Let me the FIRST to say, I wouldn't live in Charlotte if you paid me, son

I love this recession! Big Law Bitches doing doc review! Manna from heaven! Ah yeah.

Forth! I mean fourth!

This is the temp job from hell. DiscoverReady and Shawn Treadwell at Strategic Legal repeatedly lied to the contract attorneys about the job, assuring us that we would start working the next day, then telling us at the last minute that there would be no work tomorrow. I quit the project, and still haven't been paid a month later. You're better off being unemployed.

First to say thats not a picture of anywhere in Charlotte.

More importantly, this will hopefully do to keep T14 GDI gel-head douchebags from NYC and Boston out of what was once a respectable southern city.

Finally, jobs for Charlotte law grads.

This is why they can open up a million law schools and it really won't affect anything. There will only be 50 top tier law schools, no matter what. The fact that USNWR may have to add a fifth tier means nothing to people who ever had a snowflake's chance in hell at big law in the first place.

I practiced law in BigLaw in Charlotte for a few years and I was so glad when I moved out of North Carolina. I made some good friends but overall the legal community, was dominated by white, good ol' boys who were natives of North Carolina. I was always being asked "which church do you attend?" "Were you born in North Carolina?" I found Charlotte overall to be very provincal, Bible-Belt and redneck.

Don't get your hopes up. After being out of work for months following law school, I signed on with DiscoverReady to do doc review. I worked for 4 days, was told I did a good job, then never heard from them again. The pay rate is good, but not if you work 4 days every 6 months. I got a real job finally and then got an email asking if I was interested in working again, 6 months after having worked. Didn't bother replying.

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All in all, Elie.

Former Thacher partners keep calling me from Charlotte and saying...things. Angry, sexual things.

All and all??????

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Elon and UNC-CharloTTTe grads aren't even qualified to do doc review. Hell, I doubt they're qualified to cut up their own food during dinner. Only the lowest levels of sub-human retards would be reduced to those schools as their best options.

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First to say that absolutely is a picture of somewhere in Charlotte. It's a nighttime view from the square looking from the Interstate Tower across Tryon St. to the Bank of America Plaza (I think it's called.) In any event, there's a hotel dead ahead and a BofA branch on the right.

Hopefully, Charlotte law grads still won't be getting jobs, though. There are more than enough unemployed Wake and UNC grads in town already.

The gel head douchebags should return from whence they came, however.

I like how they think this'll give kids from Charlotte & Elon....I think they'd take a bottom feeder from Wake or UNC (or hell, even Campbell) before someone from one of these fake law schools...at least the UNC/Wake kid would be litterate.

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Elon and UNC-CharloTTTe grads aren't even qualified to do doc review. Hell, I doubt they're qualified to cut up their own food during dinner. Only the lowest levels of sub-human retards would be reduced to those schools as their best options.

15, it's not even UNC-Charlotte Law, it's just Charlotte law, with no affiliation w/ the UNC System of Universities

Elon has a law school?

I would hire a blind illiterate 8 year old French girl who doesn't know any English for my doc review before I looked to Elon or UNC-Charlotte.

This is 5 again. I have to add that when I asked the project manager at DiscoverReady (Andrew Mayer) if I could print out the timesheet that Strategic Legal had emailed me, he told me that I couldn't use their printers, but if I needed to print something, I could go to the Kinko's down the street.

What kind of temp job won't even let the temps print out materials sent to them by the temp agency, and expects them to pay for that expense themselves? They treat people like crap, and as a result can only hire the dregs of the legal profession.

22, so does NC Central, North Carolina has 7 law schools now; 4 (possibly 5) too many if you ask me

24 -- Sounds like you'd have no problem if Mr. Mayer responded to your accussations by publically naming you.

Charlotte is the Houston of North Carolina.

9, were there any bad parts to working in N Carolina? Cause what you describe sounds pretty ideal. Certainly better than working in NYC. Every day when I get on the 7 train, it's like that scene in Star Wars when they walk into the bar.

