"Lots of 'professionals' get worked really hard when they are young, often by people who are not planning to offer them career long employment. One way that some professionals have compensated is by claiming overtime benefits. Others got unions, or profit sharing."
-- Kay Sieverding
My Blog List
-
-
What Happened to JD Underground (JDU)?5 years ago
-
Thank You and Take Care6 years ago
-
-
Is a Bad Boy a Bad Guy?9 years ago
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
2009 Beastly Behavior Award: Richard "Massasar" Matasar, "The Subprime Student Lending Pimp Dean"
2008 Beastly Behavior Award: David Perla, "The Outsourcer"
2007 Beastly Behavior Award: Joan King, "The Law School Administrator"
2006 Beastly Behavior Award: Alfred Youngwood, "The Sweatshop Overseer"
21 comments:
Dear Tom,
The quote from some woman named Kay is not grammatically correct.
Please let us know what you are telling us, please! Maybe it's a local NYC celebrity.
We DC folks have the same agencies but largely different firms. Our Update Legal is great, they pay $37 per hour, while all the rest pay $35.
Thanks!
Projects have been denying overtime for years.
For years, NYC Update Legal has been an embarrassment to the legal profession. Maybe they should have a national training day where members of DC, SF, and LA offices teach the NYC Stepford Wives some lessons in basic human civility.
Most of the smart agencies and law firms pay overtime. While it's true that attorneys are exempt from the overtime provisions of the FLSA, they're not exempt if they're not practicing law. e.g. If I work over 40 hours/week as a book store clerk, I must be paid overtime irrespective of my status as an attorney. If I work as a paralegal, the same principle would apply. Document review is, for the most part, paralegal work. Paralegals are entitled to overtime, and so are attorneys doing paralegal work.
Update Legal is a true horror story - at least in NY - the Stepford Wives comment was so on target. I don't presume to know if DC is the same, so I will reserve judgment on their cheerleader who posted first.
I can only say that Update Legal is the only agency that has 1)Stolen money from by claiming an extra dollar of my wage without my knowledge or the client's, and pocketing the difference. 1 dollar an hour, over the MANY hours of OT we all end up doing just to pay loans. When I made a stink about their theivery and fraud they wrote me a check, but then put me on a blacklist for my impertinence.... and that's 2) the only agency CONFIRMED by anyone who has worked there to have a BLACKLIST, and its not for quality of work, it's for finding out that they are a bunch of prada wearing orange fake tanned phony as their fake fingernails bunch of bitches. WORST agency in NYC b/c they will kiss your ass to your face while fucking you from behind....
As I said I do not know the DC office but my signicant other just had her own nightmare w/ them.... and SO many others i have met... stay away from Update Bitch!
Team:
I asked as the first comment:
'Who is "Kay Sieverding" and why should we care, please?'
Folks such as "Kay", who writes in broken English, as quoted above, don't merit attention.
Thanks guys/gals!
PS: I don't mind 10 hour days. The ten hours of OT give me that $525 per week over the $1400, and pays the bills. (I knew longer hours would be part of law before law school: The dean that visited my undergrad school PROMISED that we'd work more than the average Joe!)
PPS: I am not an Update legal cheerleader. Just been on the usual 100-attorney anti-trust reviews and see that they get the same great treatment as the other five agencies that staff the projects. Up in NYC you all must have small gigs. Here in DC I stick to 100 KA-reviewer gigs, where it would be impossible for disparate or disparaging treatment. Once an agency (small) payed their employees $32 vs. the current $35 and they boosted it to $35 within the first week since they were told by the KA's to meet the $35 or they'd quit. These jobs are fungible. If one doesn't suit, at least in D.C., one may walk away and have another immediately or in a week or two. For poorer peers, there are always JD (no bar) doc reviews at $26 per hour year round. Your travails up North make our problems seem unimportant! Happy Fourth!
You can have your 100 person sweatshop mill. Every 100+ person project I have been on has been a psychological mind camp. I prefer smaller gigs where I am actually treated like a semi-human being.
Fair Labor Act
Recognizing both the inherent advantages and disadvantages of guaranteed wage plans, when viewed in this light, Congress sought to strike a balance between them which would, on the one hand, provide a feasible method of guaranteeing pay to employees who needed this protection without, on the other hand, nullifying the overtime requirements of the Act. The provisions of section 7(f) set forth the conditions under which, in the view of Congress, this may be done. Plans which do not meet these conditions were not thought to provide sufficient advantage to the employee to justify Congress in relieving employers of the overtime liability section 7(a)…. Nonovertime hours as well as overtime hours must be irregular if section 7(f) is to apply.
These various associates always work 9 to 5 Monday to Friday in addition to the irregular overtime, right? So I don’t see an exemption here for attorneys working as associates with regular hours plus varying overtime hours. I don’t see the exemption for legal employees in the DOJ do you? See
www.dol.gov/dol/allcfr/ESA/Title_29
Strangely reasoned, above, FLSA enumerates lawyers, no twisted analysis required.
Tom's blog is very helpful in the year I've been a fan. However, it's grown very provincial, incestuous, and narrow-minded, avoiding reasoning in favor of sensationalizing small events. (A small room holds a small number of attorneys: No one cares but them, and they may quit if it doesn't suit them, for example).
For your DC and LA fans, Tom, please tell us who these local yokels are that you complain about. Who is Paul Weiss--No man/firm by that name in DC, for example. No blog south of New York uses the word "toilet" like yours does. Are you all trying to say the swear-word for "excrement"?
