Monday, May 11, 2009

Vanessa Vidunas, Cut It




You aren't staffing the Manhattan Project. You are recruiting for a crummy temporary document review position, paying a below market wage without benefits.

41 comments:

Anonymous said...

Damn right! Knock these agency scumbags off their high horses!

(And while you're at it drag some of these punk-ass staff attorneys out of the basement. They will quickly wither and die in the sun like the trolls and witches that they are)

Anonymous said...

"You are recruiting for a crummy temporary document review position, paying a below market wage without benefits."

This describes practically any document review project.

Regardless, at least there are projects at the moment. This is a considerable improvement compared to 4-6 weeks ago.

Anonymous said...

the requirement for this project keep changing too...has anyone even heard back from this woman?

Anonymous said...

Gripe, gripe, gripe!

What is "below market" supposed to mean in a market in which legal salaries are going down, lock-step class year raises are being re-evaluated, lawyers and legal staff are being downsized, start dates are being pushed back, and summer programs are being cut back.

Temps, in general, are overpaid button-clickers without any semblance of a legal skill-set, and now that salaries are going down across the board, are temps supposed to be insulated from this, and keep getting the overinflated $40+ an hour that we were getting in the boom legal market of the last few years?

Get real! There are real attorneys with real skills working in small firms all over the city for less than what temps make at Skadden. You can gripe when you fall into that category: people who are underpaid for doing real work involving real skills. Until you're being paid less than, say, $15 an hour, take your money to surf the internet and click buttons, and be glad not to have to work the late shift hosing down MTA platforms.

Anonymous said...

Umm, even in the boom years the rate wasn't $40 PLUS an hour. Are you smoking crack? While the partners and even the associates were feasting on massive wage increases during the boom, the contract attorney rate was stagnant and even declining due to inflation. Let's not even begin to discuss the doubling of law school tuition in the last 7 years.

Anonymous said...

Considering that we are attorneys and law firms have billed out our work at hundreds of dollars per hour, there is nothing "overinflated" about rates of $40+.

Anonymous said...

I've heard of rates, years ago, of $40+ and some more recent projects have paid $40 with time and a half so the OT was at $60.

Anonymous said...

Recent projects? For the past year and a half projects have been few and far between. If you average the boom and bust years, the average rate is abysmal. Add in student loans and the lack of health coverage and your average contract attorney makes less than a GED paralegal, all the while they get billed out by greedy biglaw partners for hundreds of dollars on the hour.

selling my jd said...

the connecticut rate is $25.00... maybe $27.00 if you get lucky... up from $22.00 around 4 years ago..

Anonymous said...

Watch your back! Vanessa Vidunas is a snake.

Anonymous said...

There were lots of projects until around last Sept. or Oct. Few paid as high as $40.

"More recent" meant "more recent" than the best years of doc review not the last couple of years.

Anonymous said...

However high the rate is, if you aren't working for half the year you are screwed.

Anonymous said...

there are still a very small handful of 40 plus OT jobs out there. good luck getting them though, they go to the supreme brown-nosers.

Anonymous said...

exactly. $40 /hr is only nice if you are working full time for more than half the year.

Anonymous said...

What the fuck up is up with Yorkson Legal. I get calls and emails about assignments, but the NEVER come to fruition. What gives?

Anonymous said...

Who is Vanessa Vidunas?

Anonymous said...

I think she used to work at Hudson, but now she is recruiting for that Merrill gig and thinks she is staffing for a Supreme Court appointment.

Anonymous said...

The going rate has plunged to $32 flat. It used to be $35 - 40+OT. I know some coders on projects paying $40, but they are largely capped at 40 hours per week.

As others have said, the market is improving, so let's stay positive. De Novo added a bunch of attorneys to one of their projects paying 40/40

Anonymous said...

I doubt Yorkson has work. Those ladies are all talk, no action. I've been getting calls for months and months and nothing happens.

Anonymous said...

Has anyone worked with Strategic's Marjorie. She kinda pushes me into projects I don't want and gets mean if I refuse. Has anyone had similar experiences?

Anonymous said...

They don't have any good stuff right now, just Barasshole and other junk.

They have had good projects in the past and should in the future. Marjorie is okay, no worse than any other recruiter and probably better than most.

Anonymous said...

Marjorie is a cunt that doesn't return calls.

Anonymous said...

Agreed, she's a major backstabbing old cunt. Don't ever work for her, she will stab you in the back.

Anonymous said...

According to the losers here, any recruiter who doesn't give you a job is a c*unt.

I guess that's what happens when people who have the power to give jobs don't give *you* any assignments. They are c*nts, or worse, right?

Anonymous said...

