Recovery?

"Tom,

Just wanted you to know that I started a large scale project today. It's the De Novo project in NYC. It's packed to the gills with over one hundred coders. Everyone seems to be in good spirits and thankful to be back at work. In fact, I think many of us are suffering from post-traumatic stress. Whether it was spending months unemployed wondering how we were going to feed our families, or having the fortitude to put up with the "gansta gang" at Sullivan & Cromwell which was oftentimes the only show in town, we have been through a lot. Let's hope this recovery is sustainable."

Labaton Suckarow Update

Here is an update on the Labaton project. I just want to make the point, again, how greedy these law firms are. They want all the rewards but none of the responsibilities for hiring attorneys directly. They get business from government entities and have licenses to do business in NY, but yet none of the laws that protect workers' rights are applicable because we happen to be attorneys. It is only in the USA among western countries that this would be allowed to happen because the idea of good corporate citizenship is anathema to these greedy bastards.


HAPPY YOM KIPPUR FROM LABATON

Labaton which hired a bunch of attorneys for its Countrywide project some months ago and paid them $32 flat per hour with absolutely no benefits announced that the firm will be closed for Yom Kippur and there will be no pay. How wonderful! I am all for respecting each others' religion, but I draw the line when it takes money out of my pocket. If you wish to take the day off, enjoy, but why should a company consider it okay to close down on a religious holiday, not a federal one, and screw their Countrywide "employees" out of a day's pay. Labaton, you suck. You are cheap.

One of the named plaintiffs in Countrywide is the NYS Comptroller, so you Labaton think it is fine to get business from a government entity, operate in New York City and then hire attorneys for a long term project while giving them no benefits whatsoever, and then to boot, impose a religious holiday on them. What the hell is wrong with this country? No wonder that it is so fucked up. It is one thing to get screwed by an agency, but you Labaton made us your employees. You want to pay us the minimum by cutting out the agency's take, and then you bill the client God knows what for our services, all the while providing no benefits in return. We can't even get paid overtime because of the bullshit professional exemption in NY. The cleaning people have more benefits and rights than we do.

Labaton if you had any decency you would pay us for Yom Kippur, if just to create goodwill, but of course you are too short sighted and cheap to do that. Instead you continue to operate your sweatshop, provide no benefits to your "employees," bilk the client for as much as you think you can get away with, and have a nasty bleached blonde police the caseroom in the hope of finding somebody eating a banana at his or her desk; I think that bleach has leaked into whatever little brain she has. Please deliver me from this hellhole.

More Elite Click Monkeys

In Chicago, only top tier, top 1/3rd of the class, former biglaw associates with 2+ years of litigation experience need apply (products liability associates preferred!). Unreal. Game over.

"Counsel On Call is currently interviewing attorneys with at least one year of solid electronic document review experience for a contract assignment in downtown Chicago. Must have worked as a litigation associate in a large law firm 2+ years. Experience with products liability litigation strongly preferred. Full time, requires a three month commitment. Top tier school and top 1/3 of class required. Please e-mail resume to julie.lehrman@counseloncall.com."

Tower Legal - $18 per hour

"Tom, your website is awesome. it is very informative and funny. im a recent nyc tier 1 grad awaiting admission to the bar in ny and nj. i got a call from tower legal staffing offering me $18 per hour, since it is ajd/paralegal project. I declined. She pressured me telling me that it is the going rate for unadmitted JD's. I assumed she was lying, but either way, I felt it was exploitative, since my cleaning lady earns $15 per hour with zero education and zero student loans to pay off. I just thought I would share this with."

Unfortunately, she wasn't lying. JD rates (for those few that are lucky enough to be offered work) continue to fall through the teens, and admitted attorney rates are dropping to as low as $23 an hour straight time. The situation is certainly exploitative, as we discuss on here ad nauseam. Trying to support oneself on twenty bucks an hour, after taxes, student loan payments, and non-subsidized health insurance is nearly impossible. Furthermore, the work is oftentimes unsteady, the agencies are increasingly engaging in bait-and-switch techniques, the positions are truly dead-end in every sense of the word, and the working conditions are many times less than ideal. Welcome to hell.

Dupont, Pioneer In Legal Outsourcing Slammed For Discovery Fraud

It looks like the Dupont Corporation was recently slammed by a Florida judge for allegedly providing inaccurate and misleading discovery responses. If the plaintiffs' attorneys really wanted to have a field day, they should examine the cadre of unlicensed foreign nationals that who are currently reviewing discovery documents by the sweatshop load.

