Jaggers

Please, no. Isn't enough that they've ruined twitter?

I worked for a few years before law school, and it was so much fun to focus on learning instead of working. It might be the best three years of my life.

That is a top Bay St salary for a new call. I highly doubt a union in house position is paying that. But like I said, I have no inside information.

I don't have any inside information on unions, but I've been doing management side for 10 years, including hiring in house and for a firm. My gut would say about $70-75K for a union in house new call.

The car sharing gets over Providence's issue of short notice because it's easy to book one right when you need it, assuming you live relatively downtown.

I did my first few years as a labour/employment lawyer relying on Autoshare when I needed a car. It's pretty reasonable to bill that to the client because it was something like $60-$80 a day when I was doing that.

Obviously it's a gamble to quit a high paying job to go back to school for anything. I think in this case, you have a somewhat comfortable path to a much better career, but it definitely depends on you doing well in school and finding a job in a big firm. Your background will help, but it won't get you there without decent grades.

I don't think the upside is 15% more per year. The range for in house labour/employment counsel positions starts at almost 100% more once you have a few big law years under your belt.

There are no guarantees in life, but a few years of working in HR/LR would make you a pretty attractive candidate for the Bay St firms that do employment and labour law. The likely upside is a whole lot bigger than the MIR.

I got a lot of hours out of that game...

I worked for a few years before going back to school. Even though it was just random admin-type jobs, I picked up a few experiences that helped me figure out which area of law I wanted to practice, I paid off my undergrad debt, and I met some good people who are still mentors now (just had lunch last week with my boss from before law school - who would hire me in a second if I was ever looking for work outside of law). I was just working. I didn't travel much, other than one or two vacation trips. But even that experience of working in front-line jobs makes me really appreciate just how great the jobs I've had since finishing law school are.

And for anyone who thinks being a union side lawyer means you get to practice with a conscience, here's a case of a union trying to get a guy reinstated after he tried to poison his coworkers by putting chlorine in the water cooler. https://www.cos-mag.com/ohs-laws-regulations/columns/arbitrator-upholds-discharge-of-employee-who-spiked-office-water-cooler-with-bleach/ There were seven hearing days, so the colleagues he was trying to poison probably had $50K of their union dues spent on trying to get him back working next to them.

I get that you run a small business and have to fight for everything. That's not how the businesses I work for run. We are engaged in an intense fight for talent. One of our corporate priorities is to be viewed by employees as one of the best places to work in Canada. "Is it good for the employee experience?" is a question that has to inform every decision I make. A negotiation with an employee is usually zero sum once they're no longer working for you, but that's rarely the case any sooner than that.

I'm an employment lawyer at a big company. You could say that I oppress workers for a living. Or you can recognize that I can actually do more things to make the lives of our tens of thousands of employees more fair than virtually any union lawyer can do by litigating a case. Corporate lawyers who practice in an ethical manner are a powerful force in businesses that try to operate in an ethical manner.

Or "We work hard! And are lawyers! We are entitled to our entitlements!"