Wednesday, February 03, 2010

A Barren Wasteland

I was wondering if you know anything about the DC contract attorney market? Feel free to address this only in your blog, but I'm starting to wonder what's going on.

At least three of the 14 temp firms I signed up with last year have closed their DC offices, and one now appears to be placing only JDs rather than licensed attorneys. Colleagues with years of experience are finding only 1-2 week projects, and I haven't had a nibble since November 2, and that was for $25 an hour.

Is it even worth it to renew my bar dues? Is the market here dead? Or should I try to figure out if maybe this is just me and I had a bad review or something from one of the firms where I worked last year?

107 comments:

Anonymous said...

Get ready for the shit storm of bile. It's the Nigerians, the Jews, the gays, etc, etc.

Anonymous said...

bigdebtsmalllaw.wordpress.com

Sonia said...

It's not you, honey.

It's the economy.

Anonymous said...

The real shitstorm is the illegal outsourcing of our jobs to India.

You should really be writing letters to the ABA and your law school asking for your tuition back. I wonder where in your glossy brochure they mentioned the acceptance of cut rate attorneys performing US legal work in foreigh countries.

Lamm should resitn immediately.

Anonymous said...

The document review market literally collapsed overnight, after the ABA issued that "ethics" opinion permitting outsourcing.

Now, you have thousands of lawyers in the states who can't feed themselves who are sitting at home watching the deferred interest on their student loans compound, while you have shylock operations over in India. Michelle Vega and the 400 unlicensed "lawyers" she oversees are doing all the work.

Anonymous said...

It is, in the following order:

1. The so-called "profession" of the law.......It has been imploding for years. It is generally a fool's folly unless one is a member of one of the Preferred, Protected and or seriously Connected classes...

and a tie for 2. You and 3. the economy ....which only excaserbates the inherent problems with the so-called "profession" and yourself.

Leave law now or perish.

Anonymous said...

I only knew one person who has worked document rwview in the past year. Others were promised project after project which kept getting postponed until finally cancelled. Around October 2008, the document review market appeared to plummet in the DC area, and from others'
experience they havent found a permanent or temporary job since.

I wrote the following concerning permanent employment on two other blogs under comments: 'DC is a misconceived to have an abundance of jobs. First of all for many current federal jobs in law they are under different forts, military installations or military bases as the current wars continue. This means that although you work in the capacity of law, at any time you may ne deployed in war as you are technically part of military armed forces. Other agencies like FTC, federal courts (trustee positions) or SEC want old men with 15 years of experience from BIGlaw. The market is saturated so now the federal hiring agencies only want top 10 law grads w/ law review--read the qualifications section of the vacancy. Apply for vacancies and you will get any of these template responses"hiring authority no hiring at this time" "vacancy cancelled" "application under review" or my favorite "you were qualified but not the MOST qualified." I actually realized this was a definite template when a friend of mine in a different field--accounting received the EXACT wording in her rejection letter. Baby boomers are holding onto their government jobs, so others will remain in latter category and likely not surpass minimum qualifications because they are unable to obtain jobs to get experience. Ive met attorneys who it took from 3-6 years to get a government job. Dont believe the propaganda about DC, it's simply not true.'

Anonymous said...

How do you leave law with a $150,000 cow bell tied around your neck? Employers view a law license worse than a sexual predator rap sheet. They fear someone who is OVERQUALIFIED and might potentially sue them. This is like a never ending nightmare that I can never wake up from.

Anonymous said...

645
Don't be ridiculous. Many, many people leave the law. I know plenty who are working in other professions including journalism, fundraising, politics, finance, and teaching. Could it be a liability? Sure, but just about anything can be to some employers. As for you comment about suing, that's just silly. Yes, employers worry about getting sued, but not merely because you have a law degree. ANYONE can sue them. Some of the successful employment lawsuits are brought by plaintiffs with high school educations.

Anonymous said...

I live in DC, and yes, I can attest that the doc review market here has imploded. Fortunately, the government contracting market has not, and there are still tons of contract jobs for JDs and attorneys if you know where to look.

The market had become saturated with far too many temp agencies, and now we're in the middle of a "dieoff" of these firms. A lot of these firms were literally scraping by for a few years, bidding desperately on contracts with major law firms. Even when you signed up with one of them, you were in no way guaranteed of getting a job through them. These firms were basically all fighting over the same scraps -- the same shrinking pie of clients. Many are falling by the wayside. In about a year, there'll probably only be a handful of the strongest firms.

In other DC news, the George Washington University Medical School was just taken off a 2-year probation. They were placed on probation by the medical school accrediting authority for 2 reasons: (1) inadequate supervision of medical students in some hospital based classes; and (2) GWU is reported to have among the highest post-grad student indebtedness of any med school in the US. Supposedly GWU addressed these 2 problems, and they were just taken off probation.

Nice to know that at least the med school accreditors are concerned about this.

Anonymous said...

Ms. Lamm could give a flying rat's ass about all this.

How about doing something useful like recommending to the state bars that they put a moratorium on registration and CLE fees this year, which can sometimes reach to over a grand for just one state? But, no, her biglaw friends that teach many of these useless classes couldn't lose out on this extra cash, despite the fact that they have been raking it in with record profits. Instead, she runs to Barack and Congress looking for a handout and gets promptly smacked down.

. said...

It doesn't matter where you are. We are all F*&^%$! Hold on your pennies girlfriends, it's going to be a long bumpy ride.

Anonymous said...

HURON CONSULTING GROUP (which employs temps in through Dine & Synergy) and its former owners are accused of defrauding and running St. Vincent's Hospital into the ground:

"In a lawsuit filed in 2007, some of the hospital’s creditors painted a picture of a hospital system trapped between unscrupulous consultants and a passive or gullible board. The lawsuit accused David E. Speltz and Timothy C. Weis, the hospital system’s former chief executive and chief financial officer, of delaying the bankruptcy organization while they and their consulting firm collected millions of dollars in fees.

