{"id":129842,"date":"2025-08-07T14:16:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-07T22:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2025\/08\/07\/former-biglaw-associate-who-became-public-defender-after-his-firm-caved-to-trump-has-no-regrets\/"},"modified":"2025-08-07T14:16:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-07T22:16:08","slug":"former-biglaw-associate-who-became-public-defender-after-his-firm-caved-to-trump-has-no-regrets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2025\/08\/07\/former-biglaw-associate-who-became-public-defender-after-his-firm-caved-to-trump-has-no-regrets\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Biglaw Associate Who Became Public Defender After His Firm Caved To Trump Has No Regrets"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ed. note<\/u>: Welcome to our daily feature, Quote of the Day<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

It is going to be impossible both in the short and long term to come close to the wealth I could have accumulated for myself and my family had I remained in [Biglaw]. I was fortunate enough to be able to just barely pay off my student loans before leaving.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2014 <\/i>Siunik Moradian, a former corporate associate at Simpson Thacher, in comments given to Bloomberg Law<\/a>, concerning his career plans after he loudly quit the firm on the same day it announced making a deal with Trump. \u201cI will not sleepwalk toward authoritarianism,\u201d Moradian wrote in a departure memo that soon went viral<\/a>. Since then, he\u2019s decided to go into public defense \u201cgiven all that is happening to the degradation of fundamental human rights in the US, particularly under this authoritarian administration.\u201d He went on to compare his new salary to his Biglaw salary, remarking, \u201cI\u2019m hesitant to say \u2018woe is me\u2019 when even my salary as a public defender will be above the median in the US.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\n
\"Staci
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Staci Zaretsky<\/a>\u00a0is the managing editor of Above the Law, where she\u2019s worked since 2011. She\u2019d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email<\/a> her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on\u00a0Bluesky<\/a>,\u00a0X\/Twitter<\/a>, and\u00a0Threads<\/a>,\u00a0or connect with her on\u00a0LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The post Former Biglaw Associate Who Became Public Defender After His Firm Caved To Trump Has No Regrets<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Ed. note<\/u>: Welcome to our daily feature, Quote of the Day<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

It is going to be impossible both in the short and long term to come close to the wealth I could have accumulated for myself and my family had I remained in [Biglaw]. I was fortunate enough to be able to just barely pay off my student loans before leaving.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2014 <\/i>Siunik Moradian, a former corporate associate at Simpson Thacher, in comments given to Bloomberg Law<\/a>, concerning his career plans after he loudly quit the firm on the same day it announced making a deal with Trump. \u201cI will not sleepwalk toward authoritarianism,\u201d Moradian wrote in a departure memo that soon went viral<\/a>. Since then, he\u2019s decided to go into public defense \u201cgiven all that is happening to the degradation of fundamental human rights in the US, particularly under this authoritarian administration.\u201d He went on to compare his new salary to his Biglaw salary, remarking, \u201cI\u2019m hesitant to say \u2018woe is me\u2019 when even my salary as a public defender will be above the median in the US.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\n
\"Staci
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Staci Zaretsky<\/a>\u00a0is the managing editor of Above the Law, where she\u2019s worked since 2011. She\u2019d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email<\/a> her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on\u00a0Bluesky<\/a>,\u00a0X\/Twitter<\/a>, and\u00a0Threads<\/a>,\u00a0or connect with her on\u00a0LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The post Former Biglaw Associate Who Became Public Defender After His Firm Caved To Trump Has No Regrets<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ed. note: Welcome to our daily feature, Quote of the Day. It is going to be impossible both in the short and long term to come close to the wealth I could have accumulated for myself and my family had I remained in [Biglaw]. I was fortunate enough to be able to just barely pay […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":129843,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-129842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xira.com\/p\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Staci-Zaretsky-5p8mCS.jpg?fit=150%2C100&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129842\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/129843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}