The world of contract attorneys isn’t our primary focus around here. We make occasional forays into that territory, but for the most part we leave it to more specialized sites, like Temporary Attorney (aka Tom the Temp).

If the temp-attorney world is your cup of tea, however, then check out this interesting new site, which several ATL readers have emailed us about: Big Debt, Small Law. We reached out to Law Is 4 Losers — the angry author, who still works as a contract attorney (he just finished a New York project for a large national law firm) — and asked him about the site’s origins. He explained:

I was prompted to start the blog for two reasons. First is the membership solicitation from the ABA asking me for $250 in dues and listing all the wonderful things that they’ve been doing of late to “improve” this profession (curiously, outsourcing my job to India via ethics opinion 08-451 was not among them).

Another reason was my recent NYS Law license renewal of $350. There was no waiver provision or extension for unemployed lawyers. [W]e contract attorneys have to pay health insurance, bar dues, CLE fees, and other obligations out of our own pocket. And at the $28 an hour straight-time now offered by NYC Biglaw (or the $40K small firms are paying), this is a hell of a lot of money. Forcing people to choose between their rent and their job is unconscionable….

I hope to warn incoming One L’s and prospective law students about the reality out there behind the slick admissions brochures and silver-tongued charlatan deans who will lie thru their teeth to get their hands on that Sallie Mae loan money. I’d also like to lobby the state bars to offer fee waivers or extensions on dues to unemployed lawyers who can prove financial hardship.

If you’re an associate and feeling sorry for yourself, perhaps because your pay has been cut or layoffs are taking place at your firm, Law Is 4 Losers doesn’t want to hear it:

Bad as things are for associates, they are 100 times worse for doc reviewers. We’ve been losing jobs every few weeks or months ever since leaving law school, having no “careers” to speak of, and also no health insurance, severance, or savings.

His most recent blog post — deeply depressing, but scabrously funny — describes the misery of temping at two of Biglaw’s biggest names: Paul Weiss and Sullivan & Cromwell. And he doesn’t pull his punches.

Is it nationwide salary cut day and nobody told me? Earlier today, Bryan Cave cut associate salaries. Now, Fish & Richardson will be doing the same thing. We just don’t know when.

At a firm wide video conference today, Fish & Richardson president Peter Devlin said that the firm would be cutting salaries in the near future. As we understand it, the chairman didn’t give a specific date. But he did say that Fish & Richardson would be moving towards a “meritocracy” with regards to its salary structure.

Update (3:47): We’re still waiting for Fish & Richardson to get back to us directly, but firm president Peter Devlin now says that he did not suggest that Fish would be cutting salaries in the near future. Here is a statement he sent out to the firm:

Shortly after my address at today’s forum, a story appeared on the Above the Law website erroneously stating that I had announced that F&R would be “cutting salaries in the near future.” In fact, I said the opposite - that the Management Committee is not considering cutting our associate salary scale this year, despite the fact that several other firms have done so. I went on to say that we are reviewing our associate compensation system in view of the changing market, and that in my personal view any new system should link compensation with meritorious performance, put less emphasis on hours, and move away from lockstep advancement. You’ll be hearing more about this as our work progresses.

Did our tipsters misinterpret Devlin’s statement of moving towards a merit based system as a salary cut? Only time will tell. We’ll update you again if Fish & Richardson chooses to respond.

Boy, if lockstep was such a horrible system that didn’t reward merit, you have to wonder why nearly every firm used that system for so long. I bet there are a lot of people who wish they had been rewarded on merit during the boom times, instead of being punished for “performance” during the bad times.

The news should hardly come as a surprise to (remaining) Fish & Richardson associates. In January, the firm announced that it had laid off 49 lawyers. In May, the firm laid off 120 people. The salary cuts are just the latest cost cutting measure from the firm.

More details from the video conference, after the jump.