The lawsuit accused them of hiring high-priced contractors and padding their fees, instead of using hospital employees to do work. And it says they leveraged their positions with the hospital to negotiate the sale of their consulting company to Huron Consulting Group, in Chicago, also a defendant in the case.

From 2004 until the lawsuit was filed, St. Vincent’s paid Speltz & Weis, which was based in New Hampshire, $30.8 million and Huron $1.2 million in fees and expenses, according to court papers.

The expenses included a personal membership in a private university club; trips to New York for spouses; hundreds of dinners in Manhattan restaurants’ opera tickets; groceries, dry cleaning and laundry bills; and travel and housing fees for consultants from outside New York, according to court papers."

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/03/nyregion/03vincents.html?ref=nyregion&pagewanted=all

Anonymous said...

Don't worry about temping, 'cause in a few years we'll all be sold as slave labor in China, anyway.

Liz said...

So does anyone know: how would I get in on the government contracting market? Apply to government agencies directly?

Anonymous said...

Liz, sometimes these jobs are listed on Craigslist. Also, you need to find out who the major contractors are in each field... Enviro... DOJ.... Homeland Security... etc. And go to some DC career fairs.

Anonymous said...

China owns us already. Just wait till Barry meets with Dalai. Revenge dollar crash!

Anonymous said...

The "Nigerian Lawyers Association" and "Nigerian Bar Association" are based not in that swampland of a country, but in New York.
How apropos!
Or these organizations could be called doc review unions/wage lowerers.

Anonymous said...

Sorry to rain on your DC post, but word is coming out of NY that the notorious, inglorious Alex Gallard has been laid off/fired from Sullivan!!!??? Anyone know anything?

Anonymous said...

About time those weasals got fired. What took them so long???

The Yuppie Attorney said...

I just read an article at mint.com. The article stated Indians (subcontinent) are not looking to leave India for 1st world jobs. The economy in Indian has changed so much in the passed 20 years; they see better job prospects in India.

Anonymous said...

Those staffers in the S&C basement are such a bunch of degerates.

I wonder how they graduated law school?

Also, who in their right mind would want to sit in that basement 10 hours a day for 6 days a week? The permatemps are pretty wierd also. Temping as a career. Great idea. Lots of upward mobility.

Anonymous said...

Economic theory has been shattered because there is no longer any connection between the profits of American companies and the welfare of Americans. The profits of American companies are derived from the cheap labor in offshored locations and are at the expense of the American work force.

This dispossession of American labor has been heralded by offshoring’s pimps in the major universities as "the New Economy."

The "New Economy" is a hoax like most everything else the bought-and-paid-for-media feeds to Americans. There is no new economy. There is an unemployed economy. The headlined unemployment rate is just over 10 percent. The real unemployment rate, as measured by the current methodology is 17 percent. The unemployment rate as measured by the methodology of 1980 is 22 percent.

If jobs offshoring is a benefit to America, as the hired pimps of the transnational corporations claim, why is more than one-fifth of the U.S. work force unemployed? Why does the U.S. have the largest trade deficits in world history? Why is the U.S. dollar losing value over time to other tradable currencies?

Greed, and elected representatives who are toadies to special interests, are decimating the American economy.

Consider President Obama’s budgets for 2010 and 2011. The combined red ink is $2.9 trillion. No one anywhere in the world has this kind of money to lend to Washington. How will these massive deficits, never before experienced on earth, be financed? They can only be financed by the Federal Reserve destroying its own balance sheet by its purchase of toxic financial instruments from the banks thereby providing the banks with cash with which to buy the Treasury’s bonds, or by the Federal Reserve itself purchasing the Treasury’s bonds by creating new money, or by another collapse in equity values that sends investors fleeing into "safe" Treasury bonds.

American power is on the precipice, about to fall. Perhaps it is a good thing. The world will be rid of bullying, of invasions of innocent countries based on blatant lies, of torture and murder of woman and children, of redistribution of income from the poor to the rich.

The criminal record accumulated by the United States makes it the least indispensable country on earth.

Anonymous said...

2:33. 10 hours a day. Please these loser sit there 222 hours a day - some even sleep there on wonderboxes. 7 days a week. I am talking about the perm staffers. The poor temps get kicked out after a few hours.

Some of the staffers were easily making $13,000 bu sleeping in the caseroom and billing those hours.

Anonymous said...

Sorry I mean to say $130,000.

Anonymous said...

Down to $20 bucks an hour. At 2000 hrs that is 40 grand a year with no benefits for a dead end job!

Our client, a Fortune 500 Financial Institutional Company, is seeking attorneys, actively barred in any state and with Hedge Fund and financial institution experience to work on a project in North Jersey. Interested and qualified candidates are invited to submit their resumes to the email address above. Please send your resume in WORD and include 'Document Review - Newark, NJ' in the subject line of your email.


Location: Newark, NJ
Compensation: 20-22/hr

Anonymous said...

At least i finally got a job interview.

www.toiletlaw.com

Im stuck in shitlaw but im clinging to that liferaft as best I can!

Anonymous said...

I don't know that the US can ever fall completely, but at one point the Roman, Islamic, French, Turkish and British empires, just to name a few, ruled the world. How are those "empires" doing now?

The US will be replaced by India and China, maybe the Middle East as well.

Anonymous said...

What's idiotic is that we giving it all away to the China and India for the sake of saving a few pennies.

Notice liberals, no cap and trade in India or China. In fact, they are bot opting out of Copenhagen.
Its not all Obama's fault, but he has the wrong solutions.

In over his head and what shreds of hope remain are being dashed. That's what you get for elected a savior.

Obama, like all the rest, is just in it for himself.

I wish he would actually do something about outsourcing, instead of just talk.

Anonymous said...

If you notice, no American politician (except maybe Kucinich and Sanders) even mentions outsourcing as the ultimate root cause of our economic problems. They don't dare to pin it on outsourcing because Big Business will put a hit out on them in the next election.

SO it's a million other excuses... bad loans... cheap oil... expensive oil... foreign oil... currency manipulation... lack of education... training the workforce for "tomorrow's jobs"... single moms... abortion... teen pregnancy... health care... child care... renewable energy... windmills... solar power... terrorism... Iraq... Iran...

