It has been over a year since I posted here and much has happened. For one thing, I’m no longer a contract attorney. In fact, I’m not even practicing law anymore, although I’ve held onto my two existing bar memberships, paying the annual dues for old times sake – perhaps just so I can continue to call myself a lawyer (for whatever it’s worth).

Since then, I’ve moved onto other lines of work – most notably I’ve started several online businesses – and have found the Internet to be quite a treasure trove of money making opportunities. It hasn’t been easy, but I’ve managed to do quite well online.

For my fellow contract attorneys and tempers still working the salt mines of click-click land, my advice is to get out while you still can. Times are bleak, pay is low, and working hours are getting shorter by the minute – but the legal working situation for temp attorneys is also not going to get any better anytime soon. Contract attorney work is not only a dead end job career wise – but it’ll suck out your soul, pummel your pride, and leave you financially depleted years from now. If you can, try to strike it out on your own as a full fledge attorney. I know it’s incredibly difficult to compete in a market that’s super saturated and getting worse every day, but you must try – for sanity sake. I continue to curse the law school system to this day and continuously pray for numerous plagues to afflict the overrated law firms that choke our social system – but at some point, it’s time to move on to greener (or in my case, less-brownish) pastures.

And read Tom The Temp‘s blog regularly – he’s a morbid dose of social pessimissm and legal comedy for contract attorneys all rolled into one. He’ll bring you down and pick you up at the same time. Misery always loves company and there’s plenty of misery to go around.

But yes, I’ve been lucky to have remained on the same project for so long – my current assignment has truly been the never ending project. I’ve had to continuously put off long vacations until the project’s over since well, in this line of work, you never really know when or how long your next gig will be. When the end date will arrive is anyone’s guess as I have given up trying to speculate on when that will be. This project has really exceeded my durational expectations so anything more is just bonus gravy at this point. I’m justing taking it week by week.

Despite My Occasional Appreciation Of The Profession’s Flexibility, It’s Been Nice Having More Than Half A Year Of Occupational Stability

It’s been such a long contract attorney gig that I’m actually starting to forget what it was like not being on a project, and having to periodically scramble ever so often to find assignments. Having this semblance of stability for more than 6 months now is starting to make me feel like I’m working a permanent job – but of course, in reality the ride can end at any time. Unforeseen and unexpected occurrences like the client company being bought out or other settlement type activity can easily halt the project on the spot and send us contract attorneys packing for home. I guess I’m just getting lulled into a perceived but illusory sense of financial continuity. But this has got to be the most laid back, least stressful project I’ve ever been on before. The associates are incredibly lax about production numbers and the off site location allows everyone to maintain a very collegial and relaxed working environment.

I almost long for something different to happen. I feel like Tom Hank in the movie Cast Away. Yes I have co-workers but most of the time I just come in, sit at my desk, put on my headphones, and listen to talk radio while I click away. Some of the other contract attorneys talk but I guess I’m one of the more quieter ones, preferring to only look up when someone wants to talk about the Express paper crossword puzzle or when people want to quiz each other from questions pulled from the communal Trivia Pursuit box. Clearly, it’s been pretty humdrum around here. Previously the project was much larger with more people to interact with but since a few months ago, the project has been significantly downsized with only about a quarter of us left. Strangely the end is still seemingly nowhere in sight and after speaking to the associates, it seems like none of the partners are in any particular rush to impose urgent deadlines to the case. Even the associates don’t seem to be particularly stressed or busy with work as I frequently find a few of them reading authoritative news sources like The Onion or doing online clothing shopping.

Since I’m a contract attorney doing document review, I’m in the back end when it comes to being in the know about the progress and status of the case. I basically just click until someone tells me to stop. For such a cushy job, the wage rate is remarkably high, but it’s starting to fall behind in terms of keeping up with inflation and wage increases in other sectors.

Of course, whether contract attorneys are currently being paid fairly as a whole is another issue entirely. For the purposes of this piece, I’m just making a market observation. Although contract attorneys generally get paid the market rate for their geographical location, there are a variety of other factors that determine whether the offer rate exceeds or fails to reach the generally accepted standard:

1. Geographical Location – Probably the biggest factor that determines the appropriate market wage rate and compensation for contract attorneys is where the project will be located. Big cities generally get the bulk of the labor intensive contract attorney work, thus they also tend to offer the highest wage rates and most perks.
   

   New York City and Washington D.C. both currently have the highest rates at $35 an hour with time and a half for overtime. New York City probably flirts in the neighborhood range of $38-40. Any parity with D.C. rates is probably due to oversupply caused by the abundance of city law schools that seem to graduate more and more lawyers every year. Certainly the lack of work due to the current economic recession is causing the job market to noticeably slow down. Disturbingly, many NYC agencies have been taking advantage of the slump by slashing rates, an ominous trend that is frustrating many contract attorneys.
   

   Los Angeles also offers comparable rates, although the city isn’t exactly overflowing with projects, and the lack of steady gigs always seems to put downward pressure on rates. The smaller doc review cities of Chicago, Philadelphia, and Boston get the lower end of the wage scale at around $28-$30 an hour plus time and a half for overtime. That’s likely due to the fact that contract project are not as abundant in those metropolitan areas. See this unofficial but handy wage and salary chart for more info.

2. Job Description and Role - Most contract attorneys that perform straight document review get the standard rate for their geographical area. However for mega projects, individuals may sometimes be brought on board to serve as team leaders or quality control reviewers. They are not always guaranteed or given a higher rate, but when they are, the rate is usually a few dollars extra at around $37 an hour for D.C.
   

   Specialized projects that require foreign language knowledge and review skills on the other hand pay substantially more. More common languages like Spanish and French generally pay around $40 an hour. Slightly more obscure languages like Norwegian, Finnish, or Russian pay around $45-50. The premium, most difficult to staff projects involve the Asian languages such as Chinese, Japanese, or Korean. Asian language projects can fetch anywhere from $50 to 65 an hour with time and a half for overtime. If you are an attorney that can translate Asian language documents, I encourage you to price gouge your local staffing agency up to $70+ if you can. They will bend over backwards for you and more because your skills are a rarity and in extreme demand.

3. Bar Status – Interestingly, even though the DC Bar has already opined that being barred in D.C. is a prerequisite to performing contract attorney work in the state, many D.C. agencies still continue to staff projects using non-D.C. barred J.D.’s. However, many agencies do express high preference for those with the proper D.C. license and most will refuse to pay the standard contract attorney rate without it. Expect to be either rejected outright for project submission if you don’t have your D.C. bar certification or be offered only a paralegal’s wage of about $25 an hour.
4. Experience – Fortunately or unfortunately depending on how you look at it, contract attorney work consisting of mainly document review does not require substantial legal experience. However, for those of you with more years of document review management experience, you may have more opportunities to be assigned to the privilege review and quality control team. Keep in mind that although it’s sometimes negotiable, usually you aren’t offered any extra compensation for the higher level work. That’s probably why some people avoid second level or privilege review work.
5. Length Of Project – Longer duration projects tend to pay slightly less than those that have shorter duration, at least initially when agencies are fielding candidate offers. The rationale is that – what you lose in wage rate you gain in longevity. From my experience, most people tend to glaze over the duration aspect and prefer to lock onto projects that offer short sprints of high billable hour opportunities. It’s just something I’ve observed and is not necessarily a consistent occurrence.
6. Size Of Staffing Agency – Due to their greater bargaining position, bigger staffing agencies are less generous about negotiating with contract attorneys over their wage rates and more willing to withhold benefits and posture. Small potato agencies have little choice but to negotiate sometimes. They can’t compete on brand recognition so they have to offer greater incentives to entice contract attorneys – thus they usually pay more. For a project that a large agency like Ajilon may pay the standard $35 an hour for, a smaller agency may be willing to shell out $36-$38 an hour. Go with the smaller agencies if you can, although it is true, the number of projects they have to offer simply isn’t as high as the big boys.
7. Market Supply and Demand – When the market’s booming, contract attorneys rake it in. Unfortunately the boom has past and we are currently in a bust period as evidenced by all the recent law firm layoffs. The market is pretty bad right now. There are projects out there but most are for shorter durations and offering less hours. Also, expect to wait longer than usual to come across an offer. Without consecutive, multiple, and simultaneous demands for contract attorneys, wage rates will stagnate in the interim. However, when the market eventually picks up again in the near future and law firm business returns, demand pressure should drive wage rates up. That’s my hope. It’s happened in the past before and it should happen again.
8. Specific Law Firm Managing the Project – Certain law firms are well known for running generous projects – Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom for one. They seem to have a reputation for providing projects that offer full meals, transportation reimbursement, and extended working opportunities for their contract attorneys. They also have a propensity to offer slightly higher wage rates for team leader type positions. Of course, it’s not always this way for every project they manage, but it’s just an interesting tidbit to keep in mind when you hear about projects.

According to the official bar complaint, the respondent contract attorney signed an agreement with Ajilon Legal Staffing to perform contract attorney work for the law firm of Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw. The contract attorney was staffed onto a document review project that paid $35 per billable hour. His work was performed on an online document review system that presumably tracked his review activity. During the 2 week working period, the respondent submitted time sheets presenting that he worked a total of 135 hours. However, it was later allegedly discovered that he had only actually worked 51 hours and 45 minutes, quite a large discrepancy for such a short period of time. The complaint indicates he was paid $4,725 for his time sheet hours, but that he fraudulently overbilled by $2,913.75, improperly inflating his billable hours by more than 84 hours during that 2 week period.

My Thoughts – Yes There Is A Lot Of Hypocrisy Going On, But Unethical Behavior Is Still Wrong

As a preliminary matter, I think official bar sanctions against this contract attorney would be perfectly warranted if the facts are found to be true. If the allegations are verified and confirmed, it’s difficult to offer him much sympathy due to the specifics of the facts, although I personally feel the case should have been resolved internally. He allegedly overbilled by more than 84 hours in a 2 week period! We’re not talking about tacking on a lazy 1 hour or rounding up to the next 30 minute mark every day. The attorney overbilled by more than 10 full working days, an astonishing number. Calling him a modern day Robin Hood because he robbed from the rich (big firms and agencies) to pay the poor (um, himself?) is a tad misguided. We can find better ways to boost the wage rate and increase project compensation than performing such unethical activity. It’s not that I’m preaching against such activity, I just feel such activity undermines our objectives completely and only serves to make contract attorneys look even worse than some already view us.

However, I’m curious as to what motivated the Illinois State Bar to tackle on this particular case when there are much bigger fish to fry among the denizens of the large law firms where overbilling is a frequent way of life. For example, I’m currently on one of those projects that keeps getting dragged out with little end in sight. After a few conversations with the managing associates, it seems the law firm partners are in no hurry to rush the case so long as they can continue raking in the billable hours. I got the unspoken vibe from the associate that she had no problem with us dragging out our review and continuing to let the firm bill the client, a company that has continued to pay its legal fees without much protest.

