I've been a temp lawyer in a couple different cities between jobs. It's not all bad. One time I got sent to Alaska for a month, all expenses paid, just to review documents. It turns out Alaska in June is 70 and sunny every day.

The pay varies from market to market. In New York, for example (at least a few years ago), temps would typically get $20/hour, with time and a half for overtime. In Chicago, the going rate was more like $30/hour. The temps I met who were based in Alaska actually got $50/hour and full benefits, the problem being that there's not a lot of demand for temp lawyers in Alaska. In New York, by contrast, the pay may suck but you can stay employed 52 weeks a year if you like.

This is how a lot of the big firms handle major document review projects these days. I don't know what kind of markup they take, but if you have 50,000 boxes of documents that need to be reviewed, there aren't a lot of good options. I had plenty of experience under my belt at the time, but the typical reviewer is either (1) a recent law school grad who couldn't find a permanent job, or (2) a more experienced lawyer who enjoys the flexibility of part-time work for personal reasons. For those in the former category, it's a good bet they never envisioned this sort of gig when they signed up for six figures in law school debt.

The jobs can run the gamut. One time I got hired by a major white-shoe firm to write a 50-page research memo on business combinations and the regulatory barriers they face in 20 different countries. (This was useful information for their transactional lawyers, but they couldn't figure out how to bill it to a specific client, so they looked for a temp.) Another time I got hired to write a complex summary judgment motion after an associate quit on short notice. In contrast, another time I was hired to review a massive document production and stamp each document as either "confidential" or "highly confidential."

Stamping documents for $35/hour actually isn't the worst way to make a living. As I said once in Alaska, "I used to think my job was nothing but a glorified box mover, but now I realize I'm not so glorified."

A lesson for 1L's or aspiring law students: you must get good grades. If a dean or professor ever tells you that grades aren't a big deal, don't listen to them. They tend to do this right before first semester finals just to make you feel better. Too bad it isn't true.

As someone who went through dumpsters for cans as a child for spending money (30 cans @ 52 cents pound), worked at a scrap yard (10-20 bucks a day), detassled corn ($5.35/hr.), and waited tables for red necks... All I can say to victims making $35 is.... Get a grip.

I am also sure there are a lot of migrant workers who would love to make $35/hr. doing such "tedious" work as document review.

If, instead of going home and watching television, the temp lawyers bettered themselves by reading or attending CLEs, or wrote scholarly articles, I imagine their fates would change. I've exchange e-mails with a certain high-achieving people who, though already successful, were up past midnight doing "extra" work. Seems like someone who hasn't even achieved anything should have a similar ethic.

Cindy Crawford also detassled corn and look where it got her. One of my colleages in the temp lawyer position was a former garbageman before he went to law school. I forgot to ask him if he made more as a garbageman.

I sure hope you don't think I was whining about getting paid $35/hour to stamp documents.

Not surprisingly, the lowest 10% of jobs in any given market will be relatively crappy.

I'm sure you could write a similar article about general practitioners in the free clinic in Topeka, ("I wanted to be a plastic surgeon, but it turns out those jobs are hard to get!"), MBAs whose first company quickly went bankrupt, computer programmers who just graduated . . .

This is just another article that pretends to be surprised that, among the relatively elite, there is wide variations in job quality.

>I'm sure you could write a similar article about general practitioners in the free clinic in Topeka, ("I wanted to be a plastic surgeon, but it turns out those jobs are hard to get!"), MBAs whose first company quickly went bankrupt, computer programmers who just graduated . . .

The difference is that the temps are right down the hall from the $160k first years at the same firms. It's a strange dynamic.

I am also sure there are a lot of migrant workers who would love to make $35/hr. doing such "tedious" work as document review.

Sure, but the problem is the difference between what you expect and what you achieve. If you expect to slave away in a field or mine, and that's what you do, there's little to despair about. If you expect to make 6 figures and be respected, and you end up slaving away under some jerk boss for modest pay, there's much to despair about.