IT'S THE OUTSOURCING, STUPID!!!!

IT'S WHY WE HAVE 10 PERCENT UNEMPLOYMENT AND CHINA HAS 10 PERCENT GROWTH!!!!

FUCK EVERYTHING ELSE AND REMEMBER THE "TWO TENS"... AND VOTE ACCORDINGLY!!!

Anonymous said...

Government contracting is the way to go in DC. I spent 18 months at Dept. of Interior & Dept. of Justice with Labat-Anderson - making $35p/h plus OT, 401K, medical & 2 weeks paid vacation.

Not a bad gig and given the nature of the work (Indian Trust Fund Litigation) the projects are unlikely to end anytime soon. Also plenty of opportunity to do some business traveling.

Anonymous said...

Another reality check about government contracting: It's my understanding that if you've done document review even for a short while you'll likely conflict out since you were on the other side of DOJ, FTC, FCC and other federal agencies

Anonymous said...

Anonymous said...

If you notice, no American politician (except maybe Kucinich and Sanders) even mentions outsourcing as the ultimate root cause of our economic problems. They don't dare to pin it on outsourcing because Big Business will put a hit out on them in the next election.

=============

exactly. If a politician goes against big business in general or against small business, even, or against the military industrial complex or big pharma or against BoozeCo, then there are essentially UNLIMITED funds available to defeat that poltician in his/her next contest.

Anonymous said...

Colleagues, law school only provides a picture frame. You must acquire a picture. You have to have a specialty, a niche, or you will remain on this sinking treadmill.

Anonymous said...

Sad but true, outsourcing is why there is not job growth. Instead of "jobless recovery" they should just say "assholes outsourcing your job" to save a few pennies, avoid discrimination lawsuits, avoid labor laws, evade environmental laws and gut the unions and lower American wages across the board.

jobless recovery = rampant outsourcing.

Anonymous said...

http://www.myattorneyblog.com/about/

and

http://www.gabesguide.com/

Same guy?

Anonymous said...

We need welfare reform.

Do you know how many people work off the books and receive subsidized government housing, food stamps, and free health care? My friend was living in welfare housing back in NYC and she had a spacious 1 bedroom overlooking the Hudson. The ghetto it was not! Illegal aliens come over, pop out a baby, and get the same thing. It's insane. No wonder people have "given up" looking for official on the books work. Only suckers work on the books and pay taxes.

Anonymous said...

And the relentless gutting of our profession continues...taken from the LPO shill's blog (of course they do not permit comments and it's blogpost...what a fraud).

Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Financial gains underlie LPO work
Pricewaterhouse Coopers in its study has analyzed in detail the growth of LPO industry. They have found that legal services outsourcing provides the highest cost savings of 44% in comparison to other markets. The research also revealed that LPO services realise the highest profit margin for providers, with an average margin of 29%, ahead of IT (24%), finance and accounting (21%) and procurement (19%).

All these figures are indicative of the fact that legal outsourcing is the best avenue to provide cost saving, which in the present state of economic slowdown is the most coveted prize. The research also highlights the expansion plans of LPO service providers that points the increase in business meted out to them.

http://legallyours.blogspot.com/

Anonymous said...

LPO thing is overrated.

My friend that works in the business says that much of the work that is coming back is awful. What a surprise.

It's not like much is being saved anyway. Investing in the extra security and technology, the added risk of malpractice, and the logistical difficulties of setting up a review half way across the world can't be overstated. Furthermore, communication difficulties are very much there.

Anonymous said...

2:17

What a moronic comment. You're basing your whole impression of "the LPO thing" on a comment from one random person?

The point is that, while all the things you refer to may be true to varying extents, THE OUTSOURCERS DO NOT GIVE A FUCK.

Saving money is absolutely, absolutely their number one priority.

Anonymous said...

To a degree.

But when the boxes have to go out the door the next day, and you examine them and notice that they are chock full of non-responsive material (or worse yet, privileged material), this might lead to heartache if your opponent decides to raise a stink.

Anonymous said...

11:12 sez...

"Notice liberals, no cap and trade in India or China."


India's doing the capping -- capping our wages.

China's doing the trading -- trading their rickshaws for Mercedes, on our misspent Benjies.

Anonymous said...

My unemployment benefits are expiring soon.
For my base year, I had very high quarter earnings, but did not make half that amount in other quarters so will not be eligible on that account.
If State uses my alternate year I will be eligible but will only get a few dollars a week. I would get more if I was NOT eligible for a new claim and continue on extensions on my old claim.

Is is my choice to use the alternate year or not - or is it up to the state.

Anonymous said...

That happened to me, as well.

I thought I would be productive and do some temp work when it was available. Little did I know that I would be penalized for doing it.

Anonymous said...

So, 4:04 they used your alternate year?

Anonymous said...

EP Slime review starts monday in NYC. $25/hr 40 hour cap. unreal

Anonymous said...

The decline of the wage system in France - interesting and maybe of interest here?

http://theviewfrombrittany.blogspot.com/2009/11/decline-of-wage-system.html

Anonymous said...

Another reality check I forgot: most government contractors expect you to already some leveal of security clearance and aren't willing to pay for you to obtain it; another hoop for a job you won't likely get (just posting the reality)

Anonymous said...

The ABA stopped updating their free online CLEs at "CLE Now!" In fact, they took a lot of the ones they had earlier down, though it could because they became dated for purposes of getting credit.

Anonymous said...

10:31

In all government contracting positions I have held (and I'm still working in the field now), either the agency or the contractor has paid for my security clearances. I have never paid.

Anonymous said...

6:00

Interesting article.

If you really look at the macro-trends in the global economy, all wage labor except those sectors which actually require the physical presence of the worker, is moving to low-wage countries, and our political lack the interest or political will to change this.

There is theoretically no limit to how far this can go, up to breaking point. In other words, theoretically ALL positions which don't require the physical presence of the worker (either by law or by practical necessity) could and probably will be outsourced.

