It’s been a really long time since I’ve updated and you know how it is when you see people you haven’t seen in a really long time and in that time you’ve broken up with your boyfriend of several years, gotten married, changed jobs, bought a house, gone bankrupt and when your long time ago friend says “How are you? What’s been happening?” You turn to him and say “Oh, you know, nothing.”
Well, this isn’t like that at all. I haven’t bought a house, I might be on the verge of bankruptcy, but who isn’t in America and I like to blend in as much as possible. However, I’m still in the same place doing the same old contract work. They’ve just lifted the no overtime ban and now people are trying to figure out how many hours a week they can possibly work without suffering from vitamin D deficiency. The woman who heads the project now is a contract attorney. She’s been doing this for six years! And she works from 7 am until 10 pm every day, and from 8-1 on weekends. She is probably making well over 100k a year, but she’s killing herself. Then I stop and think about first year associates, who probably work as hard as she does for the same amount of money, and then my heart sinks.
That being said, I’m going to try to work an 80 hour week. We’ve all worked 80 hour weeks before when we’ve been preparing for trial, so its not horribly unusual. But, I’ve never TRIED to work an 80 hour week so I can make money – overtime. I’m just thankful I don’t have to punch a clock.
Here’s the thing about contract attorneys that I’ve seen so far. The actual lawyers in the firm are okay with having you around. You perform a valuable service and the firm gets to put more of the money its charging the client in its own pocket because it pays the contract lawyer diddly squat per hour while its billing the client at least 5X what the lawyer costs. Fair enough. You know who hates contract lawyers? Receptionists and secretaries. I think they believe they’ve finally found someone they can kick around. So, they do things like tell on us. For stupid stuff. Like using the reading room. One of the lawyers would go in there during the day and read a paper, sit in a chair, you know, normal stuff. One day the receptionist came in and told him it was ‘for lawyers only’. What a turdface. Then they had a ‘staff appreciation day’ lunch where they had hamburgers in the cafeteria. I mean seriously, it was none too fancy. Okay, well, if we aren’t lawyers, are we staff? One of the paralegals on another project said “FYI, there is this thing downstairs if you want to go.” So, three of us went – p.s. I don’t even eat meat so I didn’t eat a hamburger. Some fat lady who was cutting the cake (that I also didn’t eat) asked us where we work, what project, blah blah blah and then said “well, I’m going to have to talk to your supervisor because I need to know to make sure we have enough food when you are coming down.” I was like Come on fat lady! There are three of us!! And I didn’t even eat a f-ing hamburger. YOU ATE THEM ALL!!! LOOK AT YOU!!! So then poor lady paralegal who is in charge of all contract lawyers had to come in and she looked all downtrodden and said “if you can go to one of these things, I’ll tell you.” And she looked miserable having to tell us that.
Anyway, those are the stories. We spend our days talking politics and smack about each other. For the most part, we all get along famously and help each other out, we root for each other when we get even the slightest hint of a potential job interview, and we are all secretly happy that we can make as much at a real job but still basically goof around all summer.
Ah, good times.
