Temporary Attorney: The Sweatshop Edition

Nancy Pelosi And The Student Lending Scam

2011-04-12T09:45:00.002-04:00

"It's not often that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi camps under the GOP tent, but that's just what happened recently when she broke ranks with Bay Area Democrats and the Obama administration and voted to keep billions of dollars in federal student aid flowing into the coffers of for-profit colleges.

She had her reasons. Some of the biggest recipients of the $32 billion in federal student loans and Pell Grants each year paid to for-profits are in her district - including major Democratic donor John Sperling, founder of the online University of Phoenix, the nation's largest for-profit college.

The issue arose after Education Secretary Arne Duncan proposed a rule that would stiffen federal aid requirements for for-profits, making them provide stats showing that their students actually are getting the jobs they trained for."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/04/10/BAHT1IT646.DTL

Graveyard of Dreams: De Novo's "Night Shift"

2011-03-16T12:12:00.000-04:00

De Novo sent this email out yesterday afternoon. $30 flat to start work the same day and pull a mandatory "all nighter."

If you are interested in the below project, please answer all questions following the job description. Feel free to forward to anyone you think may be interested. Must be bar admitted somewhere in the US.

Start date: Tonight, 3/15 at 6pm or 7pm (tba)for training. Case room is open tonight 6pm or 7pm-8am. MUST WORK 4 HOURS AT LEAST TONIGHT.
Rate: $30 flat (no ot or time and ½ for ot)
Hours: 10-12 hrs/day
Case room hours: Mon-Sun, 9pm-8am
Location: De Novo 555 Madison, 3rd fl
Breaks: 30 min mandatory
Approximate Duration: 3/15-3/21

The stampede of coders wrangling for this gig rivaled the Japanese earthquake's Richter-scale readings. Within minutes of this broadcast email, 80% of NYC's broadband bandwidth was swamped with hordes of coders frantically pressing the "send" button, racing to get their attached resumes across the finish line first. Skyscrapers began to gently shake as the stampede gathered momentum, with some coders even donning their suits in phone booths Superman style, breaking land speed records as they gang-rushed De Novo's midtown offices. "It's a bird...it's a plane....no, it's a CODER!"

This is what it's come to, kids. "Down the road," as they say in the big house. Four years of college, the LSAT, 3 years of law school, the late nights studying until your eyes bleed, 100 K plus in loans, the bar'zam, the dues, the CLE shakedowns: all to beg for a graveyard shift gig at a whopping $30 an hour, sans OT. Trying to pay down loans at this rate is akin to using a Folgers can to bail out the Titanic: you'll drown long before the bilge is emptied.

Rumor has it that 50 desperate suit-clad souls spent last night clicking away, all too happy to swallow their pride like a cocktail of Drano
and click those docs until their eyes wept blood. We can't imagine the depths of desperation one must be in to volunteer for such a pathetic endeavor. Sadder still is that, in all likelihood, hundreds (or thousands?) of schmucks probably cried themselves to sleep last night because they didn't make the cut for this gig.

This is a watershed moment, kids. How much more mistreatment, degradation, and abuse are you "lawyers" willing to endure? In the immortal words of Dante from the film Clerks, we ask De Novo: "What's your encore? Do you anally rape my mother while puring sugar in my gas tank?"

Quite funny too how this gig began only hours after the spiffy new 2011 US News rankings came out, the lemmings going ga-ga that their toilet of choice is now ranked 159th instead of 167st, the nascent "prestige" flowing like heroin into a junkie's bicep.

Ah Bartleby! Ah humanity!

Columbia Law School PR Machine Kicks Into Attack Mode

2011-01-13T11:25:00.004-05:00

Reeling from a recent New York Times article in which law schools were exposed for cooking the books and turning their graduates into lifetime indentured debt slaves, many of whom wind up in cockroach infested document review facilities (something we have discussing here for over five years), the overcompensated, pampered shills in the law school administration offices have finally gone into attack mode.

Columbia (via a paid schill named Steven Gosset, who has been harassing bloggers ever since the story was released) claims that Jason Bohn, a temporary document monkey who was featured in the article, received his Juris Doctor from University of Florida and not from Columbia. Never mind the fact that he indebted himself with two degrees from Columbia to the tune of $200,000. Because of Columbia, at current rates, which continue to drop precipitously due to the American Bar Association's recent decision to allow entry-level legal work to be outsourced to India, Mr. Bohn will have to work 600 hours a year in the cockroach dungeon (or even worse with that nutcase "Jolly" John Thacher), every year for the next 30 years, just to pay off his loans. Outside of those 600 hours, Mr. Bohn will somehow need to find the time necessary to dig up another full time job so that he can gain legal experience, pay rent, buy health insurance, and save for retirement. Frankly, if I were in Mr. Bohn's shoes, I would seriously consider booking a one way plane ticket to southeast Asia, or in the alternative, heading over to Home Depot tonight, purchasing some rubber tube and adhesive tape, and putting the garage door down.

Paid schill Gosset in his exhortations seems to imply that such a catastrophic situation would never befall a properly credentialed Columbia Law School graduate. T14 grads drudging away in basements in a temporary capacity for $33 an hour is sadly, no longer an uncommon sight. God help those now who are currently graduating from lower ranked schools.

"Jolly" John Thacher Makes A Cameo

2011-01-08T23:04:00.003-05:00

"The job is set up through a company called Peak Discovery, which put an ad on Craigslist, seeking 100 lawyers. 'We got about 300 responses overnight,' said John Thacher, who is managing the project.

Mr. Thacher has managed about 2,500 people in his six years in the temporary legal business, and maybe five of them have gone on to associate jobs in law firms, the kind of work that nearly everyone aspires to when entering law school.

“Most of us either went to the wrong law school, which is the bottom two-thirds, or we were too old when we graduated,” he said. 'I was 32 when I graduated, and at 32 you’re washed up in this field, in terms of a shot at the real deal. They perceived me as somebody they can’t indoctrinate into slave labor and work to death for seven years and then release if they don’t like you.”'"

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/business/09law.html?pagewanted=6&_r=1&hp

Pig Of The Year: UC Berkeley Law Dean Signs Letter Demanding Millions More In Pension Benefits

2010-12-29T13:50:00.003-05:00

Christopher Edley Jr.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/12/29/MNDC1GUSCT.DTL&tsp=1

Labaton Sucharow - The $403 An Hour Temps

2010-11-16T23:10:00.005-05:00

"Dear Tom,

There was a hearing on Monday November 15, 2010 before a federal judge regarding the payment of attorney fees to Labaton Sucharow in the infamous Countrywide project. Please see the article below regarding Labatoilet's use of 119 'short-term attorneys,' better known as temps. We worked directly for this sheister in sweatshop conditions for a measly $32 an hour, with no time and a half and no medical or any kind of regular employee benefits. Now, Labatoilet apparently expects Judge Pfaelzer to approve paying them $403 per hour for our document review services. And of course Labatoilet gets a paid opinion from some bozo mediator named Diamond that states it is 'an extremely reasonable rate.' Well, it does not seem reasonable to me that you pay somebody $32 an hour and then turn around and charge $403 for that person's work. I wonder if the NYS pension funds and Judge Pfaelzer consider this a fair margin of profit.

If you think this is egregious billing and wish to make your feelings known, here is the contact information for the judge: According to the court's website, The best way to contact the judge's courtroom deputy clerk is by calling 213-894-5286; if the clerk does not answer the phone, be sure to leave a voice-mail message.

Hon. Mariana R. Pfaelzer
Court Clerk: Cynthia Salyer
Al Courtroom No.: 12
Telephone: 213-894-5286"

http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202473741442

"Clutch Legal" Sleazy Outsourcing Outfit Cancels Another Project

2010-11-11T09:07:00.003-05:00

Watch out for these guys. Projects fall through with them ALL the time. Their modus operandi seems to be that they set up sweatshops in India and have American contract attorneys serve as "back ups" in the initial set up stage. Smart solutions, no borders, indeed.

"It is with great disappointment and sincere apologies that I report to you that the Greenberg Taurig project is canceled. The case just settled this evening.

I am truly sorry for all the chaos and frustration surrounding this project. I had no idea the client was in settlement talks, so this is as much a surprise to me as it must be to you.

Thank you in advance for your understanding. My colleague Suzanne and I think very highly of you all, and I will make sure to keep you in mind and posted on all future assignments.

Please confirm you have received this email."

17 Hour Workdays

2010-10-29T22:09:00.003-04:00

From the Clutch Group. Smart solutions. No borders.

"We are looking to staff an HOUR INTENSIVE document review project starting IMMEDIATELY! Interviews will start today!

Must be able to interview with our client in Midtown today. Further, the hours will be intensive! We are looking at a 17 hour per day schedule, from 7:00am to 12:00am (midnight) for ten days straight. This may change, but if you are interested in this project YOU MUST confirm that you can work these hours. Interviews will be held today, and the client may even need you to begin work immediately after. Thus, you must be able to begin work immediately and the 7am-12am schedule will probably begin Saturday (you will need to work straight through the weekend into next week)."

Make it through the project without going into cardiac arrest or being carried off into the insane asylum, and you might very well be the grand prize winner who is able to ward off the foreclosure/eviction Grim Reaper for another month or two. Don't forget, the Republicans will not authorize unemployment extensions starting November 30th. Happy Holidays, in advance!

Document Review To $12 An Hour

2010-10-05T00:06:00.001-04:00

Job Description Classification:
Contract Legal Professionals
Compensation: $12.00 to $18.00 per hour

Entry level licensed attorneys needed for document review projects. Prior document review experience is now required. Great training opportunity! Please send your resume to [Click Here to Email Your Resumé].

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, FORTUNE® magazine again ranked us #1 in our industry on the list of "World's Most Admired Companies" (FORTUNE, March 22, 2010). Call your local Robert Half Legal office at 1.800.870.8367 to discover more about this position.

The Hudson Legal "Environmental Law" Project

2010-09-22T10:46:00.001-04:00

This project is being staffed by three agencies: Hudson, EP Dine and Epiq. The person who runs the review is the same woman who ran the infamous Hormonal Replacement Therapy review many years ago on East 45th Street for the firm out of Newark that does work with breast cancer and asbestos. Her name is Laura Kibby. Loud, arrogant and extremely fake.

You are paid a flat rate, you worked set hours but have the flexibility of coming in between a window, there is an elaborate conflicts form, they conduct interviews--they prefer environmental lawyers! The team leaders watch everyone, you are not allowed to bring your cell phone, especially ones with cameras---there are no notes allowed, and no books, bags nor purses. You must leave stuff in a holding area--holding pen.

There is no internet access, yet there is an obsolete cafe with old IBM computers. You are also monitor if you get up too much to go to the bathroom.

If you do well you become a permanent employee for Epiq---there are tons of ass kissers on this project.

Are you ready to give up your phone for a year?

Are you ready to be treated like a 7 year old?

Are you ready to be incommunicado during business hours and while your children are in school?

Tower Legal Staffing, Inc

2010-09-21T13:55:00.004-04:00

"This is your new home, Rapunzel. I will come every day and visit. It is better if you were away from the city and this is the place I have chosen. Years passed and the child grew -- if they could have seen her. But, locked in her tower deep in the woods, no one saw her."

Tower is a true sweatshop especially if you work out of their premises, right next to Trinity cementery---inadequate bathrooms, crammed review rooms, unfriendly or contemptuous staffers with the exception of one--who is very professional. One has to input the time sheet at a common computer so someone can see your information, the internet area is right in the waiting room/reception.

I heard that if you sit next to recruiter's office they do not want to hear chatter.

Ask people to give a fall report of agencies with a countdown--today we start with Tower!

My Favorite "Scam Blogger"

2010-09-19T23:53:00.005-04:00

"The real problem may be that Kevin Costner was proven correct in 'Field of Dreams.' If you build it they will indeed come. But they came and only found cornfields." - Jerome Kowalksi

When you mention the word "scam blogger" what comes to mind? For most people, it's undoubtedly the image of a young, disgruntled, heavily indebted recent graduate. A self-professed "scam blogger" by the name of Jerome Kowalski recently came across my radar, however. Contrary to being young, disgruntled, and/or unemployed, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Mr. Kowalski was actually an older, successful, and seasoned practitioner. His most recent article, "What If They Built A Law School And Nobody Came?" is the most pointed, well-researched, and damning expose of the law school scam that I have ever come across. I invite you to peruse it here:

http://www.jdsupra.com/post/documentViewer.aspx?fid=6945bcc9-1e12-4ea1-8edf-aec6405d27c1

Frankly, I think the "law school scam busting movement" could benefit a bit more from the maturity, credibility, and guidance of older practitioners. Too often, the criminal cartel law school deans (and their enablers in the ABA) try to brush off legitimate criticisms of their corrupt practices, as the handiwork of a small group of young, rogue, discontented graduates. Clearly, "scam blogging" by reputable/ more established members of the profession can only help shatter this gross mischaracterization. Speaking out isn't necessarily easy, however. As Kowalski notes, there is a certain institutional, self-imposed "wall of silence" against speaking out:

"These conclusions are not mine alone. At least four law firm managing partners, a number of other prominent lawyers and several law school professors have shared these conclusions with me. However, they openly expressed fear about making public statements supporting these obvious conclusions because they all felt they would be seen as pariahs, shunned by the profession, insofar as the practicing lawyers were concerned, they expressed the fear that their firms’ recruiting activities would be hampered at important schools; the academics also expressed the concern of being shunned by their colleagues, since, in effect, they would be encouraging significant unemployment among the academic community."

Steven Zack Takes Over The Reins At The ABA

2010-09-13T20:40:00.013-04:00

Stephen Zack's four main initiatives for his royal reign will be to preserve the justice system (whatever that means), civic education (provide more funding to the American Federation of Teachers), hispanic legal rights (amnesty), and disaster preparedness (close gitmo). Clearly, Mr. Zack wants to use his position to brandish political credentials and gain influence in Democratic circles.

As for the issues of regulating the profession, accrediting law schools, exploding debt, ABA schools that blatantly falsify marketing statistics, former biglaw associates scrubbing toilets, and corrupt deans channeling money through and sitting on the boards of directors of non-for-profit (in name only) lending institutions, he is notably silent.

When it comes to the issue of outsourcing entry-level legal work to the Indian subcontinent however, Zack is a little more proactive:

In remarks to the commission, ABA President-Elect Stephen Zack said that although he is "agnostic" on the issue of outsourcing, he recognizes that the lack of an official ABA position on the subject is a real problem. An opinion on outsourcing issued by the Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility, ABA Formal Ethics Op. 08-451 (2008), has been taken by others as a formal ABA endorsement, he noted. . . . . The ABA House of Delegates needs an opportunity to consider outsourcing, he said.