If the various state bars wanted to tackle this growing billable hour inflation issue, rather than going after contract attorneys, their resources would be better served going after the chief operators, the law firm partners and senior associates that cave to the pressure of generating billable hours and profits. There is truly a lot of strange hypocrisy going on today in the legal world where deceptive markup practices are prevalent, but its members still talk about fair compensation and billing. While contract attorneys like myself are sometimes offered little in terms of professional movement and prestige – having to fight and scrape for every project and permanent offer opportunity, we are still expected to abide by the high strict standards of professional conduct among full fledge attorneys.

Articles like the ones discussed help to serve as eye openers for contract attorneys. Document review programs do use sophisticated metrics to track worker productivity and usage statistics, so if the firm wanted to, it could certainly verify the accuracy of billable hours. If you do things like round up your hours, it’s important to at least be cognizant that there is indeed a digital trail that is retained. Most cases do seem to go unnoticed, but outrageous violations are bound to be caught – such as the story of this one guy who decided to straddle two different staffing agencies that were staffing the same project. He somehow ended up being separately assigned to the same project location by two different agencies who were unaware that the other agency was also staffing him. The contract attorney ended up collecting two pay checks for some time but was eventually busted. I don’t think bar sanctions were levied but he was summarily let go. Fortunately for him, he was not working or barred in the state of Illinois.

Reflecting On Past and Present Goals But Facing Reality

I am generally an optimistic person so it’s pretty difficult to get me down, but sometimes it’s not easy working as a contract attorney. The temp lifestyle is lucrative and stress free, but the uneasy instability can be hard to handle sometimes. It’s great to preach faith and resiliency, but sometimes reality can be rather harsh and unfeeling. Yes, I am a contract attorney. I bounce from position to position collecting a pretty stellar paycheck from week to week. Projects range from weeks to months to even years, but at the end of it all, I am still on my own. I don’t have my own legal practice and I don’t have a growing client roll to build off from. But therein lies the quandary I am faced with. With 3 years of legal education and the subsequent degree and job experience to show for it, why is it that I haven’t continued to chase my dreams then? The answer is – my goals and dreams in life have changed.

I entered law school with delusions of legal grandeur with the equivalent sense of reality enjoyed by the ostrich that chooses to plug its head into the ground. Upon acceptance of admission, I was immediately cocooned and safe for the next 3 years from working expectations and the real world. My goal was to study hard in law school, get good grades, join a journal team or moot court, and graduate with a perfect lawyer job all lined up.

Reality did not finally set in until my third year and second semester of law school, when one day I looked around and realized that I was in the wrong place. No I was not lost, but I came to the understanding that the practice of law wasn’t the lucrative and exciting profession I had naively envisioned. Gazing at my modest pile of student loans I wondered, was 3 years of expensive legal schooling really worth it? Perhaps my life would have taken a better turn if I had walked a different path.

We Can’t Go Back But We Can Make Our Own Paths From Here On Out

Eventually, we all have to come to grips with reality and recognize the cards we’ve been dealt. Reality is reality, and things can only get better not worse if we’d only take the time to look at all of the positive skills and experiences we have accumulated since the beginning.

I know contract attorneys come from all backgrounds. Not all temps have come to such a realization that the traditional legal rat race isn’t really going to make them happy. Some, and in fact many are still striving for their original law school dreams. If you are one of those chasers, I encourage you to keep striving higher to meet them and not grow bitter with your temping situation. Contract work will cushion your financial transition and allow you to use the opportunity as a stepping stone to a situation better geared to suit your dreams.

As for myself, the goals and dreams I started law school with are no longer mine. I look at my life now and I have many things to be thankful for. My monthly bills are paid and I have an otherwise healthy and enjoyable life. I have the abundance of time and freedom to pursue my non-legal side businesses and investments. Contract attorney work pays very well and I am not even close to wanting. While I might be honed in the art, I know now that I was never cut out to be a legal hustler in the traditional sense. I have other side ventures that drive me now. Talking to other contract attorneys and listening to their stories about their real estate exploits, interior decorating businesses, and even presidential campaign team aspirations – their experiences are reminders that I am not alone.

Those who are determined to maximize their contract attorney opportunities by exclusively working long hour projects will usually have to sacrifice some of their physical, mental, and social needs for the financial payoff. Even Indian workers in our contract attorney parallel universe over there will likely face similar health effects in the long term.

Working Long Hours Requires Substantial Trade Offs

It’s not easy working long hours sometimes. When you are coming in to work at 8 a.m. and leaving at 12:00 midnight, 7 days a week for many weeks at a time, there isn’t much time to do anything else. During those exhausting stints, everything else is secondary and placed on hold. What time is there left to do anything else? When you come home so late and have to sleep right away to get ready to wake up super early again the next day, there isn’t much time to socialize with family, pet the dog, or even to take care of routine household chores. Weekdays blend into weekends and merge back into weekdays without much differentiation. Unless you check the calendar routinely or start etching lines onto the wall to track the passage of days, each day feels pretty much the same.

Contract Project Amenities Are a Blessing And a Curse

Many firms and agencies that host very long hour projects (70+ hours) will frequently try to make it easier for workers to log those type of hours by extending office hours and providing amenities like free catering, reimbursed meals, internet access, free coffee, and even reimbursed transportation and parking costs. All of these extra benefits serve as a blessing and a curse. Without them, there is absolutely no way I’d personally be motivated or driven enough to work the extra hours. But when they are offered, the sirenic financial and convenient lure is difficult to resist. I find myself at the office and the review center at all hours, working away at my workstation for periods of time that seem endless. My regular fitness plans at the gym pretty much go out the window at that point and I live a very sedentary life while the project is underway. I’m only released from this voluntary servitude once the project is over. This is not really a complaint, but more of a social commentary. I guess the financial payoff is so lucrative that I’ve made the decision that any temporary health and social detriments are worth it.

Short Working Bursts Are Okay But Don’t Work Yourself Into The Family Split, Hospital, Or Grave

The article notes that India’s outsourcing workforce frequently face sleep disorders, heart disease, depression, and family discord. The industry is highly profitable but there is a high prevalence of psychological problems, bad diets, as well as excessive smoking and drinking. Since contract attorneys frequently work similar tedious hours and perform similar repetitive work, that might explain why we also face similar health and social problems as well. I guess that might help to explain one of the reasons why I’ve met many contract attorneys with weird, quirky, and mentally odd personalities.

But at least contract attorney work here is generally a daytime position that doesn’t pervasively require night shifts (although there have been 24 hours projects in the past). The Indians that perform outsourced jobs on the other side of the world have to contend with working flipped schedules that demand late evening shifts. Particularly for those Indians that work in the outsourced call center industry, they need to work at night to properly handle daytime calls from the United states and Europe operating in different time zones. I wonder if those in India who might be eventually called upon to perform legal outsourced work would be required to work such flipped schedules to properly coordinate with management activity originating in the United States. If so, they are in for a host of sacrificial problems.

But my advice to legal contract workers here is to try to keep your life in a good balance. Sure you’ll make a ton of money from working long overtime hours, but do take time off to exercise, stretch outside, and go outside for a quick breather. There are many gyms in the Washington D.C. area and although membership may be a bit pricey, I think taking an occasional break during the week to run on the treadmill and shower afterwards might do everyone some good. And stop smoking, it’s expensive and bad for you – but then you already knew that right?

But perhaps you’ve already laid out your financial projections based on the durational estimates given to you by your staffing agency. Haven’t you learned anything? These agency projections are frequently inaccurate and can’t be relied upon. Learn to trust your own instincts and the whispers you hear from the daily contract attorney rumor mill instead. To be ready for the unexpected but inevitable end, have a game plan to ride out the expected gaps between legal assignments. I’ve learned a few possible options and pointers after months working in the Town Town grind.

You May Want To Consider These When You Are Between Contract Attorney Projects:

1. File For Unemployment Benefits Right Away – The second the project is declared to be over, file for unemployment benefits immediately. Even if you plan on seeking another project right away, you never know for sure – so it’s best to file just to be on the safe side. In D.C. there is a one week waiting period before your unemployment benefits kick in so it’s better to file earlier than later. The maximum $359 pretax you can currently receive in benefits per week goes a long way in helping you take care of unavoidable expenses like rent and mortgage. Don’t miss out on your entitlement.
2. Interview With Agencies You Haven’t Registered With – It’s important to diversify your staffing agency portfolio. Don’t just limit yourself to the brand name agencies like Update or Ajilon/Staffwise, but branch out into the smaller firms like Delta Group or Solomon-Page. Remember, not all agencies have an equal hand in staffing specific projects so it’s always best to maximize your contacts.
3. Search For Contract Projects – I recommend mass emailing all of your favorite staffing agencies to ask if there are projects currently available or if there are any planned projects in the pipeline. If you’re already registered with the agency, there’s no need to draft a fancy email, so just get straight to the point – what you’re looking for and when you are ready. I suggest emailing or calling daily if you’re adamant about rolling over right away.
4. Search For Full Time Permanent Positions – If temp life is no longer for you, you can start your job search during your down time. Good luck, it’s an extremely tough market for attorneys now due to the over-saturation of law students and law schools.
5. Take On A Few Pro Bono Cases – Have you considered taking on a few pro-bono cases with the DC Bar? It’s an invaluable way to get real world experience in legal practice, particularly if there’s a field you’ve always wanted to enter.
6. Brush Up On the Law Or Learn More About Another Field To Increase Your Skill Set – Clicking away daily at your computer station, your legal skills will inevitably start to get rusty. It doesn’t hurt to take some time brushing up on the legal basics again. I always read my bar magazines, and enjoy tracking legal developments in the news and following legal blogs like the Wall Street Journal Law Blog.
7. Register A Domain And Create Your Own Professional Self Promotional Website – Most attorneys are notoriously slow when it comes to math and computers. That’s probably one of the reasons why we all ended up choosing to attend law school. But if you ever intend to start a solo practice or perform some type of legal practice, it doesn’t hurt to start up your own professional website. At the very least you should try to reserve your chosen domain name before someone else of the same name does. Most attorneys use their own name in the domain address with “law” following it, e.g. johndoelaw.com (which interestingly is still available at the time of this writing). I suggest reserving your domain name and hosting it using popular internet registration sites like GoDaddy or DreamHost (the one I use), but there are many others.
8. Chill, Relax, and Enjoy Your Time Off – I personally use the time I have off between projects as my built-in vacation time. Rather than rolling over immediately I occasionally like to take a few days or weeks off to unwind and rest my carpel tunneled right wrist from all that clicking. It’s one of the many curses and blessings of contract attorney work – although we don’t always get to determine exactly when we have time off, we have the luxury of having longer voluntary time off gaps throughout the working year.