It's the law of "comparative advantage" -- the comparative advantage of China, India, etc. here being labor costs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage

If you track the incessant rise of outsourcing and offshoring over the past 30 years, it's evident that the employment gap created by outsourced jobs/sectors in First World countries (particularly the USA) has been filled by smaller and smaller businesses, sole-proprietorships, individual entrepreneurialism, and bottom feeders in the growing "scam economy" (particularly in the Southwestern US).

These "jobs" do not carry benefits and are tenuous in many ways. They are characterized by "workers" literally
living paycheck-to-paycheck, and in many cases, hardly qualify as legitimate employment which merits being counted in the overall employment statistics.

This is a vast, macroeconomic trend which may not be readily visible to many people if they focus on the small, the anecdotal, or on temporary blips in the unemployment figures, but becomes glaringly obvious when you step back and analyze the big picture.

In the future, China and India will suck from us even more of the global multinationals with wage-based jobs, benefits, worker protections, etc. -- as long as they have the competitive advantage in labor costs -- which they will continue to have for long enough to destroy the last vestiges of the "American Middle Class".

Emily said...

You retarted animals couldn't even be trusted to clean my toilet.

What makes you think you can work anyplace else? You always come running back to me, bitches. Take it.

Anonymous said...

Re: "its the outsourcing people"....Yes, outsourcing is a major component of the N-Wordifcation (meaning marginalization if not utter destruction) of the american middle class. But, no one here seems to want to get to the 800 guerilla that is at the center of it all....

Who are the folks who created and maintain the caste system in lawland and in much of the rest of american society, under which so many lemmings suffer?

Who? Is it Nbigwe the Nigerian who is just taking advantage of the system that the wicked created and maintain? No, no, no....Is it Vinnie, from the shore? No, no, no...Is it Vladimir from one of the Iznaznian republics? No, no, no....Is it the great and schlubby uber TTT Seton Hall Law grad, L4L, aka Scotty Bullock? No, no, no....is it the sons and daughters of the butcher, the baker, the candle stick maker or auto mechanic, plumber or construction worker who somehow, some way, made good and made it through law school...ANY law school? No, no, no.. Is it Tyrone, Raheem or Shaquisha from the hood that somehow made good because, as they tell damn near errry kid in the hood, that "education is the key"?....or thought that they attained the Man's status through the purchase of a worthless piece of paper printed by the Man known as a JD? No, no, no......

Are their surnames the names that predonminate at the top of almost any law firm's letter head? Are they the bosses, overlords and decision makers in any of this? At almost any corporation or law firm? At any board of directors? At any staffing or recruiting agency? At any shareholders meeting?

In today's lawland, as in much of american society, if you are not a member of the Preferred, Protected and or seriously Connected classes......
..(i.e. the folks who created and own the Bush or Obamaesq, amateur figure head place holders....in other words, those who begrudge a dime paid to any US citizen that is not they when they could have paid a chinaman or indian a penny....i.e....those who look something like Jerry Seinfeld, Martha Stewart, and the ones that they prefer...)

....then you too, like most black folk, have been rendered useless.

Its not just the outsourcing, its the wicked who create it, who demand it, who effectuate it as national business and political policy. And for you moveon.org types....they are not some faceless or non-human corporate entity. They are devilish forms of humanity. Flesh and blood. They breathe air...not the same crappy air that proles like you and I breathe but a more rarified air.

You should know who they are by now. You may have erroneously thought that by bearing some resemblence, or having approximately the same education, YOU were one of THEM.

But now, you, indeed, have been brutally awakened to the fact that you are NOT them. Never could be and never will be one of THEM.

Face it, if you are not in good with them, or, with rare exception, if you are not ONE OF THEM, then you are shit out of luck.

You know who they are. Yet, many of you don't want to get to that. Its not PC to indentify who causes your suffering. Who is ass raping you daily. You want to pretend that its some sort of nasty, wicked, nameless, faceless, raceless, religionless, cultureless non human entity. Some generic villian.

Open your eyes fools. Face the facts. Get with reality. Admit who your tormentors are. The look of their minions (Obama) might change from time to time but for the most part, you should know by now who they are. Then, perhaps, you might move towards doing something about it. Until then, keep your heads in the sand while your lives, careers and that of any god forsaken children that you might have, are utterly destroyed.

Remember, its not nameless corporations that outsource your lives, its wicked flesh and blood mostly of 2 particular types that outsource your careers, nation and lives. You know what they look like. Who they are and that you are not they.

That is all, good luck and god bless.

Anonymous said...

Outsourcing is a boogeyman. The work that is coming back is absolute crap. Don't believe all the hype. Trust me.

Emily said...

Finding a competent, reliable reviewer is like trying to find a nun in a whorehouse.

Anonymous said...

11:31

Duuuhhhh....drool drool drooll....

Who gives a fuck?

Outsourcing legal work is not a new phenomenon that just started last Friday, it has been going on in the legal doc review industry for well over a decade now.

If the work that is coming back is "absolute crap", this would have been noticed a long, long time ago, and these mofos would have stopped this shit. Demand would have dried up. It would have been SHUT DOWN.

I'm not denying that the work coming back is absolute crap, though. It very well may be, in most instances.

But why hasn't it been stopped? Why are they still outsourcing?

Because it's PROFITABLE (DUUUUHHH!)

If the trade-off of less profits versus less quality had been found unacceptable by the firms, the clients, ANYONE, this shit would have been SHUT DOWN LONG AGO.

From the fact that it hasn't been shut down, and is only growing and growing as we speak, we can infer that the tradeoff (whatever that may be) is VERY ACCEPTABLE... and that therefore, outsourcing will CONTINUE.

DUUUUHHHHH....droool droool drool.... gurgle gurgle

Anonymous said...

Someone will have to care eventually. Somewhere a firm will fuck up discovery badly enough, either in an Indian legal sweatshop or a corresponding basement sweatshop in NYC where people make $20/hr, to get sued for malpractice. Accuracy is an afterthought on doc review, and while it may not happen soon enough to help any of us out, it will come back to bite someone, if it hasn't already.