9, try living in the Capital of the Confederacy where people have been known to try to place your family by asking, "Who was your mother before she married?"

9. How long did you live in Charlotte without having a "church-home?" How did you do it? I am impressed.
--Elie

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"How long did you live in Charlotte without having a "church-home?" How did you do it? I am impressed. "

Nice Elie, keep it classy.

- Ron Burgundy

28 = john rocker

31--I think you meant Jabba

Really Elie? A Star Wars reference is offensive now?

While living in Charlotte a few years back, a friend of mine was stabbed in the ass by a black person while he was outside a bar smoking a cigarette. Gangs are a problem in Charlotte.

I am glad I live in Austin.

Maybe they'll hire you, Elie.

Or you can stay in NYC, stay unemployed, and write increasingly more embittered comments in your own blog.

35. No. I just figured I'd shoot first.
--Elie

Elie, you are a genius, don't listen to the naysayers.

An admirer.

They say deaths come in 3(Ed, farrah, Michael), leave it to Billy Mays throw one in for free!!!

Does anyone else hate paralegals as much as I do? I truly believe I get dumber every waking second that I spend with one.

Charlotte is some kind of hell.

What is the going hourly rate for temp attnys in Charlotte? Presumably a lot lower than NYC/DC?

Who wants a Fresca?

40 ripped that off from textsfromlastnight.com

How sad to rip off a lame joke, 40. How sad for you

45,

Your mom.

-40

How do I know if I am prestigious enough for Charlotte?

6 & 17 - Charlotte Plaza building (now has Grant Thornton sign on it) is in the middle of the picture.

45, calling someone sad anonymously on an internet message board making judgments about something that was kind of funny=unemployed loser.

I heard that DiscoverReady is paying $10.00 an hour or $11.50 (if you elect not to use one of their chairs).

Oh, yippie, another temp firm in Charlotte...b/c there aren't enough of those there already.

Someone more internet savvy than me needs to develop a website that can connect attorneys available for contract work with legal employers. The site can survive on advertising revenue and it would cut out the need for temp/doc review agenices that take a nice cut of the attorney's pay.

The ship be sinking...

40 = douchebag loser

Interesting to read all the insulting comments about Charlotte, but the fact remains that cities like Charlotte are putting the so-called Big Cities out of business, at least when it comes to the practice of law. In case you little associates haven't noticed, not only are major corporations moving lots of legal work to India and other such glory spots, but they also are moving their major litigation and coporate work to MidLaw in mid-sized cities in middle America. While Charlotte fancies itself to be almost like NYC, the fact is that it isn't, but it still is doing quite well, while the Big Cities are eating shit by the truck load. As for the document review firm, they are replacing associates, counsels, and staff attorneys in BigLaw by the thousands and still growing. You guys might have shit for brains, but you still act like little children who don't know shit about nothing. No wonder you're getting laid off, deferred, pay reduced, or just plain fucked in the ass. Good luck, though.

36 - that's a false story because a few years back you could smoke in grocery stores in Charlotte!

Charlotte isn't "doing quite well." The legal market there has cratered. NYC firms weren't sending work there because it was cheaper; firms were doing business there because it was a banking hub already. Banking industry flops, so does associated legal work.

I try not to be elitist about these things, but ... Elon has a law school? That's kind of confounding.

56 is right, I don't know what 54 is smoking (and I'm guessing works for the doc review company), but the only legal market that's worse than NYC right now is Charlotte. It was overextended in banking and derivatives practice, and that's gone for the near future.

58: No doubt. If you're a Charlotte firm who lists BofA and/or Wells/Wachovia as a major client...you are HURTING. And, in terms of firms which anyone on ATL would care about, that pretty much includes everybody in Charlotte.

Anyone told Roxanna about this opportunity?

If Charlotte was an anus, it would be of the unbleached variety.

What are the Charlotte 05 CWT females like?

I escaped Charlotte a couple of months back. Absolutely no work there. Period. I don't care which firm, group or practice. Others have said it: if you do work for one of the big banks in that town, you are hurting badly.

