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

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

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

"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!

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

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

"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!

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!

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"

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

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.?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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