Nationwide Layoff Watch: The D.C. AG’s Office
If you work for the government, you’ll earn a fraction of what you could make at a private law firm. But at least you have job security, right?
Not necessarily. From the Washington Post:
The D.C. attorney general’s office told 10 lawyers and a manager this week that they are being fired to help close a $3 million deficit in the office’s fiscal 2009 budget.
The cuts are also being made because of the workers’ poor performance and as part of an effort to transform the agency into what interim Attorney General Peter Nickles called a “first-rate law firm” with “strong, young, able stars.”
Our tipster quips: “[Nickles] is trying to turn the Office of Attorney General into a law firm. What better way to make government attorneys feel they are working in a law firm than by firing 11 of them? The only problem: Nickels doesn’t realize these government attorneys are in a union.”
The purge, Nickles said, is only the beginning and is part of his overhaul of the $101 million operation. Lawyers are required to wear jackets at all times, must submit reports to him each week about their casework and will soon have to clock in and out, he said.
A Biglaw environment, for government pay? Where do we sign up?
Update: As noted in the comments, D.C. Attorney General Peter Nickles is a former partner at Covington & Burling.
D.C. Attorney General Fires 11 Staff Members [Washington Post]
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Hard to believe that those so stupid can be yet so powerful...
Wow. Just wow. The stupidity of DC officials never ceases to amaze me.
"strong, young, able stars."
Uh, if any of those fired are over 40, they basically have a slam dunk ADEA claim.
Idiot manager.
2:56 nails it. And jackets at all times? Clocking in and out? Formal weekly written reports? Even Cravath doesn't have that sort of a stick up its ass.
He'd better be prepared to shell out close to $200,000 a year for starting attorneys for that sort of shitty, anal-retentive work environment.
3:00 is right-- what "Biglaw environment" requires associates to check in and out every day? This guy is a petty tyrant, not a Biglaw partner.
Peter Nickles is a former Covington & Burling partner:
http://www.cov.com/news/detail.aspx?news=1168
Despite what everyone else says, I'm willing to give this guy the benefit of the doubt.
Some of these measures (like clocking in and out) sound like they're being instituted to correct serious problems--like civil servants regularly coming in late and leaving early.
Generally speaking, I have no problems with government managers trying to stir things up and improve efficiency. Why should DC's AG office be run like the DMV?
3:19 - to a certain degree because you are paying lawyers like they work at the DMV and if you want anyone, forget about stars, to work for you, there needs to be some perks. Why would anyone, other than the worst law students/lawyers ever work somewhere that miserable for 1/3 the pay?
If you want to run the place like a firm (or worse), you have to pay like a firm. Otherwise, you'll end up with a bunch of UDC and AU grads.
What's the upside of working at a crappy government job, making no money, having a tyranical asshole for a boss, clocking in like a McDonalds employee, and having no job security?
Nickles (and 3:19 for that matter) better get a labor attorney. Attorneys are Exempts, you can't monitor their time like hourly employees. Exempt employees are judged by the tasks the perform, which can wind up being any time and all hours of the day, not whether they punch in by 7:30. If you institute a policy like that, then you'd better be prepared for an empty office at 5:01 ...
The union will crush this douchebag. You can either be confident or stupid, but you shouldn't be both. This guy, is both.
HLS author outed http://abovethelaw.com/2008/05/hlr_in_toilet_flush_flush.php#comment-601475
Shockingly, the HLS author confirms his status as a mega-tool in that post as well.
I also love that he admits that his Note totally botched the nature of the statue that supplies the piece's title. That he failed to give even a cursory look to the statue seems just a perfect reflection of the piece -- sloppy, completed without care or circumspection, and telling exactly half of the story.
In law school I interned at the DC AG's office and there were a number of people who spent most of their days chatting on the phone to their friends rather than any substantive legal work. I suspect this ax may have fallen on some of them...
11 axed is pretty minor compared to the massacre this week at the Minnesota PD's office, which just laid off 68 lawyers, out of like 525 statewide. Budget cuts are a bitch, and not like criminals are a strong lobby.