Referral Fees and Working Bonuses Generally

Referral fees vary but are generally around $100-250 per attorney that you refer and takes on an assignment. The newer and smaller agencies tend to offer higher referrals since they need to find ways to steal workers from the big boys. Some of the larger, more established agencies like Compliance prefer to keep their referral policies intentionally fuzzy. If you ask Compliance about their referral rates, they will give you some spiel about how they don’t have a blanket referral fee and usually only give out referrals for certain projects. I find this case by case referral policy to be much too subjective and prone to nonpayment. I hope they will eventually adopt the more transparent referral policies that most of the other agencies offer.

Along with referrals, most agencies also offer billable hour incentive bonuses to encourage you to work more. The policy specifics vary but after you’ve worked a certain number of hours, usually around 400 on average, you are entitled to an 8 hour bonus payable at your usual wage rate ($35 an hour). Most of these bonuses are not automatically paid out so you’ll have to take it upon yourself to actually request them.

Actually Getting the Agency To Fork Over the Bonuses Is Easier Said Than Done

Although agencies like to advertise their referral fees and bonuses when soliciting for contract attorneys, they usually prefer to keep mum about their policies once you are on board. Bonuses are generally not paid out unless you specifically request them so it is your own duty to keep track of your referrals as well as your hours worked, based on the cumulative information found on your pay stubs. Thus after you’ve surpassed the requisite hours, be sure to alert your agency of your entitlement. It’s all part of the contractual bargain made to you when you took on the assignment, so you’re entitled to it. Don’t miss out!

Not all agencies are so ambiguous on this matter. I have to give credit to Special Counsel for their speedy payouts. I’ve referred attorneys to them before and they’ve always paid out very quickly, mailing me a check on the spot even though I wasn’t staffed on a project through them at the time.

Other agencies like Ajilon-Staffwise and Hudson require you to be currently staffed with them at the time of request before they will hand you your referral or billable hour bonus. I fail to see the logic behind this requirement, other than to make it harder for people to get their entitled referral/bonus checks. Don’t be so cheap, legal staffing agencies. We help stock your supply, so the very least you could do is provide the promised compensation rather than reinforce the money grubbing reputation many contract attorneys have of the legal staffing agencies. After all, it’s a symbiotic relationship and we need each other in this contracting business (at least until someone figures out a way to cut out the middle man).

Why Are The Agencies Showing You No Love:

1. You’ve Been Blacklisted – This is the worst case scenario but it happens more frequently than people think. There is temporary blacklisting and then there is permanent blacklisting. Temporary banning occurs if you commit an act such as bailing on a project, but can manage to later come up with a relatively credible excuse. The agency may be initially loathe to submit you for further projects but may reconsider in a few months or so, particularly if the market picks up and they are strapped for workers.

   Permanent blacklisting is bad news. This means you’ve done something that has really pissed the agency off or demonstrated that you are an individual that cannot be trusted to handle the duties and responsibilities of the position. Perhaps you severely inflated the hours you worked or you walked off the assignment without a valid excuse. Usually it has to be extreme for the agency to permanently ban you.
   

   If you’ve been blacklisted, you might not know it for certain but you are likely to never hear from the agency again either through email or phone. They will simply ignore your inquiries. My advice if that happens is to try to get back into their good graces, particularly if it’s an agency that frequently has a lot of good projects. Try to reach a live rep and explain your story with a convincing explanation. Even seemingly permanent blacklistings can be reversed with some fancy verbal spins.

2. There Are No Projects Available – If there are no contract jobs out there, agencies have no incentive to call back because there is nothing to report. Since there is no financial gain to be had, some may choose to ignore the hordes of people calling in when things are slow. There is always something going on in Contract Attorney Land, but not all agencies have an equal hand in it. It all depends which agency was able to successfully bid out the competing staffing firms. That’s why I recommend registering with a wide range of agencies – so you can maximize your leads and chances.
3. You Are Not On the Agency’s Preferred Short List For Regular Assignments – Some agencies have a short roll of regular permanent temps they frequently work with as they have built up a good relationship over the years. When the market is slow and projects are harder to come by, agencies will usually turn to their own internal lists to fill staffing needs before blasting out an all public bulletin request for applicants. To get onto the short list you have to butter up your agent over time and become friends.
4. You Do Not Keep In Touch With Them Often Enough and They’ve Forgotten You – Staffing agents get bombarded with e-mails and calls daily. Here’s one way to look at it – think of the agency as the parent, with a few hundred screaming babies representing contract attorneys. Mom can’t attend to all of the babies at once. If you really want her attention, you had better learn to drag your diaper over there to tug at her pant leg or scream louder than the other toddlers. So, bug the agencies persistently but cordially.
5. You Are Not Telling the Staffing Agent Which Project You Want To Be Submitted For – Like most employers it makes their job much easier when you tell them exactly which project you want to be a candidate for. Rather than taking the easy route of asking them to submit you for any project, rise to the top of the pile by telling them exactly what you want, e.g. “I want to be submitted for that project down in Fall Church that no one wants,” for example. Or, “please submit me for the project requiring an accounting background because I have the necessary degree qualifications.” I recommend scouring the job forums, the Yahoo Contract Attorney Groups, Craigslist, and the PosseList for leads and then contacting the agency staffing the project in question with directions to submit you for it.
6. Some Legal Staffing Agencies Focus Mostly On Permanent or Lateral Hires – One notable example would be Kelly Law Registry. They are a big name in the legal staffing world but I’ve rarely seen them staff a contract attorney project. Inquiries for contract attorney positions are likely to go unanswered with similar agencies as well.

With Contract Work Just Learn To Embrace The Fact That It Is Unpredictable

Contract legal work is very fickle. There is very little durational or job description guarantees. When an agency submits you for a project and promises you 2-3 months work of solid work, the duration terms frequently and do change depending on project conditions. I’ve had 3 month projects turn into 1 week ones, and even a 2 month assignment drag into a 9 month mess. It all depends on the project activity.

This is just the trade-off and essence of contract work. Law firms and corporations hire contract attorneys for short to medium duration assignments because it is more cost effective than retaining a fleet that might not be needed for long durations due to unexpected or indefinite work flow.

When I first started doing this work, I used to always gripe and blame the agencies for falsely advertising and misleading me into taking on a particular assignment that ultimately turned out to be significantly shorter than was originally projected, meanwhile forcing me to give up other opportunities. I think there are a few tricky agencies that do try to inflate the expected hours and duration to snag a few contract attorneys for project submission, but on the whole, I’m not certain that even agencies really know just how long a particular project will last. You should always try to take an agency’s duration estimates with a grain of salt. Don’t nail down irrevocable vacation plans based on their estimations because these type of details tend to waiver. Some agencies are bigger inflaters than others – if they tell me the project will last 2 months, that’s essentially code for 3-4 weeks. If they announce a one month project, be prepared to be there for only 2-3 weeks. It takes some getting used to but the more contract experience you have under you belt, the better your B.S. detector gets.

But It’s All About Knowing That There Will Be Something For You After Your Current One Is Over

As for my expectations of where I’ll end up after the project is over, that is all up to faith – but it’s not blind faith. It’s based on my own previous experience and knowledge about the condition of the market. From my past experience I know that projects are almost always available but that sometimes it may take a few days or a few weeks longer to roll from one into the other. There is no sense in flipping out or panicking when the project is finished. Hopefully you had prudently saved up enough funds to carry you over during periods of downtime and have wisely filed for temporary unemployment benefits to cushion the momentary financial hit. Don’t fret so hard because a project will come knocking soon enough. There is always something going down in lawyer central. Even during recessive periods, there will always be some form of business or legal activity happening in the D.C. metro area.

If you feel like you are waiting around for a long while, take the time to interview and register with the multitude of smaller legal staffing agencies that are popping up everyday. The small fries want to earn your business too so give them a chance by speaking to them during your down time. I’ve found that smaller agencies tend to be more customer oriented than the big agency conglomerates. Of course, faith and expectation only applies to big contract attorney cities like Washington D.C. and New York. Contract legal jobs and projects are not as plentiful or predictably present elsewhere.

The contract attorney experiences of those in New York City tend to be a bit nuttier and off the wall than those in other locations. I’m not sure if this is because of the type of people who do contract work in New York or because I’ve only been exposed to a skewed and limited cross section of opinions, but New York City projects seem to be in a weird world by itself. But for this entry let me just discuss what I’ve learned so far about the L.A. contract attorney experience.

Differences Between Los Angeles. and Washington D.C.

I have a friend who has worked in both Washington D.C. and now in the city of L.A. as a contract attorney, so I decided to ask about the differences between working in these two locations. My friend also solicited comments from current L.A. contract attorney co-workers and here are a few interesting observations:

1. L.A. contract attorneys spend 2-3 hours driving in traffic every day to get to work and spend a ton of money on unsubsidized parking and on the nation’s priciest gas. Most of the work is centralized in the city or on the west-side so getting in and out is a daily nightmare. In D.C., commuting by car is difficult but not impossible. Many choose to avoid D.C. traffic altogether by taking the more convenient Metro subway trains. Yes, they seem to have a propensity to break down and spark mini fires, but they generally run predictably.
2. Subsidized limousine and taxi rides are unheard of for L.A. contract attorney projects. With the nation’s most congested highways and longest commute times it’s not hard too see why subsidized rides home wouldn’t work in L.A. Washington D.C. and New York City are more compact and many live in the city – so it’s a more workable option for the latter two.
3. Projects in excess of 50 hours are rare in L.A. I’ve worked 95 hour projects in D.C. but apparently in L.A., such lucrative extended overtime hour projects are almost unheard of. I’m sure they exist, but they are just very few and far between. D.C. and NYC tend to get the bulk of the juicy long hour projects.
4. Catered meals are not common in L.A. either, although they are the exception not necessarily the rule here in D.C. They are usually offered by agencies and firms to encourage contract attorneys to stay at work longer so you’re more likely to receive catered meals or subsidies when the project office hours extend into the late evening. Since L.A. projects tend to have shorter hours, there is less need or motivation for agencies and law firms there to provide them.
5. The L.A. contract attorney market is very unpredictable and stagnant right now. Welcome to the unstable world of contract attorneys! It’s like that everywhere, although D.C. and NYC tend to have more established and predictable contract attorney job outlooks. Even in a tough economy like this though there are still projects to be had. You just have to dig deeper but they’re out there.
6. There are many non-California barred attorneys doing contract work in L.A. I’m not familiar with California’s bar requirements, but unlike Washington D.C., California does not seem to overwhelmingly require contract attorneys to be barred in their own state. At least not yet.
7. Wage rates in L.A. average around $35 but sometimes they can be as low as $30. Factoring in the high cost of living there, it’s not hard to see why L.A.’ers get the short end of the bargain. Here in D.C. it’s pretty stable at $35 although I’m hoping it’ll rise sometime. NYC seems to have the highest wage rate, but their cost of living is astronomical as well.
8. Overtime regulations in California differ from D.C.’s. In D.C. contract attorneys get overtime of time and a half for hours worked in excess of 40 cumulatively for the week. In California, they get time and a half overtime after working 8 hours every day up to and including 12 hours. They get double rate after 12 hours. Good deal, except they never get to fully take advantage of it due to their mostly low hour projects.
9. Apparently, there are many contract attorneys in L.A. who are also part time aspiring actors, writers, and movie producers. Surprise, it’s L.A. where everyone thinks they are a model or an up and coming actress, hoping to get discovered. Not too many of those in D.C. although I’ve seen and met a few contract attorneys who are always working on their novels and hoping to get published someday.
10. On the whole, L.A. projects tend to be well managed and not very “sweat-shoppy” as my friend put it. I think D.C. projects are generally well managed as well, although there is at least one agency here that enjoys running their projects like a boot camp.