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

Document Review Elite

Tom,

Saw this posting recently for a 'top tier' document review project:

"Compliance LP is staffing an immediate document review project in Washington, DC. We are seeking recent '09 law review graduates or graduates from top -tier law schools, awaiting bar results. The project will require 50-60 hours per week for 5-8 weeks at a competitive rate with OT.

Interested and qualified candidates must be conscientious, posses a strong work ethic and be eager to wok in a professional working environment. Document review preferred, but not required."

Apparently not even document review is low enough for those of us from bad law schools anymore.

The ABA Section of Legal Education & Admissions to the Bar

Don't expect clear and transparent post-graduate employment statistics anytime soon. This committee is a complete and utter scam. It is literally packed to the brink with members of the law school industry cartel. Although the Section's bylaws mandate that only 50% of the council's seats be occupied by law school deans, faculty, and administrators, it is quite clear that the other half of the board is populated by lapdogs who are clearly not disinterested. A Harvard 2nd year as the representative voice for the entire national law student body?

Dean of New England School of Law: Vice Chair;
Dean of Univ of Montana School of Law: Member;
Deans of Hastings, Miami, American, Washington Schools of Law: All Members;
Harvard second-year law student: Student Member;

The committtee on its website brags that "in order to acheive its goals of improving the quality of legal education, character and fitness assessments, and bar admission standards, the Section works closely with the Association of American Law Schools, and the Access Group..... among others." In the past year and a half, the Section has granted provisional approval to the Elon, Charlotte, and Drexel Schools of Law, and has granted full approval to the Florida A&M and Western State University Schools of Law. They have also granted acquiescence for the scam school Ave Maria to get up and move across the country, and have also removed Golden Gate and Whittier Schools of Law from probation. The committee is also mulling the idea of allowing certain of these scam school to do away with the LSAT, and has put out a proclamation declaring that swine flu is a bad thing. No word from them yet on the fraudulent and disingenuous marketing materials put out by many of these law schools, reports which have recently surfaced in a large number of recent mainstream media articles.

Although it was announced last month that there was a vacancy on the committee, and while it would be nice to have the perspective of a working class lawyer on that board, good luck achieving that in reality. For one thing, in order to be eligible to serve, you are mandated to pay dues to the ABA criminal syndicate. Actually reaching the board is another thing entirely. The rules say that, "the president of the board will activate the process in the Section Bylaws to fill a vacant seat." The "Section Bylaws" are a complex, byzantine set of regulations that probably haven't been revised or read since the 19th century. In reality, the seat will in all likelihood go to someone who the chair picks out of his preferred rolodex. Even if a member could be chosen who could adequately represent the interests of the overwhelming majority of working class lawyers out there, he/she would be so out of place that it wouldn't even be funny. It would be like a drunk transgender stripper showing up to a Southern Baptist Convention.

I am sure that the other ABA committee that put out that ridiculous "let's ship all the legal work to India" opinion is the same way.

The Push For Better Job Information For Incoming Law Students

Professor William Henderson is the lone responsible voice in a pack of ivory tower theives. Indiana is lucky to have him. In NY, we are surrounded by such low life scumbag "educators" as Dean Matasar, Joan "King" Wexler, and the Valvoline Dean.

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

Don't count on sensible, independent law school employment reporting coming any time soon. As Professor Henderson so accurately notes, "Regarding jobs in private practice, how many are working as contract attorneys? Nobody really knows, and the issue is not on the section's agenda. If these data are published, some law schools would probably go out of business.”

More importantly, as an astute commenter to the NY Times article noted yesterday, "It should be noted that the ABA leadership is composed of big law lawyers whose firms benefit greatly from the oversupply of lawyers because it allows the big law firms to pay rock bottom prices for the huge numbers of temp doc review attorneys they hire for large cases. Of course, these same firms then turn around and bill their clients top dollar for the same temp doc review attorneys that they are paying the lowest possible wages to. It is a win win for the big law firms. The fools who have been defrauded into persuing a law career wind up as debt and wage slaves for the benefit of big law and the banks who have offered the wage slaves loans backstopped by the government." In that vein, we have ShitStaff Staffing Agency offering this morning a pathetic, benefitless $23 an hour rate. The misery goes on.

Lock The Law School Doors

Great article.

Love the description of the Joan King (see tab on right) phenomena:

"Take, for instance, the employment statistics posted on the Web sites of three low-ranked law schools in New York City, the country’s biggest market for legal employment. All three advertise that 45 to 60 percent of their 2008 graduates who reported salary information are making a median salary of $150,000 to $160,000.

