Friday, October 10, 2008

The American Bar Association



"Tom the Temp,

We’re updating the ABA Journal’s Blawg Directory. Currently we have you listed as an anonymous blogger. I’m double checking that that’s what you prefer. I’d also like to know if there’s more detail that we should add in our description in our directory.

Best,

Molly
abajournal.com"


With all due respect, I would prefer to remain anonymous. Frankly, I feel like an anonymous nothing in the eyes of the ABA anyway. The ABA is merely designed to protect the interests of biglaw partners and their buddies in academia and banking at the expense of everyone else. More jobs for professors who want cushy positions with little work, more profit for universities (for whom law schools are VERY profitable since they're so cheap to run), no oversight of law school fraudulent advertising, more indentured-for-life loan slaves for the financial people and agencies, and plenty of top 5 percenters to burn out in biglaw billing 3,000 hours per year.

During this recent credit crisis, the actions of the ABA have truly been disgraceful. The ruling this spring to allow for document review outsourcing is literally sucking thousands of jobs out of the country as we speak. In the same vein, "End of Esq." is now reporting that the ABA is setting it up in such a way that small town attorneys could now potentially be liable to clients for uninsured deposits in attorney escrow accounts. http://endofesq.com/?p=309

The American legal profession is now on its last legs. As a desperate attorney in Michigan recently wrote on a popular legal message board,

"My problem is that I have two more kids to go to college and the ID Law firm I was working at cut me and 4 others. They lost two ins company clients. I thought I was making partner. I'm now upside down on my home (75% drop in value and owe 80K on what was a $260K home) we’re living off savings and I'm making maybe 20 K this year. I'm 49 but will be 50 next week and setting up a competitive practice in Detroit would cost over 100 K. Two days ago I had lunch with a with a friend who is a partner of a firm and he couldn't have been sorrier but his firm is cutting 14 attorneys. Same with all my friends and contacts, there just isn't a position for me right now. Going to deer camp this weekend with seven attorneys (one of which posts here). Three of us are unemployed. First time that has happened. We've been camping together for 18 years. Found out last night that another friend, who has been a senior estate planning partner in a 50 + attorney firm has had his department closed. That’s another 5 attorneys out. I asked him if he was going to set-up his department as a firm and he said that the major clients have taken such a hit that he doesn't think the firm would make any money."

32 comments:

Anonymous said...

I nominate the ABA for the 2008 Beastly Behavior Award for sending our jobs to India, among their many other transgressions.

There are very few projects starting NYC now, the reason is obvious.

Anonymous said...

Michigan has one of teh highest unemployment rates. I had a doc review gig in downtown NY with a couple of MI attorneys on it. Guy was renting a room in a motel in Newark -- would call his kids every night but never got to see him. This economy sucks. We are the beasts of burden of the legal profession.

Anonymous said...

Thanks much. I now have my answer.

Anonymous said...

The ABA should be stripped of its accreditation function and investigated for fraud. Your letter to ABA is brilliant. I hope Molly passes it along to someone with power.

Anonymous said...

Well, this is what happens when people put all their eggs in one basket. I mean clearly the lawyer's first problem was that he was going to deer camp.

Anonymous said...

At least this guy this is self-sufficient and when worse comes to worse he can live off the land and hunt deer. You liberal urban pansies wouldn't know the first to do if you woke up one morning to find that your city gourmet food store had closed its doors.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous said...
You liberal urban pansies wouldn't know the first to do if you woke up one morning to find that your city gourmet food store had closed its doors.

Uhh . . . go shoot something and eat it? Is that really so hard to figure out?

Anonymous said...

Yeah eventually that's what the doc review losers will do, shoot each other and each other.

Anonymous said...

No, the doc review "losers" as you fondly refer to them roach boy will revolt against their slavemaster law firms, agencies, corrupt corporations and the ABA.

Anonymous said...

judging from from the lack of comment, the era of the temp attorney is dwindling. those with jobs are too scared to comment.

Anonymous said...

Maybe not... More likely everyone is rightfully bored with the same old shit on this blog for the last few years!

Boooorrring

Anonymous said...

shut up, roach boy. you are the one one parroting the same crap ad nauseam. you coward.

Anonymous said...

times are tough.. gigs are few... law schools continue to peddle falsehoods.. all we can do is be civil to each other... lawyers should not feel bad now though... now misery has company... everyone else is a job market that is miserable.. at least as attorneys we have been there for years..

Anonymous said...

Apparently law school applications up this year because of the poor job market for college graduates. Boy, are they in for an eventual surprise.

Anonymous said...

With 200 law schools, the applications are bound to be "up". Like most law school statistics, however, they are highly suspect and untrustworthy.

Anonymous said...

3:06 ... True.

Anonymous said...

Now hiring shitcoders for bathroom fisting sessions.
40 hours with potential overtime!

Previous shitcoding experience a plus.

Anonymous said...

See the New York Times, "Finance Students Keep Their Job Hopes Alive"- someone in the article said finance majors are now prepping to go to law school instead of looking for a job this May. Out of the frying pan into the fire.