Ed. note: Welcome to the latest installment of “Notes from the Breadline,” a column by a laid-off lawyer in New York. Prior columns are collected here. You can reach Roxana St. Thomas by email (at roxanastthomas@gmail.com), follow her on Twitter, or find her on Facebook.

I am sitting in the war room, trying to guess what time of day it is and what the weather is like. Have I been here for an hour, or is it closer to lunchtime, and a brief respite from the monotony of document review? Is it a beautiful day outside, or is it dark and rainy? There are no windows in the room, so these details can be elusive. I will myself not to look at the clock, anticipating the pang of disappointment that comes with knowing just how many hours lie ahead. A moment later, I give in: 10:30. I sigh and turn back to my computer.

A week into the document review, my days have taken on a deadening sameness. I go to the office. I plow through documents. Ben Gay applies healing ointments to his joints; Mr. Potato Head samples from each of the major food groups. At some point, Elisa comes in to verbally abuse one or more of us. When she leaves, no one can get back to work until the nature of her bitchiness and the ridiculousness of her review protocol have been thoroughly deconstructed. These sessions seem almost necessary, a way to cleanse the collective palate of something bitter and distasteful.

They are also, sadly, the moments when the occupants of our forgotten room seem most alive, and when I catch flickering glimpses of the lawyers many of them are, or have been. In the process of discrediting Elisa and her somewhat arbitrary choices, the reviewers defend their judgment calls, piece together strategic arguments, and display a practical command of litigation that seems far greater than that of our young overseer. Still, these attempts at legal discourse invariably remind me of law school, when people immerse themselves in the painfully earnest discussion of substantive issues, with no sense for how ultimately unimportant their opinions are.

I try to remind myself that this is work, and — while far from ideal — it is better than the alternative … or at least more lucrative. But it’s hard for me not to think about document reviews I did as an associate. Although they could be tedious or frustrating (or tedious and frustrating), they often felt more like a blitzkrieg than a prolonged occupation. It was different when I was immersed in a case, faced with a deadline, and anxious to see what the documents would reveal; I remember the purposefulness of turning my attention to the task at hand, the measurable sense of progress, and the feeling of dorky satisfaction that came from seeing the pieces of the puzzle fall into place.

This assignment has none of those features. Elisa has given us almost no background information; without a feel for the context of the case, I spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about whether I’ve missed some crucial nuance. I can recognize names, but I still have no sense of the people they belong to. And while I — like many lawyers — have indulged in the fantastic notion that my hours of scut work will pay off with a Perry Mason moment, I don’t even know enough about the case to picture the eventual cross or deposition during which the important documents will be brandished at a blanching witness.

More after the jump.

Ed. note: Welcome to the latest installment of “Notes from the Breadline,” a column by a laid-off lawyer in New York. Prior columns are collected here. You can reach Roxana St. Thomas by email (at roxanastthomas@gmail.com), follow her on Twitter, or find her on Facebook.

This column is a continuation of last week’s column, which you can read here.

After the departure of Elisa — who, I now have it on information and belief, is a bitch — I have the distinct sense that I have been sent to my room. “Go to your room!” I imagine her screaming at a petulant child, “and don’t come out until you’ve reviewed 68,000 documents!”

I want to ask one of my new colleagues for some guidance — an insider’s view of what to expect, and how things work in this strange ecosystem — but I am reasonably certain that my inquiry will be futile, since none of them can hear me: they are all wearing headphones. Even the carpal tunnel guy has retreated to the auditory solace of his own world, and is bobbing his head gently while he applies something pungent to his visibly swollen joints. I watch him pull a tattered plastic shopping bag out from under his desk and rifle through a collection of tubes, bottles, and jars, one of which he finally selects and opens, filling the room with the smell of menthol. I wonder if he is going to apply it directly to his forehead.

I start to flip through the review protocol, which seems inordinately complicated. The document tags appear to have been created by several different people who were not in the same room at the same time. Like anything produced by multiple lawyers (with multiple egos), it looks like the product of a stubborn refusal to compromise. Perhaps it will make more sense once I start reviewing actual documents, I think, opening the database. I am hoping that the fine points of the “review tool” will come back to me quickly.

