Laid-Off Thacher Lawyer Goes on a Road Trip

Laid-off New York associate Jeremy Dyme decided to get going—on a road trip—when the going got tough.

Dyme was a fourth-year associate when he was laid off late last year from Thacher Proffitt & Wood. A month later, his apartment lease was up and he was on the road to California with a friend in a newly purchased 1999 Oldsmobile, he tells New York Magazine.

“We did the arch in St. Louis, ate ribs in Memphis, and then broke down in Ranger, Texas, where the town’s undertaker stopped to help us out,” Dyme wrote. “Then we got stuck in a Central Texas ice storm, so we holed up in a little motel for a few days. It was like we walked into No Country for Old Men. The only thing to do was to sit in the truck stop and make friends. Eventually we stumbled into San Diego, where I stayed for a few weeks and then drove solo up Highway 1, like right out of the playbook.”

Now Dyme has been “firing off resumés for all types of jobs” in San Francisco for the past month, to no avail. He told the New York Times last month that he can’t even find volunteer work in his targeted field of economic development and microfinance. “It’s funny to go from being grossly overpaid as a law firm associate to trying to market myself for a position to work for free,” he told the newspaper.