Document Review Hippies

Want to work in San Francisco? If the below posting is in anyway legitimate, get ready to jump through some not so ordinary hoops in the application process. One of the people that alerted me to this ad wasn't very pleased:

"The hypocritical smelly ex-hippy that posted this ad needs to get a life. There are already enough alleged "creative" types on these document review projects, we don't need more. Scrounging for work in crowded, bug infested basements to pay off Sallie Mae, an organization which needlessly funds the extravagant lives of useless "progressive" law professors and administrators is not my idea of urban chic, it is just plain dumb. This job listing is an insult to us older folk that depend on these positions to feed ourselves. Here's the posing:

"Is document review more like a Tweet, a Digg or sex? (West Coast)

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Reply to:docreviewrocks@gmail.com
Date: 2009-05-28, 10:37PM PDT

*****THIS IS A LEGITIMATE POSTING, SOMEWHAT IRREVERENT, BUT LEGITIMATE*****

Why do we want to know?

Well, we're building a team of highly disruptive document reviewers and want to know if you're the kind of legal professional who would do well with our brand of mayhem.

Here's what we can tell you:
You will be respected.
You will be trained.
You will be paid.
You, in return, will rock.

You may rock legal document review high.
You may rock legal document review low.

But, you WILL rock.
Because you will be one of the Chosen Few.

So, draw some analogies, use a few metaphors, knock yourself out with philosophical smoke as the legal spirit moves you, --so long as it's 3 paragraphs or less.

Then, attach that resume to us in TEXT format.
No PDFs. No flippin' Word documents. Just plain old text....???...
OK: "text" means, you can either include your life story plus considered analysis in an email,-- or you can attach a .TXT or .RTF file.

Don't know what those are? Look it up.
We expect you to have more than a modicum of initiative...."modicum"???...Look it up.

And, no bullshit, OK? Because we're gonna find out what you're made of before we put you on one of our document review projects.
So, if you're stoked to reduce thousands of documents to a series of intelligible narratives, we want to know you're out there looking for work.

If you're one of the few who effin' get it, then let's do this thing!
Right now, we don't care where you are. If there are enough of you in any one city, we'll come to you.
Send us the stuff here, and we'll get back to you.

Like soon."


Another reader's proposed response. Very creative:


"My response: Document review is defintely not like sex unless you're into staring at blank walls. It's more like a bad relationship. Most of time, it doesn't come through. When it does, it feels so good. Call me the Super Doc Reviewer of the San Francisco Bay Area. I'm lightening fast and highly accurate. Clicking through docs and checking boxes may not be most folks' thing. However, I get a natural high when I find docs that can really help my side's case. But here's the deal. I can't allow mere common folks to know my secret identity. The only ones who get this privilege are the document review temp agencies. So if you happen to be a real agency, send me your name and Web site. Then I'll send my resume that will reveal my real name."

Viacom Presents..........

Hell on earth.

"Asking about horrible places to work, Viacom is the worst of the worst.

Working in a small, overcrowded room under the worst possible conditions with no benefits. The case manager was like an animal.

Before the weekend we were asked who wanted to work and who didn't (strictly voluntarily). The people who didn't work were called over the weekend without warning and told not to come back. There was no indication there was any price to not working the weekend.

This is why Viacom is consistently rated one of the worst companies to work for.

Lest you think they only treat temps like shit, last December "the dreaded Viacom" laid off 850 people without warning.

Sumner Redstone famously said "Viacom is me" and fired people like Tom Cruise, Dan Rather, and Les Moonves at the drop of a hat. He's a senile bully."

SkaTTTen

"Tom,

Looks like SkaTTTen's attempt at paying an above market bonus last year to a few overly compensated 25 year old baby lawyers was a desperate attemp to hide the fact that they are obviously a firm on the decline. Today, we hear of yet another major partner fleeing the firm. This comes on the heels of the dissolution of the entire staff attorney program. Working as a contract attorney in that dump is just as perilous. For sure, Clutch is still paying an above market rate of $40 + an hour, but on the other side of the building, Kelly is filling with the rafters with a bunch of new recruits who will be earning less than $35 an hour. No doubt the new group is being brought in to replace the old guard."

