Biglaw does more than just churn paper. While some of us were in the basement churning through piles of worthless makework paper dreck, others were upstairs helping Wall Street draft opaque multi-tranche bi-lateral credit default securitization diversification instruments. Sorry America, you have been pawned. The credit crunch isn't just limited to the subprime paper, as we have been promised all along. It's in the prime, prime A, and commercial paper, as well. Get ready for a long, steep, and prolonged economic recession.
22 comments:
Don't be so negative. Our jobs are safe. No one wants them.
Combine the outsourcing with the collapse of most of the major investment banking firms in the city, and you got problems. The document review work will dry up fast. The projects that do remain will suck. Project rates will drop like a rock. Remember the last recession? Who can forget Lily Hart's infamous document review torture chamber that paid a measly $18 an hour. She used to come in and fire 20 people on a whim because she was having a bad morning.
4:58 - If no one wanted them, then no one would be doing them.
Increased supply of potential reviewers (as law firms lay off lawyers), coupled with decreased demand (as projects dry up when cost-conscious clients scale back), could mean downward pressure on wages.
The wage (adjusted for inflation) has actually been going down for years. It's not like we aren't used to it. I actually enjoy watching some of these "cost conscious" clients go out of business. Not such a great idea to screw the middle class after all.
Lou Dobbs, are you a contract attorney?
I rike receshun. Slutty temp give good suck during receshun. During receshun, I rike slutty temp with big ass. I rike big titties during receshun. Sank you very much.
There will still be document review work, but the continuing oversupply of JD's and out sourcing will squash this industry. The rate is heading to the $20.00 range. Start clipping coupons now. The dollar window will be a treat.
the writing has been on the wall for a while now. The same greedy bastards that destroyed the banking system are sending our jobs to India.
We are talking about greedy slimy bastards herre, just grabbing as much as we can. When a temp does it, they're fired and blackballed. When a CEO does it they retire with $400 million dollars.
You would be surprised how low you can go; when you have to feed your family and all you have eat is your pride!
Do you put the name of the firm you worked for on your resume for contract work/
I don't understand all this talk about wages and no jobs. I started contract work in January, have been employed non-stop with one week off the entire year, (Employed by only 3 agencies) and every gig I've had was at least $35+OT, and I've made $2,000 + after taxes for a good part of this year.
Where the fuck are you guys working?
You can't blame biglaw since all of their emails were stamped with exculpatory boilerplate (hence, you were warned): "Any legal opinion, position, or advice expressed, or implied, in this message is solely for your use addressed herein; and may not be relied upon as actual legal advice of this organization, is confidential, and may contain legally privileged information."
Hall monitors suk ass.
The 1991-1994 attorney/law firm recession was very very bleak for contract work. Most of it then revolved around antitrust 2nd requests....which is not pertinent to now. The real "hit" to the legal market will not be totally felt until the week's before bonuses are due and owing by the law firms. Sherman & Sterling has a reputation for firing within a window that would entitle an associate to receive their bonuses and severance......this time around, the games will be even slimier.........but, this will be a worldwide problem and accelerate further into the 4th qtr......you know the game, the partners want their profits at any cost.
There will be a lot of work arising out of this subprime stuff. Lehman Brothers is a massive bankruptcy -- when Enron went bankrupt there were literally thousands of temps at many different firms repesenting the various creditors. The Merril Lynch merger will need a lot of temps. Plus there will be sharedolder derivative lawsuits and government investigations.
I was on a project from April to August on a government investigation into the invesment bank's role in the suprime mortgage markets.
there may be more work after the lehman collapse but that is only short-term, the overall state of the economy is pretty bad, especially for lawyers
What you fail to grasp is that the salad days of doc review are over. The searches are much more robust now and a lot of the junk is filtered out.
The days of the "looking at every document" projects are over, as clients are wise to it and their own staff monitoring costs and programs.
even slashdot covered doc review this week. The consensus among IT folks is with companies retaining more and more documents and with the cost of storage declining it is actually cheaper to conduct huge extensive reviews than to maintain enforcement of what data to keep and what to delete. The occasional doc review once every 5 years is cheaper than paying dedicated IT people to police "efficient" retention. That's why companies now retain literally everything and they retain so much today that even the best filters leave millions of docs. You can filter out 99.9% of the files but when you typical Fortune 500 is generating 45 megabytes worth of emails every hour, and this number only grows every year, that leaves a hell of a lot of stuff to review.
The rich just keep getting richer at Lehman:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/fury-at-25bn-bonus-for-lehmans-new-york-staff-937560.html
re lots of temp work coming downstream for temps....heh guys, Enron etc. was a different set of facts. Do not count on "lots of sh-d suits"....2007-2008 case law on sh-d derivative actions changed that one......life is going to be very different. Do not rely on past to dictate future, it never is the same......best thing most temps can do is start running for cover.....there will not be the plethora of doc reviews stemming from this debacle as in the past...if you think so, good luck, you are dreaming....
More jobs going to Mumbai.
http://abovethelaw.com/2008/09/while_wall_street_collapses_mu.php
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