According to his registration profile, Moshe Kanovsky was previously an associate at the small firm of Lawrence, Krause & Associates. As demonstrated by a recent job posting, the pay at this firm was just awful:
Attorney: Krause & Associates, 67 Wall Street, New York, NY, 10005. Plaintiff personal injury firm, $35,000. Cover letter, resume and writing sample.
Add this abysmal salary to the fact that many Cardozo students are now graduating law school with over 150k worth of student loan debt at 8% interest, and you can see how someone could so easily be pushed over the edge.
As someone on the autoadmit board, so aptly put it:
"Dude, picture yourself in six figure debt and busting your ass for 2200-2400 in billables only to pull a salary of 35k -- in NYC, no less. That is bound to give anyone issues."
"Now the state bar and ABA will hold a bunch of stupid conferences and meetings and shit where NOTHING will be decided and of course NOTHING will change and the ABA will of oourse continue to accredit more and more TTT schools."
www.xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=612983&mc=53&forum_id=2
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A lawyer has leaped to his death from a 69th-floor office at New York's Empire State Building, severing a leg that crashed to the sidewalk in front of horrified onlookers.
Cops raced to the 102-story landmark just before 3pm local time on Friday after several witnesses called 911 to report a body part on the ground. A police source identified the dead man as Moshe Kanovsky, 31, of Brooklyn.
"I cried and got sick to my stomach," said Theresa Colon, 46, a tourist from Virginia who was accompanied by her 11-year-old daughter and 16-year-old niece. "I pray he knew who God was."
The left leg, severed below the knee, was bare except for a gray and black sock. Police said the rest of Kanovsky's body was found intact on a 30th-floor landing.
Investigators questioned employees at Levine & Blit, a personal injury practice, and at Ashok Karmaker. Both law firms share a suite on the 69th floor where Kanovsky "did odds-and-ends work" for Karmaker.
It wasn't immediately clear what prompted Kanovsky's suicide.
"He was interviewing a client," said a man who works in the suite. "He just got up, opened the window and jumped."
A police source said that Kanovsky met with the client in one room and jumped from another.
At least 30 people have jumped from the Empire State Building since it opened in 1931. Before Kanovsky, Dovid Abramowitz, 21, was the last to die. He leaped from the 66th floor on February 2, 2006, after buying a ticket to the 86th-floor observation deck.
AP
44 comments:
I bet there are a lot of suicides of lawyers out there that we just don't hear about. This guy just happened to jump off a public landmark.
Don't worry I am fine. I just did not have time to take the elevator. Elevators are so slow in these old landmark buildings and I had to get to court on time. Besides I am a SuperTemp so I can fly.
That guy is lucky. I dream about suicide everyday, but just don't have the balls to do it.
If I did it, I would have jumped off with a f-you Sallie Mae t-shirt.
I knew it would eventually come to this. This greed/prestige obsessed profession is simply evil.
Did anyone else receive from Lexolution that, enter your friend into doc. review and win a free IPOD sweepstakes? God, I hate Scott Krowitz; what a scumbag.
Im also a Cardozo grad. Im so happy I left the law because this could easily have been me had I stayed in that miserable profession for a few more months (not years). I never met this man, but his story will be with me for the rest of my life. I feel for his family. Screw the ABA for driving the entire profession into the toilet.
someone on the new jive board (JdUnderground) said it was some lawyer named Moshe Kanovsky, a Cardozo grad admitted in 2003. His registration says he used to work at Krause & Assoiates, a personal injury firm on Wall St. I interviewed at Krause, and probably think he went solo and hit a major bump with the cash flow - and maybe thats why he chucked it all..(?). I can understand why anyone would feel suicidal after working at Krause, the man is a total workaholic and will demand 24/7 hours from his employees.
yeah, 24/7 for 35k a year!
I really feel sorry for this guy's family, also. As far as I am concerned, Cardozo, Krause, and the entire ABA have blood on their hands. This guy was probably buried under loads of non-dischargeable student loan debt, after paying 3 yrs. of overpriced, outrageous Cardozo 150k a year tuition. Then some ttt small firm slave driver made him work 24/7 for peanuts, where he finally had to throw in the towel probably for his own sanity.
This story also hit a nerve with me. I never would have heard about it had I not run across a blib about it on a random message board. It shows you how messed up this so-called "profession" is. All the blogs and newspapers are focusing on how some stupid BLS girl took off her clothes, and how the sky is falling and how she must be carried off to the C + F committee to save the soul of the profession. Meanwhile, the real problems of greed, sweatshops, debt, and slavedrivers that are driving people to jump off of buildings are all being ignored.
I don't think this is being ignored at all. Read this blog below, and the jdunderground boards.
That silly BLS girl is part of another problem, but they are related.
