I did an interview (twiterview?) on twitter – I know, I know, it sounds really strange but it was actually kind of fun. Anyway, I did this interview with attorney Lance Godard from the Godard Group and one of the questions was what advice do you have for under or unemployed lawyers struggling to find work in these economic times. My response was that people should not fall into the contract lawyer trap, it’s a dead end, and that lawyers who are under or unemployed should volunteer. Of all of my brilliant responses, this was the one that was retweeted (which, for you normal people who have other things to do means that other people tweeted it as well). Lance and I picked up this 140 bit at a time conversation yesterday because of an article that asked whether working a contract job is like working at Burger King, i.e. should you leave it off your resume. I would link to the article but I have no idea what it was or where I read it. And, actually, it wasn’t very informative. It said whether on not you include it depends on where you are applying for employment. If you went to law school, took the bar and are actively seeking work this answer should come as no surprise to you. The ‘it depends’ is a typical lawyer answer for “fuck if I know”. Anyway.
Let me back up for the non-lawyer readers. A contract lawyer is someone who is employed by a temp agency to do work for a (usually) large law firm. The work consists of document review (usually) which means the lawyers (usually licensed meaning they can practice substantive law if they choose to) sit in a cubicle and go over documents (electronic or actual paper) and determine if they are privileged or relevant. You click off boxes on a computer. You might learn some new legal concepts but nothing in depth, just enough to make sure you are accurate when you go through your 1000 documents a day. I have always called it “walmart for lawyers” because it’s not really practicing law. It’s a job. It pays the bills. I might as well be working at Walmart except at a contract job I get to wear a stupid suit and heels and feel like I’m sort of lawyering.
Mark Bennett wrote about this a while back. A few doc reviewers posted comments and said they liked what they did as document reviewers and gave some excuses on why it was a good job. The primary thing was money. They want to run marathons, travel and drink good wine. That’s great. These people don’t actually want to practice law. Good for them. I’m talking now about people who want to be called ‘lawyers’.
It’s a con. It’s not really lawyering and that’s the problem with contract jobs. They are truly meaningless. While it is important to pay the bills and put food on the table, you cannot claim to be a lawyer if all you do or have done is document review. I’ve done it. I did it for 6 months last year when I was just getting back to work. I did it for several months in 2005 when I had just moved to Baltimore. I get it. You’ve got to pay the bills. You’ve got a family to feed. So you find a contract job that has overtime because while 28 bucks an hour isn’t great 28 bucks plus time and a half gets you through the week. So you work 50 hours, maybe 60. At first you think, I’ll do this job and look for something else, or volunteer, or take on a traffic case or two. But you don’t. You sit your ass in that cubicle and hit shift F5 and before you know it a year has passed and while you have amassed no late fees on your credit cards and no overdraft fees on your bank account, you have also amassed no new skills. You have made money at the expense of making money in the future.
Look. The shit is hard. The economy is rough. I’ve been a trial lawyer my whole big girl life. This is a skill very few people have – give me a file today I can try it tomorrow. I figured when I wanted to go back to work the whole world would be clamoring for me. I was wrong. I’d been out of the game for two years and then all I had to offer was “contract lawyer”. While it showed I was working, it also showed that after two years at home all I could now do is get myself dressed in clothes not stained in spit-up. Because there is no actual lawyering involved in document review. I repeat. You are not practicing law.
Truthfully, it is hard to find a job that pays 28 bucks an hour. I mean, we lawyers bitch that it isn’t enough but who else makes that kind of money at a regular brain dead job? Yes, it’s valuable work for the client that we never meet and who doesn’t give a fuck who we are, but it’s not horribly complicated and it’s not problem solving. So really, we shouldn’t bitch too hard about getting paid four times minimum wage to skim papers and do basic data entry. If you’ve been doing it for over a year and you are still complaining I’m just not gonna listen to you anymore.
So, what do I suggest? Volunteer. Anywhere. Catholic Charities is a good place to go. They are always looking for volunteers for their pro-bono immigration panel. I’m sure there are others. Take a day off from your dead end job – I know you need the money but think of it as an investment in your future, like law school was – and go work at a job that day with a small firm or solo practitioner. They may not pay you time and a half, or even pay you $30 an hour, but if you get paid anything at a law firm you can put on your resume that you did LAW WORK. Like, you might get to go to court. Oh no! How could I go to court for only $20 bucks an hour when I can sit on my ever expanding behind and hit some computer keys and get paid $28?? That is just crazy talk Mirriam. Can’t you do basic math?
Maybe I can’t. But I went to law school to practice law. Didn’t you?
I agree that those lawyers who do document review all day are not really practicing law.
However, not ALL contract lawyers do document review. I know of one who works for other attorneys as a freelance associate; and another who does nothing but appeals work.
So there is a way to earn money as a lawyer doing contract lawyer work (and not document review).
However, a business providing contract lawyer services takes time, money and focus to build – which you are probably not going to invest if you are busy spending 50+ hours per week reviewing documents.
Just wanted to point out that not all contract lawyers are doing document review.
Well. I guess this is something to think about after I graduate :-/
But I have to say $28 an hour just sounds really good right now 😛 Kidding 🙂
Mirriam:
I am an unemployed paralegal (two years) who would willingly do that brain-dead work (again)for anything north of $20 an hour, if the job was reasonably close to home. Yet, I do not.
Why? Because the client firms insist that the legal staffing agencies send them only licensed attorneys. I've had review projects ripped away from me because the client firm that originally asked the agency both lawyers and paralegals changed its mind and wanted only lawyers.
This is true despite the fact that I worked on a huge document review project at a Fortune 500 company that lasted in excess of one year, and included some quality control and supervisory duties.
There is definitely something wrong with this picture.