And hey, if I'm wrong about that, then we all need to face reality - we're totally worthless. If our skills and earning power would be nothing but a drain on the bottom line of our would-be employers, then why the hell are we entitled to these jobs in the first place?

Anonymous said...

I am sure only the most top of the line work is going to come out of that Slime sweatshop.

Anonymous said...

2:03pm: The folks who control your destiny, those who are the members of the PPC...the Preferred, Protected and Connected classes DO NOT care about you or your kind. You are, indeed, a worthless prole to them. You have nothing that makes them feel that you are worthy of a good living.

To the powers that be you are not entitled to anything. You should not even be allowed to breathe their air. You are a pox upon the land to them.

The sooner you get your head out of your ass on this concept the sooner you can move on.

God bless you lemming.

Anonymous said...

Does anyone read those long-ass comments???

Anonymous said...

Emily is a worthless cunt.

Anonymous said...

Seems like I am getting fucked by the state for working last year and not just sitting around collecting unemployment. I have to file a new claim and will get peanuts compared to if I wasn't eligible for one and could collect the extensions.

Anyhoo, need to find some work asap. Receruiters are not calling -has anyone worked at Target, Starbucks, Duane Reade etc. Yes, I am putting my pride aside. I don't want to mess up my debt. Then I won't even get a government job.

Please let me know if you have worked at any such places - I fear them as they are quite ghetto but I don't have a choice!!

Anonymous said...

ass comments???

Anonymous said...

2:03 said...

"Someone will have to care eventually. Somewhere a firm will fuck up discovery badly enough, either in an Indian legal sweatshop or a corresponding basement sweatshop in NYC where people make $20/hr, to get sued for malpractice."

Wishful thinking. The very fact that Indian outsourcing has gone on as long as it has, over 10 years, without a catastrophe or lawsuit like this (at least one not big enough), is enough to tell me it will continue on unabated for a lot longer.

Toyota makes cars with sticky accelerators causing accidents, implements a billion dollar recall under government pressure, and the CEO gets on national TV in Japan and bows delivering a profuse apology. But do we stop buying Japanese cars? Are Japanese cars now banned in the US? Ha ha... Despite what Detroit may want, it'll never happen.

One mistake, even a huge slip-up costing billions of dollars, will not undo outsourcing. This is pure, and TYPICAL wishful thinking, hard-hit Americans scrounging around for an excuse to sell, to promote some counter-globalization rebellion that is just not gonna happen.

Take a good hard look at the economics. One LPO team fucks up and delivers bad docs on a project, causing a law firm to lose a case.

So the losing client sues its lawyers. Then what? The law firm impleads the LPO? OK, great. How much malpractice insurance do you think the LPO carries? Are LPOs even required to carry malpractice insurance?

You can have any other kind of scenario... corporation suing the LPO that it hired directly... Law firm client suing the LPO directly (not very likely).

But, so what? One case won't bankrupt or shut down the LPO industry, and in general, malpractice lawsuits against corporate law firms are rare, and winning ones are even more rare. Generally to win damages, you have to prove not just malpractice, but that the underlying claim would have had merit. There are no damages available if you can't prove that.

That's one side of the equation -- showing how hard it is to sue and win a big malpractice claim.

Now, on the other side, firms are hiring LPOs all the time and saving huge, untold bundles of cash just to do their bread and butter litigation.

Be realistic: One big lawsuit is not gonna counteract the effect of thousands of cases where the firms and clients save big bucks everyday.

Which side weighs more in dollars?

The numbers just don't add up and never will.

Anonymous said...

11:21

WE RESEMBLE THOSE REMARKS!!!

Baxter J. Worthington IV, Esq.
Shlomo Benjamin Glickstein, Esq.

of

Worthington, Glickstein, Witherspoon & Moskowitz, LLP

--Representing Global Financial Cabals Since 1666--

Anonymous said...

"Now, on the other side, firms are hiring LPOs all the time and saving huge, untold bundles of cash just to do their bread and butter litigation.

Be realistic: One big lawsuit is not gonna counteract the effect of thousands of cases where the firms and clients save big bucks everyday."

Jut more of the same, tired, outdated rhetoric. It's been proven time and again, that outsourcing does NOT SAVE MUCH MONEY.

The real reason work is shipped overseas is to avoid complying with anti-discrimination laws, hiring laws, other labor laws, environmental laws and silly things like OSHA requirements. There really isn't much money to be saved anymore.

So when you see the code words like "saves money" or "more efficient" what they really mean is that they don't have to worry about hiring under represented minorities or complying with labor laws. It's an excuse not to hire African American attorneys, women and others traditionally without a voice in biglaw. Just take a look at the partner ranks in any large law firm or the in-house counsel in any large corporation.

By shipping the jobs overseas, it now means they can even more tightly control the flow of workers into biglaw and giving the partners even more control.

The Yolanda Youngs of the world will no longer even get a whiff inside biglaw's ivory towers. No more Nigerians clogging the Halls muttering in Tagalog on their cell phones for 20 minutes at a clip.

No, it will soon vanish. Only those with acceptable foreign language skills, e.g. Finnish, German, Swedish, Thai, Mandarin, Spanish or French will be on doc review.

The rabble will be no longer even be permitted to grovel in Oliver Twist fashion in the cockroach infested basements.

The idea that American attorneys are, when all is said and done, significantly more expensive than shipping the work offshore to be performed by unlicensed foreigners, is utterly moronic and preposterous. We all know the real reasons, and they have little to do with the price of services.

Anonymous said...

Nigerians speak Tagalog?

Anonymous said...

7:07

Yes, the Nigerians are speaking Tagalog, complaining about all those Yoruba-speaking Filipino attorneys who are exploiting their sorry asses!

Anonymous said...

6:35 Any of youz cabal boys single?????

Anonymous said...

By the way, start your own blog if you want to write long-ass Phd disserations.

Anonymous said...

Yolanda Young!

