic makeup and Confucian and indigenous Japanese cultural roots, how about Europe, which diverged from us much less time ago? They’ve got more government regulation and fewer lawyers.
Hey, give the Japanese credit, Americans never made a car that lasted 200K miles.
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Ok, I majored in a non-engineering science, and I am now applying to law schools. If I go, I plan to go in an area of law where I can use my background. From my perspective, engineering has a big image problem in this country, because the stereotypical engineer is an immigrant who spends all his time studying and never gets laid. Obviously, not many American boys are going to want that. That is where the prestige problem comes in. Although my strengths have been in the Math areas, I was not really very interested in Engineering and so didn’t consider it. I believe I would be completely bored doing it, judging from the engineers I knew where I worked. Engineers are nice guys, but basically betas. And if you don’t have a big social network from college, it is very tough to get one afterwards if you are working in silence with almost all guys in the suburbs. This is what I saw working in science. Law school may not have the most feminine women, but at least it has some.
I would think becoming a lawyer, even not one that makes six figures (many don’t), still helps a man in the dating market. For a female, it probably worsens things. I personally believe many people go to law school partially to meet a mate.
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Jack, with the advent of the cold approach you don’t have to worry about stupid shit like that. If you aren’t a beta then you have the skills to meet women anywhere and share incredibly experiences with them.
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incredibly experiences? bah anonymous, learn to speak.
And jack may or may not be a beta, but I can bet you he’s not into lawyer chicks. At least not long term.
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SFG: Actually, America can build plenty of cars that will last three decades. America just hasn’t built cars like that in four decades.
When the last ’07 Mustang is turned into scrap iron, people will still be driving ’67 Mustangs.
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Jack…please…PLEASE…tell me you are not going into law with hopes of getting women. PLEASE don’t tell me that. I know so many guys like that…it’s so sad to see. They become lawyers and they actually open with lines like “Hey ladies, ever date an attorney?” or “Hi, I’m an attorney!” They just scream “I have no social skills and I’m SOOOOO hoping my job will compensate for my lack of social intelligence and self-confidence and get me laid.” They only end up attracting the most blatant social climbing women who have fucked a ton of alphas already and are now just looking for a provider beta chump to marry, sponge off of and lead around by the nose or they end up with other female lawyers. Plus, it often just takes their previous social ineptness and adds some layers of professional arrogance and zero-sum thinking to the mix, making them worse socially. And it isn’t the type of profession that screams adventure or sexy, it just conveys boring, dependable but safe and hard working.
Seriously, if you want to get women don’t do it using law. Go out there, throw yourself in the game and approach, approach, approach. Allow yourself to get dissed until you get a thick skin. Find a mentor who gets laid a lot and watch him in action. At the end of the night, pick apart your own game or have someone with social intelligence pick it apart for you and learn what needs correction.
If you have good social skills and want to be a lawyer, that’s not bad. If you lack social skills and want to be a lawyer to compensate for that and get you ladies, you’ll be disappointed.
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the current system of law in the us (and to a lesser extent the uk, canada, and other english speaking nations) rewards going on offense. lawyers make money providing defense, and helping people go on O to get cash. that’s the real reason there are so many lawyers. the j factor mentioned above is big too.
it takes hard work and some skill to be an average lawyer, but very little in the way of brains. it takes even more hard work, and a little bit more brains and skills to be a Dr, but still nothing like the smarts comp sci or engineering often requires. being very very good at either prof requires brains of course, but those industries favor kids who can afford big time schools and who have connections — this explains part of the sense of entitlement we see in the above.
engineering requires more brain power and plenty of hard work. some visa students will be robots who study 12hours a day 7 days a week and have the social graces of a water buffalo, but in the better schools many of the kids come out being very very good comunicators. in my industry (i-banking/trading) the ones who really make the wheels turn have very strong math/engineering backgrounds.
the social aspect of all of this imo is well illustrated in this blog. laywers define the rules of the game, but are still subject to them and aren’t actually happy at the end of it.
the same imo applies to american women. no where on earth to girls have the same advantages and sense of entitlement, but they aren’t happy either. this blog shows roissy’s approach and alleged success with women as coming from being catty, manipulative, coy, strategic, and essentially feminine in order to get girls. i suspect that this is the best approach for 22-30 year old american girls in big cities who went to a specific type of college with a particular life experience. it should also be noted that roissy stakes his self worth (and the measure of being the “alpha male”) on how much ass he can pull. being that concerned about what the opposite sex thinks is very female behaviour. in countries and places where pussy is cheap and money is expensive getting laid is much less of a big deal and a man is measured on a broader scale.
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Jack, here’s your life plan if you are serious about law school:
1. Go to a law school that is a strong DI athletic powerhouse, like a state school or some other large university. For fuck’s sake, do not go to a standalone law school.
2. Get a work-study job in a part of campus somewhere outside the law school that allows you to interact with undergraduates. Or take some no-credit undergrad classes for fun. Befriend male and female undergraduates, preferably alphas. DO NOT BE “THE LAW SCHOOL GUY”. Be a regular guy who happens to be in law school.
3. Be the consummate professional while in classes with law school chicks: do the stupid, useless study groups, attend law school functions, be Mr. friendly, but not Mr. Sleezy. Never “date” a law school chick. Sleep with law school chicks only on the condition of total secrecy. They will willingly agree to this if you are not super-alpha, which sounds likely, no offense.
4. When stupid law school functions end without action, go to undergraduate bars and parties: find the frisky sorority types. Turn off the polite lawyer, turn on the asshole. Get in fights. Have anal sex with 19 year olds. Try coke. But do not get arrested.