Jaime Gorelick said that the commission's work on outsourcing will be put out for public comment, so that by the time the report comes before the delegates at the 2011midyear meeting it will be "fully vetted."

http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:_EXqCwjSoDIJ:www.abanet.org/ethics2020/bnart.2.pdf+Stephen+Zack+outsourcing&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESgolEijPapNAS7ZO-cG8rGgSIh27e2LPLpefs_zctgjOOdgLikBY5_eVq0yPcGHYdWVabZ2j6Xevg2wblpmkMEtEY95ynReA7dSnAUZ8e7gZGR1TMewVwKnMe8uhsc37tupTXfi&sig=AHIEtbSs8P4HIsWVdh1UAJgL-17Jr-7-zw

Jaime Gorelick remember, is that horrible bank lobbying creature that took slush money from Sallie Mae and unsuccessfully tried to kill off the student loan reform bill last year. She also took $26.4 million away from Fannie Mae, money which was later found by federal regulators to have been given out because management manipulated earnings. Talk about ethics!

http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2010/02/05/bank-lobbyist-jamie-goreleck-endangers-student-loan-reform/

Make no doubt it, for however "agnostic" Mr. Hack pretends to be, the ABA will indeed put their full seal of approval on Indian outsourcing later next year. Thanksgiving dinner will be served up early next year and the turkeys will be you and me!

The Autumn Of Discontent

2010-09-13T11:46:00.006-04:00

I hope TTT writes about the new payment model being used by all of the agencies:
rates are low.
- OT is rare and starts at 40 not 35.
- More of flat rates.
- No osha guidelines whatsoever---inoperable bathrooms, non-ergomanic chairs, locked fire exits.
- Some places do not even provide air since client will not pay for it.
- Others do not even provide drinking water which is required by law.
- A posting with links of agencies and how to report hazardous environs needs to be published.

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

Helene Diamond's ridiculous questionnaire. Don't buy into the b.s. They are only interested in your response to question #8. As the overworn cliche goes, you can apply Mascara and pile on 20 layers of make-up to a pig, but it is still just a pig. No matter how you cut it, providing a representation as to an estimated rate of review of documents without actually seeing or handling the documents is clearly unethical.

QUESTIONS FOR DOCUMENT REVIEW CANDIDATES

1) What types of issues have you looked for in the course of your reviews? Forensic accounting, FCPA, patent, pharma reviews/technical issues, FDA regulatory issues, financial issues
a) Are you usually looking at one particular issue or several?
b) Are they discrete or complex?

2) What is the extent of discretion you have used in reviewing the documents?
a) Is the review essentially objective or subjective in nature?
b) Is the decision regarding whether the issue is implicated clear on the face of the document or does it require thoughtful consideration?

3) In what types of cases have you been involved?
a) Are they criminal or civil?
b) What has been the nature of the civil cases, i.e claim disputes, patent issues, securities issues, pharmaceutical matters, class actions?
c) Are they on the plaintiff’s side or defense?

4) What has been the purpose of the reviews?

5) What types of electronic platforms or systems have you used?

6) What other functions have you done in the databases, i.e. running searches?

7) What is the range in size of the reviews, i.e. how many documents in total?

8) What is the rate of review, i.e. how many documents can you review in one day on average?

Election Volunteers

2010-09-12T23:09:00.002-04:00

TTT, I'm wondering if you'd be interested in posting this volunteer opportunity for Tuesday. Part of the reason we still have white collar sweatshops in NY is because of corruption in Democratic primaries in NYC. If we have legal monitors this coming Tuesday, it can mean a difference of thousands of votes, which is basically an election.

Volunteer for Election Protection: Be a Legal Monitor on Sept. 14

What: Attorneys and law students are needed to be legal monitors at poll sites to protect voters rights on a crucial election day in New York City. In most past elections, there have been significant complaints about problems at the polls in certain areas, problems that have led to voters being disenfranchised.

Where: In the Bronx and other areas throughout New York City.

When: On Tuesday Sept. 14th, lawyers are needed all day from the opening of the polls at 6am to the closing at 9pm.

Who: We are in need of licensed attorneys (in NY and other jurisdictions, including international) and law students. You will not be working on behalf of any candidate; you will be working to ensure that the system operates in a manner that is fair to all candidates.

Why: To protect the rights of voters. To gain training in election law. To meet key people involved in election protection and grassroots activism in New York City. To ensure the system works as it should and that people are not unfairly turned away from the polls. To have fun!

Contact: electionprotectiondrive@gmail.com

Has Helene Diamond Lost Her Mind?

2010-09-09T18:37:00.004-04:00

"We have an immediate need for admitted document review attorneys - we have a document review project in our offices (25 West 31st Street, NY, NY 10001) starting on MONDAY, September 13th @ 900am.

Rate: The pay rate is based on an incentivized pay structure. You will receive a base pay rate of $25/hr, and at the end of the project you will receive a bonus check based on group performance and productivity."

Are you serious, lady? $25/hr is insulting enough, but to base pay upon "group performance and productivity" is downright laughable. Last time I worked for you, I was promised a "professional" working environment, but while you sat on your duff in your cushy office, I was shoved into an unventilated broom closet with an angry bipolar girl off her meds, an inappropriate sexual deviant, and a sweet talking con artist who skimmed along without doing any work. The way it works is this: I code the documents, you place and are responsible for the quality and work ethic of the candidates. Don't penalize me for your incompetence in having to find quality candidates with your insulting, bottom feeding slum rate.

Congress Finally Cracking Down On Foreign Medical School TTT's

2010-08-11T13:28:00.005-04:00

This is very encouraging news. Expect a long drawn out lobbying fight from the Caribbean scammers. It's only a matter of time before the corrupt law school TTT's find themselves in the regulatory crosshairs. The fat cat administrators are padding their pensions and plotting their exit strategies as we speak.

"The federal government, through the Federal Family Education Loan program administered by the Education Department, loaned U.S. students enrolled at foreign free-standing medical schools $1.5 billion between 1998 and 2008, according to the report.

Although that amount represents less than 1 percent of all federal student loans made during the same period, borrowing has grown by more than 300 percent because of increases in tuition, student enrollments and the availability of other loan funds.

Foreign medical schools that participate in the loan program have to meet certain statutory requirements. One requirement has been that 60 percent of their students who take the USMLE must pass the test. Beginning last month, however, Congress increased that must-pass percentage to 75 percent of students.

According to the report, the Education Department has not been able to fully enforce the institutional pass rate requirement on foreign medical schools. One reason is that private organizations that administer each step of the exam have refused to release student scores on grounds that the information is proprietary.

Stall, stall, stall..... Obfuscate, obfuscate, obfuscate........ Pad those pensions.

http://www.aafp.org/online/en/home/publications/news/news-now/resident-student-focus/20100809gao-loans.html

Hunger Strike!

2010-08-06T00:50:00.002-04:00

Release: Unemployed J.D. Begins Hunger Strike to Support Law School Transparency

On August 5, 2010, Ethan Haines, self-designated J.D. Class Representative, emailed an Official Notice of Hunger Strike to administrators of ten randomly selected law schools ranked in the Top 100 of the 2010 U.S. News & World Report's annual rankings. These schools were selected because they stand to gain the most from keeping the current rankings structure in place.

Below is a partial listing of recipients of the Official Notice of Hunger Strike:

1. University of Pennsylvania Law School (Philadelphia, PA)
2. Fordham University School of Law (New York, NY)
3. William S. Richardson School of Law, University of Hawaii at Manoa (Honolulu, HI)
4. Florida State University College of Law (Tallahassee, FL)
5. American University Washington College of Law (DC)

The Notice sets forth two conditions that administrators can satisfy to end Ethan's hunger strike. One condition is to provide written confirmation of their intent to cooperate with the Law School Transparency (LST) organization's information request regarding employment statistics. Ethan is not affiliated with LST, but is an avid supporter of the cause and intends to forward the compliance statements to the organization.

The remaining five law schools will be announced Friday, August 6, on the blog http://www.unemployedJD.com. A Twitter petition http://twitition.com/wqtfs is also circulating the internet in support of the cause.

Feel free to contact Ethan Haines for additional information.

Ethan Haines
J.D. Class Representative
ethan@unemployedjd.com

Excelerate Discovery

2010-08-04T13:36:00.003-04:00

Excelerate Discovery, the current nesting place of several former Update Legal recruiter hacks, apparently had a bit of a shake up last week. Alexandra "Lexie" Newman was reportedly shit-canned during her Israeli vacation, and apparently went ballistic on Facebook. Just another day of backstabbing and juvenility in the distguished profession of law.

Joan Wexler Of Crooklyn Law School

2010-07-28T09:52:00.004-04:00

"TTT,

I am highlighting Joan Wexler and her in$TTiTTuTTion this week on my blog. I was tipped to this PDF by a commenter on my site. Here is Brooklyn Law School's IRS Tax Form 990, i.e. Return of Organization Exempt from Income Tax, for 2007.

http://www.guidestar.org/FinDocuments/2008/237/227/2008-237227990-050fa431-9.pdf

Go to page 18 of Crooklyn's IRS Form 990 to see Joan Wexler's salary and compensation for 2007.

As a dean who devoted 50 hours per week to her position, Joan G. Wexler took home $529,293 in salary; $40,146 in contributions to employee benefit plans & deferred compensation plans; and $50,580 in expense account and other allowances. This brings her TOTAL COMPENSATION for 2007 to $620,019.

Look at line 12 on page 1. The sewer of law took in $69,029,620 in total revenue that year. After total expenses, the "non-profit" school made a nice gain of $9,052,403 this year. On line 21, we can see that Crooklyn had $143,063,841 in total net assets. Line 59 shows the school had $244,
710,030 in total assets.

This lady and her institution have consigned LEGIONS of lawyers to a lifetime of debt servitude, anxiety and doc review hell. Tom, please provide the link to the IRS form, so your readers can see the figures for themselves. Thank you.

Nando"

http://thirdtierreality.blogspot.com/2010/07/profiles-in-flatulence-crooklyn-dean.html

Another great find by Nando. There are legions of underemployed document reviewers slaving away in unventilated basements, so that morally bankrupt individuals like Joan Wexler can continue pulling down half a mil a year by scamming unsuspecting college graduates with all those "inadvertent" errors to US News. The woman is a sham/con artist and she needs to be carted away and locked up before she destroys anymore young lives.

Evelyn

2010-07-24T10:07:00.006-04:00

"Tom the Temp,

Just so you know, De Novo is still an awful place to work. From what I hear, Evelyn and Mr. Singer are still using mind tricks to control and exploit their slaves. They are driving down the rates close to the twenty dollar range and stuffing all the extra money into their pockets. Anyone who objects, or in anyway displays a 'negative attitude' is immediately blacklisted. It's bait and switch central. She acts all sweet and tries to put the blame on the client for being the bad guy, but everyone knows she is full of crap. Evelyn is constantly lying about the terms and conditions of the projects, and anyone who objects is immediately put on the shit list. It's simply not right. It makes me sick to think that during this economic calamity De Novo and all these record profiteering law firms are using their extraordinary market power to exploit and terrorize everyday Americans who are just trying to survive and put food on the table. I'd rather live in welfare housing than put up with the deceitful shenanigans of these unethical business people."

25% Of Recent Law Graduates Work As Office Temps; Most Make Far Less Than $70,000 A Year

2010-07-23T10:06:00.007-04:00

The NALP is finally starting to come clean. Their numbers are grossly distorted and flat out fraudulent.

http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/median_salary_of_2009_law_grads_is_72k_but_job_picture_cloudy_nalp_stats_sh/

Minneapolis, Where Recent JD's Work For Dirt Cheap And Scrounge Through Garbage Cans

2010-07-20T09:20:00.005-04:00

"Need document review done? Come to Minneapolis!

We offer: plenty of attorneys that are hungry with student loans.
We have four law schools pumping out attorneys faster than BP can spill oil
Employment-at-will statutes
Overtime starting at 48 hours vs 40 hours. (In other words, you'll never need to pay it)!
Firms from anywhere in the country can fly a partner in and out in the same day for a quick training.
Low wages, one major employer pays attorneys $17/hour with no benefits."

Overbilling In Los Angeles

2010-07-09T14:06:00.005-04:00

"Hey Tom The Temp,

Big fan of your blog! Keeping it real, man, keeping it real.

Here's one more crappy story for the Wall of Shame. Probably not the worst, by far, but I think it kind of stinks.

So I was working on an easy little project at a big Los Angeles firm. Some kind of breach of contract nonsense, really easy. Within a week, I finish two batches adding up to about 1700 documents. No big deal, right? Actually kind of a slow pace for many of the projects in L.A.

Without much warning, the project leader (another temp) gets ticked off at me. Because her friends on this deal, who came with her from a prior project, hadn't finished even their first batch, and that looked bad. Makes little sense to me, either, actually, since I would be hard-pressed to match names with faces . . . never saw much of those folks, or really cared anything about them way down at their end of the hallway.

Guess who gets let go?

LOL, apparently working up to spec at a marginally competent level gets you fired these days.

What makes it ironic is that I thought I was the lazy one . . . I mean, we're talking about assignments that had nothing but junk e-mail and review criteria along the lines of "Is it a contract? Mark it with the "contract" tag. The end." And they were handing out massive unplanned break time, every day, for computer crashes and all sorts of administrative what-have-you."

Yes, unfortunately this is all too common. Sadly, certain temporary attorneys blatantly overbill and milk the projects for all they are worth. Certain attorneys even steal hours by knowingly not working for the times they jot down. The agencies & firms know this. Sadly, quality and professionalism often times take a back seat to cheap/incompetent labor, profitability, and wide partner billing margins. Stay away from dehumanizing billing machines that skirt around the fringes of legal ethics by hiding under the banner of elite law firm name.

Labaton Sucharow Sweatshop Sued For Failing To Pay Overtime

2010-07-07T23:30:00.005-04:00

"A lawyer is suing his former New York-based employer, alleging that the law firm violated federal labor laws by not paying time-and-a-half for overtime.

In a complaint filed Wednesday in federal court in Manhattan, the lawyer, Moshe Koplowitz, said that the firm he did temporary work for, Labaton Sucharow, did not pay him at a higher rate when he worked more than 40 hours in a week. . .

'People are afraid to bring these kinds of cases because they don’t want to be blacklisted,' Mr. Kirschenbaum said. 'I would hope people use this as a wake-up call to get the money that’s clearly owed to them.'"