Anonymous said...

Okay, looks like a doc review rate for licensed attorneys in Chicago just went below $20 an hour. Please prepare for the end of days. Tom, please pick this up and post on the main blog page.

-------------------------------


Job Description
Classification: Contract Legal Professionals

Compensation: $19 to $20 per hour

Licensed attorneys needed for month-long electronic document review project downtown. Please send resumes ASAP to [Click Here to Email Your Resumé]

All applicants applying for U.S. job openings must be authorized to work in the United States. All applicants applying for Canadian job openings must be authorized to work in Canada.

Located in major markets throughout North America, Robert Half Legal is the premier provider of legal professionals on a full-time, project and temporary basis to law firms and corporate legal departments. We offer our candidates challenging assignments, competitive compensation and benefits, and skills-enhancement training. Robert Half Legal is better at finding you challenging new career opportunities because we come from the legal industry ourselves, with a majority of our staffing executives holding JDs or other legal credentials. Additionally, we were just ranked number one in our industry on Fortune's list of America's Most Admired Companies.

Anonymous said...

Hire a Nigerian......put Americans out of work.
They don't know what they're doing.

Robert Half as before is driving the rate to $19.... but their Bloomberg rate got down to $15.

People would work there for free for the prestige. I am a J.D.

Anonymous said...

Dear 4:23 (guy looking to work at Target)

Wow, you are like the third person on this blog that worked a little bit and then got screwed over on a technicality trying to step into your next tier. Jeez, talk about bad luck.

First there was the one guy who was supposed to step up a tier in December but then worked a bit so then his benefits pushed back into Jan and originally was freaking out because the tier jumping was set to end Dec 31. (this was rectified)

Then there was the guy (same guy?) who was panicking because he was set to tier jump in Feb but if he got called up on a job then he'd be pushed back into March, which for the time being will be too "late" for a tier jump.

Now there's you, the guy who worked a bit and now has actual income in his/her year of unemployment, enough to qualify for a whole new claim, but at a much reduced rate. sheesh. (btw, getting a reduced rate is exactly the purpose of the design of the whole "benefit year" system, it seems to me).

So yea, sorry about your troubles.

If you are serious about working in retail:

As for working at Target, I will say, it's only as ghetto as the actual location of your Target. The Targets out in the 'burbs are decent and are staffed with pretty decent people. I used to work at one and it was not a totally unpleasant experience.

Here are some bulletpoints:
- schedule was fairly flexible.
- people were nice (both customers and co-workers). One of my fellow co-workers was an MBA. Another was a teacher trying to break into teaching and substituting from time to time. majority were average joes though.
- pay was decent, though I would think this depends on your particular location. Mine paid well above minimum wage. I don't want to give you any ideas that won't be met, but my location paid double digits per hour. Frankly, if you're on unemployment right now at 430/week in NY State, a 40 hour workweek at Target (at least in my location) would give you a comparable gross (of course, then there are payroll taxes to factor in).
- job is mundane, but no more mundane than doc review. Mostly shelving items. Cashier would be when you're most busy. But really, it's just scanning bar codes. Most people use credit cards and work the system themselves. So scanning and bagging. Be sure to be nice to the customers even on a crappy day. At my location, there were mystery shoppers (yea, you'd think that's a joke, but apparently they exist) at least once a month. My store generally got good grades.
- on rare occasion, you might help someone cart a large item (for example, furniture) to their vehicle. It happened to me on three occasions. Two out of the three, I got a nice tip out of it.

I think that's it for my Target thoughts. My particular Target was one of the newer ones and tended to be clean, it seemed.

As for Starbucks, I've never worked there, but I understand it's not a totally bad place to work. Baristas start at $12/hr, but I don't know if "barista" is entry-level or something after "trainee" or whatever. But once again, I think a 40 hr workweek at Starbucks would bring a comparable gross to unemployment compensation.

I know nothing about working at Duane Reade.

Good luck in the job hunt. I'm not sure if I'd mention being a lawyer. You might seem overqualified. On the other hand, I did mention it when applying to Target, and the hiring individual seemed to be impressed, so I guess it could go the other way as well. I don't think he was trying to be a jerk and thinking it would be awesome to be the boss of a lawyer, but I guess that could've come into play. The guy was also a career downgrader though, so maybe he had some sympathy for my position. I no longer work there, and when I left, he tried to get me to stay on for the weekends or whatever.

Anonymous said...

Don't turn on the news right now it states "More bad economic news" and since the recession began 8.4 million people have lost their jobs...Anyway, I found out from a fellow attorney (she's in MD) that she lost her job as a state prosecutor this past fall. She works at Starbucks and collect unemployment. I told her I can't believe you work at Starbucks--her response was basically doing what you have to do to survive and she was talking about if she became homeless...at least she enjoyed the home she had while she had it..this is getting sadder and sadder, at least when your friends were working you had hope.

Anonymous said...

It is tragic. Just remember that when people outsource to "save money". Any savings are financed off the back of the American Middle Class.

Outsourcing Steals Work from American Lawyers Daily.

Anonymous said...

Can anyone fail to miss the irony in this Target stuff?

In America, now even erstwhile professionals are downgrading career aspirations so fast, that we're becoming a nation of cashiers and baggers at retail outlets that downgrading their lifestyles (but still buying 100% Chinese crap -- just cheaper crap, now), to prevent a few people in a boardroom in Minneapolis from defaulting on their jumbo-loan mortgages, while increasing the nation's trade deficit even more, so living standards go down even more...

THIS IS FUCKING ABSURD!!!! American capitalism is in the Shitter, and We The People put it there with our fucking abject stupidity.

Anonymous said...

Here we go again with the misplaced focus:

"Outsourcing Steals Work from American Lawyers Daily."

No, its not "OUTSOURCING" that steals work from American lawyers and or the American middle class.

Its the devils that look like Martha Stewart and Jerry Seinfeld who make it their policy to use outsourcing as a tool to aid in the rendering of the proles, the american middle class, feckless and useless.