The verdict? Contract attorney work in Washington D.C. pays better, offers better hours, better perks, and offers greater stability with more project opportunities than our brethren enjoy on the west coast. Although I must point out that over there they have much better weather and much better places to eat than here in D.C.

I didn’t really do anything terribly exciting during the holiday weekend but it was a very appreciated rest for the weary. I thought about it but ultimately decided against joining in the Black Friday shopping craze. Those hardcore shoppers are too tough for me and I think my time would be better spent shopping online. Luckily, the associates are out again as usual and we are only about half staffed since many contract attorneys are still out, presumably still suffering from the post holiday I-Don’t-Wanna-Go-Back-To-Work-Wah-Wah syndrome. I totally understand their sentiments. Since work is so slow today, I’ll probably sneak in break time to do some online holiday shopping at my work station and take advantage of post Thanksgiving deals – Cyber Monday they call it.

It’s Not Always Easy Planning Extended Breaks While A Contract Attorney Project Is Still Ongoing

I haven’t taken substantial time off in a long while and this winter I would like to but I think my plans will have to wait a little while longer. My project continues to be extended and now it’s looking like it will last well into the new year. Contract attorney work is generally flexible but its fickle nature sometimes means that vacation plans have to be put on hold until the project has completely run its course. Contract work pays the bills and as much as I’d like to say with all confidence that jumping from one project to another seamlessly is a piece of cake, you never really know for sure.

The temporary lawyer job market ebbs and flows and currently the market is severely dehydrated. Numerous smaller projects are out there, but the key mega ones are a bit lacking right now. I think the real estate mortgage mess and the resulting credit crisis is causing corporations and law firms alike to be more conservative with their business plans. With less corporate activity happening, there is less demand for contract attorneys. But fear not, although the market is slow right now even in a normally active place like D.C., if you follow the contract attorney job forums and postings like I do, you will notice that there still remains a respectable number of active projects. Hopefully the start of a few big projects at one well known firm in the Falls Church area will serve as a catalyst to get things busy around here again.

Delaying Extended Vacations Plans Till Later

Since my working opportunities might be unpredictably murky after this project is over, I think it’ll probably be better for me to pocket the income now when the going is good and still available. Although I generally have day to day working freedom, unlike those who have permanent positions I don’t have the luxury of paid vacations and the security of knowing that my position will still be here when I return. If I don’t work, I don’t get paid. I’ve been generally lucky so far in being able to roll over consistently from project to project on my own terms, but the gravy train might end one day. Maybe eventually my acceptance and patience for this type of high-income-but-unstable line of work will run out, but for now it fits my lifestyle and financial plans.

Okay, back to online shopping, I mean work.

Have a safe and wonderful Thanksgiving everyone! Remember to eat hearty – you can work off the pounds later on the treadmill.

Earning extra overtime is certainly great, but it’s just not worth the extra sacrifice for me right now. There are more important places I need to be at and more important people I need to be with during this time than spending it cooped up in an unventilated, stuffy room clicking away on a computer.

Knowing When To Keep Time Off Information To Yourself

It’s been a wonderful luxury to be able to set my own working schedule. Since the summer I’ve been working on the same project and have taken a few days off here and there. In general, agencies don’t mind when you take very infrequent time off but when you do it too often they are likely to see it as a serious problem that warrants prompt terminative action. Some agencies are more stringent than others and will ask before submitting you for a particular project whether you intend to take any time off during the expected duration of the assignment. If your response is anything but an emphatic no, it is likely that the agency will take a pass on you and choose to submit someone else for consideration. Some agencies won’t even submit you if they believe you intend to take time off while the project’s ongoing. When you are not working, you are not billing hours. When you are not billing, the agency is not earning their cut off of your efforts. Thus, unless you plan on taking a very significant period of time off, my suggestion is to keep tight lipped about any anticipated vacation plans when asked by the agency.

Agencies are notorious for providing very inaccurate projections and overestimations of project duration. I understand that sometimes it’s not possible to pinpoint exactly how long something will last, but I think certain agencies frequently provide exaggerations to coax more interest from prospective contract attorney applicants. This makes it extra difficult to plan vacations around project estimations.

So I think it is in every contract attorney’s own working interest not to reveal whether he or she plans on taking time off when inquiring about project availability. Disclosing such information to the agency will only lead to negative results in you not being considered for projects that you would otherwise have been submitted for. Besides, deciding when and if you plan on taking time off in the contract attorney business is a very fluid decisional process. Originally I thought I would try to maximize my working hours and overtime opportunities by plugging through the holidays, but I ultimately reconsidered and decided my time would be better spent with family and loved ones. Money is important, but it’s not every thing. Heeding my own advice, I didn’t alert the agency until the last possible moment (a few days before my planned time off), although I did reasonably make sure the project would not be too understaffed while I was away.

However, as a contract attorney, sometimes I forget that I am an adult, let alone a trained attorney with past working experience. There are many moments in this line of work that sometimes make me feel like I am not a real lawyer.

Based on my experience in the last few years, some legal staffing agencies seem to feel the need to run their projects like a day care for adults. They monitor our actions, track our minutes like an obsessive parent, and even mandate the use of bathroom passes to account for our billing accuracy. How is one supposed to feel like an adult when your supervisors require you to sign in and sign out for even brief activities like performing a routine bodily function. In high school I had to raise my hand to request a pass to use the bathroom because the teacher didn’t want students randomly wandering the halls. But when college and law school finally rolled by, the permission requirement went out the window since the expectation was that we should now be responsible enough to monitor our own actions. It is almost comical how things have regressed since then.

Feeling Like I Am Working At a Daycare For Grown-Ups

I was on this one project where one of the head agency administrators actually felt the need to come before everyone and make a long winded speech about the agency’s zero tolerance policy towards anything that could be remotely construed as controversial. I’m not just talking about things that are patently wrong either, such as sexual harassment. But the insinuation was that any joke or comment within earshot of someone that could remotely be considered offensive would not be tolerated and would result in prompt firing.

Such stringent rules leave little room for much social interaction outside of clicking away at one’s workstation. It makes things even worse when they’ve taken away internet access. The only thing I can really think about when I’m on one those types of projects is to hope that it ends sooner rather than later so that I can find another one that offers a better working environment.

I think experienced contract attorneys can offer a lot of review experience and guidance to supervising associates, who are frequently novices to managing document review projects, but when working conditions are so stifling, it severely discourages people like me from really caring about the case at all. I like to feel that my work is appreciated, but when it is not and conditions are terrible, I really have little motivation to be involved.

It Can Be a Bit Sweatshoppish Sometimes

Once in a while, associates or agency strongmen will pull us aside to discuss our numbers – basically your productivity level compared to the other members of the contract attorney team. It’s amazing the degree of data they keep a running tally of. Many document review programs are able to compile user information into neatly diagrammed charts that can track when and how often you code documents to determine your level of productivity. Unproductive workers are usually quickly canned. Every time I am pulled aside to discuss my numbers, I feel sort of like a little garment industry worker being called into my boss’ office to explain why I’m not hitting my button sewing target number.

At the same time though, I understand there has to be a mechanism to keep productivity and quality up, and perhaps it’s just the linear nature of contract attorney work that makes it very mechanical and numbers based, but I wish there was a more professional and befitting way of handling it.

But come to think of it, even big law firm associates have their own numbers too. They have pressing billable hours they must meet and they too have partners who will pull them aside when their numbers are below par and not up to snuff. In this world unless you are at the top, you’re really just an ordinary cog in a giant working wheel.

Many of my former classmate friends and I left law school with high hopes of working inspiring jobs and living comfortably. Others pursued their dreams of working in organizations where they could help the needy and less fortunate. Since that time, I have seen many of my friends and former classmates grow disillusioned with the law and leave the profession altogether. Others, such as myself, have eventually found ourselves performing contract attorney work. It is so disheartening when I hear stories of people becoming beaten down so early in their careers, and burdened with the relentless weight of unforgiving student loans that presses down heavier with each passing day.

I know many law school graduates who end up working in low paying attorney jobs ($40,000) for years with little hope of advancement. They stay on because they are unable to find any other positions out there and because it affords them the apparent security of a steady paycheck, albeit a tiny one. Some end up working in areas of the law they have no interest in that won’t prepare them for future work in any field they really enjoy. Many keep working in the same dead end job like a good worker bee – just like they were told would be the path to success when they were little. This goes on until they finally burn out and have enough. Hearing all this, it all makes me wonder if I’m really in a worse position because I work as a contract attorney.

What I Always Hear From Non Lawyers

I’ve been told frequently that temporary attorney work is a dead end job, that I should go get a “real permanent position” that will allow me to grow with the firm and ultimately make a million dollars a year. Many of the people who are constantly blabbing in my ear are usually non-lawyers (namely my family members) – people who have bought into the media-spun fantasy image of what attorneys do and the fabulous lives they must live.

But the reality is that being an attorney is not what it used to be. Competition for jobs is fierce and even for the fortunate few who make it as associates working in the big law firms, a tremendous amount of their life energy is demanded of them. Many find themselves working well in excess of 80+ hours a week for many years with little time for anything else.

Is that the working life I really would want to have for myself? Frankly, if I didn’t have people telling me that I needed to go find a stable full time position, I would be feeling pretty okay about my working situation. After all, I currently have a reasonably steady paycheck, a set of growing retirement accounts, paid holidays, and the ability to work as little or as much as I’d like. I can afford to live in a nice apartment with reasonable utility bills and have the means to save a sizable portion of my contract attorney income, even after satisfying my regular student loan payments. True working freedom means that when work time is over, I go home without having to worry about what happened on the job today. Unless I am working weekends, that time is my own and I will never have to rush into the office on a Saturday night because a demanding partner wants me to prepare an emergency brief.