Just give us a clue as to what our KA neighbors to the north mean, please! Weird slang and unknown persons take your per se perfect blog of last summer and now it seems exclusive to your New York area. (your right obviously, but you disappoint your national readers because the parties and slang are unique to you).
Best,
Your continuing but diminishing fan
PS: You still have not said who this Kay Sieverding person is or why we should care. Googling her tells us she's in Colorado. Get specific or you convey no message!
Why do you care who I am or where I live? Did I misquote something? We know you are "anonymous".
So what if Kaye is a private individual? Is Tom only aloud to quote famous people? If Paris Hilton made the above statement would it be any more credible?
New York is an awful, awful market.
The Wall Street Journal Law blog said that they really need lawyers in Iraq. Maybe a consortium of big law firms would pay a legal task force to try to implement a legal infrastructure there and pay your student loans if you signed up for a tour of duty.
To diminishing Fan:
Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison is one of the top corporate/tax/M&A firms in the country, their purported lack of DC office notwithstanding. www.paulweiss.com (it appears that they in fact do have a DC office, however)
If you are that clueless, you will never escape temping hell.
Kay Sieverding is a true patriot. She is trying to release this country from the corrupt, tight grip that slimy lawyers and the ABA hold over all US Citizens. She recently won a 10th circuit court decision in which a judge tried to take away her voice/basic right to sue.
Kaye, you go girl!
Freedom Belle:
If she's not in the NY Times or WSJ she's small potatoes.
Sincerely,
Uninterested
Kay Sieverding is a nutjob who was thrown in jail for violating a restraining order and has filed countless frivolous lawsuits eating up taxpayer dollars. Do a Google search on her and you will see for yourself.
I would appreciate your not calling me names. I have an evaluation from a phsycholgist saying I am normal and I have no criminal record. I was not accused of misrepresenting facts nor misquoting laws. I was not even accused of breaking a law nor of disrupting a hearing before I was thrown in jail. When they let me of jail, judge Edward Nottingham said “whoops”. There was no injunction that complied with rule 65(d), there was no document labeled "injunction", there was no motion to show cause why sanctions should not be imposed, there were no motions for injunction. There was no independent prosecutor as required by the Supreme Court in Vuitton. The defense counsel Christopher P. Beall said that I was not entitled to an evidentiary hearing before I was thrown in jail at his request. No Act of Congress was cited to justify my being jailed as is required by the U.S. code. There was no judgment in any court stating that I filed any misrepresentation of any fact or law. I was not accused of not complying with discovery because there was no discovery and no case management plan. I claimed enough damages to be in federal court and claims that, according to the magistrate, sounded "like a hornbook textbook". But I could not get a reply that stipulated to or disputed facts. I sued a newspaper and then they published about the litigation. The defendants, The Steamboat Pilot et al., published that motions for summary judgment could be “struck” if they were not called objections. However, the rules of civil procedure were amended in 1948 so that a defendants motion for to dismiss does not go before a plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment. The defense counsel billed for 25 ex parte conferences including a three way long distance secret conference between former federal magistrate Schlatter, David Brougham (who billed Underwriters of Lloyds of London for defending Col state employees Wittemyer, Lance, St. James and McLimans) , and Anthony Lettunich (part time city attorney Steamboat) . Lloyds supplied a claims number for my local matter so how can they claim that what they sold was reinsurance and not direct insurance? Lloyds paid a bill for a discussion about "case assignment issues" and after that my case was reassinged from Judge Matsch to Judge Nottingham. The case assignment worksheet does not claim that it was random. The senior judge did not sign the case assignment as is normal. Judge Matsch did not claim illness nor did he recuse himself. We claimed a jury trial but did not get a jury trial nor any motion hearings nor any judgment that stated facts and laws as is required by rule 52. The judgments granting motions to dismiss did not state facts and laws as is required by the 10th circuit (see roz v. U.S.) When I asked Judge Nottingham why he dismissed my action, he said it was because of a state case but that case was abandoned without being served and according to the U.S. Supreme Court in Semteck v. Martin Lockeed (2002) did not cause claims preclusion. The 10th Circuit ruled that Magistrate Schlatter is a good writer. Judge Nottingham ruled that my objections were prolix, disorganized and legally twisted. Defense counsel Patricia Jean Larson sent a letter to Judge Nottingham and asked him not to have a summary judgment hearing and not to require a response to my summary judgment motion. Patricia Jean Larson wrote to Judge Nottingham and said if he had any questions or wanted a formal motion to have his clerk call her.
to Freedom Bell
Thank you. I try to do what I think the patriots of the past wanted. I made a list of factors of liability from the Col Supreme Court tort case U of Denver v. Whitlock and the bar associations had almsot all of them--I thought. The bar associations said they shouldn't have to respond to our motion for summary judgment.
Kay Sieverding
We filed a mandamus petition in the U.S. Supreme Court http;//www.rightscase.com. 07-884. This petition asked for default because of violation of state insurance laws and criminal obstruction of justice. The defense defaulted or filed waivers of right to respond, thereby effectively taking the 5th to our charges that the defense counsel acted in a criminal manner. If the Supreme Court approves our petition, maybe the legal industry will be less dominated by Lloyds of London and other foreign insurers and there will be more opportunity for small law firms and sole practitoners.
Hey.. that was nice..
Attorney companies
Post a Comment