For more on the terminology of "contract lawyer" v. "freelance lawyer," see my posts, "A Contract Lawyer by any Other Name" at http://tinyurl.com/cqyo2n and "
NAFLP and LRWP to ABA: Outsourcing Study Must Include Solos/Smalls and Freelance Lawyers" at http://tinyurl.com/25jld6e.
While I certainly understand the mind-numbing frustration of doc review, having done it myself, I disagree that it is a "dead end." Given the job choice between Wal-Mart Greeter or Doc Reviewer (assuming you want to be a lawyer) choose the latter (unless a sharp stick in the eye is on the table, in which case you might really have to think about it).
While doc review is not "practicing law" it is related to practicing law in the same way that working on an assembly line is related to designing cars. Before law school, I worked as a paralegal, which meant that some lawyers barely wanted to acknowledge my presence, much less think of me as a future peer. But rather than think of it as a "dead end" I viewed it as an opportunity. Working an assembly line might give you insight some day as an engineer designing an assembly process. In the same way, working as a paralegal has helped me understand how the practice of law is actually administered to the people it affects most (our clients, and our opponent's clients).
Without that experience, I probably wouldn't have been able to supervise a 24/7 corps of lawyers and paralegals during a week long IP trial. Doc review provides a similar experience, giving the lawyer first-hand understanding of how 90% of the civil litigation process is carried out. A lawyer that has actually spent trench time reviewing documents will be better suited later in life to advise clients contemplating litigation and manage the litigation process.
Coming from someone who worked on a project with you in the past, I just wanted to say I love this post.
This post certainly has the right sentiment, although it may gloss over some of the repercussions of "just volunteering." I did the volunteer thing the summer after my first year of law school. I went back to my job waiting tables on the weekends in order to make ends meet (ah the days of paying bills on three days of serving). It was good experience and a great way to see how litigation works so early in my legal career.
My second summer was a different story. I did doc review for twenty bucks an hour in a midwestern city. I would have loved to do legal work for free but it just wasn't an option; the lights have to stay on, etc. Would I do it again? No, not now that I'm licensed. It was terrible, soul killing work. Not only was the actual task reminiscent of my days working at a factory in my college town assembling engines, it was for an evil cause. Before I landed this gig I was set on opening a practice right out and praying I didn't destroy anyone's life. As you note, I went to law school to be a lawyer and doc review is not the practice of law.
So yes, I'll forgive an attorney for taking some doc review work to make ends meet. If it goes on too long there might be a red flag, but with loans and everything else, that dollar rules the day sometimes.
Oh, and anonymous paralegal, it's a shame, but the firm can bill licensed attorneys and law clerks twice what they can bill for a paralegal. You all can do the same work just as efficiently, but a client will choke down $70 or $80 an hour from a licensed attorney more easily than a paralegal.
I think I defined 'contract lawyer' narrowly for purposes of this post. I contract services out as well, but that is actual substantive law. Which makes this post not applicable to that type of contract work.
I discussed this very issue as a guest on the Down by Law podcast.
There seems to be a perception among many people doing doc review as contract attorneys that they're doing the same work as a junior associate (and as such, it's unfair that they toil away year after year without ever being promoted, while associates get promoted based on seniority).
While big law associates are often stereotyped as doing a lot of this type of work (doc review for the litigation department, diligence on the corporate site), they also are getting true legal work.
While doc review might be a job done by lawyers, it is not the practice of law.
I like to use the analogy that doing doc review and expecting to get hired as an attorney is like being a dish washer and getting promoted to prep cook. (Yeah, I moved from the dish pit to prep cook, but the analogy still makes sense.)
Many years ago, when I was doing doc review, I told my girlfriend that anyone with a 5th grade education could do it. When she asked why they required someone with a license to do it, I replied it was because the law firm could then call it "legal work" and charge the client horrific rates.
I'm just now getting around to reading this, thanks to ABA Journal linking to your post, so sorry if I'm late to the game. But Mirriam, I agree with you 100%. I consider myself qualified to agree with you because I did mind-numbing doc review for a year and a half not long after I gradated and passed the bar, and this is exactly the conundrum I faced. I'm out of it now, but reflecting upon that time I find myself wishing it hadn't paid as well as it did, because the pay made it easy to get into but very, very hard to leave. Not only that but the project was long-term and the work was steady, and I basically worked as much as I wanted to. So the money was fantastic (more than I make now as a "real" attorney at a firm close to home), and I even turned down job opportunities that would've brought me home because they didn't pay nearly as well, and my wife and I didn't feel we could afford the steep pay cut. And yes, instead of doing stuff that might've gotten me somewhere like working cases on my own time, volunteering, networking, etc., etc., I sat in that chair hit F5 over and over again because none of those things paid, and doc review did.
So paid my bills (got a little ahead even) had a great time on the weekend with my wife and kids because I wasn't sweating the money that much, and then during the week I seethed at the meaninglessness of my job and the slow suffocation of my nascent legal career, and laid awake at night missing my family. I find myself thinking now that had I stuck it out at home, hunting and pecking for real legal work and maybe taking short-term contract stuff here and there, I would have two more years of real legal experience under my belt than I have now, and I would've spent that time with my wife and kids. But then, maybe I can't make my car payment one or two months, or my student loan payments, etc., etc.
So anyway having said all that…no, I don't understand anybody choosing to do doc review unless they just don't have that much interest in being a lawyer. If anybody asked me I'd advise them to pass up the doc review gig, or at least force themselves to do something else in the meantime, or they're going to find themselves just as unqualified to do anything else two or three years down the road when the shine from the money starts to wear off.
Thanks a lot Mirriam, I just truly had my first panic attack! Something to look forward to after law school.