In fact, I am now making a lot more than most of the people I know who took permanent positions at smaller firms where their salaries have yet to experience any appreciable increase, and where they continue to struggle mightily with student loans in the hopes that someday their financial ship will arrive. With the legal job market the way it is, I personally could not wait around forever like them. Suffice to say, my job as a contract attorney has been very good to me.

I Was Paid Less Than The Other Temps On the Project

When I first started doing contract work not too long ago, I was staffed on a long term project by an agency that offered me a wage rate slightly lower than the market rate of $35. Despite my initial hesitation, I took the assignment because there were promises made by the agency that the project had the potential to last a very long time. Because longevity is a valuable commodity in the temporary lawyer business, I agreed to the slight wage reduction as consideration for the opportunity to work on a longer duration project.

A few months into it, I was sitting at my computer command station with my headphones on when I casually overhead two contract attorneys discussing their document review experiences. One temp had been on the project before I came along and another had only recently joined the team. The subject of wage rate disparity came up and the newer temp mentioned that the agency was paying him a rate of $35 an hour. The older temp immediately became agitated and expressed his shock and incredulity. Apparently the older temp was only being paid $33 and had been under the impression all this time that everyone else was being compensated at the same rate. The only reason he had agreed to the pay cut was because the agency had promised a long stint.

This information disturbed me greatly. After all, I later learned, we were all DC barred and likely being billed off at the same rate. Eventually more contract attorneys joined the conversation, and we discovered that only the newer temps were being paid the slightly higher wage rate. Several of us immediately called the agency to demand an explanation. After several attempts at feigning innocence and putting the blame on the law firm, the agency agreed to bump the wage rates of those affected to the same rate as everyone else. Requests for retroactive application were rejected.

Comparatively, my story is tamer than the ones I’ve heard from some other people. One individual being staffed on a supposedly lucrative foreign language review was being paid a rate of $40 an hour. It was not until a few months into the project that she learned that her similarly situated peers were being compensated at $53.

While not legally improper, the practice of paying different wage rates is very distasteful and underhanded. While not all legal staffing agencies practice this, some do, and those that do this give the rest a bad name.

Temporary Legal Staffing Agencies Try To Limit Information To Maintain their Competitive Edge

Many legal temp agencies try to make the discussion of certain subjects taboo. Most, if not all contract attorney staffing agencies have their own boiler plate employee policies that expressly prohibit temps from discussing topics such as wage rate. The conclusion I can draw is that agencies want to adopt policies that will allow them to maintain competitive control over their temps. While they want the strategic right to offer different deals to different contract attorneys, they also want to limit key information that could cause rebellion or unrest in Temp Town.

I think these agencies must be really naive if they think they can perpetually keep their contract attorneys in the dark. You know what they say. You can fool some of the people all of the time, and you can fool all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.

Agencies will not be able to fully prevent contract attorneys from talking among themselves regarding subjects like compensation. If legal staffing agencies want to encourage loyalty among their contract attorneys and ensure quality of effort and work, it’s in their own interest to maintain fairness in how they treat their contract employees. There is nothing good that can come out of paying similarly situated workers differently.

I will not list names at this time, but I know many contract attorneys are already well aware of which agencies have this type of shady practice. Their tainted names are routinely circulated among those in Temp Town.

While most people see the holidays as a time to relax and take time off to spend with family, many contract attorneys, such as myself see it as the bonus months. There will always be plenty of time to take a vacation and unwind – after the project is over. When the project is still ongoing, my commitment is to taking advantage of overtime opportunities and maxing out my available hours.

Extra Overtime For Holiday Work

Most legal staffing agencies and law firms have a policy of providing contract attorneys paid holidays. What this means is that if you come in to work on an official paid holiday such as Fourth of July or Christmas for example, you are automatically paid at the overtime rate for all hours worked that day, and all hours logged will also be applied towards the usual 40 hours for the week. Once you hit 40 hours, the usual overtime rules kick in again and you get overtime thereafter. In essence your hours worked during paid holidays are performing double duty.

I know, it sounds like I’m all about the money and like I place less importance on family time during the holidays, but you should know, there is no obligation to stay the entire day. Most agencies and firms are more lenient during those paid holidays. You can usually come in and stay for as long as you want up to the maximum allotted time to earn your automatic overtime and leave earlier than usual to be with your family. Work schedules during paid holidays are generally more flexible, and even the supervising associates are usually eager to get home soon so they frequently don’t stay the entire time.

Remember, the double bonus hours you get during paid holidays don’t come along that often. Most of them occur during the winter season so do try to take advantage. It’ll help pay for all the Nintendo Wii’s and stocking stuffers you’ll be buying when December rolls around.

My Never Ending Project

It’s not easy to predict just when that will happen though. My current project was originally scheduled to be a 6 week project. That was back in the summer. Since that time, 5 months have passed and the project continues to be regularly extended with no end in sight.

But I really can’t complain. The hours aren’t as long as I’d like, but the working condition is overall pleasant. I just wish the project provided catering or at least reimbursed us for meals – that would make it even better. Our group of contract attorneys have gotten to know each other well and there is a relaxed, collegial atmosphere in our work room.

The associates are supposed to be present at all times to supervise us and answer questions but I think they’ve decided that we can handle things on our own. After all, we are all professional adults and don’t require hand holding to do our work diligently. When we are done with our review batches we simply sign out a new one from the review binder. When we have questions that require a second opinion, we solicit feedback and discuss among ourselves. When we feel like we need partner guidance on an important matter, we call the special bat phone and get in touch with the associates back at the firm. The system essentially runs itself without the need for associate or partner oversight.

But even ideal environments become routine and humdrum over time and eventually you hear tired grumbles from those who want the project to be over with. I wouldn’t mind a few more months though.

Unpredictable But You Get To Enjoy The Changes

When I first started doing this type of work, I had a hard time handling the lack of job security. It is true that even with full time jobs, any employment-at-will situation will never truly guarantee 100% job security, but with contract work, security is even more precarious. The very nature of contract work guarantees that it won’t last forever. Sometimes you will luck out and stay on a project for months and even years. Other times you will have the misfortune of only staying on for a week before everyone is released. I’ve adapted over the last few years and have actually embraced this regular changing of work location cycle.

Some people are really affected by the changes, but personally I get bored if I’m in the same environment for extended periods of time. One of the benefits (if you call it that) of contract attorney work is that you get to be rotated into different working environments and get to meet different types of people over the course of several projects. Over the last few years, I’ve begun to recognize some familiar faces, but I still enjoy meeting new people and seeing new firms – sort of reminds me of college or law school where every semester you changed classes and switched to a different set of students. It certainly helps to keeps things fresh in this otherwise everyday-is-the-same line of work.

Not Everyone Handles Uncertainty That Well

Some people have a hard time handling the turnover and I think one of the biggest hurdles is the occasional financial instability.

Everyone needs a steady paycheck, but particularly for those who have families to support or mortgages to pay, periods of transition between projects can be extra difficult to bear. I have neither of those things and I suspect that’s probably why I handle it better than most. I do have high monthly rent payments, but my contract attorney wages and savings easily pay them off. To survive in this type of work you need to have a lot of faith and a good saving mentality. If you tend to blow your savings on frivolous things rather than focus on paying off debt and monthly expenses, you will forever struggle with paycheck to paycheck living. When I work projects that have a lot of hours, I make the extra effort to squirrel away the bulk of it to tie me over till the next project in the event I am unable to roll seamlessly. Although I’ve been able to roll over consistently, I still continue to save, and things have worked out quite well financially.

In a healthy job market when projects are plentiful, making a six figure income or more a year is not only possible, I would go as far as to say it is a likely occurrence. Of course, it would depend on your ability to successfully roll from one project to another. Even after factoring some downtime and gaps in between, a lucrative temp income is not out of the question.

The current recessive job market we are experiencing makes it more difficult to roll, but hitting six figures is still a very reasonable target. It simply may require more agency networking and persistence. Because the market’s a bit tight right now, you can’t passively wait for project announcements to be posted on the listservs. You need to take active initiative to bug the agencies and remind them of your availability on a routine basis.

Concept of Contract Attorney Pay As Fast Money

Interestingly, I have heard some refer to contract attorney pay as “stripper money” – categorized as the type of significant money that can be earned within a very short period of time through tasks that supposedly don’t lead to any future professional enhancement. I might disagree a bit about the latter part of that statement, but the first part is frequently true. Because most contract attorneys are paid overtime wages of time and a half for hours worked beyond 40, we are capable of earning a significant amount within a short period of time. It all depends on how many hours you are willing to put in.

I’ve worked a wide range of hours and personally have no problem with the varying project hour availabilities, but I know many contract attorneys who absolutely embrace and demand long hours. Long billable hours means more overtime and massive overtime can lead to big bucks. Many temps are frequently disappointed if not very upset when hours are cut back as such rollbacks greatly affect their bottom line.

Working 100+ Hours

I’ve had my share of long hours before and let me tell you, working that long is not easy. But at the end of each week, the resulting jackpot paycheck that greeted me was always worth it. Just don’t expect to accomplish much at home during those extreme hour weeks – this includes laundry, family time, sleep, and even personal grooming and hygiene for some people.

At the start of this year, I worked on a project that offered virtually unlimited office hours. Dinner was reimbursed up to $25 and transportation costs were covered. Working conditions were decent, associate supervision was reasonable, and internet access was not restricted. A few contract attorneys and I were separated from the main pack due to room overflow issues, so we essentially ended up with our own private room.

The members of my little posse all worked very long hours, and we took turns encouraging each other when energy and morale was low. Because our food expenses were covered and the office hours were so long, I essentially lived there for several weeks straight. I worked 5 weeks continuously, 7 days a week and racked up nearly 100+ billable hours each week. Needless to say, that one month span was my most successful contract attorney experience to date in terms of financial payoff.

I’m sure I contributed many productive hours for the client. It wouldn’t have been possible if the working conditions were oppressive. It was only possible because the agency and law firm created a commendable working environment that was ideal and conducive for extended hour work.

Extreme Hour Projects Are Rare So Take Full Advantage

There were times I wanted to just go home, but I knew such ideal overtime-heavy projects were not easy to come by so I made the effort to stick it out for the long haul. When you are on one of those kind of projects, you really need to maximize the opportunity. You have the potential to earn more than 2-3 months worth of income within a single month’s time. Contract attorney work can be occasionally unpredictable so when you have the chance to work and earn a lot of overtime in such a short burst of time, it is in your long term interest to stay the course.