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/07/lawyer-sues-firm-for-failing-to-pay-overtime/

Carolyn Lamm's Political Pet Projects

2010-07-01T18:16:00.010-04:00

It has been over 154 days since Carolyn Lamm and the ABA said they would "look into" the massive fraud being perpetuated upon the public by out of control tuition gouging, federal student loan abusing esteemed "institutions" of higher learning. Despite the exclusive authority granted to it by the Department of Education to oversee and regulate the law schools, the ABA thinks of itself more as a special interest lobbying organization for hot button left wing political issues.

http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/aba_files_amicus_brief_with_district_court_opposing_arizona_immigration_law

The Sullivan & Cromwell Insane Asylum

2010-06-29T23:29:00.005-04:00

"Now I know everyone has a favorite nick name for Albanian the Anus: ladka, Balki, wild & crazy guy, but as a member of the ESL (English as a Second Language) set he is part of the inner-sanctum at Sullivan & Cromwell. So much so that a 10k phone bill Ennus racked up in the United Kingdom to call the US to bore and confuse his coworkers or exchange animal husbandry tips with his close relatives was hidden by Pary Garchment. But what Gary could not cover up was his rank incompetence in which he lost....irretrievably terrabytes of BP documentation. Apparently they sent MF like Martin sheen in appocalypse now to relieve him of his command.

Point of order stop calling the ladies of S&C "Big Mama" it is quasi racist and not specific enough since S&C likes its underlings fat, female & affirmitive action. Next week I will tell you about either: Cokie Lopez the addicted associate, the porny paralegal & the stairwell vidoetape that Fave Digaro tried really hard not to see."

Take Advantage Of The Unemployed Week

2010-06-29T11:21:00.003-04:00

As Congress plays games and twists itself into political gridlock, millions of Americans are losing their unemployment benefits. Coincidentally, just as benefits stalled last week, rates for several upcoming reviews plummeted. I am sure this is all just a normal function of the market and not just a carpetbagging opportunity for certain sleazy agency middlemen to stuff extra money in their pockets.

"Contracts Attorneys Needed ASAP

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2010-06-28, 6:17PM EDT
Reply to: job-ytcgp-1816081049@craigslist.org
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fortune 500 Company is seeking several contract attorneys for a review starting this Wednesday!

We are seeking licensed attorneys who can commit to at least 10 hours a day and who are available to work through this upcoming holiday weekend and all of next week.

If you are interested, please send your resume in WORD.

Compensation: $26/hr (flat rate)"

The Subprime Student Lending Bomb

2010-06-24T11:26:00.004-04:00

The short-seller, Steve Eisman of FrontPoint Partners, is perhaps best known as being immortalized in Michael Lewis’ book, “The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine,” as having warned about the sub-prime mortgage mess when nobody cared. He is scheduled to testify today in front ot the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.

Eisman has recently noted:

“Until recently, I thought that there would never again be an opportunity to be involved with an industry as socially destructive as the subprime mortgage industry. I was wrong. The for-profit education industry has proven equal to the task.”

With Title IV student loans, “the government, the students and the taxpayers bear all the risk and the for-profit industry reaps all of the rewards.”

“We have every expectation the industry’s default rates are about to explode.”

http://www.cnbc.com/id/37896158

The Lord And A Million Serfs

2010-06-22T13:33:00.007-04:00

"At the same time, law firms are instead expressing a “growing enthusiasm” for a staffing alternative—contract lawyers, according to an Altman Weil press release. Last year, 39 percent of the law firms used contract lawyers. This year, 53 percent will or might do so, while 52 percent expect that contract lawyers will become a permanent part of their staffing plans."

And the TTT schools love them, too! After bilking 40,000 kids out of $150,000, why not dump them onto your grubby biglaw partner friends who can exploit them in cockroach infested basements and not have to worry about contributing towards those pesky health/dental plan and 401K things? They will be so desperate to ward off Sallie Mae that they won't mind slaving away for 80 hours a week in unventilated, superheated basements. Meanwhile, you can share in the loot with your skeletor Joan Wexler look-a-likes and enjoy obscene, record profits and jacked up tuitions in the worst economy since the Great Depression.

http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/law_firms_express_growing_enthusiasm_for_contract_lawyers/

Toro! Ole! HireCounsel Deflates The Rate!

2010-06-21T10:22:00.002-04:00

"HIRE COUNSEL SPANISH LANGUAGE PROJECT IN WESTFIELD, NJ

Hire Counsel is currently seeking candidates admitted in at least one US jurisdiction for a Spanish Language Project in Westfield, NJ. The project should interview next week and start shortly thereafter. It is a document review project which should run for 4 to 6 weeks, involve 40 hours per week (no overtime) and will pay $32.00 per hour. The rate is on the low end for foreign language work but our client is not requiring any prior document review experience, just fluency in Spanish and admission to at least one US Jurisdiction. For candidates seeking to obtain experience working on a document review project this may be a good opportunity to do so."

Frozen!

2010-06-18T22:02:00.006-04:00

"TTT, I was just staffed on a project overseen by a cold blooded reptile. She would literally BLAST the AC like you wouldn't believe, and would constantly bitch to the maintenance men about how supposedly "warm" it was. Can anyone say early onset menopause? It's no fun standing at the bus stop in the sweltering early summer heat wrapped up like Nanook of the North in your winter coat. Thirty people are absolutely fucking miserable, but nobody has the courage to stand up and say anything. Market is so rotten, so-called professional admitted attorneys are afraid of rocking the boat and being blacklisted and frozen out of low rate $20 an hour temp gigs. We all rather spend our summer days hauled up in a windowless supply closet, cryogenically frozen like Walt Disney, praying that we don't come down with pneumonia lacking health insurance. We should all kill ourselves now."

Before Benefits Accrue, Staffing Agency Swiftly Kicks Your Butt To The Curb

2010-06-14T23:09:00.006-04:00

"I have been a contract attorney in the SF Bay area for the past 4 years or so. In that time I have worked through approximately 6-7 staffing services. I have noticed that many of them tend to "lose my number" once I have been on project(s) for 4-5 months or so.

Most of these staffing services offer benefits like paid holidays and sick time, but only to workers who have worked over 1000 hours for them. (1000 hours is approximately 6 months of 40 hour weeks.) I have had agencies send me out on projects for a while, but once I get close to the 6 month mark, I suddenly become invisible and never find work through that agency again. Whether it's one longer project or cumulative shorter projects, once I get close to that 6 month mark, the agency never calls again and sends other workers out on projects. There is never any indication of trouble or dissatisfaction with the work I've done, the work just stops.

I don't doubt that staffing agencies would use workers for a pre-determined period of time (up to 4-5 months) and then find new workers to send out on projects so they don't get stuck paying pesky benefits to their workers just because they're legally obligated to do so. I'm just curious whether anybody else has had a similar experience in becoming invisible to staffing services once they approach the benefits date."

Premier NYC TTT Law School Jacks Up The Tuition!

2010-06-09T22:06:00.009-04:00

46K a year to attend the Brooklyn Law School Dump and Document Review Training Facility? Is the Dean Joan Wexler freakin out of her mind? For years we have called out this scoundrel and her ilk in the press for their blatant misrepresentation of post-graduate career statistics, and yet they still have the audacity to jack up tuition three times faster than inflation in one of the worst job markets and deflationary environments since the Great Depression. Pure unbridled arrogance and greed!

Georgetown Law Grad Arrives At Simpson Thacher Covered In Defecation

2010-06-07T10:27:00.005-04:00

A van with "Georgetown Admissions" painted on the side was apparently last seen riding around McPherson Square canvassing for homeless.

"We haven't had a continuation of the awful people you can meet on projects recently, so I figure I'd send this gem along. I finished a project about 2 weeks ago and I had overheard a story about one of the coders not more than a few feet from me. Apparently this gentlemen came in one day with shit on his pants and his shoes. When he realized the awful stench of feces was coming from his person, he went right on and continued coding as if nothing was wrong. He eventually "tried" to go clean himself up (after he was coaxed and almost mocked into doing so, even by the project manager), but for the rest of the day he stayed soiled. Can you believe that some people wouldn't even have the decency to go buy another pair of pants or, God forbid, go home for the day so as to not subject others to his lack of cleanliness?"

Lowenstein Sandler

2010-06-06T11:04:00.004-04:00

TTT,

Forewarn your readers about this dump! The recruiters are fishing around to staff another project here and will lie to your face about how great it is. They claim it is a short commute from NYC, but when you get here you will find yourself in a dangerous ghetto in the outskirt bowels of New Jersey. The guy that runs the place is a major league class act asshole. He brags about taking MBA seminars to make the place more "efficient" which means that there is no talking, cell phones, or internet. If you can't stand the misery or nausea that you develop after working at this dump after a week and decide to jump ship, the agency will blacklist you FOREVER! STAY AWAY, STAY FAR AWAY!

Elaine P. Dine - Different Name, Same Toilet Bowl

2010-05-17T22:39:00.004-04:00

I am sure Elaine P. Dine was a very nice lady back in the day. The successors to her recruiting outfit however have done a very fine job in defecating all over her legacy these past 10 years. (Do a thread search to pull up some of the horror stories that have occurred over the years.) It seems like the "Elaine P. Dine" moniker has worn out its welcome however, and now the Dine sewer scrounging gang is operating under the more generic sounding name of US Legal Support. Be forewarned.

Contract Attorney Coordinator At Fitzpatrick Cella Not A Fan Of Your Comments

2010-05-14T13:27:00.004-04:00

"I would appreciate it if you would remove any negative responses regarding me. If not, I will be taking legal action against you immediately. I can provide your my attorneys name and contact information, he asked me to contact you first and to kindly ask you to remove the two posts about me. Please contact me with any questions. Thank you for your anticipated cooperation."

The Lexolution Chicken Coop Gets Another Visit From The Fire Marshal

2010-05-06T22:39:00.004-04:00

I heard that Lexolution tried to put up to 60 or 80 contractors in their tiny space in DC on F St. If, you've seen the space then you'd understand how crazy it is. I wouldn't think that it could hold more that 35-40 at the most - and that would be pushing it. Attorneys were crowded in the hallways. The official company line is that Lexolution didn't have the "bandwidth" to accommodate the additional traffic. However, it is suspect. The day before the reviewers were told leave for the day the Fire Marshall showed up!

Let The Fools Die By Their Own Stupidity

2010-05-06T09:05:00.005-04:00

"Thomas Reddy, a second-year student at Brooklyn Law School, hasn't landed a summer internship yet after sending resumes to more than 50 law firms. He is taking on about $70,000 of debt each year of the three-year program to earn his degree, but said he may be fortunate to make $80,000 a year in a lawyer job after graduating. 'That is less than what I was making before I went to law school,' he said."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704866204575224350917718446.html

Mr. Reddy, with all due respect, you are a complete and utter fool. There is no 80 grand a year job waiting for you, unless you aspire to work in some crowded, dank, overheated basement for 80 hours a week in a temporary capacity. You just made the BIGGEST mistake of your life, and you are about to make it worse by handing over another 70 grand to the snakes at BLS.

How Cheap Is Huron?

2010-05-03T12:56:00.005-04:00

According to the New York Times, they are so cheap they billed one of their clients $2.36 for a pack of gum. The Huron Witch is not only evil, she is cheap as hell!

"No charges have been too big, or too small. The Huron Consulting Group, a management consultancy {bottom feeding outsourcing outfit} involved in Lehman, charged $2.54 for 'gum in airport.'"

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/business/02workout.html

Boies Schiller To 40K!

2010-04-28T21:30:00.002-04:00

I just got the most retarded phone call. Temp job out in Albany, "6 months" on the project although they claim they try to keep people on longer, doc review job with no upward movement at all, $40k a year. I'm assuming no benefits either obviously. I guess after 6 months they expect you to go onto unemployment or something. I think the girl on the phone knew how shitty all this sounded, she said "that's a lot for Albany" which I of course don't buy for a second.

They demand you start within 2 weeks of the "interview" (why interview for doc review?).

I don't even know how you'd find a place to even live in that quickly. I don't care how bad the legal market is, that is the worst thing I have ever heard. I forgot to check on hours, but I'm assuming it's at least the full 40 hour work week, if not more than that.

If you check their web page, they tout diversity and being a top law firm. Now I don't know, maybe it isn't this law firm doing the hiring, but I actually think it is, but regardless, if it's another firm placing, this firm should be angry to even be associated with that.

Please don't use my e-mail or name or anything, but I'd love to know what other people think about this. As bad as things are, this one takes the cake. If they manage to fill this, it's going to be people living in Albany with their parents, there is no way anybody in their right mind MOVES out there for something this pathetic and for a temp job. Talk about insulting.

The Law School Transparency Project

2010-04-20T22:06:00.005-04:00

"Instead of simply griping about the shortcoming of law school employment statistics, Patrick Lynch collaborated with fellow Vanderbilt law student Kyle McEntee to develop what they hope will become a new source of information for would-be law students. The two have founded a non-profit organization called Law School Transparency with the goal of compiling detailed employment and salary information from all ABA-accredited law schools."

Good luck with this guys. I am sure you will receive a deluge of cooperation, especially from the ABA and the lower tier law schools. Your attempt at system wide transparency through carefully reasoned law review articles is admirable, but when you mess with the income streams of the lower tier law schools (who owe their very survival to scamming young people with access to mountains of subprime educational debt), get ready to get thuggy with it. You are dealing with the trashy, dishonest, seedy salesmen personas of Massasar, Joan King, the Valvoline Dean and their ilk, not Learned Hand.

http://www.lawschooltransparency.com/

The Clowns At The American Biglaw Association Are At It Again

2010-04-14T22:53:00.004-04:00

As if profits per partner weren't high enough last year, it looks like the ABA is about to come out with another one of their award winning outsourcing decisions. To all you out of work lawyers scounging around in garbage cans looking for food, relief is certainly NOT on the way. Carolyn Lamm's kangaroo commission is seeking input before they rubber stamp another employment sapping "ethics" mandate.

"YOUR COMMENTS SOUGHT
MAY 7, 2010 DEADLINE

The ABA Commission on Ethics 20/20 is studying the ethical and professional regulatory implications of legal process outsourcing in a domestic and international context. The Commission is reviewing the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct, existing ethics opinions and other literature and studies about this topic. The Commission is also interested in gathering information about domestic and international legal process outsourcing from lawyers, law firms, clients and outsourcing providers, and developed the following questions to do so. We look forward to hearing from you. Please do not feel constrained to limit your responses to the information sought by these questions. We are interested in receiving whatever information you feel is relevant. Please e-mail your responses by May 7, 2010 to Senior Research Paralegal Natalia Vera at veran@staff.abanet.org"

http://www.abanet.org/ethics2020/

The Working Professional Poor

2010-04-13T22:08:00.007-04:00

The Offer:

I wanted to touch base with you and see if you’re available for an upcoming assignment. I have a client who is seeking 4 contract attorneys to work onsite in Bloomfield, New Jersey, starting next Monday, April 19th and I wanted to know if you’d be interested.

Here are the details:

Pay Rate: $22/hr – flat rate
Hours: 9am to 5pm (with 1 hour lunch break)
Location: Bloomfield, NJ
Expected Duration: 2 weeks

Please let me know if you are interested and I look forward to hearing from you!

Best,
Jeannine

The Response:

Jeannine,

Sorry but that rate is rejected and, frankly speaking, downright offensive.Thats less than I pay my own paralegals, and even less than someone makes after graduating from Devry.