Someone more internet savvy than me needs to develop a website that can connect attorneys available for contract work with legal employers. The site can survive on advertising revenue and it would cut out the need for temp/doc review agenices that take a nice cut of the attorney's pay.

I'm pretty sure Craig's List has already been invented. And why is it that no one ever seems to realize how little those ads pay? To survive on the net, you need either an insane amount of eyeballs, which will allow you to freelance at better paying media jobs trading on your "cool," or a side business selling things like tee shirts. It's pretty much the music industry's concert model of business - not an easy road.

Look, 15 years ago, when journalism started to die, people said the same thing they're telling lawyers now, "There will always be a place for GOOD journalism - there will just be more routine work farmed out."

Journalism schools kept cranking out grads with high debt levels, while journalism salaries fell from the level of a bad joke, to actual poverty. I'm not kidding - there are several articles by people who applied for welfare benefits while still employed by newspapers.

At the same time, the big players consolidated control, and websites which were tangential to journalism took off - Perez Hilton, for example. The business took on a freelance model, where writers are paid by the piece. Routine news coverage is automated, and competition for the always very few high level jobs went through the roof.

The thing no one seemed to anticipate when they were talking about "always work for GOOD journalists," is that there is a limit to the number of pieces one writer can do. If the piecework pay is low, you need to write more to get paid enough to live. Since that isn't really possible past a certain point, it turns out, that what you really need to do is get so big that you become a destination site, or use your writing to create a market for something that people will buy - and under that model, the advantage was with the big players, not the individual writers.

I think lawyer doc review and contract work is like freelance writing. And I don't think it lends itself well to the web model. What are we going to do? Sell tee shirts to go with our briefs?

65, do you mean to say that the days of sending an associate to fourth-chair a summary judgment argument in state court are over?

I guess I'm saying the associates were only 20% of the new lawyers every year anyway, and now no one will even pay for that.

The salaries are going down, and no one wins that race except the people who sell books titled things like, "Salaries are going down! Here's How to Get Yours!"

Things like that distract people from realizing how bad it really is, because, at least with journalism, all the writers assumed that the other writers would be the ones to get laid off. Associates and new lawyers seem to be doing the same thing. "It will be bad for everyone else, but I can hustle!"

Who cares if you can hustle if you're up against a team of doc reviewers who charge one-fourth the going rate? You're never going to win that race, and even if you did get the business, you couldn't afford to eat.

The only money left in law is for people who can take advantage of the panic and find lawyers who will pay for job search services and marketing training. Personally, I don't have the stomach for it, but funny enough, a lot of out-of-work journalists seem to be ready to jump in :)

29-
as a native Richmonder, I have heard that exact phrase on more than one occasion. Another version is "Now, who are your people?"

A polite way of saying "Let me see the bank statements and educational pedigree of the three generations immediately preceeding you. Then, and only then, will I give you permission to even look at my daughter or aknowledge my presence in the aisle at Ukrop's."

29 and 68, what is hillbilly bbq?

68 is right

if there is any place that is more parochial and provincial than Charlotte, it is Richmond

64: I'm pretty sure reputable legal employers steer clear of CraigsList. Its not got the cachet, control over posters, or reputation as a legal marketplace to get law firms to buy-in. A legal-specific website just might. I'm not saying the numbers add up, but thinking CraigsList already serves this purpose is laughable. If you don't believe me, go look up the job postings and candidate postings on that website.

8 - you're right, thankfully.

-- Charlotte Atty

I don't understand how DiscoverReady can operate. Aren't they engaging in the unauthorized practice of law? What about violation of the ethical rules involving fee sharing with non-attorneys? Why are clients putting up with this crap of double profit making off the contract attorneys? If DiscoverReady gets their temps from a staffing agency, the staffing agency is getting a cut. DiscoverReady is undoubtedly also adding on top of that. Are clients that in the dark? Law firms have to do better to prevent unscrupulous companies like these from appealing to clients.