Instead, looking at the screen in front of me, I am flooded with the memory of a case I worked on a few months before I was laid off. For a moment I am back at my desk in my old office, talking to the client on the phone about what we need to identify in the documents. I want to laugh at the absurdity of revisiting the nuances of Kroll Ontrack the way some people remember the details of an old relationship. In this scenario, Kroll would be the ex-boyfriend, which, I suppose, is not so far-fetched given how much time I spent with it.

Kroll would be a bad ex, I muse. Remember that restaurant we didn’t go to? The time we didn’t go for a walk together? Remember when I marked that document “privileged,” and then someone else marked it “non-responsive”? Remember how hard we didn’t laugh? I’m sorry we had to break up, Kroll, but you never wanted to do anything but talk shop and stay in on weekends. Yes, I remember when you said I’d be back, and I guess you were right. But I want you to know that I saw other documents — lots of other documents — while we were apart.

More after the jump.

Ed. note: Welcome to the latest installment of “Notes from the Breadline,” a column by a laid-off lawyer in New York. Prior columns are collected here. You can reach Roxana St. Thomas by email (at roxanastthomas@gmail.com), follow her on Twitter, or find her on Facebook.

This column is a continuation of last week’s column, which you can read here.

When Olivia tells me that she may have a “possible” document review on which I could “potentially” be staffed, I don’t really believe her. In fact, I have the same feeling I get when I read the spam in my Gmail inbox. I’ve won £1,500,000,000? An undisclosed sum from the Loteria Espana, or perhaps De Lotto Netherlands? It sounds nice for a moment, until you realize that it’s bullshit. The promises of the British Lottery, the “Microword Corporation,” and Mr. Van Curtis of the Delta Lloyd Bank are illusory, gigabytes of sounds and fury, signifying nothing. Likewise recruiters, who often make it sound as though the fabulous job they are describing is yours for the taking — a done deal! Then you never hear from them again.

So I am surprised when Olivia calls me back a few days later to tell me that the “possible” document review has actually materialized. “How would you,” she breathes, pausing dramatically, “like to be staffed on the project?” Something about her delivery makes me wonder if she once dreamed of being a game show host, and has stood before her bathroom mirror telling imaginary guests that they will be going on a four night, five day trip to … Aruba!! I feel as though I should jump up and down and scream, clapping my hands. Instead, I tell her that I would be delighted to work on the project.

“That’s great!” she effuses. She gives me some minimal information about the project (a large pharmaceutical case) and the pay ($30 an hour for the first forty, and around $35 thereafter), then tells me a little bit about the firm, using the most generic terms possible. The people who work there, she says, are “just really nice,” and “a pleasure to work with.” She thinks I’ll “have a lot of fun.” In addition, she adds, the firm sometimes hires temps for full time positions. She says this as though she is telling me that, if I am really good, I might get ice cream at the end of the day.

“Really?” I say. “How often does that happen?”

“Oh, from time to time,” she answers. “It has happened.”

I do not jump up and down and scream when we get off the phone, but I have to admit that I am excited. Though the pay is modest at best, $1200 a week is more than I’m making now. And if the gig lasts for two or three weeks (Olivia’s estimate), I’ll have at least $2400 (or more, if there’s overtime) to throw at my bills.

But I also have some concerns. Read about them, after the jump.

Ed. note: Welcome to the latest installment of “Notes from the Breadline,” a column by a laid-off lawyer in New York. Prior columns are collected here. You can reach Roxana St. Thomas by email (at roxanastthomas@gmail.com), follow her on Twitter, or find her on Facebook.

There was a time when, as working attorneys, many of us were accustomed to the ubiquitous presence of legal recruiters. Sometimes their calls were a benign nuisance — another voicemail message, another call you were too busy (or too uninterested) to waste billable minutes on. Other times, they served as a reassuring benchmark of one’s marketability — a valuable tool for underappreciated attorneys to gauge whether someone, at some firm, might want to woo them away to a place where “they don’t care about ‘face time,’” “associates have tons of autonomy,” and “they’re really concerned with professional development.”