The sculpture depicts the man BAREFOOT... and Phil of HLR fame thought he looked like an ARISTOCRAT?!
What. An. Idiot.
Damn. Just looked at the pictures; good catch 4:04. There's no way he actually *looked* at the statue, as it clearly could not be reasonably confused with what he says he saw in it. He just *assumed* that it must be that way since that's how he views the world... sorta like his "arguments."
In honor of 4:04...
Our family has an act that I think would prove to be a great inspiration for a HLR Note.
First, we drive our Ferrari in Cambridge until we find train tracks with a person trapped on them. Then, we park our car on the train tracks, get out, wait for a train to come, and then hop back in the car and leave while the person gets run over by the train.
Then we drive to Boston Common, find a kid, put a backpack full of heavy rocks on his back, throw him in a pond. We wait for a 2L with expensive jeans to come along, intercept her before she reaches the kid, and have her come in the car with us, saving her jeans in the process. The kid invariably dies.
Then we all drive to Border Cafe in Harvard Square, buy a big order of jambalaya to go. We find some starving homeless woman, and pour some of the jambalaya out on the floor right in front of her. We do that in memory of the dead person on the train tracks and the kid we drowned. We spill some of the jambalaya on the 2L's jeans, just to be mean.
We take the rest of the jambalaya with us to Cambridge Common, and stand in front of the Irish Famine statue, and give the jambalaya to the best dressed guy we find.
It's pretty awesome. We named this after the guy in that statue.
"What do you call it?"
THE ARISTOCRAT!
5:22,
I love ya!
xoxo,
4:04
it must be really, really bad when govt employees start getting the boot...
Nickles rocks. DC government needs some serious purging and he, Fenty and Rhee have been doing quite a nice job.
3:30- don't you dare put UDC and AU grads in the same boat. I would have posted earlier but oh yeah, I had to work at my big NY firm. If you have time to post, then it sounds like you must be working for the AG's office in DC.
-an AU grad
this is a sad thread...but not as sad as the 70 staff members axed at Sonnenschein
AU is a safety school for UDC
is the DC AG's office more prestigious than the DC USAO?
12:06 - Great AU/5th grade logic:
"If you have time to post, then it sounds like you must be working for the AG's office in DC"
Commenters on this board--a group to which you belong--must work for the DC AG office. Except, as you have made a point of telling us all, you work for a "big" NY firm. I understand you are proud of that, as you probably think it is a major achievement for an AU Grad. I hope your firm continues its staff attorney program.
If you had gone to a better school or done better at AU, perhaps you would have a better command of reasoning. Then, instead of working at a "big" firm, you might have been at a "top" firm - like I am.
"don't you dare put UDC and AU grads in the same boat"
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\ UDC Grad
AU Grad /
\__________________/
"UDC and AU Grads in the same Boat"
Sorry about the above boat the for UDC and AU grads above, it was a shitty one (pun intended)
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\ UDC Grad /
\ AU Grad /
\__________________/
11:47
I worked for this office last summer... it is unreal how poorly run it is, files are routinely lost, there are inept and lazy employees all over the place, and generally a horrible work ethic.
As with any agency - there are poor performers...even at a big law firm (gasp! ivy league graduates, no less). However, the whole point of the law suit is that people with decent evaluations are being fired. Under the proper procedures - they are allowed time to correct their alleged poor performance. Nickles isn't going through the proper procedures - plain and simple. You can't just fire attorneys...even a firm has procedures. Nickles is too arrogant. He thinks he is above the law.
There are a number of attorneys at the OAG that work very hard for very little. Our pay is less than the federal government. Our pay is a lot less than the law firm environment that Nickles wants to create. We have few if any support staff and supplies. And yet, a number of attorneys choose to work for DC b/c we believe in what we are doing.
What amazes me is that even a good law firm attorney should know that he has to follow the proper procedures. So why doesn't Nickles get it??