Document Review, Law Schools, Libraries / Librarians

Law School Turns Library Back Office Into Doc-Review Dungeon

Which law school is turning part of its library into a "legal delivery center"?

onJanuary 26, 2016 at 12:51 PMJanuary 26, 2016 at 9:27 PM

sleepy lawyer Like it or not, thanks to the advent of technology, the legal profession has changed. Computers have made it much easier to perform all manner of tasks that young lawyers would typically have completed. The job market for recent law school graduates is “shifting” in the face of these technological advances — especially for graduates of lower-ranked law schools, where employment prospects may have already been low. Computer-assisted document review is king in this brave new world, and document reviewers are the peasants struggling to earn their daily bread.

One law school recently decided to take ownership of the fact that many of its graduates wind up positions where their law degrees seem to be all but unnecessary, and will be turning a little-used room in the back of its library into a “legal delivery center.”

Suffolk Law School has partnered with Integreon to create its “Client Services Innovation Program,” where law students (and sometimes undergraduate students) will be able to work on things like due diligence contract review, legal spend analytics projects, and perhaps most importantly, large-scale document review. Suffolk Dean Andrew Perlman says this program acknowledges that while there are fewer traditional jobs available at law firms and corporate legal departments, graduates of his school weren’t taking them anyway — in fact, “more and more of [Suffolk’s] graduates are taking positions at the intersection of law and technology, for which a legal degree is helpful but not necessary.”

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From Pilot and Above The Law

Here’s more from Bloomberg BNA’s Big Law Business on the reason why Suffolk Law’s partnership with Integreon is so important for the school’s graduates:

Perlman said many of the school’s graduates are now ending up working in “compliance,” a loose term for positions that do not necessarily require a law degree and bar passage, but benefit from a lawyer’s knowledge of the administrative rules that govern an industry. Another growth area, in terms of where graduates are landing jobs, is with legal technology companies, he said. Having Integreon on campus will prepare more students to enter these types of industries, he said.

Law students will receive training sessions from Integreon, and will be paid $20 per hour for their work in the Client Services Innovation Program — which should more than adequately prepare them for what they should expect to receive as remuneration for their work as professional document reviewers after graduation.

Suffolk Law’s new doc-review dungeon has been brought to you, in part, by the school’s declining enrollment (fewer students means more space available in the library), as well as the rise of digital publishing (books that are available online take up less physical space). Per Dean Perlman, no one has signed up to to use the legal delivery center yet.