Needless to say, we live in a different world. For the most part, the pursuers are now the pursued: most out-of-work attorneys I know would be delighted to talk to a recruiter, if only one would call. Unfortunately, however, the too-good-to-be-true positions — the nirvanas of work/life balance, substantive practice, and exciting, sophisticated cases — are even less real now than they were before.

Still, recruiters are a resilient lot, and they surface every now and then with the wispy promise of a job lead. One day in early spring I get an e-mail from one, who tells me that she saw my resume on one of the online legal job sites. She wants to know whether I am open to the possibility of temp work, or temp-to-perm contract work. If so, she says, she may have some opportunities to tell me about.

Roxana’s recruiter meeting, after the jump.

Apparently, many ATL readers are conducting their job searches via Craigslist, because this posting has appeared in our inbox more frequently than lobster references in the comments.

We’ve already mentioned it in Non-Sequiturs, but we’re returning to it to beg you to stop sending it to us, and to give you the story behind it. For those not in the know, here’s the legal job listing that many a job searcher has stumbled across:

Associate Attorney (Midtown West)
Reply to: job-991754136@craigslist.org [?]
Date: 2009-01-13, 5:41PM EST

Fast-paced 20-attorney law firm looking for an eager associate to join our growing practice. We understand that you may be a newly-admitted attorney looking for their first job. We also know that the economy is harsh right now. However, we are willing to give you a chance. Here are the details of this spectacular opportunity:

* Your salary will be $30,000 per year. We understand that this may be on the low end (since you probably are six figures in debt), but we will be able to give you unlimited opportunities for experience and you’ll be making six-figures soon enough. On the other hand, we will bill our clients $300 for every hour of your work; at least you will know your work is valued by us in several ways.

* There is no health insurance, but we have an on-site 2nd year medical student who will abide by the upmost professional standards take care of any illnesses or injuries that occur, both on-site and off-site.

* You will be expected to work 12 hour days, six (6) days of week. You will be afforded 1 week of vacation time, and three (3) sick days. Your vacation time is limited to the months of January and February, as we will need you to be in the office while the partners are taking their time off in the summer. The good news is that you will earn vacation and sick pay as soon as you start. The only holidays that the Firm observes are Christmas and Thanksgiving, but you must work a half-day, as we are a busy and important firm who adheres to our clients’ needs.

* Your bonus, if earned (by billing 2100 hours per year), will consist of a one-year membership to a “food-of-the-mouth” club of your choice. In 2008, every associate took advantage of this valuable program and has benefited greatly for their hard work and dedication.

Please email resume, cover letter, salary history, law school and college transcripts to the address above. We will also need you to take a drug test. All resumes and credentials will be held in strictest confidence

Ridiculous and hilarious, right? Obviously a joke? Well, we talked to the guy behind the ad — a contract attorney who’s looking for a permanent firm job himself — and he says he has received over 100 e-mails, including two from recruiting agencies, in response to his satirical listing.

Find out which recruiting agencies, and the story behind the posting, after the jump.

Back in the golden days of Biglaw (in the before times, in the long, long ago), associates were fired all the time. Getting laid off for poor performance or low hours is nothing new.

Of course, back when we had a functional American economy, getting fired was a temporary bump in the road. You could always work at a smaller firm or for the government. Back in the day, you could even work as a contract attorney if you needed something to tide you over.

Now … everything is different. And contract attorney jobs are great gets in this market. Yesterday, the National Law Journal ran a piece about the curious case of paying off law school debt while making $35 an hour:

As law firms downsize, laid-off attorneys and new law school graduates unable to find jobs have been turning to an option they may never have imagined at law school: becoming contract attorneys — hired guns for $35 an hour.

Yet in the past couple of months, even that field appears to be showing signs of a slowdown.