Once, I saw Anita's c*nt.

Anonymous said...

The DeNovo Ho will make bitches out of all of you!

Anonymous said...

has anyone met with her and she informed them that they are on the project that yorkson is also staffing..but yorkson requires an interview and you are told to start monday?

Anonymous said...

Who is the real Vanessa Vidunas?

Anonymous said...

BTW -- Aren't the flat rates (no O.T. pay) that agencies seem to be offering widespread illegal???


http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/uscode05/usc_sec_05_00005542----000-.html

U.S. Code collection


TITLE 5 > PART III > Subpart D > CHAPTER 55 > SUBCHAPTER V >

§ 5542. Overtime rates; computation
(a) For full-time, part-time and intermittent tours of duty, hours of work officially ordered or approved in excess of 40 hours in an administrative workweek, or (with the exception of an employee engaged in professional or technical engineering or scientific activities for whom the first 40 hours of duty in an administrative workweek is the basic workweek and an employee whose basic pay exceeds the minimum rate for GS–10 (including any applicable locality-based comparability payment under section 5304 or similar provision of law and any applicable special rate of pay under section 5305 or similar provision of law) for whom the first 40 hours of duty in an administrative workweek is the basic workweek) in excess of 8 hours in a day, performed by an employee are overtime work and shall be paid for, except as otherwise provided by this subchapter, at the following rates:
(1) For an employee whose basic pay is at a rate which does not exceed the minimum rate of basic pay for GS–10 (including any applicable locality-based comparability payment under section 5304 or similar provision of law and any applicable special rate of pay under section 5305 or similar provision of law), the overtime hourly rate of pay is an amount equal to one and one-half times the hourly rate of basic pay of the employee, and all that amount is premium pay.
(2) For an employee whose basic pay is at a rate which exceeds the minimum rate of basic pay for GS–10 (including any applicable locality-based comparability payment under section 5304 or similar provision of law and any applicable special rate of pay under section 5305 or similar provision of law), the overtime hourly rate of pay is an amount equal to the greater of one and one-half times the hourly rate of the minimum rate of basic pay for GS–10 (including any applicable locality-based comparability payment under section 5304 or similar provision of law and any applicable special rate of pay under section 5305 or similar provision of law) or the hourly rate of basic pay of the employee, and all that amount is premium pay.
(3) Notwithstanding paragraphs (1) and (2) of this subsection for an employee of the Department of Transportation who occupies a nonmanagerial position in GS–14 or under and, as determined by the Secretary of Transportation,
(A) the duties of which are critical to the immediate daily operation of the air traffic control system, directly affect aviation safety, and involve physical or mental strain or hardship;
(B) in which overtime work is therefore unusually taxing; and
(C) in which operating requirements cannot be met without substantial overtime work;
the overtime hourly rate of pay is an amount equal to one and one-half times the hourly rate of basic pay of the employee, and all that amount is premium pay.
(4) Notwithstanding paragraph (2) of this subsection, for an employee who is a law enforcement officer, and whose basic pay is at a rate which exceeds the minimum rate of basic pay for GS–10 (including any applicable locality-based comparability payment under section 5304 or similar provision of law and any applicable special rate of pay under section 5305 or similar provision of law), the overtime hourly rate of pay is an amount equal to the greater of—
(A) one and one-half times the minimum hourly rate of basic pay for GS–10 (including any applicable locality-based comparability payment under section 5304 or similar provision of law and any applicable special rate of pay under section 5305 or similar provision of law); or
(B) the hourly rate of basic pay of the employee,
and all that amount is premium pay.
(5) Notwithstanding paragraphs (1) and (2), for an employee of the Department of the Interior or the United States Forest Service in the Department of Agriculture engaged in emergency wildland fire suppression activities, the overtime hourly rate of pay is an amount equal to one and one-half times the hourly rate of basic pay of the employee, and all that amount is premium pay.
(b) For the purpose of this subchapter—
(1) unscheduled overtime work performed by an employee on a day when work was not scheduled for him, or for which he is required to return to his place of employment, is deemed at least 2 hours in duration; and
(2) time spent in a travel status away from the official-duty station of an employee is not hours of employment unless—
(A) the time spent is within the days and hours of the regularly scheduled administrative workweek of the employee, including regularly scheduled overtime hours; or
(B) the travel
(i) involves the performance of work while traveling,
(ii) is incident to travel that involves the performance of work while traveling,
(iii) is carried out under arduous conditions, or
(iv) results from an event which could not be scheduled or controlled administratively, including travel by an employee to such an event and the return of such employee from such event to his or her official-duty station.
(c) Subsection (a) shall not apply to an employee who is subject to the overtime pay provisions of section 7 of the Fair labor [1] Standards Act of 1938. In the case of an employee who would, were it not for the preceding sentence, be subject to this section, the Office of Personnel Management shall by regulation prescribe what hours shall be deemed to be hours of work and what hours of work shall be deemed to be overtime hours for the purpose of such section 7 so as to ensure that no employee receives less pay by reason of the preceding sentence.
(d) In applying subsection (a) of this section with respect to any criminal investigator who is paid availability pay under section 5545a—
(1) such investigator shall be compensated under such subsection (a), at the rates there provided, for overtime work which is scheduled in advance of the administrative workweek—
(A) in excess of 10 hours on a day during such investigator’s basic 40 hour workweek; or
(B) on a day outside such investigator’s basic 40 hour workweek; and
(2) such investigator shall be compensated for all other overtime work under section 5545a.
(e) Notwithstanding subsection (d)(1) of this section, all hours of overtime work scheduled in advance of the administrative workweek shall be compensated under subsection (a) if that work involves duties as authorized by section 3056 (a) of title 18 or section 37(a)(3) of the State Department Basic Authorities Act of 1956, and if the investigator performs, on that same day, at least 2 hours of overtime work not scheduled in advance of the administrative workweek.
(f) In applying subsection (a) of this section with respect to a firefighter who is subject to section 5545b—
(1) such subsection shall be deemed to apply to hours of work officially ordered or approved in excess of 106 hours in a biweekly pay period, or, if the agency establishes a weekly basis for overtime pay computation, in excess of 53 hours in an administrative workweek; and
(2) the overtime hourly rate of pay is an amount equal to one and one-half times the hourly rate of basic pay under section 5545b (b)(1)(A) or (c)(1)(B), as applicable, and such overtime hourly rate of pay may not be less than such hourly rate of basic pay in applying the limitation on the overtime rate provided in paragraph (2) of such subsection (a).