Low wages, a lack of hours, no benefits, ballooning tuition debts in one of the highest COL/taxed areas in the nation.

Ass Clown

2010-04-08T22:48:00.007-04:00

"TTT,

Instead of constantly putting a hatchet to the firms and staffing agencies, why don't you focus instead on some of the psychoids, perverts, and malcontents that somehow get staffed on these projects and make life a living hell?

I am currently on a nice foreign language review gig that was generally going well up until today. Some ass clown (who was probably playing around on some illicit website) downloaded a virus onto the server and crashed the entire project's network system. How about before we hire someone we run their name through a sexual perversion watchlist? Not only did dozens of people lose out on an opportunity for hours today, but just wait until the client finds out about this. Just another wonderful day in the oh-so "distinguished" practice of law."

DiscoverReady

2010-03-29T21:24:00.011-04:00

DiscoverReady was one of the few chop shops in town offering project work last week, and I wouldn't be surprised if they were inundated with 10,000 resumes. All this for a job that is expected to last less than two weeks, where your cell phone is confiscated at the sweatshop door, and where you are lucky to scrape by with 40 hours per week. Welcome to the new reality. Recently, the ABA sponsored a presentation discussing how outfits like DiscoverReady are the wave of the future:

http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/majority_say_law_practice_is_undergoing_a_sweeping_evolution_survey_says

As we have been saying for years, welcome to the Wal-Martization of the so called profession of law, where obscene partner profits and rock bottom freelancing rates are the rule of the day.

As Kaye Scholer partner James Blank is quoted as saying in the study,“you just don’t need the bodies and man hours to get answers anymore. E-Discovery tools have eliminated the need to have junior associates review boxes of documents, which is why you are seeing thousands [of] junior associates laid off.”

E-Discovery tools, Mr. Blank? By tools, are you referring to cheap offshore human labor? While Mr. Blank and the offshore discovery vendors bask under the green shade of the money tree (DiscoverReady's emblem is the money tree, by the way), American law graduates suffer through the autumn of despair, with sky high student loan debt and a lack of jobs.

Another Assault At LabaToilet?

2010-03-24T22:39:00.001-04:00

Sounds like a great place to work:

"I quit labaton several weeks ago after I too was assaulted in front of several witnesses in the eating area and no one confronted/reported the asshole who hit me to anyone, including me because we were all afraid of losing our jobs, just as happened to other people recently. Keep in mind that I am a woman and my attacker is a male foreign educated attorney."

Golden Gate School of Law - Your One-way Ticket To The Trailer Park

2010-03-23T20:57:00.005-04:00

Someone posted this earlier today in the comments section, and I wanted to highlight it. Crappy law school (that should be padlocked) + stay on the couch spouse + student loans + two kids ='s eviction, misery, and a horrible life.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/03/22/BUUO1CI40P.DTL

Health Care Reform

2010-03-21T20:08:00.004-04:00

On the floor of the House, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee told a story of a 32-year-old lawyer who went to an emergency room three times but was sent away with antibiotics, and eventually died. He probably had crappy agency health insurance.

Wilmer Cutler

2010-03-18T21:58:00.009-04:00

Just when things were quieting down in crazy document review land, this nonsense pops up. Apparently, Michael Layman (staff attorney 007) solved the espionage crime of the century over at Wilmer Cutler when he caught an international super spy downloading sensitive corporate documents on to his custom made Inspector Gadget flash drive. Actually, the "spy" was nothing more than a dingbat contract attorney who was downloading his resume, most likely because he was bored out of his mind shuffling through millions of pages of irrelevant corporate dreck, and was doing everything in his power to get out of a toxic and degrading work environment where low level staffer douchebags try to score brownie points with superiors by cracking fanciful imagined international spy rings.

http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/2010/03/temporary-lawyer-sues-wilmer-for-defamation-.html

Dine Group Drops the "F-Bomb" On Contract Attorneys

2010-03-12T20:10:00.004-05:00

The Dine Group is still up to their old tricks of fishing for rate information from attorneys and trying to lowball the competition. A friend also recently told me that she overheard one of the business managers of the company scream: "Fuck them! They are under contract for $25 and easily replaceable. We'll ghost them if necessary." I guess some of the foolish attorneys who signed on for that assignment spoke up after the fact only to be blacklisted. Blacklisted for $25/ hr? Really? So Sad!

Chicago to $10 an Hour!

2010-03-10T22:51:00.000-05:00

RESEARCH ATTORNEY (4105 W. 26th St.) Date: 2010-03-08, 9:11AM job-ff5pp-1633948536@craigslist.org

Illinois licensed attorney with exceptional research and legal drafting skills needed to support attorney work in several areas of law, including immigration, bankruptcy, mortgage foreclosure and loan modification, family, criminal, among others. The position is full time -- 9am to 6pm, Monday through Friday, and requires a natural talent for writing and research, an ability to produce exceptional work within a short amount of time, as numerous assignments will always be in the queue. This is a great intro position for someone who has this talent but minimal experience, and wants to learn a great deal quickly in many areas of law. The pay is non-negotiable $10/hour with a review in six months' time. Full benefits are provided after three month probation term is passed. This is the legal equivalent of the medical school graduate's residency experience.

• Location: 4105 W. 26th St.
• Compensation: $10/hour
• Principals only. Recruiters, please don't contact this job poster.
• Please, no phone calls about this job!
• Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests.

"Et tu, Anita?"

2010-03-05T22:58:00.004-05:00

"Two books chronicling Eliot Spitzer's meltdown are about to come out. One is entitled, Journal of the Plague Year, by Lloyd Constantine, a former senior adviser and close confidant of Spitzer's, revolves around a three-day period after Spitzer was linked to the prostitution ring before he resigned, during which Constantine camped out at Spitzer's Manhattan apartment. Spitzer was distraught and leaned heavily on his friend, confiding matters about his relationship with his wife. Now neither Spitzer nor Silda is speaking to Constantine."

-Time Magazine, 3/15/10.

Waiting For Godot

2010-02-26T09:44:00.003-05:00

"Let's go. Yes, let's go. (They do not move)."

"Tom,

I am very frustrated. After being out of work for a couple of weeks, I got a call to start a project early last week. I was very excited. The day before work was to commence, and after tying up some last minute business, I received a call from the agency informing me that the project had been pushed back to the following Monday. After a long weekend revving up for work, I was informed by email that my project had been pushed back again. A couple of days later, the project (you guessed it) was pushed back, yet again! Screams with frustration.

Foolish me, I called the agency seeking clarification. The lady immediately became snippy, saying that the client was having issues, that they were thankful for my patience, and that I was just going to have to remain on standby. I kindly informed her that I was having issues, that I was precluded from seeking out other employment opportunities, and that if something else came along that I might have to take it. She barked back, saying that I had already agreed to be submitted for the project, that if I 'quit' that I would 'do what I had to do,' before hanging up on me.

Sadly, she probably just doesn't care. By crossing me off her list and dumping my husk on the side of the road, she probably has hundreds of other sorry saps "on standby" eagerly waiting for the job to nowhere. Sadder still, the diploma mills will be pumping out an additional 45,000 victims, and India has thousands of semi-literate reviewers who will work for five dollars an hour."

Pee In The Cup

2010-02-24T11:04:00.001-05:00

"I heard RR Donnelley (the massive octopus legal outsourcing operation)is mass drug testing doc reviewers - if this is true, doc review is hurtling towards blue collar status."

Compliance Staffing To Shucked Off Contractors: Drop Dead And Go Starve In The Street!

2010-02-17T10:58:00.005-05:00

Over a hundred people worked for the massive 3+ year World Trade Center litigation in the Wall Street area for Compliance LP/Patton Boggs. After the end of the project was announced for the first week of October, they kept extending it for an additional week, an additional 3 days, another week etc. In that time people were lining up other projects to jump to off as they could.

Well guess what....now that some of them are coming off their projects and signing up for unemployment benefits, Compliance is contesting ALL of the claims saying that everyone quit before the project ended! That's right, work for 3 years and get dicked around on the end date and then NO BENEFITS FOR YOU. Of course the end date announcements and revisions were always verbally announced so no one has documentation to contest their unemployment denial. DO NOT WORK FOR COMPLIANCE!!!! DO NOT WORK FOR COMPLIANCE!!!! Especially since those turds are offering a new gig at $28 an hour!

The Lexolution Chicken Coop Is Once Again Open For Business

2010-02-15T10:15:00.004-05:00

Lex-pollution has re-opened the infamous "Chicken Coop" over on East 40th St. This time it's a Quinn case. We are only getting $32 flat an hour, and the project sucks! There are tons of tags for each document, and the associate from Quinn is strutting around the floor like a Gestapo officer.

No talking allowed, just grind out your work. No Internet access either, naturally. It's a miserable review and even more miserable work environment. They have the heat set on about 110 degrees in here or else it's freezing cold. The bathrooms are filthy as usual and often out of paper towels and soap. Maybe Lexolution should just spread wood shavings or straw on the floor for us to relieve ourselves on. It really is just like a chicken coop! Click Click, cluck cluck! Cock-a-doodle doo!

Jones Day: A Follow-Up

2010-02-12T00:10:00.002-05:00

Tom -

The person who wrote to you about the Jones Day project left out several important details:

1. Jones Day never told Hudson that it was a privilege log review, instead telling them it was a straight review using Documatrix. Presumably, this was to save money on the hourly rate, because priv log is always a higher rate.

2. The first year associate Jaime is getting a bad rap. The real jerks are the senior associates, Marla Bergman and Joe Hand. They're the ones being nasty and acting arrogant toward the temps and threatening to fire them daily. They're also the ones who fired the entire project after the first week and then hired all new people.

So please take Jaime off the hook. She wasn't that bad and is presumably under a lot of pressure from the two senior associates mentioned above.

The "ShitFingers" Chronicles - Solo In Bankruptcy Law

2010-02-11T11:21:00.006-05:00

The "ShitFingers" Chronicles is a new ongoing venture created by L4L's in which he deconstructs the lies put forth by Solo Practice University and the other after law school scammers, in which they try to use false hope and other after-scamming carpet bagger techniques to bilk an additional $500 out of starving, unsuspecting law graduates.

"ShitFingers" refers to certain characters that L4L came across in the bathroom vestibules of the Sullivan & Cromwell basement. "One particular guy nicknamed 'ShitFingers' liked to operate his side practice via cellphone while dropping heat in the restroom stall, giving 'toilet law' a literal dimension. Later, you’d go to wipe and find he’d captioned draft briefs on the Charmin and hidden a stapler under the toilet tank. I often wondered why he didn’t just tape his law degree up in there alongside the stall’s graffiti. No one would’ve cared. This was, of course, in the SullCrom basement, down amid the boxes."

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Today, we talk about becoming a bankruptcy solo. For one easy payment of $495, Solo Practice University will teach you about the intricate ins an outs of bankruptcy practice, mystical knowledge which will ultimately redeem you from the cockroach infested boiler rooms of Paul Weiss hell.

http://solopracticeuniversity.com/faculty/jay-s-fleischman/

"Professor" Fleischman will teach you about cutting edge developments in cut-and-paste Chapter 7 filings, will devote a whole subsection explaining the growth of consumer credit in the United States (no shit), and just in case you were comatose in law school (and throughout the first twenty-five years of your life) will explain to you what a judge, debtor, and attorney is.

Fascinating stuff, but L4L's will have none of it:

No area of law is 'complex.' The complex thing is getting enough steady clients to make a living, as opposed to drips & drabs.

Some BK attorneys buy mailing lists of folks in trouble and do direct-mail marketing (not allowed in all states, check your bar rules). Others do the phone book/newspaper ad method. Of course the big shops use TV & radio commercials.

All of these cost money. A lot of money. A 1/2 page ad in north NJ county yellow pages will set you back $12,500 a year. That's a shitload of 'simple 7s' just to break even on your ad budget. Direct-mail is 44 cents a clip postage plus the cost of the mailing lists, envelopes/stationary, and a 1-800# (which should bounce calls to your cell, b/c if you miss the call they'll move right on to the next bozo). And of course you ad will be buried amongst the 1000s of other clowns in the phone book and lost in the junk-mail shuffle.

Or you could "network" with CPAs and finance guys who might steer you a client who's in trouble, but most of these guys worth their salt already (i.e successful) already have lawyers/firms they deal with regularly and receive mutual referrals from in return. As a new solo you have nothing to offer them, and thus they won't recommend you unless they're a close family member of yours (like your dad, cough cough).

A guy I did doc review with did BK as a solo (hence his doc review gig LOL), and spent 5 K on google ad words in NJ. Didn't score one client out of it. Unless you wanna pay big $$$ per click with a high click limit, the big mills will pwn you. Remember, these are low-ticket cases with flat fees, so you can't go too wild wasting money on ads.

I saw a diner paper-placemat ad for a BK attorney recently at a diner in Green Brook NJ. Those ads are very cheap (i tried them back in 2007 for injury cases), but totally ineffective. I did 150 K placeats total spread among 7 different NJ diners for only $375 bucks. A run of 150 K lasts the diners like 3-4 months. I got no calls at all from these ads. Not one. You'd be surprised at how abysmal the response rate is for print attorney advertising. The big mills don't buy those TV ads for fun. They're the only thing that works and they know it.

I also tried a full-page 'penny-saver' ad, a 1/4 page ad in 4 different condo newsletters, and about 4 different church bulletins. Believe it or not, the church bulletins were by far the most effective (and the cheapest- only $10 a week). I got about 12-15 living will gigs from these Catholic nutjobs who want to stay 'plugged in' like Terry Schiavo even if their brains are a pile of mush. You'd think they'd be 'dying' to meet their buddy Jesus, but at $400 a pop I didn't ask questions. And sadly, it just wasn't enough $$$ to really make it worthwhile. You see, some shyster firm saw my ad in there and decided to buy the whole back cover of the bulletins for like $150 a week. Once that happened my calls dried up. Be aware that if you do find an 'overlooked' place to advertise, some shyster will soon find out and then come in and outspend you 10 to one to 'shout out' your ad. If I'd had a bit bigger 'war chest' I would've bought the back cover (they offered it to me first), but $600 a month is a lot of $$$ for a heavily indebted Seton Hall loser.

You could always spam-bomb craigslists 'legal services' section like 50 X a day and offer to do 7's in return for a cord of firewood or some Ramen noodles. Or better yet, drop out of law school and get into a trade that people will actually pay money for, like plumbing or auto repair."

Must Drop Off Convoluted Job Application Form In Blizzard For Short-term Shitlaw Position

2010-02-09T23:29:00.005-05:00

Please complete the attached forms: 1) Application; 2) Conflicts form. The Conflicts form can be filled out on your computer and emailed back to us.

But the Application must be filled out by hand and dropped off at our office. This has to be completed ASAP: preferably tomorrow, but if weather is too inclement, Th. morning early is fine. Also, the application asks for 10 years of employment history (please list everything), and the conflicts form asks for firm names/all adverse parties for the last three years. When you do fill out these forms, please be as thorough as possible because they have come back to us with very specific questions.