Given that we're dealing with disgruntled lawyers, I'm surprised there haven't been class action lawsuits alleging that the law schools' employment statistics constitute "unfair business practices" because they mislead applicants about the nature and pay of the jobs their graduates get. I'm not saying such a suit would necessarily be well-founded, but it would be no worse founded than many suits that do get brought. If each law school were to provide a more-detailed breakdown of the employment results of its graduates (say, by providing GPA ranges, categories of employment, and income), then applicants would have a much more realistic idea before making the investment as to what they are buying. Perhaps the answer to my question is that the people who would be proactive enough to bring such a lawsuit don't need to, because they were also proactive enough to seek out that data on their own, and/or to find better jobs.

Actually, a cousin of mine runs this sort of operation for a large firm. His take is that he does not want the top of the line lawyer for this kind of work. The issue on the process is to get through the documents as quickly and accurately as possible(note processes can be set up to deal with errors). Someone who want to read and "understand" a document slows down the process. Someone who is top of the class has a hard time just skimming the document for general issue and classifying. Some of his best people are not Law Review material. On the other hand, this is a growing business. With discovery requiring all e-mails and online files to be handed over, vetting them for confidentiality and relevance is vital. Big money doing this right and fast.

Document review sounds dreadful.

Document review sounds dreadful.

How do you think the documents feel about it?

cmn,

There have been such cases. See Bank v. Brooklyn Law School, 2000 WL 1692844, No. 97-CV-7470(JG), 2000 WL 1692844, AT *1 (E.D.N.Y. Oct. 6, 2000) (Gleeson, J.) (emphasis added):

In March 1993, plaintiff Todd Bank read in U.S. News &World Report that the class of 1992 graduates of defendant Brooklyn Law School working in the private sector earned an average of $60,328. Based in part on that information, plaintiff decided to attend Brooklyn Law School and decided not to transfer to another law school a year later. He graduated in 1996. He claims that the $60,328 figure was false and misleading.

Plaintiff, who is representing himself in this case, has converted that straightforward allegation into a 65-page, 225-paragraph complaint that charges, among many other things, that Brooklyn Law School violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (“RICO”), 18 U.S.C. § 1961 et seq., in association with various other entities and thousands of individuals. It is exactly this sort of complaint that has given the private right of action under RICO a bad name.

Brooklyn Law School has moved to dismiss the case. For the reasons set forth below, the motion is granted.

—- Given that we're dealing with disgruntled lawyers, I'm surprised there haven't been class action lawsuits alleging that the law schools' employment statistics constitute "unfair business practices" because they mislead applicants about the nature and pay of the jobs their graduates get. —-

Actually a law student did, but lost. See, Bank v. Brooklyn Law School, 297 A.D.2d 770. But that was in 2002, and the Court found that he had no factual basis. Over time, there is a growing belief that schools lie about their employment data, so that Courts will not be so skeptical.

You guys are really quick to judge these people as having no or low-level legal skills based on their inability to find a good job out of the gate. This is absurd. No one will ever know if these people are any good since they will never be given a chance. I attend a school ranked in the 30 - 40 range and have top grades but there are plenty of competent people who may have gotten a raw deal in a class or two first year and may know have their careers permanently derailed. Perhaps the people who are so quick to ridicule these poor kids should direct their vitriol to the absurd system that relies exclusively on first year grades as a proxy for legal ability.

You guys are really quick to judge these people as having no or low-level legal skills based on their inability to find a good job out of the gate. This is absurd. No one will ever know if these people are any good since they will never be given a chance. I attend a school ranked in the 30 - 40 range and have top grades but there are plenty of competent people who may have gotten a raw deal in a class or two first year and may know now have their careers permanently derailed. Perhaps the people who are so quick to ridicule these poor kids should direct their vitriol to the absurd system that relies exclusively on first year grades as a proxy for legal ability.

In response to the commenter who asked about lawyers who work for themselves, yes, there are plenty, and yes, many of them do plenty well. One of the best kept secrets of solo practice is that many solo lawyers are not struggling losers, as some would like you to believe. Solos with specialty practices that compete with biglaw (such as my energy regulatory and appellate practice) are easily earning 6 figures, with some well over 500k. And even most solos who run consumer based general practices earn comparable to what lawyers in government or in house at insurance companies earn. There are dozens of blogs on solo practice, my own included (www.myshingle.com) that offer numerous examples of successful solos and advice on how to start a practice.