Anonymous said...

well, at least we can all agree 2:44 is overpaid in relation to skill set (just challenged legal temp agency practice by citing to code pertaining to Government employees)

Anonymous said...

2:44 is one of the dumbest things I have ever read on here.

Anonymous said...

I heard back from her, but she said I wasn't qualified since I didn't have one year of securities litigation experience. Honestly, she seemed pretty nice.

Anonymous said...

she totally ignored me!

Anonymous said...

I got contacted by Vanessa out of the blue for a "substantive project" earlier in the month because the client asked for me. I thought, wow, great, maybe this will lead to something permanent! I haven't done substantive work in forever! While waiting for the "substantive project" to start, I turned down doc review work that paid more and was at a reliable, steady and nice place with a decent amount of 1.5 overtime. Well, it turns out Vanessa's project is just doc review that STILL hasn't started. WTF! NOTHING in the original email she sent me said it was doc review, and I would never have turned down available work for a doc review project that seems like it will never start.

Anonymous said...

YUP same here she did the same to me..

Anonymous said...

evry month she keeps delaying her project -- god woman please give us the true story

Anonymous said...

DO NOT sign up with Vanessa Vidunas. She is a moron and is completely unprofessional. And whatever you do, DO NOT give her any references. She does not take names to actually check references for you, she takes those names to send advertisements to them (which is why she asks for email addresses and not phone numbers). BEWARE because she will embarass you in front of your professional contacts.

Anonymous said...

Sounds like alot of crybaby out of work attorneys on here just trying to put the blame on someone else.
It's not the recruiter's fault you bums.
To attack someone personally because you didn't get hired is a little hypocritical don't you think?

Anonymous said...

I would like to make two comments and a few sugestions.

First, I have worked with Miss. Vidunas in the D.C. Market as a contract attorney and she has ALWAYS acted in a professional and up front manor, which is more that I can say for 99% of other employers. This is a classic case of kill the messenger. It is not her fault that the perameters of the project changed. Get over it.
Second, stop complaining and go get a job with a firm. Times are tuff for everyone and you should look at the contract business as a valuable source of income. If you took away the staffing agencies the firms are not going to open the doors to mass employment so see it for what it is.

Now my suggestion. Place yourself as a third person and tell me honestly who is and is not acting professional. You should stop bellyaching and be mindful of the bridges that you are burning. In these times jobs do not come easy and prospective employers do not like to hire unprofessional whiney people.

Anonymous said...

Amen 8:34 and 9:46.

Anonymous said...

"If you took away the staffing agencies the firms are not going to open the doors to mass employment so see it for what it is."
You're wrong, 9:46. But since you're too ignorant to figure it out for yourself, I'm certainly not going to tell you how to go about it...