5. Become a patent lawyer. Take the Patent Bar. Go to a smaller city like Philly, Boston or Atlanta. You will be in demand as a patent lawyer by the big firms. You will be able to afford the best bars, restaurants and nightlife in your affordable city. When you meet overdressed, underpaid 28-35 year old women, lead with how you always wanted to be a musician or an artist, but, well, you just happen to be an attorney. Just sort of fell into it. They will sleep with you.
6. Eventually, leave the firm to join a hedge fund, private equity firm, VC firm or I-bank in NYC. When you get to NYC, stop being nice to women all together except your secretary. Treat women as disposable playthings, particularly if they have high-powered jobs. Do not be afraid to go out to bars and affect a British accent just for pussy. Tell younger women you want to take them to Greece for the weekend, and then do it. Have 3-4 women going at once.
7. Eventually, marry a 26 year old East Asian or Eastern European woman who has a good job and makes decent money, but less than you. Her body will hold up, and she will treat you like a man. Preferably a nurse, physical therapist, a teacher, a doctor or some kind of phd.
8. Move to Connecticut or get a weekend place in upstate NY or Vermont. Never set foot in New Jersey. Never ever go to the Hamptons unless it is for business. Avoid Westchester if possible.
9. Have no more than two children. If your wife has a hot bod, float the idea of adoption on moral grounds. Don’t push it though.
10. Always be diligent about staying in touch with everyone you have ever known, no matter how you felt about them.
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There are so many lawyers because people are uncivilized. Scratch the surface, and most are lower than the animals.
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#51 that is very good advice actually.
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Go to a law school that is a strong DI athletic powerhouse, like a state school or some other large university.
I don’t know … according to what I’ve read there are 14 top law schools: Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, NYU, Chicago, University of Pennsylvania, University of Michigan, University of Virginia, Duke, Northwestern, Cornell, UC Berkeley, and Georgetown. Only six of these (Stanford, Michigan, Virginia, Duke, Northwestern and Berkeley) have DI/BCS-level basketball and football teams,* and not all of them could really be called “powerhouses.” The fives Ivies have mediocre (at best) DI basketball teams but minor league football teams, Georgetown has a top basketball program but minor league football, Chicago has minor league football and basketball teams, and NYU is last with minor league basketball and no football.
* = realistically, almost no one cares about any other college sports.
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I will not get into a T-14 law school, so that point is moot. I’m probably a bit too old for most undergrad chicks, and I am aiming for a school in a decent-sized city rather than a Big Ten campus. I am not becoming a lawyer (if I do so) to get laid, and I will certainly never be a beta chump for skanks. But I do have a feeling most lawyers get laid more than most engineers. I will almost definitely not be superrich right out of law school, and that is a good point to NEVER be the meal ticket guy. Cause a bitch can always fuck around on you.
Larry Summers – the one thing I kind of agree with you on is going to smaller cities and not NYC. The other stuff – not so much.
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Lawyers make more money.
Also, you’re racist and a woman-hater! Keep up the good work! It almost makes a woman want to treat men like garbage. Wait a minute…
Look at the populations of the states, and the cities within them. Why so many lawyers in NY? Because the city’s full of selfish, entitled assholes. Case solved.
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This is no joke; I’m actually am studying international law in Japan, including Japanese law. America is NOT the most litigious society in the world, and Japan is actually quite litigious, ranked higher than many developed nations. However, the reasons why Japan has so few lawyers are many, one including the numerous other vehicles for conflict resolution. Also, the government sets the limit on how many people may pass the bar. Previously the limit was around 3% annually of all test takers (around 1,500 people). Now that the government has pushed judicial reform, which included the opening of American-style law schools, the cap has been increased to 3,000, although many current lawyers are against it.
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Ahhh, forgot to edit, hence all the typos in the above comment.
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Don’t bother going to law school until it’s one of the top 14. You’ll be very disappointed when you graduate and haven’t secured one of the few $40k a year jobs chasing ambulances.
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60 Anonymous
You have no idea what biglaw pays starting associates. In NYC and elsewhere that wishes to be competitive for first year hires (quite a lot of places for the leading firms) it’s WELL over 100K.
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@61 dougjnn –
60 Anonymous knows what he’s talking about. Biglaw pays well over 100K, but they recruit heavily out of the top 14. I mean HEAVILY. You can make it into BIGLAW without being in the top 14 law schools but you have to be in the top 10% of your class or so. And if you do make it into Biglaw, get ready to have 80-100 hour weeks and pretty much have ZERO quality of life. And if you don’t get into biglaw, you can still make a decent salary, but there are lots of lawyers out there making 40K ambulance chasing.
It’s similar to acting, there is a small segment making megabucks that drive up the average actor salary figure, but a vast majority of actors are scraping by. It’s the old median vs. mean fallacy:
http://blogs.payscale.com/ask_dr_salary/2007/09/median-vs-mean-.html
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB119040786780835602.html
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as a 3rd year law student at a regional school 62 is completely right. even getting low paying legal jobs in the public sector is extremely competitive. the bronx da’s office, for example, only hires 5% of all the applicants for ADA positions in their office. so all the whiney engineers on this blog should just shut up and appreciate their job security. engineers crack me up because they’re all so fucking surly. always simultaneously bragging about their mental superiority and bitching about how no one else gives a fuck. just take one look at the fat, bespeckled, short-sleeve-dress-shirt-wearing, d.n.d.-playing, wanna be grease monkey filling up a cubicle at any civil engineering firm and you know why they don’t get as much respect as doctors, lawyers or i-bankers. social skills count for something in this world.
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duchy 3L
And resorting to name calling isn’t surly. I seriously hope you don’t represent the face of America’s next lawyers.
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Yeah Duchy, social skills count for something, and you don’t sound like a socially malfunctioning sociopath AT ALL.
Sounds like you are projecting BIG TIME.
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