Quit trying to be PC about this by making the villian out to be a faceless corporation or a mere tactic that the classist and racist elite uses to destroy normal americans.

Outsouring is but only one of the many tools that your overlords use against the rest of america. The elites who look like Mr. Seinfeld and Ms.Stewart and who have firms with names like the asshole above posted (i.e. the aforementioned fictional but quite illustrative Baxter J. Worthington IV, Esq., Shlomo Benjamin Glickstein, Esq.
of Worthington, Glickstein, Witherspoon & Moskowitz, LLP) will never be satisfied until their labor costs are almost nil and until all regular americans are totally castrated.

Understand this, its evil, vile, racist, classist and devilsh people who cause all of this. And most of the elite are of 2 particular tribes. You know who they are. You know where they work and where they dwell. You know who their minions are. If you don't then you are a blind fool.

And if you are not one of them then you need to know that you are allocated only one or perhaps two outs in an inning while they seem to have around 6 outs to play with and are starting out at 2nd or 3rd bass.

Quit demonizing tactics and start demonizing the devils that run all of this.

Anonymous said...

Thanks 9:04. Yes, back in Dec. I did post asking about extensions - but I wouldn't have bothered had I known the state would screw me over a new claim and give me like $5 a week.

Anyway, thanks for the info. How long did it take for you to get the job with Target? And will they hire you if you are honest and say you are only interested in short-term work like a month or two?
Yeah, the burb Targets are great. I am in NYC so it's gonna be pretty ghetto here - hey I worked at S&C and the staff attorneys there were pretty ghetto - so that's NYC for you. Good decent people are only in the burbs now.

Anonymous said...

By the way how do they hire staff attorneys at firms like S&C. Most of them are pretty low-level - and many of the contract attorneys are more polished, decent and well-rounded. My friend, an Ivy League, graduate applied there for a perm spot and got turned down but they have all kinds of crazy staff attorneys from Touro and Hofstra running the show. How does that work?

Anonymous said...

I notice the same thing with Hudson. They tend to prefer deranged saddlebag queens.

Perhaps, they are looking for people who have no exit opportunities and won't be jumping ship.

S&C is definitely an insame asylum. They should hand out crayons on the first day and let everyone draw on the walls.

Anonymous said...

The 10 year public service loan forgiveness was a start, next step is to just wipe out all loan debts for homes and student loans. And then to ignore the national deficit. Money is not really an actual thing to begin with, it's all imaginary. Nothing is stopping the US government from just deciding tomorrow "We don't have a national debt, too bad if you think we owe you money, we're not paying you back." That'd fix the problems quickly.

Anonymous said...

"Quit demonizing tactics and start demonizing the devils that run all of this."

Nice try, Babu. If the outsourcing of legal work stopped tomorrow, there would be thousands of American, licensed, JD holding attorneys who did things the right way that would be back to work. End of story.

It is ironic, but not unexpected, that professional class (which is being outsourced in a big way) is forced to retrain and enter the service sector.

We create and export less and less all the while importing more and more, which is a boon for Target and Walmart, but little else.

It's a race to the gutter baby!

Outsourcing Steals Work from American Lawyers Daily.

Anonymous said...

11:41 (person asking about Target)

Sorry to hear that you are the same person from Dec. As a quick thing, I would say re-check to make sure you actually will trigger a new claim. It sounds to me that you didn't really work that much. Make sure you have at least 16 "credit weeks" in the base year. At least, that's a requirement in my state.

As for Target, I think part of it was extremely fortuitous luck/timing. I didn't wait that long to hear back, but the people that interviewed with me on the same day apparently had applied months earlier, so I caught a good time in the cycle, I guess. The short-term thing actually made me nervous as well. I can't remember exactly who brought it up first, but I think I did. At the same time, though, my interviewer tried to prepare me for the possibility that hours would be dramatically reduced in the future months so it worked out fine for the both of us. We both kinda knew that it was a possibility. Since I have no idea about the Target you'd be applying to, I'm not sure I would mention the short-term thing. And maybe not the lawyer thing because it would make it seem like you might leave in a couple months. I just don't know what the proper advice for you is right here. Like I said before, you could always run into a fellow "downgrader" who happens to be interviewing you and they might have sympathy for your situation. Sorry I can't be more helpful.

Really, best of luck to you and all the unemployed attorneys out there.

Jubilee Now said...

THROW OFF YOUR CHAINS SNUGGIE PEOPLE!!!

YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT THE DEBT THAT ENSLAVES YOU!!

Anonymous said...

11:44, the answer is that at most firms like S&C they don't hire staff attorneys anymore. Its a job that went into extinction with this recession. Most of the major firms shut down or greatly scaled back their staff attorney programs.

S&C is one exception, aside from the whole internal investigation/Aley Gayllard fiasco I dont think they've laid off or fired anyone during the downturn.


I dont think firms want Ivy Leaguers on staff. They dont want alpha type personalities who are going to bump heads with their associates. They tend to pick people with TTT degrees or who are "stuck" at a bad point in their careers. People who are smart but with issues. These types of people will be grateful for the thankless work, can be whipped like oxen and won't walk away. And as for S&C, the place is overrun by corruption and office politics, even to get consistent temp work there now you have to smooch at least 2 sets of buttcheeks and often times its not even that easy.

Anonymous said...

The thing about S&C is that ultimately you will have to interview with the Caribbean management. Everyone but their own types seem to threaten them. A few years ago the people who hired paralegals and staff attorneys [well at that point even the staff attorneys were merely referred to as paralegals] were managed by a bunch of white chicks. These chicks although annoying were fairly well-bred and went to decent colleges so they recruited fairly decent people. Then the management became a little ghetto -and you began to see more ghetto staffers. Most of it depends on who recommends you and how you do in your interview with the Jamacian top-dogs doing the hiring. They tend not to like anyone better than them - which is pretty much anyone. I know of some really nice intelligent people who were turned down and some real ghetto whores and jackasses that were hired. It all comes down to how much the people recommending and interviewing you "like" you and how insecure/secure they feel with you. I know one girl who was extremely hard-working, very well-educated, honorable [in short, not your standard temp] blah blah blah but the woman she worked for did not recommend her purely out of competiveness even though this girl worked for her for two years and lugged boxes like a mule. All this while people less than her were getting hired simply because their bosses were not threatened by them. If you are working for a woman you'd best be ugly and if you are working for a guy you'd best be hot. A hot girl working for a woman fuggedabouit honey!!