People who waited too long to swallow their pride and confront the reality of the financial crisis are finding that contract work has already been snapped up by less prestige conscious job seekers.

And it probably isn’t helping that just as the American legal market is starved for low level work, the ABA has made it easier to outsource doc review to other countries:

Also cutting into their business is the growing popularity of outsourcing to India. Hudson Legal has countered with an ad campaign that encourages law firms to “onshore,” and choose U.S. staffing companies where there are no security or privacy concerns and where they operate in the Eastern time zone.

Even if you land a contract attorney job you never thought you wanted, the working conditions remain just as bad as you remember them.

While the world waits for S&C’s bonus memo, here’s some interesting news from a person with a ground-level view at Sullivan & Cromwell: a contract attorney.

The blog Temporary Attorney has a post up about how the other half is living at S&C. An excerpt:

The economy is bad, so that means that down here at S&C, the clients are starting to dwindle, and the ones the firm has are having trouble paying their legal bills. New cases aren’t starting, which means that associates and litigation analysts don’t have anything to do. That means they’re starting to get the work that contract attorneys usually get.

This means that even “lifer” temps who have been working at S&C are being summarily dismissed, usually with little to no notice that we could lose the steady source of income that we’d come to expect. No notice, no severance. Your last day of earning is today. If you discuss this with lawyers not trapped in the temp system, or with basically anybody not on the inside, the situation smacks of outrageous and patent injustice.

Read the full post over here.

Even during good times, the work of a junior associate doesn’t differ much from the work of a contract attorney. When things are slow, it makes sense to funnel even more grunt work to your highly paid juniors — who have nothing else to do.

And we expect that work is slow all over.

But work is not so slow that it’s going to make S&C think about pulling a Half-Skadden?

Right?

P.S. Speaking of S&C contract attorneys, as we mentioned previously (see the “P.S.”), we’re also working on an item about a former contract attorney supervisor at the firm. We already have multiple sources but would like a few more. If you can help, please email us (subject line: “Sullivan and Cromwell”). Thanks.

Sullivan & Cromwell Update [Temporary Attorney]

A staff attorney reader of ATL once described his position as “either the bluest white-collar job, or the whitest blue-collar job.” We found the description quite apt, based on what we know about being a staff attorney.

For those of you who are not familiar with them, staff attorneys perform work similar to contract attorneys — e.g., document review, document production, other discovery-related tasks — but, unlike contract attorneys, they are “on staff” at their specific firms (hence the title of staff attorney). They don’t have to worry, like contract attorneys, about what their next gig will be, since they are employed directly by their Biglaw shops (i.e., not placed through an agency). Staff attorneys have stable jobs, good benefits, and reasonable hours (at least most of the time; they may have to work overtime if a case is busy).

But there are also disadvantages to being a staff attorney. All that document work can be monotonous, even mind-numbing. Unlike associates, staff attorneys are not on the track towards partnership. They are often the first to be let go during downturns (e.g., at Milbank Tweed; see here and here).

Some staff attorneys claim they are treated like second-class citizens. Back in March, over at the Huffington Post, Yolanda Young — a former staff attorney at Covington & Burling — decried what she described as the firm’s “staff attorney ghetto,” noting the high proportion of minorities among the staff attorney ranks (and the low percentage of minorities among the ranks of partnership-track associates).

If it is a “ghetto,” however, it’s a rather well-paid one. From one tipster:

I’m a Paul Weiss staff attorney. [ATL] has a loyal following among us.

I’d be interested in seeing a post on SA salaries. I wonder how much they differ from firm to firm here in NYC, or in other cities.

I’m sure such a post would get hammered with comments from BigLaw associates. But it would be widely read, and interesting to the growing ranks of the staff attorney underclass.

We’re happy to oblige. Here is the requested post.

Find out how much Paul Weiss pays its staff attorneys in New York — and, if you’re a staff attorney at another firm or in another city, dish about how much you make — after the jump.