I’m sure everyone has similar war stories of working those long hour projects. I hope they were good experiences.

Contract attorneys enjoy debating and talking among themselves but there really isn’t much of an online outlet for this type of activity. There are a few related online forums but those sites are populated by mostly obscene, wisecracking people. Other sites such as The Posse List and the Yahoo Contract Attorneys Group are legitimate, but they focus on employment and legal staffing. Occasionally they will discuss issues affecting contract attorneys, but that’s not their primary mission.

There are only a few contract attorney blogs out there, most notably the one up in New York City, but his site pulsates too much negativity for me at times, although I admit I am often thoroughly amused and entertained by what he has to say. He’s been blogging for several years now with the same pessimistic message, which makes me wonder at times just how much of it is real and how much is spin. There is some truth sprinkled in his writing, but it just seems a tad too one sided in my opinion.

My Approach Is To Be More Positive

It might be fun to sit around and blast all law firms and staffing agencies about their practices, but after a while it would get old and tiresome. I’m trying to create a site where we can all discuss issues that affect us all. We’re all in this profession together so we might as well pool our thoughts and share with each other the fruits of our experiences. I’ve always greatly enjoyed listening to the advice of the “old timers” in the contract attorney world. Most of them are not old at all, but simply have been doing this work for a long time and frequently have fascinating stories to share.

Eventually I would like to start discussing more controversial topics but currently I am trying to keep above the controversy fray. I am aware that staffing agencies and law firms routinely monitor the blogosphere for content that portray the profession or their firm in a negative light. But I believe strongly in the freedom of speech and the right to exercise it within the reasonable confines of the rules of professional responsibility. I also believe in protecting the privacy of readers. So I welcome the attention and participation of all and hope everyone can learn and improve a thing or two.

Honestly, it is not difficult to see why law firms and corporations would want to move their man power intensive legal work offshore to countries that command much lower wages. By outsourcing their work overseas, law firms and companies can potentially and substantially decrease their cost of intellectual labor. The natural place to outsource document review is India, an English speaking, low wage, and low cost of living destination. Due to tremendous language hurdles, other low labor cost countries like China or Vietnam would not be feasible so India is probably the best bet.

Despite stories of legal outsourcing that we’ve been hearing about recently, why am I not concerned that the outsourcing movement will affect the contract attorney market substantially? That’s because I don’t think the established conservative legal market will readily accept this type of employment and cultural shift. I also don’t think legal work is as easily exportable as other fields that have been outsourced such as customer service and information technology. This is just my own preliminary take on the matter.

The Conservative Legal Culture Will Resist

The world of law firms, partners, and associates is a very old fashioned and traditional profession, steeped in conservative values. Unlike the private corporate world, law firms have been very resistant to modernization of its cultural norms and old ways of doing things. For example, while corporate America has generally embraced a greater push towards diversity in the workplace, law firms have been very resistant to change, as minorities as a whole still comprise less than 10 percent of all attorneys.

Law firm partners are also generally very old fashioned and I feel they will be very resistant to such employment shifts. Law is still practiced the same inefficient way it has always been practiced. It’s only recently that some courts finally began accepting electronic filing for example. The old bigwigs will not be entirely embracing of the idea of sending tons of privileged and confidential legal work product to a third world country and allow some locals, who they will never meet in real life, ready access to such privileged information.

There will be always be trailblazers in the legal field who will attempt to migrate some legal work overseas, but I truly feel this movement hype will ultimately subside.

Other Outsourcing Attempts Have Not Entirely Succeeded

The concept of outsourcing work to a country with cheaper labor costs is nothing new. But the reality is that outsourcing is fraught with serious confidentiality and adaptation difficulties. There is also the hidden cost of customer attrition. Many companies who have tried to outsource their work overseas have not been entirely successful. They have also not reaped the overall financial benefits they initially expected when they began their outsourcing efforts. Many have ultimately brought the work back in-house.

It’s interesting to read a few stories of outsourced work to India but I just don’t see it happening successfully on a grand scale. Instead, I think the greatest long term threat to the current document review attorney market is technology itself. One day, perhaps many years from now, it is possible that reviewers may be replaced by super efficient software that can keyword sort through documents at lightening speed, completing work in a few minutes that would have taken a lawyer hours or days to complete in the past.

The market will continue to adapt over time and so should we.

After all, if you wanted to request an aisle seat on an airplane or be seated in an emergency row for extra legroom, it is your prerogative to do so. Similarly, contract attorneys should take work related benefits into account when selecting projects (assuming the market’s healthy enough to offer the luxury of choosing).

Here are a few a benefits and perks that I always look out for when evaluating the attractiveness of a contract attorney project. Contract attorneys usually work long hours. The benefits help to make the experience more enjoyable.

1. Internet Access – Some law firms and agencies block out non-work related internet usage to boost productivity. In my opinion, this practice only works to a limited extent. Yes random web surfing will be down but it will be replaced with excessive talking or hallway roaming. I think having internet access is a necessity. I don’t know anyone who can work 10-15 hours straight a day without needing to take an internet break. For the majority of contract attorneys I know, not having internet access is a deal breaker.
2. Streaming Radio - Sometimes streaming radio is prohibited on certain projects. The reason is that usage of streaming media causes a significant drain on internet bandwidth, causing work related programs to slow down. This is a perk I enjoy but I understand why some firms would want to limit this privilege. It’s just hard to get a clear signal with a traditional hand held radio sometimes.
3. Earphones Permitted – At least one law firm does not permit document reviewers to wear headphones. Their explanation is that this causes workers to be mentally distracted and hinders the firm’s ability to make announcements and work related updates. I don’t buy their explanation one bit. Document review doesn’t require extensive mental analysis. During times when I need mental clarity, I usually just voluntarily turn off my headset for a moment. There is no need for the firm to regulate this matter.
   
4. Free Coffee and Tea – Usually it’s either one of those ubiquitous Starbucks or Flavia machines. On my current project I only have access to free Flavias so I’ve trained myself to drink them. Not the tastiest, but it beats paying $6 for a cup of premium Starbucks.
   
5. Free Pizza – At least one legal staffing agency offers free pizza and coke on Fridays. I’m glad they finally switched to Papa Johns from the other company. But is free pizza really a perk that would cinch the deal for you? If it is, then you have some low standards!
   
6. Catered Meals – For the single contract attorneys who don’t need to go home to eat dinner with their family, this is a welcomed benefit. Not having to pay for my own meals has allowed me to save up quite a bit. Not having to go out to find food allows me to work more and bill more hours as well.
   
7. Reimbursed Meals – I actually prefer this over the catered meals. Agencies usually cater meals from the same caterer. If the project is a long term one, you will get sick of eating the same food after a while, I assure you. You can only eat baked chicken so many times.
8. Reimbursed Parking – I usually commute by Metro so this one isn’t important for me, but for many who drive, this one is invaluable. Daily parking can be quite expensive in downtown Washington D.C.
   
9. Reimbursed Limo or Taxi Rides Home – If you work past a certain time in the evenings, some projects will permit you to have reimbursed access to a free limousine taxi ride home. You might not look like a high roller at your workstation, but at least you can cruise home like one.
   

Did I miss anything?

Survivor

Contract work is by definition not a permanent proposition. You move from project to project and longevity can be difficult to predict sometimes. I’ve been on projects where I was brought on to serve for several months. Only one disorganized week later the project was already over. The opposite has happened before too. I was brought on for a projected 4 week project, and 6 months later I was still there with no end in sight.

Like the Survivor reality show where contestants have to live on a tropical island and remain in the competition for as long as possible before getting voted off by other contestants, I just try to stay on board my project as long as possible before bouncing.

Projects can be unpredictable and oftentimes there is little feedback to let you know where you stand and what’s the current status of the project. You just keep working until someone tells you to stop.

But sometimes you can tell something is going to happen when the natives start to get antsy and restless. When the project is near its last legs, some of your co-workers will inevitably start panicking and start talking like Armageddon has arrived, while frantically dialing their agencies for salvation. Why the panic? From experience they should know that rolling over onto another project is a common and likely occurrence, whether it be with the same agency or a different one. I’ve never had a voluntary gap between projects longer than a few weeks.

So long as you get along with your Survivor workmates, do good work and put in decent hours, you won’t be voted off the document review island. No one wants to get the dreaded announcement or phone call that the project is over for them. Play it clean and you will likely survive another day.

I try to stay away from childish office politics although I enjoy watching them unfold. It gets particularly entertaining when I see female contract attorneys bicker to death about the most trivial and ridiculous things such as thermostat temperature. I’m almost hoping they will start something with each other just to break the monotony, which brings me to my second point.

Groundhog’s Day

In the world of contract attorneys, everyday is the same.

Hmm…let’s see, what did I do today at work? I came in, got my free Flavia coffee, sat down and clicked away at my workstation. What did I do yesterday? I came in, got my coffee, sat down, and clicked away. And the day before? Basically the same. It’s true, contract attorney work is not very exciting. The social interactions I have with other temps are the highlights of my day.

If you want to be in court or interact frequently with clients, this is not the line of work for you. Everyday is basically the same. I have a hard time distinguishing one work day from another sometimes. Although I do want to point out that it’s not really that much different from my past jobs frankly. In my last full time attorney job before working as a contract attorney I often experienced the same deja-vu feeling, so this is nothing particularly new.

But if you’re like me and understand that this is just a stress free way to make a living and fund your side projects, while still having time to pursue your other professional and personal goals, it’s not so bad.

My own law school loans are comparatively tame and I managed to consolidate them at a time when interest rates were extraordinarily low. But I know many who are struggling with the realities of being debt ridden. There are those who end up spending months or years submitting resumes for attorney positions they may never get. Others transition into another non-legal field altogether, while others choose to perform contract attorney work until they get their employment life together.

Working As a Contract Attorney Because Of Student Loans

Talking to some of the other contract attorneys at work, I get the sense that many chose to perform document review work out of financial necessity to pay off crushing student loans. Contract attorneys get paid pretty well, albeit for relatively short stints at a time. But during those periods of available employment, they have the potential to earn quite a bit depending on the overtime hours available. When you are indebted with a sizable amount of student loans, sometimes your realistic employment options are limited.

I know a few contract attorneys who left law school with dreams of working in the non-profit sector or working in areas that would allow them to help low income people. Eventually financial reality set in and they ultimately could no longer afford to work in those relatively low paying areas of law. Some of these people did not willingly choose to work as contract attorneys but their financial realities ultimately did not give them much choice.

Instead of being bitter, I would hope that they would see contract attorney work as an honest and sensible alternative that can help them stabilize their financial lives and help them tackle their student loan payments. Everyone eventually has to find his or her own path and we are fortunate to have this type of work available as a stop gap solution.

