What Is A Staff Attorney?

"Yolanda Young will be happy to explain in detail. From her recent court pleading, I gather it is somewhat like a legal sharecropper. You have to 'work off the clock,' and probably get paid in script, only negotiable at the 'company store.' Also, the desks would be set up in 'converted filerooms,' which Yolanda speculates do not meet OSHA standards. Anyone that complains gets the tar and feathered, and then their bonus is pressed down to a measly $5,000."

-ABA Journal Commenter

http://www.abajournal.com/news/high-profile_former_staff_lawyer_files_discrimination_suit_against_covingto/

Desperate Households

"Tom,

Given the fact that there is currently no work out there, can you do a story on how people are surviving this thing economically? I used to be able to string together a modest living on document review, but aside from a one week project that I was able to pull down last month, I haven't been able to find anything since last September. How are we supposed to survive on a measley $400 a week in unemployment? My credit cards are quickly becoming maxed out, and I shudder to think that any day now the bank may catch on and try to reduce my credit limit. What then? I can honestly say that I am just one day away from scouting out food kitchens. God knows how I will be able to dig myself out of this credit hole once this is all over. Don't even get me started on my student loans. With accruing interest, I am underwater and probably now owe more than I ever borrowed. I could never have dreamed in a million years that things would be this bad."

Black Thursday

Above the Law almost imploded today with a stream of steady negative layoff news. As of noon, Dechert, Bryan Cave, Goodwin Procter have all axed dozens of associates. Apparently, more layoff news is on the way.

I am sorry to say that anyone who is expecting an uptick in the temporary document review market this year is going to be sorely disappointed. Not only do we have to compete with dozens of highly qualified out of work former associates, but the floodgates opened by the ABA Indian legal outsourcing opinion will continue to suck out of the country any last remaining remnants of legal scrap work.

Change We Can Believe In?

Look what Sallie Mae quietly slipped into the stimulus bill:

"One provision, which was sought by the student lending industry and went unmentioned in early Congressional summaries of the stimulus package, would temporarily increase subsidies to banks in the guaranteed student loan program by tying them to a new index, partly because recent federal intervention in the credit markets has invalidated the previous index. A spokesman for Sallie Mae, one of the largest student lenders, said the change was needed to keep student loan markets fluid. Critics said it represented a potential new windfall for lenders.

“This just continues the well-established tradition of welfare for the student loan industry,” said Barmak Nassirian, an expert in student lending."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/education/28educ.html?hp

Race To The Bottom

"James Jones, managing director of Hildebrandt International, also talked about the need to change associate compensation in a talk he gave last week. He predicted that the law firm business model will change to include a shift to more contract and temp lawyers and fewer full-time partners and associates."

http://www.abajournal.com/news/how_some_big_law_firms_erred_in_the_boom_years/

Looks like this blog won't become an anachronism after all. While they outsource our jobs to India and push us out of the profession, they are also planning on transforming the future ranks of full time associates into temps.