-Sara Kim

Red Flag The Ad

2010-02-09T09:58:00.005-05:00

As many of you know, legal professionals all over the country are
suffering during these economic times. In Richmond, many who have
relied on contract and temporary assignments are being taken advantage
of as concerns wages and over-time. Moreover, we have all witnessed
the diminishing amount of respect being accorded to our peers who have
worked very hard to become attorneys and paralegals. Last minute
cancellations, misrepresentations and a general lack of regard have
become the norm.

That said, please help protect what is left of our integrity by NOT
responding to craigslist posts that do not identify the hiring agency.
The anonymity that craigslist provides, allows the agencies to gather
resumes and then undercut your pay as they fight amongst each other
for the few assignments available in the Richmond market. This results
in lower wages, greater turn over and less respect for our profession
as a whole.

You have worked hard to become a legal professional. Don’t send your
resume to a faceless email address. It hurts all of us (attorneys,
paralegals and even the agencies) in the long run. Please join me in
flagging posts that do not identify the agency or law firm in
question.

-Saint Peter

Jones Day

2010-02-08T10:04:00.005-05:00

Tom,

I was just talking to a friend who told me to watch out for this place in NYC!

He was recently at Jones Day (two weeks ago) for a couple of days. They were fired on the spot because the slave driver felt that they were not typing entries fast enough into the privilege log. Please publish the story to alert others not to work there as the first year associates were real jerks, watching over people. The real punk was the African American female associate named Jaime. She was on a real power trip.

Has anyone else heard anything about this place? I got called to work there awhile back, but I didn't take it as I was able to land something else.

A Barren Wasteland

2010-02-03T17:03:00.001-05:00

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?

2009 Most Profitable Year Ever For The Paul Weiss Slave Drivers

2010-02-01T17:10:00.004-05:00

Stuffing hundreds of heavily leveraged law graduates (earning $21 an hour without benefits) into cockroach infested basements, forcing them to slave away for 14 hour days, and then mass firing them the minute the economy takes a downturn is certainly a sure way to make oodles of money. God bless biglaw, the big banks, the ABA, and America!

http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/paul_weiss_chairman_says_2009_was_the_most_profitable_ever/

http://abovethelaw.com/2010/02/what_did_paul_weiss_just_say.php

More Fallout From ABA President Carolyn Lamm's Spin Piece

2010-02-01T10:26:00.010-05:00

Tom the Temp

[I wrote this as a Letter to the Editor to the Los Angeles Times on Thursday, January 27, 2010. They apparently were not interested in publishing this in their forum.]

I am the author of “Third Tier Reality,” a blog dedicated to informing potential law students of the risks inherent in going to law school. I am writing in this forum to weigh in on Mark Greenbaum’s opinion piece to the Los Angeles Times on January 8, 2010, and the response from the president of the American Bar Association, which was featured on Above the Law.

Carolyn Lamm asks Mr. Greenbaum to look at the number of students, as opposed to the number of law schools. Fine, let’s do that. We will look at the sheer number of U.S. law students enrolled for the 2008-09 academic year:

http://www.abanet.org/legaled/statistics/charts/stats%20-%208.pdf

By the ABA’s own numbers, ABA-approved law schools had a cumulative enrollment of 142,922 students in 2008-09. There simply is nowhere near such a demand for lawyers, to justify such massive enrollment.

Now let’s look at the number of annual law graduates. According to the NALP, ABA-accredited law schools produced 43,587 graduates for the Class of 2008. The ABA reports 43,588 JDs for the same year.

http://nalp.org/uploads/08SelectedFindings.pdf (page 2)

http://www.abanet.org/legaled/statistics/charts/stats%20-%207.pdf

The fact remains that American law schools are producing far too many graduates. Simply put, there are nowhere near this many available attorney positions in a given year – even in a good economy.

While we are at this, let’s look at some more numbers. Let’s take a peek at the average amount of student debt for law students.

http://www.abanet.org/legaled/statistics/charts/stats%20-%2020.pdf

For the 2007-08 academic year, the average amount borrowed for students attending public law schools was $59,324. For those attending private law schools, this amount was $91,506. For the 2001-02 academic year, these respective figures were $46,499 and $70,147.

Carolyn Lamm is incorrect in alluding to the consent decree between the Department of Justice and the ABA, as a reason why the ABA cannot limit the number of law schools or available seats. The suit originated due to the ABA requiring law schools to pay their professors at a certain level. Furthermore, the consent decree expired – by its own terms – on June 25, 2006. The parties have chosen to abide by this lapsed agreement.

Carolyn, if your organization is so concerned about violating antitrust law, you may want to ask the American Medical Association how it manages to accredit only 131 U.S. medical schools.

http://www.aamc.org/medicalschools.htm

http://services.aamc.org/memberlistings/index.cfm?fuseaction=home.search&search_type=MS&wildcard_criteria=&state_criteria=CNT%3AUSA&image=Search

Or you may want to confer with your counterparts at the American Dental Association to see how they are able to keep the number of ADA-approved member schools down to 58 – without violating antitrust laws.

http://www.ada.org/prof/ed/programs/search_ddsdmd_us.asp

Could it be that those professional schools actually care about protecting the significant investment of their practitioners and students? Carolyn, your organization simply needs to own up to the fact that it does not care about current law students or recent law graduates.

Nando

http://thirdtierreality.blogspot.com

"Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education."
Bertrand Russell

Carolyn Lamm To Defrauded Law Students: "Drop Dead And Go Eat Cake!"

2010-01-28T11:22:00.007-05:00

Looks like Queen Lamm of the ABA is merely going to "look into" the blatantly fraudulent self-reported employment statistics and the sleazy shenanigans of the subprime banking/educator operators.

"Finally, with respect to your specific question about requiring changes in the way schools report salary and employment information on their recent graduates, the Section is in fact looking at ways it might revise its annual questionnaire to law schools to elicit additional information. While there is no evidence that we have seen that schools are inaccurate in their reports, we may not be asking all the right questions, and that is under review. But we also encourage prospective students to consider carefully their decision to attend law school, their choices of schools and how they finance legal education. We are concerned about student debt and the burden it places on graduates. But we do not equate that concern with limiting entry into the profession. As I said in my letter, we believe it is important that the legal profession be open to entry from all elements of society. The law is not and should not be a closed club."

http://abovethelaw.com/2010/01/aba_defends_itself_and_the_nee.php?show=comments#comments

Report Of Man With Gun In Northwestern Law Building

2010-01-27T12:44:00.001-05:00

A Chicago TV station has spoken with a law student inside the building, who said that about 50 students were inside for a first-year lecture when reports came in of an armed man spotted in an elevator on the building's 11th floor. The man appeared to be carrying a gun in his waistband, the story says.

That's pretty much all the news out there for now. Northwestern officials have told everyone in the building to lock themselves in their offices, and the student who communicated with media via his cell phone reported that people are laying low and staying away from doors and windows. The student said people were "calm" despite the situation.

Law School Fraud - Georgetown Gaming the US News Rankings

2010-01-26T12:09:00.004-05:00

"Well here's one way to boost your postgrad employment stats, I guess - presumably the fact that the university is funding these jobs itself doesn't count against them in the US News Rankings...

-----Original Message-----
From: Sophia Sim
Sent: Mon 1/25/2010 4:42 PM
Subject: short term alum position in Admissions

Dear All,

I hope things are going well with you. I'm contacting you to see if you are interested in a few newly created positions here in Admissions. We are looking for 3 recent alums to help us with the scholarship process from start to finish-this will involve responding to requests, reviewing several hundred applications, interviewing finalists and meeting with prospective students. This is a new hugely expanding area for us, and, frankly, we've been inundated with requests this year.

These full-time positions will begin 2/1, a week from today, and end around 3/12. The pay is $20/hour. If you are interested, please send me your resume as soon as possible at sims@law.georgetown.edu.

Incidentally, we received your name from OCS that you are still seeking employment-if this is incorrect, please let me know so that I can update their records.

Warm Regards,

Sophia"

NJ Shitlaw Wants your Wheels!

2010-01-25T12:22:00.006-05:00

Check out this strange 30 K a year shitlaw ad from North NJ cragislist:

http://newjersey.craigslist.org/lgl/1569177492.html

I like how one "must never say "no" to where they are sent or why?" and also send him a photo or the make/model of your car. Things are getting mighty strange out there in shitlaw land as the desperation and saturation reach epic levels and the toilet schools keep cranking out JD's. Remember, it's less than 4 months until the class of 2010 get those precious sheepskins!

By the way, the pay works out to $14.25 an hour if you assume a 40 hour week. Where do we sign up!

L4L

Pro Bono Scam

2010-01-25T11:27:00.005-05:00

As tuition skyrockets and law school diploma mills continue to blossom across the nation, American Bar Association President Carolyn Lamm has urged the organization and law firms to "think creatively" about how they might lead efforts to develop ways to employ lawyers hit by job cuts. Actually regulating the scam schools and the bogus post-graduate career statistics, and actually doing something about the endless supply of jobless graduates being pumped out into the job market is clearly off the table. The bloated law school administrators that sit on the ABA regulating committees will have none of it.

The ABA and the legal establishment have attempted to foster an illusion of an imaginary, nonexistent demand. The solo scam cheerleaders (most notably, Susan Cartier Liebel) are always trying to convince naive law graduates that there is some great untapped need for lower income legal services. She says this despite the fact that legal service organizations are inundated with the resumes of the thousands of unemployed lawyer grads who are willing to work for free. Even deferred associates and those short on hours are in a mad competition to "help the poor" and look busy.

It comes as no surprise then when I came across the following article published last weekend in the San Francisco Chronicle. Looks like Pillsbury Winthrop's pro-bono program has the city in quite an uproar. In a city with no shortage of homeless, the firm has been accused of using scorched-earth tactics to fight for the right of some scumbag to litter the city with 11 abandoned vehicles. On top of the litter and declining property values, the taxpayers have had to spend $71,320 to defend this matter. City residents have been pleading with the law firm to stop assisting with this vexatious litigation. "This guy is out of control," said local resident Ken Stewart. "It's unbelievable. We need some help on this." Perhaps, next time I head out that way, I could get this guy to park one of his vehicles on Carolyn Lamm's front lawn.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/01/23/BAA11BM6RJ.DTL

TTT

Sad Note

2010-01-22T13:56:00.003-05:00

"L4L,

Just wanted you to know that I heard a sad rumor that a contract attorney passed away on the downtown NYC Juristaff gig. I am not aware of what caused the death at this point, but was told that for whatever reason he wasn't able to seek out medical attention soon enough. At this time, I have no information as to the identity of this individual. I will keep you posted if I learn anything else."

The Garden State's Rates Deflate!

2010-01-21T17:51:00.005-05:00

This just went up an hour ago (1/21/09) on nj craigslist:

http://newyork.craigslist.org/jsy/lgl/1564000500.html

"Deflate the rate" comes to New Jersey! BTW, can anyone confirm that Barasso/Deloitte has cut the Westfield sweatshop rate to $25 for the incoming coders? Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse! Lady Barasso must address this immediately and reclaim the mantle of cheapest sweatshop operator in the Garden State from our new pals in Morristown!

This is great news for the Valvoline Dean Pat Hobbs of the infamous Seton Hall Unemployment Center. He's probably working the phones right now and loading Greyhound buses at Newark Penn Station to truck those grads up to Morristown, just in time to mention his "99% employment rate" to our pals at US News!

Do the math: 44 K a year tution at Seton Hall to scrounge for $25 an hour temporary doc review gigs with no health benefits or chance for advancement! Come on down.....

L4L

(By the way, this will likely be my last post as Tom is getting back from vacation soon and taking back the reins. It's been fun, coders! L4L

The "Swine" Group Pigs Deflate the Rate!

2010-01-16T16:26:00.006-05:00

Our pals at The "Swine Group" aka EP Dine aka "Franken-Dine" aka "EP Slime" are hard at work "deflating the rate" with this new $25 an hour cattle call that needs 100+ bodies:

http://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/lgl/1554510102.html

As predicted on this blog months ago, the new waves of recently-admitted lemmings will drive rates to shockingly low levels. We're reached the point where agencies are testing new floors for doc review rates daily, and don't doubt that they'll fill this job w/in hours. Don't be surprised if we see rates fall to the high teens or very low twenties by mid-spring. Remember, the NY Bar 1st Dept has a big admissions ceremony in January, and then in March all the out-of-staters head up to Albany for that swearing-in. The agencies are licking their chops at this new group of desperate, heavily indebted lemmings who will code like crazy and ask for more! We learned a couple days ago that a Hudson job that's happening in NYC right now is paying $27 flat and was filled w/in hours with admitted NY attorneys.

(Another rumor awaiting confirmation is that the infamous Deloitte/Barasso gig in Westfield NJ cut the rate for incoming coders from $29 to $25- can any T the T readers confirm this?)

We certainly hope that all experienced coders boycott this project. At that rate, you might as well drive a truck or wait tables and preserve at least a bit of your pride. Posts like the new Swine project really remove all doubt that we're in an ugly, bumpy race to the bottom out in doc-review land.

*UPDATE: We learned today at Tom the Temp that the $25 an hour Dine project is at Huron Consulting. Another agency, Synergy, is staffing Huron gigs at $33 an hour and have been for some time. Apparently, Dine is simply testing the bottom to see if they can steal a few more bucks from the coders and pad their already fat bottom lines.
L4L

Solo Cheerleaders say we're "whiners"

2010-01-15T15:09:00.002-05:00

Came across this post on good old Solo Practice U's website:

http://buildasolopractice.solopracticeuniversity.com/2010/01/11/dont-be-a-victim-of-the-victim-mentality/

You really gotta hand it to the solo cheerleader shysters and their denigration of anyone not swilling the $595 "Solo Practice U" Kool-Aid! Who knew that forking over $595 for a bunch of YouTube clips of fellow solo losers was the fast-track to success?

Fact is, American lawyers cannot compete with a continent full of unlicensed third-world "lawyers" who will cut, paste and code the same slop-work garbage as us for 1/100th the pay. It's like a baseball game where one side gets 3 outs and the other 15. You cannot compete on a playing field that unlevel. And lest we forget, LegalZoom has stolen most of the makework garbage like LLC formation and wills, while the terrible economy and unemployment make it impossible for DWI and other shitlaw quasi-criminals to pay even modest attorney fees.

And if solo practice is so lucrative and fufilling, why aren't these people out there doing it? By their deeds you shall know them.

L4L

Junior Associates in India Earn $8100 a year

2010-01-14T14:42:00.002-05:00

Good luck competing with folks who pay no bar dues, student loans, CLE fees, and work hard for 8 grand a YEAR:

From Bloomberg.com (link: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aBo8DnfekWZQ

(Bloomberg) -- Bruce Masterson, chief operating officer of Socrates Media LLC, asked his outside counsel to customize a residential lease for all 50 U.S. states in 2003. The firm's estimate: about $400,000. He rejected that price tag and hired QuisLex, in Hyderabad, India, which did it for $45,000.