Law school itself is an extremely successful industry, but the cost is high. It is truly inconcionable that more law schools are being opened. In fact, law schools should be shuttered.
The current crisis for law school grads is beginning to resemble the subprime mortgage meltdown, but no one will feel sorry for a bunch of lawyers with boatloads of debt and/or lacking any tangible career prospects in their chosen field.
Many of us were sold a dream that no longer exists, and by the time we figured it out, the loan checks had been cashed and the three years forever gone.
It is no longer a dream - it turned into a nightmare.
As tragic as this was, I have hope. Because of all these blogs and message boards, the word is finally getting out. Before the internet came along, people were trapped in their offices and cubes for 24/7 and couldn't communicate. Despite the fact that they are continually trying to limit internet access for contract attorneys, and continually trying to use strong-arm tactics to shut down message boards such as jdjive, I believe information will continue to be disseminated. One day, debt will be manageable, law school deans will be in a federal penitentiary, recent graduates won't have to jump off of buildings, and the abusive tactics of Lily, Eggman, and Anita will be a thing of the past.
It's true. I graduated at the top of my class, clerked for the state supreme court and was a law review editor. Sure, I got a job out of law school, but it was for peanuts. Four years out of law school, and I'm barely making 50K with $75K in loan debt.
My friends that got BA degrees in social work are making more money.
There should be a blanket closing of at least half of the law schools in the country.
I actually know that Moshe Kanovsky was not working for Krause at the time of his death. I also don't think law school debt all though it is an important subject has nothing to do with this incident. I read on another site how Mr. Kanovsky was suffering from mental illness, going back about 10 years. And may or may not have been on medication for it.
Sometimes lack of job and tremendous debt load can cause people to have mental problems and require medication.
I agree. If he was mentally ill, having a Cardozo debt load and working in shit law certainly didn't help.
It one thing to say that law students "should have known", that all these things are "published". Although there is a kernel of truth this is not the way things work.
The law schools cook the books when it comes to their employment stats, they send out nice glossy marketing literature. Kids sign up for this and most of them pay 30 grand a year tuition and 50 grand tuition plus room and board. All the wonderful "counselors" who are just there to forcefeed you with conventional wisdom = "take an unpaid internship", "network", "informational interviewing".
Then you graduate and you are doing document review, sitting in a closed room for 60-70 hours a week paying down monstrous amounts of debt.
This is not a function of students being spoiled or that students should have known. The universities have turned into businesses and have lost their status as institutions displaying compassion on the young generation.
http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/law_BarBriMemo_ABA.pdf
http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/law_BarBriMemo_ABA.pdf
that document is posted on the right.
I apologize for that. I should have noticed it, just sitting there.
Time for a page update?
This post really, really, really has me convinced not to look for work in New York.
Cardozo is the worst law school ever. My degree is not worth the paper it's printed on. I don't have debt but I did spend all of my money on a degree that gets less respect than a degree from clown college. The dirty little secret is that 98% of Cardozo grads can't make a living. The career services center is useless unless you are on law review. I think they should offer refunds to everyone except for those top 2% who actually end up getting increased earning power from their degree.
Actually, I know a kid who graduated Cardozo, and he started out making 150k, at least, right after he took the bar.
That being said, although i agree that there are already way too many law schools out there, there's really no chance the number will stay stagnant, much less decrease. The ABA itself says that it wants to open up new law schools and flood the market with even more lawyers. It's damn stupid, and as a temp myself, I strongly disagree with that game plan. But, I've read that ABA feels the poor/working class are severely underrepresented in legal proceedings, whether in criminal trials or civil, and the ABA is purposely driving lawyer rates down so that the poor can afford lawyers. Bet they didn't see this whole temp lawyer thing coming. So in the end, they've flooded the market with lawyers, and I don't think any of the poor are having better access to lawyers. Their game plan didn't work, but they're still going to stick to it and hope it eventually will.
p.s. higher education in general is a scam, not just law school. Ask all the English majors and psych majors out there. Or better yet, the liberal arts majors. Or even better, the Ph.D's in English. School's an investment. You gotta pick the right stocks (i.e. major in engineering, or some kind of real science. I did political "science" and now I'm screwed).
We have to lobby for labor regulations like the med students did. While we are politically active, we might as well get our federal loans waived. I feel like a sucka for going to law school. It's an artifical costly 3 year barrier to enter the industry (while our foreign friends don't have that Hoop), has no practical use, and is a brain drain on society. Think about it, some of our most intelligent minds are driven to a "service industry" that doesn't produce anything....and slows down the rest of society that does produce tangible things. The only time I showed up during 2L and 3L was for the finals and I got the same B's as 1st year. In fact, law schools need to be paying us for wasting 3 years of our lives.
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this is ridiculous...i'm thinking about going to law school, i have decent lsat and GPA...but...
i think i'm gonna pursue finance or economics instead.
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