Gregory,

On the other hand, such a system might encourage counterproductive sloppiness in the review of documents. As I can attest from personal experience, it's very easy when doing document review to numbly click through dozens of documents without fully focusing on their contents, especially after one has been reviewing for 5 or 6 (or 10) hours. I'm not sure it would be a good idea for firms to implement a system that would encourage such carelessness, particularly since, given the volume of documents to be reviewed, most of the documents reviewed by contract attorneys are never seen by associates or partners and the contract attorneys' judgments are never evaluated, particularly with respect to documents marked not responsive.

The quoted text from the article says: "they do well-paid work that sometimes seems to require no more than a law degree, the use of a single index finger, and the ability to sit still for 15 hours a day"

Is a law degree even required for this kind of work? Yes, sure, according to the existing "legal ethics" rules this constitutes the "practice of law" and non-lawyers shouldn't do it, blah blah, but why couldn't college graduates do this?

That article should be standard reading for anyone considering law school.

I do this work currently for a firm in Richmond VA, and make $29/hr. my bosses are not jerks at all, but the work definitely is sheer drudgery. the mix of people seems to be about 70% young lawyers wishing to do something else, and 30% older people for whom this is a later phase in their career. not all are licensed.

good: unlimited free beverages (soda, coffee, tea).

bad: we cannot listen to iPods and our workstations have no internet access (for email, etc., we use a common terminal that always has a line and we have to sign in and out when using it).

worse: as the article says, feeling trapped between the career-killing decent hourly wage and the uncertainty of an otherwise crappy market.

FYI, I graduated 2006 from a top 30 school and was top third of my class.

I'll say this about large-scale e-discovery document review: every now and then you find an e-mail that is so disturbing, so horribly inappropriate and creepy, that it will cause you to re-evaulate your view of humanity.

Alas, these e-mails almost never have anything to do with the issues in a given lawsuit.

Document review is a rather necessary part of litigation. Did I miss the memo that attorneys are only supposed to have to do the fun parts?

Nick

You guys are really quick to judge these people as having no or low-level legal skills based on their inability to find a good job out of the gate. This is absurd. No one will ever know if these people are any good since they will never be given a chance.

There are lots of people who need legal help. Do some pro bono work. Go to legal aid. (Maybe after talking to people with real problems, you won't feel so damned sorry for yourself.) Offer to help a more experienced lawyer out. Start a blog and make it worth reading.

There are lots of ways to prove yourself.

Good for you, Brian G. A few years out of law school, I dropped out for a while and did a Ph.D. at Yale in a maximally-unrelated-to-law field. While I was in New Haven, I got to know quite a few YLS students. And I am not exaggerating at all when I say that I would not entrust an actual legal matter of any sort to any of them. I pity their future clients.

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then click one of the buttons on the screen that says "relevant" or "not relevant," and then they look at the next document.
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This sounds like on-line poker, just less fun.

GW3L, touche.

Brian G, surely you did a good job on your summary judgment, but the "big shot Stanford guy" handling a plaintiff's slip-and-fall case (perhaps he wasn't top of his class?) sounds like he had the facts and law against him, and at least had the presence of mind to say SOMETHING to try to keep his suit alive. Was there some aspect of state law he failed to argue that would've defeated your motion?

Beyond the satisfaction of winning, it's also nice when a victory comes against a good or prestigious opponent, as a sign you probably did a good job; but cases usually are decided on their merits. I don't think that your experience proves anything about the relative quality of elite vs. state schools.