Vanessa Vidunas Strikes Again

"Vanessa Vidunas of the Merrill Corporation, another intruder into the inundated Manhattan temp market, just called to inform me that the partner-in-charge of their project at Labaton Sucharow had changed his mind over the weekend and now required contract attorneys to be barred in New York, apparently deciding that my membership in the California Bar did not qualify to click my mouse on his precious document review. So fuck me, I am no longer on the project.

Seems unprofessional to take back an offer, but to us peons who gives a shit? Never mind that I 'almost' turned down another offer (same low rate) but thank God I've been doing this crap to know the golden rule of temping in NYC. Never turn down an offer until you've been on the job for a day or two to see if it's for real. Let that be a lesson to all you newbies who've been downsized to the cellar that is being a contract attorney in this town."

Sullivan & Cromwell Deflates The Rate

Last week, the 55 Water Street job announced S&C "across-the-board" pay cut on temps to $33 per hour, down from the previously rock bottom $35.

Not wanting to lose the iconic status of being the lowest payer in the industry, this is about a 10% pay cut.

While you can say it's only two lousy dollars, that depends on what your starting point is. That is, it's not like we were making $50 before.

The cut was done in the usual way, through the hit-men, the agencies, which made the calls to the poor temps. But we're like children who get beaten all the time and always expect something new or flinch when a hand is raised.

There is no doubt that this is the kind of call the agencies love to make to their temps, and think it's a way they can show their "value-added service". Their alleged reasons were the bad economy, the downward trend of pay, yadda, yadda yadda.

Thanks to the David Perla's and Bloomberg's of this world's constantly creating a new lower and lower standard, the agencies could not allow themselves to be outdone in this unpleasant reminder of how the rug is always being pulled out from under you in the temp world.

Beaten down like a bum, you are left chirping for a few stale crumbs of bread. Forget about our student loans. There's no hope of ever paying them back.

Update Legal

"I just found your blog but wish I found it earlier before I wasted my time with Update Legal. They called me for a job that supposedly paid $35 in Manhattan but I had to work 8-10 hour days with no overtime pay (is that legal??). The interview is in Jersey but they assured me that the work would be done in Manhattan. Then, right before my interview, I give them a call to ask last minute questions and that's when they tell me that the job is in Jersey and I would have to commute every day there. Then to make matters worse, they said that if I take the job, I'm not allowed to look for permanent work anymore. After paying taxes, and paying for a dog walker and paying for the commute and paying with my sanity, my dog walker would make more than me.

This might not be newsworthy but I have to agree that they are some shady bastards. They also called me on another job basically trying to get me to lie about one of my qualifications to make me seem more qualified than I was."

Contract Attorney Suicides

"This problem is more widespread than some of you think. An attorney friend of mine has been in the hospital since a suicide attempt a few weeks ago.

Although he was once a partner at a mid-sized firm, since then, my friend has slid down the attorney food chain and has supported himself since the last downturn through contract work. (It is indeed true; once you start down the contract attorney path, it is very hard to get off it, especially if you're older.)

Unable to find any kind of work since being laid off from his last contract gig in the fall, my friend recently lost his apartment, moved in with relatives and is flat broke.

I'm not sure whether he has medical insurance to cover his hospital stay; he paid for insurance as long as he could, since he has chronic medical problems, but the last I heard, he was trying to get Medicaid.

Neither am I even sure how he is doing right now. He hasn’t been answering his e-mail."

-From Above the Law

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.

Anita's Auction

When the economy turns around, these will come in handy for Anita when she employs the most debt ridden batch of lemming graduates in the history of legal education.

For sale in NYC: Torture devices from 16th century

NEW YORK – For sale soon: a variety of torture devices from the 16th century, including shame masks to enforce silence, a 14-foot table-like rack to stretch the victim's body, and a tongue tearer to punish blasphemers and heretics. Even an executioner's sword.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090506/ap_on_re_us/us_torture_auction

Game Over!

Susan Hackett, Senior Vice President of the Association of Corporate Counsel was on CNBC last Thursday touting the Clutch Group and the outsourcing of legal work to India. The sucking sound of American legal jobs being drained out of the country is only getting louder. If you are still in law school, you should seriously consider dropping out. If are currently in the profession and haven't devised an exit strategy yet, you need to do so immediately. The awful recessionary torture chambers won't be around for much longer. Take advantage of them while you can, enroll in night school, and learn a hard trade.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=1108402386&play=1