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This Is Not A Good Job Listing

But it's not bad for the reasons you might think.

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While Biglaw attorneys are pulling down a $180K scale all across the country — whether they deserve it or not — the rest of the legal job market isn’t so pretty. This is the world where contract attorneys drive hours and hours to other states just to nail down a meager hourly salary reviewing documents to keep one step ahead of their student loans. But it’s also a world where legal employers hold all the leverage and can shortchange attorneys in other ways with near impunity because those lawyers need to take every scrap of work to keep above water.

But never forget that this is very much another “world.” It’s not someplace where hapless never-shoulda-been attorneys struggle while nefarious employers cash in. This is a place where you can’t hate the players, you have to hate the game. This isn’t a good job listing, but the problem here isn’t that it’s a crazy outlier of a job listing, but that it’s very much a normal job listing in this world.

Check out this listing from The Posse List. Lane Keyfli Law needs a contract attorney — fair enough — but what they really want is a local attorney with “exceptional” researching and writing skills and strong familiarity with local filing conventions. That sounds like a tall order. What’s the job pay?

This contract attorney job pays between $150 a day min. 8 hours/day, based on experience…

As a tipster points out, that bottom end is a mere $18.75 per hour assuming that 8 hours doesn’t drag into 10. That’s not the worst job listing we’ve ever seen, but then again this is Chicago where the cost of living is a bit more onerous. But it’s not a terrible price for part-time work generally and there is possibility for advancement:

… will lead to a permanent and full time entry level position with annual salary between $40,000 and $60,000 a year, plus bonus, after 12 month at job or sooner, provided the candidate shows the capability to work independently and provides quality work.

That’s not a lot, but that’s actually pretty typical on the back end of the bimodal salary curve. So the numbers aren’t really out of whack here.

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But why not hire an associate rather than run someone through a contract attorney gig where a legal professional has to sweat out an indeterminate period with a complete lack of job security? And, again, I don’t want to single out Lane Keyfli just because they happen to be on this particular listing. This isn’t a practice unique to them and I highly doubt they’re intentionally trying to pull a fast one. They see an opportunity to hire an associate without taking on the risk of being saddled with an expensive mistake. If the market will bear hiring lawyers on a trial run, it’s smart business to take that opportunity. Unfortunately, this just shifts all that risk onto the most vulnerable participant in this deal — someone who’ll have to live day-to-day unsure if they’ll be able to make rent the next day.

Far from heaping blame on any individual employer, this is why something more fundamental has to change about the legal profession. Employers are just doing what they have to within the strictures of the market. But our bar associations — the guilds that are supposed to protect the dignity of the profession as a whole — should be doing something about the erosion of lawyers’ standing in the market. They should be lobbying for labor protections to keep attorneys from working as provisional lawyers.

When the market incentivizes making lawyers into disposable employees, that hurts all of us. Hopefully someone out there realizes that the market can’t correct itself and takes action. Because we’re about to see another glut of young lawyers and they deserve to enter a market governed by better rules than this one.

HeadshotJoe Patrice is an editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.

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