Things are sort of looking up for former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. First, a speaking gig in the U.S. Virgin Islands. And now, Gonzales, who has been jobless since August, has a job!

From Bloomberg:

Former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who was forced from his job amid a controversy over the firings of federal prosecutors, has been hired to provide assistance to a special master on a patent case.

Gonzales will help former U.S. District Judge Layn R. Phillips oversee settlement talks in the case of a Texas company which claims banks such as Wells Fargo & Co., Citigroup Inc.’s Citibank and Bank of America Corp. are violating its patents for taking and transmitting digital images of checks.

Phillips, in an order signed yesterday, said he needed Gonzales’s help because of the number of parties in the case and the “overall complexity of this litigation.”

And maybe because he feels badly for him. Since “special master” appointments are not permanent gigs, we’re calling this what it is: a temp job for Gonzales.

We hope Gonzales ensures that we can keep pulling up copies of our checks online. If not, we may lobby to have him sent back to the Virgin Islands indefinitely.

Alberto Gonzales to Help `Special Master’ on Check Patent Case [Bloomberg]

On Tuesday, we wrote about staff attorney layoffs at Milbank Tweed Hadley & McCloy. As a commenter on our post noted, yesterday the firm sent around an email disputing our account:

From: David R. Gelfand
Sent: Thursday, April 17, 2008 3:20 PM
To: #Litigation Non Partner Attorneys US; #Litigation Partners US
Cc: Sikora, Michael; Green, Valerie
Subject: Discovery Attorney Program

Several of you have asked about rumors that we have disbanded our Discovery Attorney Program. The rumors are absolutely not true.

If you need assistance from our Discovery Attorneys, please contact [xxxx].

Thanks.

David

We would have appreciated it if Milbank had responded to the multiple inquiries we made of them prior to running the post, instead of responding indirectly and after-the-fact. But it’s not the first time we’ve seen passive-aggressive behavior on the part of a law firm.

(We often reach out to law firms about rumors we hear — and we often kill stories when firms explain how and why they’re inaccurate. This happens almost every day around here. But if firms don’t avail themselves of the opportunity to comment on a reasonably credible rumor, then we view it as fair game.)

Anyway, we ran David Gelfand’s email by our original source, who responded:

“Milbank let go of all of the permanent discovery attorneys except for two. They kept on temporary discovery attorneys — those who are working through staffing agencies and not on Milbank’s payroll.”

“Notice in Milbank’s response [how they say] they did not dissolve the Discovery Attorney Program. That’s very different from saying that they did not fire all or nearly all of the attorneys in that program.”

Our earlier report, in stating that all the permanent discovery attorneys were laid off, was erroneous, since two were spared. We regret the error (and have appended a correction to the original post).

Could this latest report be erroneous as well? Quite possibly; we’re honest about our fallibility. But we once again reached out to Milbank, yesterday and today, and neither David Gelfand nor a firm spokesperson responded to our inquiries.

If you have knowledge of what’s really going on over there, feel free to drop us a line. Thanks.

Earlier: Nationwide Layoff Watch: Milbank Cans Staff Attorneys

Last month, we informed you about positive developments at Milbank Tweed Hadley & McCloy. These included enhanced parental leave and a promise of no associate layoffs. In a bit of positive publicity for Milbank, whenever a rival firm announces a no-layoffs policy — e.g., Latham — it’s described as making “the Milbank promise.”

But not everything is hunky-dory over at Milbank. We hear that, earlier this month, the firm laid off the entire group of staff attorneys. It appears that the “Milbank promise” protects partnership-track associates, but does not extend to staff lawyers. (Shhh, don’t tell Yolanda Young….)

We wondered whether perhaps it was just a case of contract lawyers whose project was finished being dismissed because their work was done. But a source explained this was not the case:

Milbank has a staff attorney program, much like Skadden or Simpson, where they have a group of permanent employees engaged in e-discovery, doc review, etc for the litigation department. Staff attorneys are not hired to work on a specific case like a contract attorney. They get assigned to various matters, and once they finish, get assigned to new ones, much like associates.