Recent Observation

I’ve noticed something recently that disturbs me. It seems a few staffing agencies are vehemently against hiring contract attorneys who also work as solo practitioners on the side. At least one staffing agency has indicated in its job posting that one qualification criteria is that the applicant is not a solo practitioner. What is the deal with that? Do they want only lifers or something?

It’s Important To Stay The Course and Not Bail

There have been times I’ve been staffed and ended up stuck on a bad project. Maybe the hours were too short, overtime was limited, internet usage was banned, with no meal reimbursement, and under stifling working conditions. In those type of situations I have seriously given thought to leaving the project mid-stream for another one. My advice is, don’t do it! Projects don’t last forever and they eventually will end.

Ditching an assignment before it is over is a sure fire way of getting on the staffing agency and law firm’s bad side and could and likely will result in you becoming permanently banned from working with them ever again. Many contract attorneys like to overlap their projects seamlessly and may try to jump ship before it is over to catch the next project before it sails. Once again, don’t do it. The damage you’ll do to your working reputation isn’t worth it. This is not just for contract attorneys, the same goes for anyone in any profession. Do you think any client would be pleased if the person they hired left them in a lurch the moment a better assignment came along?

I have known people who became blacklisted from certain agencies because they left their project before it was over. Don’t expect to hear from the agency again anytime soon about upcoming projects if you do that. They will likely remove you from all future project consideration. Of course, the blacklist is agency and law firm specific. You can easily go work for another agency and law firm, but because the contract attorney world is so small, it is likely you will bump into the same law firm again in the future and find yourself regretting that you burned that particular bridge in the past.

Try to maintain good working relationships. I know there are some bad assignments out there with working conditions akin to that of working in a sweatshop, but from my experience, only a handful of projects are really that bad.

In the event that you do burn an agency by jumping ship and you find yourself blacklisted. Given the passage of time, it is sometimes possible to get back into the agency’s good graces. Remember, they need you for staffing purposes just as much as you need them for job leads. You just have to convince them by apologizing and assuring them that it was an isolated incident that won’t be repeated. Some agencies have been known to take people back. Just don’t make it a systematic practice.

When it comes to learning a foreign language, conventional wisdom is that you take classes in a language that is popular and spoken by many. After all, what is the point of language if you can’t find anybody to communicate with?

However, in the world of contract attorneys, conventional wisdom doesn’t always apply. So you know French and Spanish and want to do foreign language document review. Well guess what? There are plenty of individuals out there who are fluent in those two languages as well and can perform the same translation skills as you can. That is why when it comes to foreign language projects, the demand for the more common languages isn’t as high as that of the more obscure languages. Obscurity in this case doesn’t mean that no one in the population speaks it. It just means of all the fluent speakers, fewer of them are actually attorneys.

Supply and Demand Means Big Money For Asian Languages

Now if you really want to become hot commodity, you’ll need to dive into the more obscure languages – languages like Swedish or Norwegian. However, the pinnacle of in-demand foreign languages is fluency in one of the Asian languages, such as Chinese, Korean, or Japanese. If you are a native speaker and can reasonably perform legal translation in those languages, you are good as gold. The current market rate for contract attorneys who can perform Asian language document review is $50-55 an hour, with a whopping $75 per hour for overtime. It’s simple supply and demand. There are simply relatively very few contract attorneys that can speak or read any of the Asian languages. Legal staffing agencies would love not having to pay such a high rate, but they know that they wouldn’t be able to recruit any Asian language contract attorneys otherwise.

Learning a new language is difficult and the task of learning Chinese, Korean, or Japanese is probably even more insurmountably difficult. But some of you may already have a basic background or foundation in a language other than English. If you do, I encourage you to brush up on your reading comprehension and translation skills. You will be increasing your marketability not only for contract attorney projects, but also improving your employment prospects should you decide to ultimately pursue permanent employment.

For those of you up to the task, I’d suggest that you start taking classes at a local college or even performing self study through an online course like Rosetta Stone. The language skills you acquire will likely pay dividends in the future.

An interesting issue that I’ve been wondering about is whether some of these flat rate agencies and law firms are violating the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) by not providing its employees time and a half compensation for time worked beyond 40 hours.

Does FLSA Require Contract Attorneys To Be Paid Overtime?

I’m not attempting a complete legal analysis but my understanding of FLSA in the matter boils down to the following. Under the FLSA ,workers who are not otherwise exempt from the statute are guaranteed the right to overtime pay, or time and a half for every hour worked beyond the normal 40 hour work week. For white collar workers such as attorneys, three basic tests determine whether they are exempt from FLSA overtime requirements. If they fulfill the three basic tests, they are exempt and thus not required to receive overtime pay. If they are not exempt, they are eligible for overtime.

To be exempt from overtime, contract attorneys must satisfy the following tests:

1. Salary Level Test – Firstly, employees earning less than $23,600 per year ($455 per week) cannot be exempt. Average contract attorneys are almost certainly exempt since they are likely to earn more than the threshold.
2. Salary Basis Test - Secondly, employees must be paid a set salary and not an hourly wage in order to be exempt. However, the FLSA actually excludes lawyers from this requirement, and thus lawyers may be considered exempt even if they are paid hourly.
3. Duties Test- Thirdly, a worker cannot be denied overtime pay unless his or her duties are primarily administrative, professional, or executive in nature.

My Opinion

I think as an initial matter, contract attorneys are not independent contractors, since we are at-will employees of the agency or law firm that employs us.

Under the tests outlined above, I believe contract attorneys are exempt from the overtime requirements of the FLSA. The only question regarding overtime exemption is the third duties test of whether contract attorney work is considered professional in nature. Can we really consider document review work to be professional in nature and not merely clerical? I submit that it is. While document review does not entail mind blowing legal skills to say the least, it does require understanding of legal procedure and terminology. The legal skills and analyses required are dependent on the type of project and on the level of expected interaction between contract attorneys and managing associates. As contract attorneys, we support the project and oftentimes may be called upon to provide our legal opinion to the team and draw upon our prior experience, e.g. discussing privilege claims issues.

Additionally, as licensed professionals, we are also subject to all applicable standards of practice and conduct while on the job. Therefore, even if it is document review, it constitutes the practice of law and ethical violations such as over-billing could lead to bar sanctions.

Thus, while I don’t believe contract attorneys are statutorily required to receive overtime compensation, I do note that it has become common expected practice for document reviewers to be paid in such fashion. Currently, I don’t think there is industry consensus about whether contract attorneys are exempt from overtime requirements under FLSA. How the overtime compensation trend got started I’m not sure, but most contract attorneys today request overtime compensation and agencies predominantly oblige. I think law firms and agencies agree to pay the extra overtime now for competitive reasons rather than legal obligation. Like some commentators have pointed out, we are a finite resource.

Particularly when you are between projects and you’re trying to get aboard another assignment, it’s easy to become frustrated when the agencies give you no love. Some agencies are worse than others but I won’t name any names for now, but I’m sure we’ve all compiled our own lists of agencies with bad “customer service”.

But I will give credit where credit’s due. In my opinion, Update Legal has always had an excellent track record when it comes to contract attorney attention. Tom the Temp up in New York City seems to dislike their New York operation but I personally have no problem with how Update Legal runs their D.C. office. They’ve always returned my emails and phone calls, even when they didn’t have any assignments to offer me. I think it’s excellent form the way they are so prompt in getting back to their contract attorneys who are often deservedly anxious about finding employment.

I Try To Return the Good Favor

Of course, in return I always try to reply back to the good agencies whenever they e-mail me to check if I’m available for a project. Even if I’m already on an assignment, I think it’s common courtesy to write back to let them know my current status. In this business, maintaining good relationships is important. I know some people will say the agencies don’t care about their contract attorneys and that it’s all abut the money. In many ways it is always about the bottom line, but remember, many of the staffing agency recruiters used to be contract attorneys themselves. They’ve been through the contract attorney system. If you treat them with courtesy and professionalism, they are likely to return the favor.

There are a few agencies that will ignore you regardless if they are not currently staffing anything, so as always, individual experience will vary from person to personality.

There are several newer agencies that have just recently popped up that I haven’t gotten around to visiting yet. I probably won’t get to them immediately until they have established themselves for a while first. There’s no point in taking time out to hand over your professional and personal information including social security number until you can reasonably expect employment leads as a result of your efforts.

I have noticed that a few of the newer staffing agencies have been regularly posting contract attorney leads on the various listservs, which is a good indicator that they are getting a steady stream of job orders to fill. If they can keep it up for a few more months I will likely pay them a visit to register.

However, there’s been a few startups that I haven’t heard from in a long time. I suspect either business has dried up or perhaps they’ve already established a small in-house list of dedicated temps that they regularly call on for projects, and I’m not one of them. It’s okay. I will eventually develop a relationship with all of them when the time is right. At the moment I am fairly comfortable with the 6 primary agencies that I regularly work with. However, since the market’s been drying up recently, I may soon increase my list of preferred agencies. I know of at least one new agency that entered the staffing business having already developed a solid prior relationship with one of the major law firms. It may be time to take advantage of their connections.

I’m writing in response to today’s Wall Street Journal follow-up article on Monday’s piece regarding the dismal state of the legal employment market. The follow-up article reported that Seton Hall law graduate Scott Bullock, the first lawyer quoted in the original article, has finally jumped ship, quitting his law firm job and joining a former high school friend to work as an electrician. The article reported that he’ll be paid the same as his former lawyer job, about $50,000.

Contract Attorney Work Can Be A Great Stepping Stone

Is that how far the attorney job market has deteriorated? We now have lawyers quitting their jobs to become electricians. I wonder why doesn’t he work temporarily as a contract attorney until he gets back on his feet? Many contract attorneys perform document review work for short stints while they plan out their future. It is much easier to plan for the future when you are actively working and paying the bills than when you’re just sitting at home all day, moping about your plight. Performing contract work will keep you productive during the day so you don’t completely fall out of the legal loop. Despite what some may say, document review does entail the practice of law, albeit in its lightest form.

Working as a contract attorney is still a job, and indeed it’s a well paid job. The work is not particularly stressful and there is usually time after work to develop other side opportunities. The wage rate and hours are generally very good and the hours are flexible. Taking time to develop your side business or consider future projects can be performed during your non-working hours. I even see some do it at work during their breaks, talking on the phone to clients of their part time real estate business or like me, typing on this blog during my mandatory lunch break.

I know some contract attorneys have grown very disillusioned with being an attorney and have chosen to exit the legal market altogether. However, I am concerned that these people are wasting the time, money, and effort they previously invested in their legal education. Yes, a law practice is not for everyone, but that doesn’t mean you should ditch everything you’ve learned altogether and go become an electrician. That is, unless being an electrician was your original calling. But for most people, they should keep finding a way to put their education to good use. There are related opportunities out there.