Anonymous said...

Temping is far from dead. I recommend all people dissatisfied with legal temping to seek jobs in the booming market of AML temping. I've been doing it for the last year and it pays 2-4X the hourly rate for a doc reviewer, with much less supervision and the usual B.S., and much more professionalism. You just have to be amenable to travel. A good number of people on my AML projects have been former doc reviewers.

Anonymous said...

"The ABA is merely designed to protect the interests of biglaw partners and their buddies in academia and banking at the expense of everyone else. More jobs for professors who want cushy positions with little work, more profit for universities (for whom law schools are VERY profitable since they're so cheap to run), no oversight of law school fraudulent advertising, more indentured-for-life loan slaves for the financial people and agencies, and plenty of top 5 percenters to burn out in biglaw billing 3,000 hours per year."


WTF? I typed this verbatim in a JDUnderground post a week and half ago. I admit, Tom, that you were among the greatest sources of inspiration for this passage, but that doesn't mean you can plagiarize me. On the other hand, I'm a bit flattered.

Anonymous said...

boring!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!'

Anonymous said...

1:49...can you give us some more details about AML temping? Which staffing agencies provide these positions. Thanks.

Anonymous said...

Anyone who made it from monkey clicker to AML is probably one of the .0001% of temp attorneys worth something. This means the majority, as in the retards posting about going to war, etc, DO NOT QUALIFY FOR AML JOBS.

Most of the losers here have time to post the same shit night and day for 3-4 years because they are the bottom of the barrel.

Don't give these people false hope. Don't tease the animals. It's not nice.

Anonymous said...

I nominate Tom the Temp for blog plagiarizer of the year.

http://jdunderground.com/thread.php?threadId=23364

Anonymous said...

the fact that you have actually cut and paste a post verbatim as opposed to recycling ideas (as is usually done) is pretty fucking poor form tom.

Anonymous said...

Hey Molly,
Yeah you have your answer, alright. I for one am sick and tired of being forced to pay through the nose for membership in your worthless organization. But don't worry. You are just as expendable as everyone else. If you had done well in law school you wouldn't be working at a non-profit. Sure, you're part of a lucrative scam, but you're a pretty small part. You'll be out of a job soon yourself, and the only advantage you have over me is one more hole between your legs.

Anonymous said...

molly,

Can I getba taste of those holes.
ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Anonymous said...

I wonder how others feel on this subject.

http://www.walterstrustinfo.com

Anonymous said...

What is AML temping and how do you get into it???

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Anonymous said...

The ABA 1) shouldn't be in charge of accreditation and 2) should be held accountable for pernicious activities that are destroying the legal profession.

I'm a licensed attorney in Alabama who attended a school deemed unacceptable to the ABA regime. My school, Birmingham School of Law, has been producing fine attorneys since 1915, but because our professors are actual practicing attorneys instead of over-philosophical eggheads, doesn't have a million volume library, doesn't have billions of dollars in endowments, etc., the school cannot be accredited. Therefore, I am a second-class lawyer. It doesn't matter that I easily passed the bar on my first attempt. A biglaw firm wouldn't dare hire me, and most states won't even let me sit for the bar. Sure, I'm fine in Alabama and can therefore argue before the U.S. Supreme Court, but I can forget about ever practicing in my home state (TN) or many other states.

Instead of letting the ABA determine what an acceptable law school is, why shouldn't the state's approval of the law school be all that matters? I can get a judgment issued by an Alabama Court and have it enforced anywhere in the nation thanks to the constitutional principle of full faith and credit, and I can drive anywhere in the U.S. with my Alabama driver's license, but I can't practice law anywhere besides Alabama.

The real kicker is that a foreign-educated lawyer (read immigrant) can come here and be accepted to a state bar (or at least sit for it) as long as his or her school is accredited by his or her country's equivalent of the ABA. As for me, I can't go across the state line and join the bar because my school's not on the ABA's list. I can really see how French law or Jamaican law or Timbuktuan law would be more similar to Tennessee law than Alabama law is. Thank you, ABA, for your brilliance and your influence on the American legal system.

Anonymous said...

I'm tired of people referring to "document reviewers" as "loosers". Those young grads who were or would have been in that line of business, will now be competing for our litigation and other "real" attorney work, thanks to Senior BigLaw Partner, who was greedy and wanted to save $50,000 - $150,000 a year by not hiring junior associates, then paying an Indian "firm" of non-lawyers, $10,000 - $50,000, to pay its workers only about $$2,000 - $6,000 per year, and netting about $3,000 - $42,000 per year in profits for the Indian non-lawyer "law" firm,per job a US Attorney lost to India. Senior Partner doesn't mind because he's retiring soon and wants to net as much cash as possible prior to retirement. But what about Jr. Partner or Associate? He'll also be competing with the less than minimum wage "attorneys" in India... along with all of the rest of us. If only the ABA or our State and Local Bar Associations were here to protect and defend our profession. Here in my State UPL isn't even prohibited. Thanks ABA and State Bar, you're the best! I'm so looking forward to moving to Mumbai in search of work!