I don't know about the rest of the firm, but yes some of these managers are pretty corrupt and even in bed with greasy temp agency ladies. Why would any well-bred person want to work here perm in the first place?

Anonymous said...

By the way anyone know the name of the new temp web site that lists agencies with links? They posted here a while back...

Anonymous said...

I agree. Back in the day, 5 or 6 years ago, S&C used to be known as the place that hired a ton of entry levels and required the mega-hours. It was like a graduation reunion. It was kind of a zoo, but there tended to be many well bred people from decent schools who were just out of school.

Just had a project there, and boy how have things changed. G-H-E-T-T-O. Aggressive retards.

Anonymous said...

5:06

So in other words, this vaunted, prestigious white shoe law firm has what is essentially a race-based caste system, like something out of Apartheid South Africa, or worse, Huxley's Brave New World.... everybody, the associates, the hiring people, the staff associates, the paralegals, down to the lowest rung of peons, knows their place and know better than to trespass out of their lots in life... and to a large extent, these slots are filled all with a certain stereotypical race, sex, nationality of people who typically occupy these positions.

It really is like Brave New World -- the associates are Alpha Minuses and Beta Pluses; the staff attorneys are Beta Minuses... the all-Caribbean hiring crew are Gammas... the paras are Deltas... etc.

Anonymous said...

Another friend of mine--not a recent grad hasn't practiced law since 2006. Although she's a licensed attorney she teaches at a paralegal institute!

Anonymous said...

There are some people working as paralegals/staff attorneys aka glorified paralegals at law firms today that would not make the cut to be a janitor, a construction worker, a cleaning maid, a fireman. These people have much more honor and breeding than the people I have met at law firms.
No joke. They may have studied the law but as far as conducting themselves they have no poise, no dignity, no integrity, no honor. Just a bunch of greedy weasels - many of them medicated. They bring shame to the law - it would have been better if they had just gone into a profession they were more suited for - used car salesmen.

Anonymous said...

If you work in one of these ghetto environments, you seriously have to get out. Not all review projects are like this. Working in a ghetto, classless environment where everyone is unmotivated and passive/aggressive will really do damage to your psyche.

Anonymous said...

Interesting article

http://www.americandiscovery.com/about/globallegaloutsourcing.pdf

Anonymous said...

"Outsourcing Steals Work from American Lawyers Daily."

No fool, get the focus on where it belongs....the mostly WASPY and JEWY snake devils that bring outsouring about.

Its racist, classist and elitist devilish WASP and JEW bastards that steal work from american lawyers daily.

Racist, classist and elitist mostly WASPY and JEWY devils ulitilize the tool of outsourcing to destroy those who are not they in much of american society.

Outsourcing is nothing but one of the many tools for the WASP and JEW firm partners to steal american legal jobs from american attorneys.

Anonymous said...

The whole "people like Jerry Seinfeld and Martha Stewart" schtick is really starting to get old. At first it was just annoying, but now it's just appearing way too much and with too much frequency.

I miss the days when Bullock was interim moderator and actually bothered to block the crazy posters.

Anonymous said...

Most of the lawfirm partners, office managers and people who control lawland are devoid of any honor, integrity, decency or shred of humanity. Most are money grubbing, shylock traitors to this country and should be tarred and feathered by their underlings and society in general. Most of those who control law are a pox upon society.

And the fact is is that most of those who control lawland are not the nigerians, the guidos, the blue collar psuedo white folks and especially not the black americans or carribean types.

You can say what you will about things being old hat but the fact is is that it is old hat who controls much of lawland and most of american society and it is most definately not those mentioned above. You know who they are and what they do and who they do it to.

You know who their minions are too....think their WASPY and Jewish daughters and gay sons and daughters. Think their golden tokens too.

Focus lemmings...focus on the evil ones that bring you the pain of marginalization. They are flesh and blood, not some inhuman tactic or faceless corporation. They are the elite and they have nothing but contempt for the likes of the most of you. They display it here on this thread and this site when they speak or write of your "ghettoization" of their once alledgely pristine and honorable firms and so-called "profession".

Most of those who control lawland along with their minions are no better than snake oil or used car salesman. No smarter either. Shun them like the traitorous dogs and vile slime that they are.

Anonymous said...

DOC WORK FOR RAZA!

www.homies.tv

Anonymous said...

If you are interested in giving NYLS bad press, I have pictures of their career services website for Spring Recruitment. There are two employers listed: Army JAG and Air Force JAG

Anonymous said...

oh, me want be lawyer! me want big money and nice car!! me get 150 on LSAT, me go to Seton Hall law school! ohhh... now me done, why no job??? Why work in basement???? Me no understand!!! bad!!! me write blog!!!

Anonymous said...

Die in a fire.

Anonymous said...

10:42

Sounds like the "Caveman Lawyer" from SNL...

Anonymous said...

dental plan lisa needs braces

Anonymous said...

How do these people even get jobs that pay that much. Christ!
She majored in political science and drama.

a big WTF to the whole legal industry

Anonymous said...

Getting back to the original question, I think it depends on with whom you'r registered. I've only had couple weeks of downtime since August, and have been offered two projects in the past week that paid $35+. While quite a few projects have been short-term, 3-4 weeks each, it seems things are still going well. Perhaps, I've just been lucky, but things aren't that bad...at least for contract work. I do, however, desperately miss my Associate position in BigLaw (laid off last Spring).

Anonymous said...

God, no wonder you folks are unemployed - hateful, racist, bitter. No one would hire you.

Travel Company in Delhi said...

Thanks for sharing this information. i actually like your blog post considerably . you've got really shared a informative and interesting blog post with people..