In other Milbank news, we hear that their summer program has been capped at 12 weeks. But considering that there are only so many weeks in a summer, and that some firms — e.g., Pillsbury Winthrop — are going as low as 10 weeks for summer 2008, this doesn’t seem like a big deal.

A Milbank spokesperson did not respond to multiple inquiries about either the staff attorney or summer program news.

Update / Correction: This post is the subject of a correction. Please see here.

Earlier: What’s Up at Milbank Tweed?

Here’s something from the ATL mailbag that we thought might be a good topic for discussion. It concerns the professional prospects of staff attorneys at large law firms:

I have a friend that is a staff attorney at a Vault 100 firm. He kind of keeps it a secret. He started at a tiny firm after being on the Law Review of a third tier school. Then he got this job almost two years ago.

I know he is hoping that if he busts his butt and does great work, they will wake up one day and realize: this guy should be an associate! I know from other mutual friends that he is aching to get that response, and would even start as a first-year associate at this place, or of course another Big Law firm, even though he is the equivalent of a third- or fourth-year associate by seniority.

So here is the topic I propose, for guys/gals like him: Is there any shot at his strategy working? Do Big Law firms ever allow or invite a particularly valuable and hard working staff attorney to become a “real associate”? Will the experience he has ever get him in the door at another Big Law firm?

Some of my peers think that once you are pegged as a staff attorney, that is all anyone will ever think of you as, whether at your current firm or other Vault 100 firms. For his sake, I hope that they do allow staff attorneys to become associates.

So, folks, what do you think? Our off-the-cuff reaction is that this strategy is a long shot, especially now that the economy is worsening and firms are tightening up on hiring (even of judicial law clerks, who tend to have superb academic credentials).

But that’s just our quick-and-dirty response, backed up by no research. If you have some opinions or, better yet, actual data (either systematic or anecdotal), please post in the comments — or feel free to email us, if you have an especially long and detailed response. Thanks.

In the absence of more associate bonus news — we’ve heard rumors of various committees at various firms meeting, but we have no new announcements — let’s move on to a related subject. What about bonuses for staff attorneys, the non-partnership-track lawyers employed by many large law firms?

Here’s what one of them had to say:

Staff attorneys who work at Biglaw read your blog, too. Most shops have a bonus tied to hours, but they do not specify what the payout will be at each tier (2000, 2200), claiming they’ll see where the market is at in December. I’m wondering whether other firms have a similarly vague policy (vague because the market for staff atty compensation isn’t as established as associates, but it still exists). It would be great if you could dedicate a bonus post to this.

I know staff attorneys will get slayed as third-rate, but that’s why we didn’t work as hard in law school to try to get recruited…. We don’t give a s**t!

Our jobs may be headed to India, as glorified contract attorneys, but we do handle the grunt work, so associates don’t have to. We make their jobs easier, I think. Yeah, I know, they have to answer to the partner — but see my last sentence in the preceding paragraph.

If any of you have information to share about bonuses for staff attorneys, please spill your guts in the comments to this post. Thanks.

That’s the question that Arin Greenwood — who previously brought us this great article, as you may recall — tackles in a long but interesting piece for the Washington City Paper, entitled Attorney at Blah. Greenwood writes:

For more and more law school graduates, this is the legal life: On a given day, they may plow through a few hundred documents—e-mails, PowerPoint presentations, memos, and anything else on a hard drive. Each document appears on their computer screen. They read it, then click one of the buttons on the screen that says “relevant” or “not relevant,” and then they look at the next document.

This isn’t anyone’s dream job, but more and more lawyers in big cities around the country are finding that seven years of higher education, crushing student loans, and an unfriendly job market have brought them to windowless rooms around the city, where they do well-paid work that sometimes seems to require no more than a law degree, the use of a single index finger, and the ability to sit still for 15 hours a day. Is this being a lawyer? It is now.