Now, of course there must be some way of slicing and dicing the numbers to yield that magic result. But what happens, in practice, is that prospective degree-purchasers enroll in these $43,000-a-year programs believing their chances of landing that Big Law job are about one in two. Tempting odds."

ABA utterly out of touch:

"The American Bar Association, which continues to approve law schools with impunity and with no end in sight, bears complicity in creating this mess. Yet a spokeswoman, citing antitrust concerns, says the A.B.A. takes no position on the optimal number of lawyers or law schools."

A whole future generation of low wage sweatshops coming down the pike:

"Meanwhile, as job opportunities abate, law school matriculation rates rise unchecked. Each year, the number of students who enroll at one of 200 law schools approved by the American Bar Association inches closer to 50,000."

http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/02/hold-for-tues-pm-another-view-lock-the-law-school-doors/

More Solo Cheerleader Shysters

Look at what I received from the State of Texas Bar "job agent" today (below). Looks like there is a huge proliferation of shysters trying to make money off the unemployed by setting you up as a "solo." LOL!

"Job description:

We work directly with the Placement Centers of many of the State and Local Bar Associations across the nation. It is our common goal to help our members develop their careers and income through placement and counseling services. As you can imagine with this slowing economy, there are many incredibly qualified and talented attorneys seeking career assistance. Whether you are a recent law graduate, associate, or former partner; law firms are making it very clear that unless you can bring a considerable book of business with you, the chances of the firm extending an offer is greatly reduced until the economy improves greatly. So what do you do until then?

- Quit practicing law?
- Just keep looking until the economy improves?
- Build your Book of Business as you continue your search

For an attorney, "quitting" is never an option and unless you have deep resources, waiting 8-24 months for the economy to turn might not be economically feasible either. We believe the most important and successful approach for your career is to develop your own book of business (working) while you continue your search and to keep your resumes work history active as an attorney. This means "Going Solo" and establishing your law practice while you search. That might sound a little scary, lonely and perhaps even costly to most attorneys coming from an established firm, but it doesn't have to be if you go about it the right way.

We would like to recommend a new and cost effective solution for attorneys who are looking to "Go Solo" as an interim solution to their employment situation. It is GoSoloEsq.com.

GoSoloEsq.com provides attorneys with the ability to establish a Solo Practice and complete Virtual Law Office for as little as $129 a month. That includes the Virtual services, Office services, and Networking services. Below is a list of included services:

- Virtual Law Office (available in over 400 US cities)
- Professional address, call/mail center, client meeting rooms (all while working from home)
- Access to client meeting rooms as needed on an hourly basis
- Free meeting room office vouchers valued at $1,100
- "Lawyer to Lawyer" Case Referral (receive or refer with fee sharing)
- Mentoring Services (ask or offer your services to other members)
- Contract Attorney Work (take on contract work while you grow your client base)
- Ask The Experts Forum (interact with other solo attorneys by topic or specific area of law)
- Access to virtual or onsite staff (paralegals, legal secretaries, word processors)
- Online links to state forms, practice forms, templates and tools

* We guarantee you will receive referrals from the service each month or membership is free.

Click here for a full review of their services!

We understand that this might not be a solution for everyone during their employment transition, but if you find yourself contemplating "quitting" or "waiting" then at least take a look at what we have to offer. You might find "Going Solo" is just what you need to keep your career fresh, your talents sharp, your work history active, your employment value high, and your cash flow positive.

Take a moment to visit us at www.gosoloesq.com and see why "Going Solo" no longer means "Going it Alone."

Help Wanted: Assist Office Tiger In Outsourcing American Jobs Overseas

"Tom,

Here is an interesting job opportunity that was posted on craigslist this morning:

"Serve as a Records Analyst to one of our global clients for a major records management initiative relating to our client’s safety, health and environmental documents. The goal of this project is to identify, review, index and categorize these records in accordance with new records categories being developed by the client. The scope of this project will include all of our client’s plant sites in the United States and has an unknown duration, but approximately 1-2 years. This position will be responsible for visiting plant sites and identifying, reviewing, indexing and categorizing applicable documents at such plant sites. We are looking for an individual that is willing and able to travel each week to various client sites for document review. This travel would be US based only."

http://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/lgl/1351296089.html

Don't be fooled! The ad says that you will be working for RR Donnelley, which is a respected business print company. If you do a little research, you will learn who you are really working for, none other than that bottom feeding LPO firm known as Office Tiger. Office Tiger is hiding behind the respected name of a large American Fortune 500 company. Why aren't they using their own name? Can someone please call Lou Dobbs? If I could venture a guess, you will be collecting documents so that they can be sent back to India to be reviewed by low wage, unlicensed professionals."