Karoshi!
Evidently we're all screwed.
The family of a 45 year old former Toyota engineer in Japan has successfully convinced Japanese courts to declare that the engineer's death was due to working too much, a phenomena known in Japan as "Karoshi".
Evidently for the two months prior to his death, the man worked upwards of 80 hours of overtime a month. "He regularly worked nights and weekends, was frequently sent abroad and was grappling with shipping a model for the pivotal North American International Auto Show in Detroit when he died of ischemic heart disease in January 2006."
Not to demean the guy in any way, but I've heard of even senior partners who regularly pull those kind of hours. And I'm not even talking about back in early 2007. I'm talking about right now - in the "recession".
So, yes, apparently we're all screwed. I just figured I'd share.
Ok, enough of that. Off to my next biglaw-funded day-long retreat!
The family of a 45 year old former Toyota engineer in Japan has successfully convinced Japanese courts to declare that the engineer's death was due to working too much, a phenomena known in Japan as "Karoshi".
Evidently for the two months prior to his death, the man worked upwards of 80 hours of overtime a month. "He regularly worked nights and weekends, was frequently sent abroad and was grappling with shipping a model for the pivotal North American International Auto Show in Detroit when he died of ischemic heart disease in January 2006."
Not to demean the guy in any way, but I've heard of even senior partners who regularly pull those kind of hours. And I'm not even talking about back in early 2007. I'm talking about right now - in the "recession".
So, yes, apparently we're all screwed. I just figured I'd share.
Ok, enough of that. Off to my next biglaw-funded day-long retreat!
posted by tj at 8:18 AM
27 Comments:
So did they post amjurs/prossers yet, per the last email we got?
My. God.
Enough already.
Did you get an award? If yes, then log in and look for yourself. If no, then why do you care?
If you don't know or aren't sure, then the answer is probably no. But if you are truly unable to silence your inner nagging douche, you can always email your professor and ask.
And another thing, while I'm at it. Try looking up proper use the word "per."
Re: Karoshi.
When you say that attorneys who regularly work these kinds of hours, are you taking account of the fact that the article said the guy worked 80 hours of overtime a week, not just 80 hours a week.
Both the article and TJ said 80 hours of OT a month, not a week. Them's transactional hours in my book.
I had always assumed that karoshi was death from exhaustion and requires some truly heroic hours (i.e., 100+ a week).
But after doing some google searches on this, it seems that karoshi is meant to specifically refer to death from cardiovascular disease in the context of overwork. You know, the heart is pretty sensitive to stress and it makes sense that overwork could lead to some kind of heart failure. (And its an old saw that heart attack rates for men are twice as high on Mondays than on the other weekdays.)
Sure, cardiovascular disease, high cholestoral and blood pressure might be part of the mix, but I bet that for more people than we realize overwork preceded an incident of heart attack or death and may even have been a "but-for" cause. Next time I hear of someone I know that has a heart attack I'm finding out how much they've been working...
"Them's transactional hours in my book."
Are you saying "them's" not litigation hours? Do transaction really work that much more (usually)?
Take what you thought I meant and completely reverse it. [Hint: with the credit crunch transactional is slower than lit.]
For pete's sake, 10:31, calm down. Logging on to Bearfacts and seeing nothing tells you either 1) you didn't get an award or 2) there was another of the countless problems with the uploading of grades. There's nothing wrong with 9:41 anonymously wondering if the awards went up as promised. It's something people who earn HHs wonder about. And it's not anything for you to get all offended about. The jealousy makes you seem almost as petty as your jibe about "per."
Upon re-reading, I realized that my above comment could be read as putting "people who earn HHs" on some kind of pedastal. I only meant that anyone with an HH in a class is still in the running for an award. And there's no crime in wondering about them.
I just don't understand why we need to have the same post every semester about when the awards come up on the transcrips. Can't you people search in past archives of grades or something? (Please prove that the HH's show some common sense too!)
FYI-- the awards do show up on bearfacts when they are added.
While we're all being insufferable overachievers, what about CLR? Someone on this blog has to be reading for CLR. Any idea when we can expect to hear more?
you've got about another 3-4 weeks before you'll hear from CLR.
Oh common, that's ridiculous.
As a biglaw associate, death is one of the more favorable things you have to look forward to.
CLR calls last year came in the last week of July. We'll see if history repeats itself.
I think the above comments were just trying to determine if the chance to win an award has passed by asking if awards already went up. At least some awards posted last night.
Sorry to say, none of you will make it onto CLR. That operation shut down over a year ago. I know, it's shocking! A school's flagship law review folds, and yet, the school continues to operate as if nothing happened.
Hmm.
Perhaps someone will correct me on this, since I'm a very infrequent user of blogs, but the setup of Nuts & Boalts doesn't lend itself to organized discussion. Hence you get amjur questions (and subsequent flames), mixed in with karoshi, and now blog design...sorry. There's no convenient way to just post a new topic of conversation that people can contribute to or choose to ignore.
A note about awards: if you get more than one in a semester, you can't tell on bearfacts. They put awards for each semester by line. So, if you have two then you can only find out by ordering a transcript from the Registrar.
Any update on when we'll be getting class rank?
One more Q: Do you have to be the type of person who is generally awake at 7:30 AM on a Saturday in order to get more than two awards in a semester? Seems kind of like a sad trade-off.
One more Q: Do you have to be the type of person who is generally awake at 7:30 AM on a Saturday in order to get more than two awards in a semester? Seems kind of like a sad trade-off.
Translation: I'm jealous and this is the only way I can rationalize the fact that some of my fellow students are succeeding in a way that I can't.
Seriously, what is with the pettiness? Why are some of you people so upset that people are winning the awards that are given out for every single class? Let your egotism go; congratulate the people that are succeeding rather than getting all kinds of spiteful.
as I inadvertently prove EW's point about getting up way to early... um, 7:33 -- that's totally not true. thanks for playing though.
Proposal: free EKG and cardiac enzyme screenings to posters of questions about awards -- there be karoshi in the air!
2:42-
I don't feel like congrats are in order for being up at 7:30.
And I REALLY doubt EW is jealous of anyone's grades.
This may come as a surprise to you, but some people post from the east coast, which is 3 hours later than the west coast.
5:57 am,
Really? Do yours show up on separate lines? It could be a case-by-case deal, or depending on how long the course title is.
-7:33am
Yup. Separate lines.
--not 5:57
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