The best stuff is at the beginning, in which Greenwood paints a vivid (and hilarious) picture of a temp attorney’s daily grind of document review. The end of the piece, a description of the grim realities of the legal job market for most law school graduates, might be interesting to lay readers, but it will be all too familiar to anyone who’s heard of Loyola 2L.

Check out the full piece by clicking here.

Attorney at Blah [Washington City Paper]

McDermott, Will & Emery has come up with a more creative way to deal with soaring associate salaries. The firm has announced that it will be creating a “second tier” of associates to deal solely with low-level tasks like, e.g., document review.

As Cal Law points out, hiring cheaper lawyers to do this type of work is nothing new; this type of stuff is the staple of contract attorneys in most biglaw firms these days. The new part is making these contract attorneys a lower class of associates, essentially making them “permanent contract attorneys”, as Cal Law puts it:

While some firms quietly turn to contract attorneys, or even ship grunt work overseas, McDermott, Will & Emery plans to create a new tier of attorneys — think of them as permanent contract associates — to handle lower-end tasks at lower billing rates.

…

First-year associates at big firms now earn $160,000. Meanwhile, electronic discovery has dramatically increased the amount of basic work that usually goes to those high-priced associates.

“This is a topic of great importance, since the cost of document review has become intolerable for everyone,” said David Balabanian, the head of Bingham McCutchen’s litigation group.

While hiring contract attorneys is nothing new, creating a second class of full-timers is.

[The Recorder via Cal Law]

Is this a good or bad thing? On the one hand, it increases the competition even more for the “real associate” positions and institutionalizes to an even greater extent the law school tier system into biglaw law firms.

On the other hand, it may be beneficial to those attorneys now doing the contract work. It will establish them as associates in the firm, even if not on the same level as the top tier associates. They will likely receive things like benefits. The top tier associates will likely do more substantive work sooner. And the clients won’t find themselves paying top tier prices for stuff like document review, as still occasionally happens.

So what do you guys think? Will other firms adopt this model? Once again, it makes sense to us.

And hey, L2L, maybe you should apply.

Related:
Firm to Fill Cheap Seats [The Recorder via Cal Law]
McDermott To Create a New Class of BigLaw Attorneys [WSJ Law Blog]

Our recent post about contract attorney work, part of Non-Top-Tier Law School Week here at ATL, generated almost 200 comments. We’re happy to report that we have more for you on that front.

Here’s a question from a contract attorney reader:

I’ve done some contract attorney work (doc review, ick) in the past and have been offered jobs that pay a flat fee of $35-$45 an hour, but want 60 to 80 hours a week.

The Fair Labor Standards Act seems to say that professionals (attorneys) are only exempt from OT pay when they’re salaried. We contract attorneys, obviously, don’t fall within that category. It also seems to say that it’s illegal for an employer to make an employee waive that right to overtime pay.

Any idea why it is that so many major law firms can hire contract staff for flat rates and make them work overtime without OT pay?

More after the jump.

Yesterday we declared this week to be Non-Top-Tier Law School Week at ATL. We’ll be focusing on the career prospects of graduates of non-elite law schools.

As noted, many such grads work in the field of insurance law. Here’s another popular option: working as a contract attorney.

We’ll kick off the discussion with a comment from a reader. Here’s one:

How about a post on JD’s who are doing contract work while waiting for bar results? There have to be more people like myself who don’t have jobs wit the Am 100, who once bar exam results emerge will be hitting the legal market in search of the dream job.

Maybe you would tap into a large section of people like myself who are presently in a legal no-man’s-land…. [F]rom what I hear, only about 20% of students actually have jobs coming out of law school or before bar exam results come out.

So, any takers? Are any of you similarly situated, doing contract work while waiting to hear from the bar examiners? Any recommendations about landing such gigs?

(We have fodder for more general discussion of contract attorney gigs, but we’ll save it for future posts. Feel free to send tips our way, by email. Thanks.)