``It was good quality,'' said Masterson, whose Chicago-based company publishes legal forms on the Internet. ``We've been working together ever since.''

Clients are pushing law firms like Jones Day and Kirkland & Ellis to send basic legal tasks to India, where lawyers tag documents and investigate takeover targets for as little as $20 an hour. The firms are reacting to a trend that will move about 50,000 U.S. legal jobs overseas by 2015, according to Boston- based Forrester Research Inc.

``The objective is to have only the most valuable people in London or New York, and the others in India, China or Columbus, Ohio,'' said Robert Profusek, co-head of the mergers and acquisitions practice at Jones Day in New York, who sends low-end work to the cheapest locations and plans to open a document center in India. ``Lawyers are service providers. We are not gods.''

Companies with in-house legal departments in India include Wilmington, Delaware-based DuPont Co., San Jose, California-based Cisco Systems Inc., and New York-based Morgan Stanley, according to ValueNotes Database Pvt. The Indian legal services industry will more than quadruple to $640 million by 2010 from $146 million in 2006, Maharashtra, India-based ValueNotes said.

General Electric

General Electric Co. sends about $3 million a year in routine legal work to its Indian affiliate, said Janine Dascenzo, the Fairfield, Connecticut-based company's managing counsel for legal operations.

``India has very talented lawyers,'' she said. ``But it's a misconception that you can just send work there and it gets done. You need proper supervision and security.''

Kirkland & Ellis, the seventh-largest U.S. law firm, works with offshore attorneys at the client's request, said Gregg Kirchhoefer, a senior partner in the firm's outsourcing and technology transaction practice.

``I'm not an advocate of offshoring legal services, but having worked in this area for so long, I understand the value of the model,'' he said. Typically, clients hire a provider and Chicago-based Kirkland helps manage the attorneys, Kirchhoefer said.

Markup Disclosure

U.S. law firms are required under ethics rules to disclose markups on what they pay foreign attorneys who aren't licensed to practice law in the U.S. Such rules don't apply to legal work performed by lawyers admitted to practice in U.S. jurisdictions.

Traditionally, law firms pay U.S. contract attorneys $50 to $65 per hour and bill clients up to three times the fee. For work performed by associates at the law firm, firms typically bill clients about $250 to $400 an hour.

Armed with the knowledge of how little law firms might pay for offshore work, corporations can use the threat of cutting them out and sending legal tasks overseas on their own to force law firms to reduce fees.

``Law firms can earn more by using labor they can mark up without disclosure,'' said Stephen Gillers, professor of legal ethics at New York University School of Law in Manhattan. ``But clients are knowledgeable about costs, and they want to negotiate the markup on these charges.''

Trend

Not every law firm has accepted the trend.

``Some firms are spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt,'' says David Perla, co-chief executive of Pangea3 LLC, an offshore legal services company based in New York and Mumbai. ``They see any competition as bad and they'll raise any issues as to why you shouldn't go offshore.''

Of the 10 highest-grossing U.S. law firms, seven declined to comment on outsourcing. Only one, Chicago-based Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw, said it doesn't use the practice.

``I don't think law firms are ashamed of offshoring,'' Perla said. ``The firms that are having success with it aren't talking, because they view it as a competitive advantage.''

Of about 100 third-party legal services providers in India, clients give top marks to Pangea3 and New York-based Integreon Managed Solutions Inc., according to The Black Book of Outsourcing, a survey published in July by Clearwater, Florida- based Brown-Wilson Group Inc.

About 80 percent of Pangea3's clients are corporations and 20 percent are law firms, Perla said.

`In-House'

``Some firms are coming to us because in-house clients suggested it or pressured them,'' Perla said. ``Others want to come to the client first and offer a solution.''

Integreon, which provides legal services in India, the Philippines and Fargo, North Dakota, has long-term contracts with about 45 companies and 15 law firms, said CEO Liam Brown.

Law firms contribute 45 percent to offshore revenue, while corporate law departments contribute 36 percent, ValueNotes said.

Integreon recruits lawyers from second-tier law schools in India and managers from the litigation practices of firms such as New York-based Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, Brown said. After training in India, managers relocate to New York or Los Angeles.

In India, legal education is based on common law, conducted in English, and requires two or three years of classes. The country produces about 80,000 law school graduates a year, according to ValueNotes, compared with about 44,000 in the U.S.

Offshore companies charge $10 to $25 an hour on low-end work and $25 to $90 an hour on advanced jobs. Junior Indian lawyers might earn as much as $8,160 a year, according to ValueNotes, compared with the $160,000 average salary for associates in major U.S. cities.

Janice D'souza, 26, a lawyer in Pangea3's litigation and research department in Mumbai, says she makes three times as much as she would at an Indian law firm.

``At an Indian law firm, generally your potential is not recognized at an early stage,'' D'souza said. ``Here it's talent- based. In the near future, I think I will be a department manager.''

To contact the reporters on this story: Cynthia Cotts in New York at ccotts@bloomberg.net and; Liane Kufchock in Southfield, Michigan, at lkufchock@bloomberg.net

Doc Review R.I.P.?

2010-01-11T19:54:00.002-05:00

Can NYC doc review finally be pronounced dead? It's been months since any large projects have gone up on Posse List or craigslist, and the few projects we do hear about seem to pay abysmal rates ($25-$30/hr) with no chance for any OT.

Is anyone working out there? If so, post agency, rate, and expected duration below in the comments.

LA Times: No More Room on the Bench

2010-01-08T14:05:00.002-05:00

Wow, wow, and just WOW!. Perhaps the hardest-hitting mainstream Op-Ed yet on the dismal state of the legal "job market." From todays Los Angeles Times:

The American Bar Assn. allows unneeded new law schools to open and refuses to regulate them. The government should consider taking steps to stop the flow of attorneys into a saturated marketplace.

By Mark Greenbaum

Remember the old joke about 20,000 lawyers at the bottom of the sea being "a good start"? Well, in an interesting twist, thousands of lawyers now find themselves drowning in the unemployment line as the legal sector is being badly saturated with attorneys.

Part of the problem can be traced to the American Bar Assn., which continues to allow unneeded new schools to open and refuses to properly regulate the schools, many of which release numbers that paint an overly rosy picture of employment prospects for their recent graduates. There is a finite number of jobs for lawyers, and this continual flood of graduates only suppresses wages. Because the ABA has repeatedly signaled its unwillingness to adapt to this changing reality, the federal government should consider taking steps to stop the rapid flow of attorneys into a marketplace that cannot sustain them.

From 2004 through 2008, the field grew less than 1% per year on average, going from 735,000 people making a living as attorneys to just 760,000, with the Bureau of Labor Statistics postulating that the field will grow at the same rate through 2016. Taking into account retirements, deaths and that the bureau's data is pre-recession, the number of new positions is likely to be fewer than 30,000 per year. That is far fewer than what's needed to accommodate the 45,000 juris doctors graduating from U.S. law schools each year.

This jobs gap is even more problematic given the rising cost of tuition. In 2008, the median tuition at state schools for nonresidents was $26,000 a year, and $34,000 for private schools -- and much higher in some states, such as California. Students racked up an average loan debt in 2007-08 of $59,000 for students from public law schools and $92,000 for those from private schools, according to the ABA, and a recent Law School Survey of Student Engagement found that nearly one-third of respondents said they would owe about $120,000.

Such debt would be manageable if a world of lucrative jobs awaited the newly minted attorneys, but this is not the case. A recent working paper by Herwig Schlunk of Vanderbilt Law School contends that with the exception of some of those at the best schools, going for a law degree is a bad investment and that most students will be "unlikely ever to dig themselves out from" under their debt. This problem is exacerbated by the existing law school system.

Despite the tough job market, new schools continue to sprout like weeds. Today there are 200 ABA-accredited law schools in the U.S., with more on the way, as many have been awarded provisional accreditation. In California alone, there are 21 law schools that are either accredited or provisionally accredited, including the new one at UC Irvine.

The ABA cites antitrust concerns in refusing to block new schools, taking a weak approach to regulation. For example, in 2008 the ABA created an accreditation task force to study the need for changes, but saddled it with a narrow charter. In the end, it proposed only cosmetic changes and rejected out of hand the possibility of giving up control over accreditation, calling the idea not viable and "draconian."

The task force also raised the possibility that if the ABA gave up its accreditation authority, the Federalist Society, a conservative-leaning interest group, could take over that job. This is an intellectually dishonest red herring, likely injected to divert attention from the idea's merits. The Federalist Society would have no reason to do this because the technical, expensive accrediting process does not gibe with its mission, nor would the Department of Education be likely to give it such authority.

The ABA has also refused to create and oversee an independent method of reporting graduate data. Postgraduate employment information generally provides the most useful facts for prospective students to study in deciding whether to go to law school.

In many cases, the data that schools now furnish are based on self-reported information, skewing the results because unemployed and low-paying grads are less likely to report back. Law schools do this because they want the rosiest picture possible for the influential rankings given by U.S. News & World Report. Despite its ample resources, the ABA has rebuffed calls to monitor the schools to get more accurate data, calling the existing framework an effective "honor system."

Based on what happened with the accreditation task force, the ABA is not likely to force change; it is too intertwined with the law schools. ABA groups -- such as the task force, which was chaired by a former dean -- are stacked with school officials who have no incentive to change the status quo. This is why the ABA should get out of the accreditation business completely.

Unlike other professional fields such as medicine and public health, whose preeminent professional organizations do not have control over the accreditation of schools and programs, the ABA exercises unfettered power over the accreditation of law schools.

The American Dental Assn., the nation's leading dental group, offers a model for the ABA to follow. It accredits schools but assiduously guards the profession and has allowed respected dental schools such as the ones at Emory, Georgetown and Northwestern to close for economic reasons and to prevent market saturation. Such a move by the bar association would be unprecedented. Dental schools go even further to protect the profession's integrity by collectively boycotting the U.S. News rankings.

The U.S. Department of Education should strip the ABA of its accreditor status and give the authority to an organization that is free of conflicts of interest, such as the Assn. of American Law Schools or a new group. Although the AALS is made up of law schools, it is an independent, nonprofit, academic -- not professional -- group, which could be expected to maintain the viability and status of the profession, properly regulate law schools, curtail the opening of new programs and perhaps even shut down unneeded schools. The AALS has cast a very skeptical eye on for-profit schools, compared with the ABA's weak hands-off accreditation policies.

Although these would be unprecedented moves, they are necessary. The legal profession must be saved from itself.

Link to original here:

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-greenbaum8-2010jan08,0,4457698.story?track=rss

A Year-End Snapshot of the job market

2010-01-07T14:54:00.003-05:00

From "Adjunct Law Prof Blog"

Student loan debt is up and job expectations are down according to a year-end, informal snapshot of several sources. The online ABA Journal is reporting today that almost a third of all law students expect to graduate with more than $120k in loan debt. Over at Above the Law, editor Elie Mystal describes, in a column called "Debt: the Silent Killer," the effect $150k in law school debt has had on him since he graduated from Harvard Law in 2003. Since he decided he didn't like the practice of law after all, he calls the experience "a very expensive vacation that debt financed." The ABA president is urging Congress to offer law students debt relief.

On the employment side of the equation, the year that just concluded represents the worst period ever in BigLaw lay-offs with more than 12,000 jobs lost. The picture is brighter for more nimble, mid-size firms although even 65% of those surveyed still expect to reduce associate salaries in the coming year. And then there's this: "Associate Pay Cuts Here to Stay."

Perhaps for that reason, law students have changed their expectations about working in the private sector with more indicating a desire for (lower paying) public interest work according to the most recent Law School Survey of Student Engagement (and here).

This year's survey found that the percentage of law students who expected to work in private law firms dropped to 50 percent, down from about 58 percent in each of the previous three years. The percentage of law students who anticipated finding work in the public-interest sector rose to 33 percent, from about 29 percent in each of the past three years.

The findings "may indicate that law students are reframing their career expectations in response to changes in the economic climate that have affected hiring at many law firms," said Lindsay Watkins, the survey's project manager.

How will it all end? This article reminds us that we've been through a severe legal recession before and survived just fine - some even thrived. Whether circumstances exist now that didn't then (more law schools, more law grads, outsourcing, etc.) is still the big unknown.

Full link here:
http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/adjunctprofs/2010/01/a-yearend-snapshot-of-the-job-market-for-law-grads.html

L4L

*REMINDER: All racist/anti-Nigerian/anti-Semitic comments will be removed. Comments are being moderated before publication. So don’t waste your time- no one will see/read your racist gutter ranting. Get the picture? Thank you.
L4L

Let's give temping the "Frontline" Treatment

2010-01-05T12:26:00.007-05:00

Frontline, the award-winning PBS documentary series, has recently run feature programs on the Madoff scandal, the financial/derivatives market meltdown, and other infamous swindles of late.

Yet it seems they’ve overlooked one of the biggest scams of all: the law school/student lending cartel. This festering cesspool is just begging to be pumped out. We have Dick Matasar of NYLS steering lemmings to a notorious student lender “loan shark” whose board he chairs, the obvious salary/employment fraud broadcast by the schools and the NALP, the total lack of jobs for new grads, tuitions increasing at 5 X the rate of inflation, and of course the ABA’s infamous 08-451 outsourcing opinion. Plenty of grist here for the Frontline scambusting mill.

Here’s the link to email Frontline your story idea:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/contact/

Make sure to forward this link to all your struggling friends. Just imagine the squirming TTT deans being confronted on national television with hordes of their pissed-off grads and held to answer for their patently bogus salary/employment brochures. Talk about must-see TV.

*NOTE to COMMENT POSTERS:

All racist/anti-Nigerian/anti-Semitic comments will be deleted, so don't waste your time. You guys should be ashamed of yourselves.

Skadden Stiffs Bomb Scare Victims

2010-01-04T15:41:00.003-05:00

Rumor has it that Skadden Arps has decided to screw over victims of the recent Times Square bomb scare incident. As you've probably heard, a building doorman reported a suspicious looking van without license plates to the NYPD, who quickly called in the bomb detail and evacuated all high-rise buildings in the area including Skadden Arps headquarters at 4 Times Square the day before New Year's Eve.

Skadden has apparently informed the coders that they will not be paid for the time they were out of the building due to the evacuation. This doesn't surprise us here at T the T, since Skadden is a notoriously cheap crew of shysters. They suffer from a major prestige defecit due to their "McBiglaw" reputation, and recently axed scores of long-time staff attorneys and paras without a moment's notice or a dime of severance. In these turbulent times, it's comforting to know that scumbags like Skadden haven't changed their tune.