I’ll admit, I haven’t decided exactly what my next professional move will be, but it certainly won’t be what the attorney in the Wall Street Journal Article did. I truly wish him well if that is what he wants to do, but as for me, I didn’t rack up law school loans for nothing! My future move might not necessarily be a legal practice but it will at least have some tenuous connection to my education and previous legal experience.

I’m sure many contract attorneys are also members of The Posse List, and if you haven’t already done so, I highly recommend registering for their e-mail listserv. They protect the identities of their members and offer plenty of contract attorney employment related information. You may have already read the recent market status e-mail from them, but here is the excerpt:

Yes, it is very slow. Things have tightened up for a few reasons, and the mega-attorney projects are far and few between. We believe it’s based on the following reasons:

1. The financial market turmoil has put a number of projects on hold. We discussed the situation with our contacts at various DC and NYC law firms (associates and staff attorneys we have known a long time who are in the loop on projects that will need contract attorneys) and they pretty much hone to the same line: “the deals that must be done by fiscal/calendar year end December 31 are in progress. Everything else can wait”. If you monitor DealBook, Deal Digest, and Deal.com you get the same story. Postings for contract attorney work on Craigslist and Monster.com are also down for DC, NYC, LA, San Francisco, and Chicago.
2. The new changes in the DOJ/FTC review process (instituted last year) have cut-down on the number of attorneys needed for projects, as well as the review time needed for those projects. For example, Google/DoubleClick, a huge deal, got done with a total of 80 attorneys on both sides. (later corrected to 90 on the Google side and 40 on the DoubleClick side)
3. We monitor Hart-Scott-Rodino filings, and they are also way down. Angela also tracks corporate activity through SEC filings via our Edgar search programs and activity is quiet.

   That does not mean nothing is going on. Based on D.C. Posse member feedback, we count between 10-15 projects out there, though all are small. NYC Posse members rang in with about 10 projects. There are not a lot of complex litigation reviews around but we counted about 3 in D.C. and 5 in NYC based on Posse member feedback. And there are a lot of small (1-3 attorney) projects.

   NOTE: We do not get/hear about/see everything. When the market is this slow, agencies can staff internally. And of course there’s Intel out in Falls Church.

   Markets will fluctuate. We saw this “dry” pattern post-9/11 through mid-2002. Our busiest listserv right now is foreign language, with Europe a close second. There are two large (comparatively speaking) reviews in Brussels: one in progress and about to ramp up. And before you swamp us with emails, the first prerequisites: you need to be an EU national with either a U.S. law degree or a U.S. LLM. Those projects are posted to our Europe listserv. Go to [The Posse List] to see/subscribe to our various listservs.

   The good news: of the 10 D.C. law firms we spoke with, we guesstimated they’d generate about 8-10 projects between now and end of the year. One of those DC law firm has 3 projects in the pipeline.

   The NYC firms saw about the same, but none are big projects. We will see it when we see it. As indicated, these were guesstimates.

I’m currently a contract attorney. On my projects I encounter attorneys from all legal backgrounds and graduates from all law school tiers. However, whenever I bump into someone who was a great student from a top tier school like Georgetown Law, I always stop to think about how far the legal profession has fallen. Even these top tier law school graduates lament to me about how tough the market is and how difficult it is to find proper full time employment. They too are finding it extremely difficult to rise above the sea of attorneys. Many end up changing professions altogether or choose to perform temporary contract attorney work. Some toll away in jobs that pay the same as that of clerical workers as they struggle to find a way out. The drowning pain is further compounded by the often crushing student loan debt numbering in the six figures that frequently accompanies law graduates.

Too Many Law School Creating Too Many Law Graduates

There are simply too many lawyers out there and law schools are facilitating this never ending deluge of new attorneys by continuing to graduate more and more lawyers. Unlike other major professions, there are over 4 tiers of law schools and new law schools are added every year to keep up with the demand of students who blindly want to become lawyers. Many of these law school hopefuls hope to chase the commonly hyped fantasy of landing a big time job at a law firm working 40 hours a week and making millions. These law school hopefuls need to know that the legal market already has more than it can handle. There are better academic and professional options out there. Did you know there are only 1/3 as many medical schools as there are law schools? Do we really need so many lawyers? If law school bound college students only knew.

I’m glad the Wall Street Journal article was published. It helps to shed public light on a serious epidemic in the legal profession. An attorney is still a prestigious profession but when you have over saturation, it loses its prestige and you become a dime a dozen. You have all of these easy political science, English, and history majors enrolling in law schools because they don’t know what else to do with their majors. It will take time, but hopefully such discussion will cause a shift in the legal profession for the better. Despite my usual optimism, I don’t have much hope for this. There are too many stakeholders such as a large firms and law schools that will never want the lawyer making machine to slow down.

In 2005 the District of Columbia Court of Appeals Committee on Unauthorized Practice of Law issued its opinion requiring contracts attorneys working in D.C. to be barred. This caused the prior variations in wage rate to stabilize at the higher $35 an hour for D.C. barred contract attorneys. However, since then, there has been little change or forward progress.

The recent appearance of new legal staffing agencies in Washington D.C. brings hope that this might lead to some needed changes. Smaller staffing agencies that are not as well known, such as Palmer Legal, have recently been heard offering their contract attorneys higher wage rates ($38) to better compete against the bigger agencies. I am not sure if this is their new approach but there has been at least one recently advertised project that they were staffing in which they offered the higher wage rate. Newcomers such as Solomon-Page Group have also been offering slightly higher wage rates as well. I think it would be very prudent to seek them out. They want to better compete and we should certainly encourage them. When the staffing agencies compete, contract attorneys win out.

Although my current project has since been extended, it was originally scheduled to end early. The managing associates held a small meeting on a Tuesday and thanked us for our diligent work and gave us the heads up that the pace had been much faster than they had expected and that the project was likely to end at the end of the week. In return, we were all very appreciative of their honesty in choosing to share with us the prior notice. They could have chosen to spring this information on us at the very last moment on Friday but I respect them very much for choosing to give us the information earlier. Actions like that leave me with a very favorable impression of their law firm and I would certainly want to work with them again in the future, and help them succeed in their case.

Professional actions like that help to make me want to be more sincere in the work that I do. Many of the contract attorneys such as myself are likely to be recirculated back into the mix and may even end up back at the same firm in the future. It’s in everybody’s best interest to maintain that honesty and candor – both firm and contract attorneys alike.

Weeks ago, the associates went around recruiting a select few for the privilege review team and made their selection based on those who had prior related experience. However, more than one person turned it down when they were asked to take on the assignment. Their real reason? It’s too much work and they don’t get paid more to do it so they don’t want to take on the extra responsibility.

That’s the part I don’t understand. We are all professionals so we should act like professionals. You don’t just turn down additional work because you aren’t getting paid more to do it. It’s very tacky and makes them look like slackers.

Let me clarify, I’m not one of those “supertemps.” I do take it very easy at times, but I do try to do the work to the best of my ability. Unfortunately, it’s not hard sometimes to see why contract attorneys get such bad reps.

Did you know that contract attorneys can participate in their legal temp agencies’ 401k plans? I didn’t know they offered these tax deferred retirement plans until a few months ago. Since then I’ve been trying to learn more about them.

Just One 401k Example

There are many of them out there but I’ll just use Compliance Legal Staffing’s 401k plan as an example. Like most of the 401k plans offered by other temp agencies, initial eligibility requires that you work for a certain predefined number of hours for the agency. Compliance is owned by its parent company Vedior. Vedior requires that you work 1,000 hours with them before you can qualify for their retirement plan. Through automatic payroll deduction, you can contribute between 1% and 30% of your eligible pretax income into the plan, which is run by Fidelity NetBenefits.

The good news is that Vedior does match a portion of your 401k contribution, but the match doesn’t vest for several years. According to the plan, Vedior will match 100% of the first $750 that you contribute and 50% of the next $1,500 that you contribute annually. This brings us to the bad news. The maximum annual match is only a measly $1,500. But hey, it’s free money!

If you sign up and work with several temp agencies over a number of months and years, you can strategically max out the matching contribution limits of more than one agency’s 401k plan. I think that would be a pretty smart way to take full advantage of company matching and the tax deferred benefits of 401k’s.

I think it’s important to have side projects and other work related plans outside of temping. While some contract attorneys run an actual legal practice on the side, others work on building up their outside business and use the proceeds from temping to fund their side projects.

I have several side projects in the works and I use my non working hours developing them. If I didn’t have goals outside of temping, I’d feel pretty trapped. It’s true what they say. There isn’t much of a legal future in temping. I think everyone should see contract attorney work as a stepping stone to something bigger, particularly if they want to continue practicing law. But for those who like the lifestyle, more power to them. I don’t have anything bad to say about the permanent temps out there. Different strokes for different folks. Not everyone was cut out to be a legal hustler.

Now, I am pleased to see the power shift. The bread and butter law firm clients are obviously still at the top, but in between the law firms and the contract attorneys is an expanding number of staffing agencies, each vying for applicants. I encourage you to apply to as many staffing agencies as you can to maximize your opportunities. The smaller staffing agencies may have more difficulty finding work for you initially but in time they will grow. They will also be more inclined to offer you a higher wage rate and will also likely be more grateful that you’ve chosen to work for them. Competition is definitely good for us!

According to the D.C. bar website:

The D.C. Bar Board of Governors has set September 17 as the last date to pay Bar dues for the 2007-2008 year without penalty. After that date, a $30 late fee will be applied to members who have not remitted their annual dues. Nonpayment as of October 31 will result in the member’s loss of license to practice law. Dues originally were due on August 1.

Dues amounts are $188 for active members, $118 for inactive members, and $95 for judicial members.

I really should get more active with the D.C. Bar again. Take on a few pro bono cases perhaps.

The legal field has been greatly saturated over the years with multiple tiers of law schools continuing to graduate all sorts of lawyers with different levels of qualifications. Needless to say, there is a significant oversupply of attorneys and simply too many lawyers vying for too few permanent attorney positions available, even in the land of attorneys like Washington D.C. With the rapidly growing trend of using contract attorneys to perform many of the major law firms’ legal tasks, there is a growing need for contract attorneys. While some embrace this contract lifestyle, there is a large portion that disapprove of this position and constantly bemoan their existence, rather than feel fortunate for this golden parachute line of work that does not exist in many other fields. It is unfortunate that in every circumstances there will always be naysayers.

I welcome comments and opinions. But don’t forget, as contract attorneys, we are still bound by the ethical obligations of the Rules of Professional Conduct. Please refrain from unnecessarily divulging confidential client information.