Ignatius, with respect to your statement: "A lesson for 1L's or aspiring law students: you must get good grades. If a dean or professor ever tells you that grades aren't a big deal, don't listen to them.:

Please tell us:

In the BigLaw/Courts employment arena, how do we deal with removing the effects of discrimination occurring at the law schools to "level the playing field," so we don't create a substandard 2nd class level of employment for the J.D.'d victims, thereby perpetuating the lack of a level playing field and denying forever better employment opportunities?

e.g., Law Student A graduates law school before adherence to anti-discrimination enforcement of the Americans W/Disabilities Act and Rehabilitation Act reasonable accommodations mandate, failure to accommodate results in bottom 1/5th of the class -- how do we adjust this result to remove the discrimination and compare to those w/o disabilities graduating say in the past couple years who are top 1/10th?

Or do we just accept this discrimination pervading the legal profession and the fact numerous victims of illegal discrimination are releged to mindless grunt tasks that really only require about a 3rd grade level of education and a lot of elephant tranquilizer to get thru the day and perform?

Just curious ..




3. e.g.

I also think a lot of the older attorneys have not adjusted to the new admissions criteria for law school....My point is the underclass of lawyers are much more talented now then they were 20 years ago and I think that needs to be accounted for in the analysis.

I completely agree with this post. Not so long ago, only white males could go/did go to law school. Back then, it was a lot easier to compete when you only had to compete with a fraction of the population. Law students today are more diverse, more competitive, and more motivated to remain in the middle class. A college degree won't cut it any more.

I completely agree with this post. Not so long ago, only white males could go/did go to law school. Back then, it was a lot easier to compete when you only had to compete with a fraction of the population. Law students today are more diverse, more competitive, and more motivated to remain in the middle class. A college degree won't cut it any more.

What is "not so long ago"? I think most of the graduates of the class of 1964 have retired.

By the way, do you need a license to do this stuff, or just a law degree?

Here is the original post:

I also think a lot of the older attorneys have not adjusted to the new admissions criteria for law school. 15 years ago numbers that would barely qualify you for Brooklyn law school or Cardozo would have gotten you in at Georgetown and UVA. Stanford was letting in 165's as late as 1997. I would have been competitive at Harvard if I applied when many of the people who are looking at my resume went to law school. My point is the underclass of lawyers are much more talented now then they were 20 years ago and I think that needs to be accounted for in the analysis.

my most humiliating job interview was for a doc review company. they didn't even validate my parking -- at a job interview! and the receptionist was so mean!
and I didn't even get the job. so there are dark and dreary days trying to be a lawyer but then again that's the same thing with everyone else's life too.

30 an hour would be pretty awesome even if the work was boring. in KC the firms pay like 25 an hour I believe for the doc review work.

someone posted about how having temps "beaks the deal" because there is no advancement path. but maybe it misses the point. at least with the temp gig, everyone knows there's no future so makes arrangements as opposed to the real firm world where we fool ourselves into thinking we can make it if we just commit a little more billing fraud.

The comparisons to miners and migrant workers are ridiculous. We live in a society that values and pays for intelligence, human capital (i.e. education), and work ethic. Migrant workers exhibit one of the three; lawyers, in theory, have all of the above.

Between tuition and lost opportunity costs, law school is costing me in the six figures every year. At the end of it, should I not expect to have better job opportunities than when I started? (Top 25 law school, close to the top of the class, if such is relevant.) You can certainly find boring, relatively low-paying, dead-end jobs without the effort and expense of law school.

Furthermore, it is entirely disingenuous to look at straight-up salary. After all, there are costs associated with obtaining said salary (seven years of tuition and lost opportunity costs), migrant workers may be financially better off for many years. Imagine two 18-year-olds, one at the top of his high school class and the other a slacker. The latter goes into construction, security,the military or other blue-collar work; the former goes to college and law school. How long will it take the law student, earning $40,000/year, to catch up to his peer financially? Five years? Ten years? If the construction worker saves (or has the opportunity to save) a few thousand a year, he'll be in better financial shape than his lawyer buddy until their 30s, at least.

Obviously, you shouldn't earn it back within the first year, but there is the expectation that we will recoup our investments. Otherwise, there is no incentive to so invest, which is bad for society as a whole. As a general matter, we don't want to get into a situation wherein education (and a professional education, at that) is a bad investment.

My two cents at 2:22 am....