L4L is watching the store

2010-01-01T14:39:00.003-05:00

Hello out there in coder-land. Law is 4 Losers here and you there, wishing all a happy New Year and how ya’ be?

Tom is taking a well-deserved vacation and asked me to look after the blog while he’s away (don’t worry, he bought a round-trip ticket and has not defected to Honduras to escape Sallie Mae.) As you probably know, I recently updated my own blog Big Debt, Small Law (er, sorry for the long wait) and even scored a feature over at ATL:

http://abovethelaw.com/2009/12/is_solo_practice_a_pipe_dream.php

As usual, the pro-law shills circled like a school of piranhas when a monkey falls into the Amazon. It’s simply amazing how many attorneys just 6 months into solo practice are clearing over 300 K doing shitlaw “estate planning” and breaking 7 figures with their books of Allstate fender-bender files, as the ATL comments state. Who knew? That’s not just “networking”, that’s hijacking the goddamned airwaves! Me thinks that Susan Carter Liebel must’ve had all hands on deck and manning their battle stations within minutes of the ATL post going up. Like dumping root beer down a beehive, scores of angry shills swarmed out with stingers locked n’ loaded, ready to attack all “losers” and venom them into submission. The few legitimate comments were likewise pathetic, with some Wilson Elser cut n’ paster bragging about his 76 K salary four years into the insurance defense racket and other assorted Kool-Aid burpers that don’t even rate a mention.

But enough about me. Here are some L4L doc review predictions to ring in 2010:

Rates will continue their downward plunge. Over the next three months, 15,000+ starry-eyed lemmings will “take the oath of office” and gain entry to the exalted bars of NY, NJ and CT. Since even the no-fault boiler rooms paying under 40 K now require a SCOTUS clerkship, Ivy-league pedigree and 10+ years experience, look for many new faces lining up at DeNovo, Lex-Pollution, Hudson, Update and the other pimp-daddies just dying to whore these virgins out for peanuts. The child-sex trade in Thailand will look benign by comparison once the agencies taste the sheer volume of fresh suckers signing up. And just imagine how bad the “training seminars” will be with squads of newbie gunners raising their hands every 30 seconds to ask if “we need to keep our eyes out for UCC 2-207?” and “will quantum meruit be a factor here?” and other bar exam-type “substantive” bullshit.

Worse yet, these kids are going to be clicking faster than the Morse Code operators sending Titanic’s distress signals. They haven’t yet learned that lightning-fast coding doesn’t lead to one being “discovered” and promoted to associate. No one is panning for “diamonds in the rough” on a doc review gig. Lemmings, the law school lottery was already drawn. Your ticket lost, so quit re-checking the numbers. Get over it and slow the fuck down.

I really feel for you “veterans” stuck doing Q.C. on these gigs. Get ready for reams of false-positive “hot docs” where a newbie thinks some corporate sushi order was really an encrypted top-secret message about screwing over shareholders. The “attorney comments” boxes are going to read like mini-Law Review articles for a while, maybe even with footnotes. Relax. Just give them time. Like a tire stuck in the mud, it takes a while for this pent-up legal energy to futilely “spin-off” before finally burying itself in apathy’s quagmire. As Red said in The Shawshenk Redemption, “these doc review gigs are funny, boys. At first you hate ‘em. Then after a while you get used to ‘em. Before long, you start to depend on them.” Indeed.

Look for time and a half rates to finally vanish altogether. 2009 signaled the chest pains for OT, but 2010 will bring the fatal coronary. With the desperation level currently out there, there’s simply no reason for any agency to pony up OT pay anymore. We’ve seen the last of the OT dodo bird. Its extinction is imminent. Hell, even the rates for foreign language gigs are headed straight downhill. A new trend by Peak and esp. Strategic is to post Posse List jobs with an “up to” qualifier, such as “up to $32 an hour” and such. What’s going on is that they’re seeing how many resumes they get and then keying pay based on the response rate. Anyone here remember the last time an agency called them as opposed to the other way around? Enough said. And don’t be surprised to see “junior level” projects popping up in the $16-$20 an hour range in 2010, and probably even lower. (Jursitaff is already testing these waters). Rumor is that Helene Diamond (Peak) and Sean Treadwell (Strategic) both took a real hit in 2009, and as such could only afford to have their Bentleys detailed every other week. Everyone here had better buckle down and get to clicking to make up the slack for them here in 2010.

Expect the market to remain tight and projects few and far between. New software and other “coder-bots” have taken quite a bite out of first-level review. The herd of documents has been drastically culled. And of course the ABA (American Biglaw Association) is hard at work in 2010 sending more licensed attorney work to the cheapest third-world serfs they can find, all while tooting the diversity trumpet like a “rusty trombone”. Their tune sounds a lot like a Cleveland Steamer.

Also look for conflicts and background check forms/processes to become even more invasive and demeaning. With the nefarious corporate behavior of the last 10 years now coming to light in litigation, Biglaw is shitting its pants and subjecting all coders to a virtual anal cavity search before placing them on project. The recent Synergy/Huron debacle with its 12,490 page conflicts forms and invasive requests for SS#s and private info is a trend we predict will continue. You can, of course, kiss internet access goodbye forever. Even SullCrom pulled the browser plug about 3 months ago from all the basement workstations.

BTW, you SullCrommers better mind your P’s and Q’s, because Big Mamma’s Xmas stocking was lighter than usual this year. Paul Weiss already cleaned house and slashed scores of staff attorneys and paras, and SullCrom will be monkey-see, monkey-do once they catch 09’s profit per partner numbers at Paul Weiss. “Big Mamma”, if axed, will first swallow the recently re-opened Burritoville across the street before stampeding thru lower Manhattan and climbing the Woolworth Building a la King Kong. Shit could get ugly real quick.

Keep the horror stories coming, coders. It’s a brand new year…..

Your pal,
law is 4 losers

PLEASE NOTE: All racist/anti-Nigerian/anti-Semitic comments will be deleted, so don't waste your time. You guys should be ashamed of yourselves.

Assault at Labatoilet?

2009-12-30T20:36:00.004-05:00

"Apparently Labaton & Sucharow has come up with an unusual incentive system for its junior hires in this benefit bereft market: The right to assault & hospitalize even more junior hires. This Kapo- Kapitalist system was put to the test when one of the recent hires: (name to be confirmed) sent a fellow attorney to the emergency room with a concussion today. The cause of this treatment by this belligerent barrister was that someone asked him to turn down the volume on the game function of his iphone, during one of his infrequent visits to the work area. More on Mr. (name to be confirmed) as/if he develops; will he be arrested, deported or just plain promoted?"

Merry Christmas From Harris Beach LLP

2009-12-26T12:35:00.002-05:00

Figured I’d pass this along. I know it was only three contract attorneys and the firm isn’t a big player, but I just was dumbfounded by the fact that they called today to tell us the project is over. The firm is closed today. It couldn’t wait until Sunday evening. Or even early Monday morning?

Merry Christmas, eh?

"As I’m walking back into my apartment this afternoon, I heard the final few rings of the telephone and the answering machine turn on. A staff person from the attorney temporary staffing agency I’d been working for these past few months was leaving me a message telling me that the project I had been working on at Harris Beach PLLC on Wall Street was over effective immediately. The firm’s current advertisement hook is 'Lawyers you’ll swear by. Not at.' How funny. Real professional too. Well, I had a few choice words for those attorneys today, that’s for sure. It’s unconscionable to call someone on Christmas Eve, when the law firm is actually closed, to tell them that their job is over effective immediately. Great timing. Wonderful way to usher in the Christmas holiday. Here’s your hat, what’s your hurry, right? It couldn’t wait until Sunday evening or even Monday morning?"

http://laidofflawyer.wordpress.com/2009/12/24/bah-humbug/

Happy Holidays From Quinn Emanuel

2009-12-23T13:29:00.005-05:00

"Here are a few tales from the holiday season at Quinn Emanuel:

We all joined Quinn on an up-note. We were told we would be direct hires making $55/hour plus overtime and operating on California's generous overtime rules. The project was to be run by a heavily made up (think Jersey Shore) cheerleader and a crooked-nosed lurch from Fordham.

All went swimmingly for a week. We got our steady diet of indignity, but as it was served with a healthy dose of money, who were we really to complain. And so it carried on a week until the Wednesday before Thanksgiving when they gathered us all in a great big room to tell us that our pay had been reduced by $19 an hour, cheers, and have a great Thanksgiving. Also, you no longer work for Quinn, you work for a woman at Strategic Legal with a herpee on her lip. Oh, and a baleful "sorry" to those who had canceled their holiday plans, but our work wouldn't be entirely necessary this weekend as they planned to increase our hours later.

And so they did. The week after Thanksgiving was up to sixty hours. The week after that was unlimited, but do not bill too much lest you get tired. The apoplexy and abject managerial failure obtained in the instructions doled out assiduously by the Cheerleader in a flurry of daily emails reminiscent of Donald Rumsfeld's 'snowflakes.' In these emails were a delightful mix of perfect reversals in instruction with the necessary admonishments about how we should have known the entire time what she was thinking (though she didn't give us the production requests because drooling assholes like us wouldn't get such high falutin language); warnings blasted without even a scintilla of irony when people worked fewer than fifty hours the week after Thanksgiving about failing to live up to what we 'had agreed' to do; and perhaps my favorite, an email in which the Cheerleader (I'm sure to appease Lurch) lectured us children on the moral quagmire of billing while shitting. I was so shocked by the last bit that I forwarded it to a few friends with jobs at other firms.

To make the season bright, I get word today that the project looks to end Thursday. Christmas Eve. With no warning given either to those of us on the project since the Great Rate Cut or to those that started yesterday. What the fuck is this job I've got. I'm so grateful I couldn't have made plans for Christmas, seeing as I'll likely not be working after all."

Knee-jerk Positive Thinking Is A Mental Disorder

2009-12-19T12:37:00.009-05:00

In her new book "Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America", social critic Barbara Ehrenreich lays out how an epidemic of postive American thinking from the Iraq War to the build up to the recent financial collapse has led to misery and brought us nearly to the brink of economic collapse.

Ehrenreich recently noted that, "two weeks ago, I was in Fort Wayne, Indiana, at a meeting where people who were about to be laid off told their stories. A woman next to me said that when her unemployment insurance runs out, she'll live in her car. Then, another woman said, 'Well, we have to remember to be positive, and that means don't watch the news, don't read the newspaper, just concentrate.'"

There is no shortage of postive thinking delusion when it comes to the law school scam. The Wall Street Journal for example did a front page story not long ago questioning the integrity of the post graduate career statistics at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. When it comes to delusion, facts and statistics apparently don't matter. Just last week the ass clown career center dean of the law school (Graham Sherr) gave a presentation to the unsuspecting 1L's in which he stated, "there are more jobs than there are of you, but you have to shun bitterness; bitterness is ugly." He then proceeded to demonstrate how positive delusional thinking would somehow reach out and magically bend the supply curve in the legal marketplace. Apparently, it worked because several minutes later the same fraudulent, puffed up career stat numbers that were criticized in the WSJ piece magically appeared on the overhead screen.

Labaton Suckaroo - Scrooge Of The Year

2009-12-18T09:54:00.006-05:00

"Dear Tom,

I nominate Labaton Suckaroo for the Scrooge of the season award. I worked for them at their offsite Merrill Corp hellhole earlier this year and I blogged about the infamous Blondie who was the team leader at the site. I managed to find something else, but I have some friends who are still working on the same Countrywide project back at Labaton’s headquarters downtown. They related the following to me: Labaton promised their temps, who they made short temp attorney employees, benefits after six months of service. Last week, they were called into a meeting on their six-month anniversary and told by a nasty personnel troll that they would not be receiving their paid vacation that had accrued or be paid for company holidays, Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, for this year. Some of these short term attorney employees had already planned vacation days over Christmas and got it approved, but now were told that you are not getting paid for it and that you are not getting paid for the company holidays either, and it’s too bad if you made plans. Lousy Labaton postponed all benefits until 2010 in order to avoid paying their employees for Christmas.

You can imagine what this has done for morale in a situation where they expect their short-term attorneys to build a plaintiff’s case in a multi million-dollar lawsuit against Countrywide, which was acquired by Bank of America. This is not mere document review. They expect their ex temps to do substantive work for $32 an hour flat while temps who are doing the same work, but representing a co-counsel on the same case at Labaton are making $45 an hour. Also, they recently blocked Internet access because the sleazy Guliani type COO came down and observed a few people on the Internet; apparently the same greaseball was instrumental in stopping Christmas pay.

Well, I guess Labaton Suckaroo is following in the great tradition of other ambulance chasing plaintiff firms like Paul Weiss and Milberg Weiss. I suggest you also put Labaton Sucharoo in your hall of shame. I know that they are very conscious of their image, as Paul Weiss was when you embarrassed them before, and they do monitor this blog. Thanks for providing this forum to expose the hypocrisy and abuse of these toilet law firms. I know that your blog does make a difference; Blondie almost got fired last time.

All the best!"

"Synergy"

2009-12-14T22:03:00.002-05:00

Hey Tom, a large project is gearing up with Synergy, a new gang of pimps in the doc review ghetto. Rate is $33 flat for 40 hours. Miserable does not begin to describe the situation. The incompetent old hags from Aronld & Porters DC office are running the "training gulag."

First you have to fill out a 12,590 page conflict form listing every firm, matter, and case you've handled since being admitted to the bar, as well as the name of your first grade teacher, blood type, and scores of other irrelevant and personal info. They have been bouncing the forms back again and again for even the smallest typo or discrepancy. Apparently the case involves Avon. Let me tell you, those Arnold & Porter hags sure could use some - they should lay it on like drywall spackle and then sand off the excess.

Anyway, only 2 days into training they already cut 1/3 of the 50 coders for "failing" a pathetic doc review test (maybe they're taking lessons from Lady Barasso). Now they're in scramble mode to replace them ASAP- so all coders beware! Stay as far away from this shitshow as possible- the in-house counsel and Arnold & Porter will be breathing down your neck like it was Alcatraz. The coder/straw boss ratio is like 2:1. I'd rather ride around on a garbage truck than push paper with these devils. A & P obviously have zero experience running this size review- I'm half tempted to write the Avon CEO and let them know that their "counsel" have their heads up their asses (or are their heads their asses- hard to tell!)

A Law School Carole

2009-12-12T15:39:00.008-05:00

When you get a chance, you just HAVE to check out this computer generated cartoon that will be featured in the National Law Journal on Monday. While I got a kick out of the ghost Ralph Marley, the shadow of the (still alive, but might as well be dead) former law student who used to rent Steve's apartment and now does document review somewhere in New Jersey, my favorite scene has to be that of the Ghost of Law School Past, one of the most hauntingly disturbing and hysterical things I have seen this year.

Scroll through the videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-_wDwmOQ1U

Here's the article, including commentary from the vile crap diploma school deans and useless ABA:

http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2009/12/14/spotlight-on-esq-never-writer-also-an-animator-a-latter-day-loyola-2l/

More Lexploitation

2009-12-09T10:17:00.004-05:00

Earlier this year we told you that "Nora Moo Moo" (no, not King Kong) would be arriving in Los Angeles. Well, she has arrived and those previously nice California rates are beginning to plummet:

"Here is a Lexploitation posting on Craigslist. I know because I received the same e-mail directly from them, although they also mentioned that there will be no paid parking parking ($60/week).

On a positive note, Providus is staffing a project at 34/hr."

http://losangeles.craigslist.org/lac/lgl/1500640581.html

Another E-Discovery Shin-dig

2009-12-07T15:55:00.005-05:00

"Hey Tom, Did you see this? Let's Gate-Crash the E-Discovery Shin-dig!‏

Listen to some of the podcasts! We have Diane Barasso, slave-mistress of Barasso, and the Panega-3 outsourcing crew! Sounds like quite a shindig."

Learn how to most efficiently downsize and outsource your legal work to India, followed by a presentation by Lady Barasso on how best to torture those Americans remaining through "non technology solutions designed to maximize efficiency, including ways to accelerate the review teams." I am curious as to what "non technology techniques" Lady Barasso has in mind to prod the teams along, especially when she oversees one of the most stifling, demoralized, low paid review camps in the NY metropolitan area. Maybe she will give a lesson in her infamous churn and burn mass firing techniques.

http://www.ediscoveryevent.com/main/?utm_campaign=MPPosse&utm_medium=banner&utm_source=exacttarget.com&utm_content=home&utm_term=discount&MAC=IUS_POSSE_#1

Matasar's Junk Bonds

2009-12-02T10:20:00.003-05:00

In the unregulated Wild West fantasyland of the American Bar Association, you now have a dean of one of the most overpriced law schools in the nation (who has jacked up tuition 5x faster than inflation over the last 10 years) serving as the head of the Board of Directors of a private student loan financing company. Put this together with the fact that many of the bonds sold off into the ABS market by this financing operation are now going negative, and you have one fishy situation. Lucky for the investors in the FFELP trust, the American taxpayers will be on the hook for 97% of the principal and accrued interest AND PENALTIES in many of these garbage loans.

Thankfully for us, several reporters are interested in looking into this seedy situation, while the ABA sits back and promotes outsourcing and "how to get ripped off while setting up a solo practice" promotional blogs.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Fitch-Affirms-Access-Group-bw-809064258.html?x=0&.v=1

Snubbed By The "ABA Journal Blawg 100" This Year

2009-12-01T09:40:00.003-05:00

Despite winning our category last year, it looks like we weren't recognized by the ABA editors this year. I guess our Congressional letter writing campaign and our nationwide call to defund the organization didn't go over too well.

Regardless, I urge everyone to vote AGAINST the "Strategic Legal Technology" blog for Prism Legal under the tech category. Thanks ABA for honoring an Indian outsourcer in one of the worst job markets for young lawyers EVER.

http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/third_annual_aba_journal_blawg_100

Another Angry Letter To A Law School Dean

2009-11-30T11:43:00.002-05:00

"Dean Hiram Chodosh
Dean Reyes Aguilar

S.J. Quinney College of Law
University of Utah
332 S. 1400 E., Room 101
Salt Lake City , UT 84112

Dear Reyes and Hiram,

Gentlemen, on your school’s materials, it states that 98% of graduates from the Class of 2008 were employed within 9 months of graduation. And, according to the representatives from your school, this is based off of 100% response rate to the graduate survey.

The same material also claims that the median starting salary is $89,021 for the Class of 2008. Is this counting private and public employers? Is this also counting those graduates who are working in non-law positions? Does this median figure include those working as retail and insurance salespeople, school teachers, clerks, and research assistants?

Lastly, the school lists a starting salary range of $42,000-$215,000. So, does this mean that not one single graduate from 2008 found a job making less than $42,000? I find this incredibly hard to believe – isn’t there a large oversupply of lawyers and JDs in the U.S. ? Since your school publishes and presents these figures to attract more applicants, would you be willing to submit these figures to an outside, independent audit?"

1 Hour Notice

2009-11-23T14:12:00.001-05:00

"This is my first MAJOR gripe about doc review in about 3 years. In July about 60 people were recruited by Lexolution to do a review for Dechert. The review initially went well. We did our job, had no complaints from the people upstairs and then all of a sudden we were told to pack our stuff because the project will be suspended until at least next week. We were given 1 hour notice on the eve of thanksgiving week! Some people actually need to prepare to take their belongings (e.g. tupperware, mugs, dinner, ipods, wires, etc.) since we practically lived there anyway and were all under the impression that the project was going to last through December

Its clearly obvious where we rank on the totem pole but they should've had the decency to give us more notice than 1 hour. To add insult to injury, we may also not qualify to file for unemployment until we find out whether in fact we are officially unemployed. We were told that we should know by Wednesday whether we're coming back. What a load of crap this is!

Of course, I'm not surprised that we were let go right before thanksgiving. After all, its not as if Dechert has any respect for social standards and to them we are a dime a dozen anyway. But at least have the decency to give us more notice than 1 hour! It is noteworthy that we were all let go on a Friday. Ya think this was planned in advance?

It just goes to show that there is no fraternity among the legal profession, nor are there any social boundaries. For the first time in my life, I'm thankful we have a penal code. Who knows, if murder were legal they would probably set the whole case room on fire just to avoid letting us have our unemployment benefits, which by the way, is not nearly enough to get by."

Return Of The Eunuch

2009-11-23T12:02:00.009-05:00

BLAST FROM THE PAST, THE EUNUCH IS BACK!
"'The Eunuch' is back in the general population. I heard through a friend that he is on the Countrywide project at Labaton as a temp making a whopping $32 an hour flat. Apparently he is no longer with Anita's shit law firm. Also, I heard that he is trying to impress at Labaton and become a project leader. He does this by copying and pasting large portions of the document in the Attorney Comments field of the coding sheet thereby hoping to impress; of course, this dumbass provides no relevant comments of his own. But from what I hear, it doesn't take a lot to impress on the Labaton project. The Eunuch and Labaton: What a perfect duo!"

BLAST FROM THE PAST - http://temporaryattorney.blogspot.com/2006/01/anita-and-her-sidekick.html
http://temporaryattorney.blogspot.com/2006/02/hey-heyyo-yo-sidekick-has-got-to-go.html

A Happy New Year's Surprise: Unemployment Benefit Extensions Set To Expire By End Of The Year

2009-11-20T10:08:00.005-05:00

Readers of your blog should note that the recent unemployment extensions do not apply to everyone. This is especially important for those laid off after July 1, 2009, as we go into the holiday season when temp hiring may slow down.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/19/us/19unemploy.html?_r=1&hp

Blacklisted By Lexolution

2009-11-17T10:08:00.002-05:00

Wear it as a badge of honor. The arrogance and greed of those shysters is so great that they think they are immune from 19th century fire and labor code regulations.

"I just walked off a LeClair Ryan document review gig. Although the fact that I was thankfully offered a better paying job at another firm and by another agency, the work conditions at LeClair were so ridiculous that I probably would have left anyway. Some of the random activities prohibited at this jokehouse: wearing earphones, making phone calls, text msging, doing anything with your phone, having a non document review related conversation with anyone near you, etc.

Despite promptly notifying my rep, I still was graced with a bitchy phone call about how unprofessional I am. Oh, I almost forgot, 15 dollars an hour. Parking not included.

I imagine I'm now blacklisted from Lexolution, but I'm so bitter I couldn't care less."

An Open Letter To Dean Richard "The Slimeball" Matasar

2009-11-16T09:59:00.005-05:00

"Tom:

Attached is a copy of an email I sent to Richard Matasar at New York Law School. I'm forwarding it to you because I thought you might be interested in it, given your recent post on your blog about Access Group and Matasar.

Thanks and keep up the good work with the blog."

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From:
Date: Sat, Nov 14, 2009 at 11:21 AM
Subject: Letter from an '02 almunus
To: rmatasar@nyls.edu

Dear Mr. Matasar:

My name Is . I am a 2002 graduate of New York Law School, and I am admitted to practice in both New York and New Jersey.

I am writing to encapsulate and memorialize my disappointment with both you and New York Law School in general. I'm terribly disappointed with how my legal "career" has played out in the seven years since I graduated, and I was shocked and outraged to hear that you concurrently serve as Dean of NYLS AND as Chairman of the Access Group (a CLEAR conflict of interest that should be addressed by the ABA and New York Bar Ethics Committee).

In short, my NYLS degree is not worth the incredibly high price tag that I paid for it, using student loan funds I obtained from your Access Group. I was unable to ever obtain a permanent legal job that would pay me enough to both service my student loan debt and put food on my table. This was not for lack of trying; I utilized Attorney Resume and paid top dollar to have my resume written and gain access to almost 1,000 law firms' contact information, only to be rejected by EVERY firm to which I sent my resume. (That's correct: almost 1,000 REJECTIONS - both affirmative rejections and "trashcan rejections," where they didn't write back. Not even ONE interview.)

I contacted the NYLS "Career Services Department" in 2003 (in quotes because it's not really a Career Services Department, but a farce). They apologized that I was having problems and directed me to a link on the NYLS website to TEMP AGENCIES, under the guise of "Legal Recruiters." "Lots of our graduates do Contract Attorney work to hold them over until they can find permanent employment," they said. Little did I know what "Contract Attorney" work entailed, how horribly and disrespectfully I'd be treated, and how I'd ruin even the slightest chance I'd have to secure a permanent job with the albatross of "Contract Attorney" on my resume. But this was supposed to "hold me over," as per your "Career Services" department's assertion.

Since I was desperately in need of income in order to eat and service my debt to your Access Group, I contacted the temp agencies and was soon put to work for approximately $30 an hour. The conditions were reminiscent of a Third World sweatshop; there were over 100 "attorneys" stuffed into a dingy, poorly ventilated basement that was infested with cockroaches! And there were an inordinate amount of NYLS graduates on this job; I don't have an exact number, but I would estimate at least 15 or so.

This project lasted approximately three months, at which point it ended and I registered with several other agencies. I quickly was placed on another project that was worse than the first one, at a very prestigious downtown firm. We were shoved into a sub-sub basement, surrounded by mountains of dusty and dirty boxes, and made to review the contents of these boxes. Now I have no aversion to getting my hands dirty, but this was ridiculous, given the abuse we sustained at the hands of our supervisors. I won't go into more detail, but it was a terrible experience. And, once again, there were and inordinate number of NYLS graduates working with me.

These temporary jobs continued for five years. For five years, I bounced from one temporary job to another, some lasting for a few weeks, some lasting almost a year. No opportunity for advancement, no respect, no benefits (or at least benefits that were too expensive for me to afford, given I was being soaked by the Access Group each month and had other bills to pay.) Then the economic crisis of 2008 happened.

I completed my last (and possibly worst) temporary project in November 2008. Since then, I have been unable to land another temporary project. That's right, Mr. Matasar: I have been unemployed for ONE YEAR!! For one year, I've been collecting unemployment benefits and struggling to make my student loan payments to your Access Group.

In the past year, I've been frantically trying to find work, to no avail. I've sent out hundreds of resumes, to no avail. I even have an interesting story for you:

A college friend of mine works for Cognizant, a mobile communications technology company. Upon hearing of my plight, he asked me to give him my resume so he could forward it to his friend in the legal department. I hesitatingly did so, knowing in my heart and mind that I would be quickly rejected and laughed at because of all the Contract Attorney experience listed on my resume. (It has been my experience that Contract Attorney experience is a quick way to get your resume thrown into the trash in record time. I've heard several interesting justifications for this, including that Contract Attorney experience is an indicator that the candidate "didn't really want a permanent position." Meanwhile, Contract Attorney work was the ONLY work I could get that would allow me to earn enough money to survive and pay my debt to THE ACCESS GROUP. Can you say CATCH-22, Mr. Matasar?)

My prediction came true: my friend called me a few days after forwarding my resume and told me his friend in the legal department determined that I "didn't have the skill set" they needed. My friend pressed him to define exactly what he meant by "skill set," and he said the following (my friend actually took notes):

1) New York Law School is a joke, a farce. They don't even consider NYLS graduates for attorney positions. He might be able to get me an interview for a paralegal position though, but it's a long shot. (Mr. Matasar. I AM A LICENSED ATTORNEY, NOT A PARALEGAL!! I SPENT OVER $140,000 TO OBTAIN MY J.D. FROM NYLS AND I'M ADMITTED TO PRACTICE IN TWO JURISDICTIONS!!)

2) Contract Attorney work is GARBAGE. It's document review and can be done by "monkeys." It's not substantive legal experience, and is indicative of my not wanting to get a permanent job. (Meantime, I couldn't get any other work, as I've said. My friend even told him this, but it went in one ear and out the other.)

3) There was no way my friend's friend could forward my resume to his superior without looking foolish and being repremanded for wasting his superior's time.

So, Mr. Matasar, there you have it. I spent top dollar, which I borrowed from your ACCESS GROUP, to get my J.D. from NYLS and pass two bar exams, only to be shunted aside, marginalized, and humiliated by the legal industry. I am on the verge of bankruptcy and as of next month, I will be unable to continue making payments on my ACCESS GROUP student loans. I plan on writing a letter when the next payment is due, explaining that I didn't get what I paid for and was mislead by NYLS's job statistics prior to enrolling (NYLS misleads potential students with employment numbers - you include temporary Contract Attorneys as being fully employed at large firms, which is not the whole truth), and I'm suspending my payments. I am prepared and willing to face the legal wrath that will occur when I default, and I see it as a golden opportunity for me to expose both NYLS's fraud and your unethical conflict of interest

I plan on expressing my outrage at your conflict of interest, namely that you are concurrently the Dean of New York Law School AND the chairman of the Access Group. You thus have a VESTED INTEREST in continuing to mislead NYLS students, convincing them to take on huge amounts of debt from your ACCESS GROUP, which means you personally reap a double benefit. It's not right, and it's not fair. I can't believe you think this conflict is acceptable. It's so wrong, so unethical, and it needs to be addressed on a much bigger level than this email.

Sincerely,

Fool Me Once

2009-11-14T10:05:00.002-05:00

I received the following email from several ticked off people this week. If you have followed this blog for any particular length of time, you would know that a project offer from SkaTTTen is like receiving a vow of fidelity from Eliot Spitzer, or a promise from Barack Obama that taxes will not be increased on the middle class.

"Hello,

I wanted to update to let you know, with my deepest regrets and with Skadden’s deep regrets, that the project has now been postponed indefinitely. If anything changes, I will let you know as soon as possible. Clutch Group and Skadden both apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. I hope we have the opportunity to staff you on a project soon. Keep me updated as to your availability. Have a great weekend.

Elle

Recruiter
ClutchGroup
Smart solutions. No borders"