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With Glut of Laid-Off Lawyers, Temp Jobs are Harder to Find—and Pay Less

Posted Aug 4, 2009 2:32 PM CST
By Martha Neil

Despite an increase jobs for temporary attorneys as cost-cutting corporation clients seek to get the same work done for less than they would have to pay a law firm associate or partner, a glut of laid-off lawyers is making it harder to get this kind of work, too.

A year ago, a lawyer who needed a document review job or another temporary assignment could generally find one. But now there is an oversupply, reports the San Fernando Valley Business Journal (sub. req.).

Hourly pay ranges from $30 to $37—less than what contract attorneys made earlier this year—because of the increased supply of available lawyers, Cameron Peterson of the Los Angeles regional office of Compliance Staffing told the business publication.

“I met a recent grad who went to Duke and Harvard Law School, and had done impressive law clerking,” recounts Peterson, who serves as director of recruiting and staffing for the business. “She can’t find a full-time job in this economy.”

Related earlier coverage:

ABAJournal.com: "Contract Lawyers Get Paid Less, But May See More Job Opportunities"

ABAJournal.com: "As Laid-Off Lawyers Look for Work, How to Find It Isn’t Clear"

Comments

1.

B. McLeod
Aug 4, 2009 2:53 PM CST

Comment removed by moderator.

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2.

More inflation -
Aug 4, 2009 2:55 PM CST

I have seen temp work in NYC for as low as $23/hour, and in Boston for $15/hour.  I know temps who would kill to make $37/hour these days.

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3.

Enough...
Aug 4, 2009 3:08 PM CST

Sorry, McLeod, but that has absolutely nothing to do with the article.  This is the very height of trolling.  Please go back to your minesweeper game and leave us alone.  No one cares about your opinion.  If they did, you would be in Chicago for the meeting, and not blogging here throughout the business day.

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4.

B. McLeod
Aug 4, 2009 3:32 PM CST

Certainly opinions may differ, #3, although yours, in this case, is simply wrong.  The point is (as this article tends to indicate) the profession does have some real problems that the House of Delegates could be dealing with.  Problems, I dare say, that are of more substantial concern to most lawyers than taking a political position on universal health coverage or gay marriage.  I am not in Chicago because it would be useless.  The annual meeting is a grand “Masque of the Red Death,” where the disconnected and oblivious are holding a party as the profession crumbles around them.  Any voice of dissent or reference to reality would be out of place there.

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5.

anonymous
Aug 4, 2009 7:02 PM CST

The article neglects to mention that there is a dearth of temp work due to the fact that the ABA passed a resolution allowing document review work to be outsourced India.  I remember reading on the Tom the Temp blog that there are now factory floors full of Indian attorneys doing the work that used to be done here.

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6.

B. McLeod
Aug 5, 2009 7:09 AM CST

# 5, mentioning the ABA’s causative role in relation to these thousands of laid-off and temporary lawyers is probably “off-topic.”  I have learned that A suggestion that ABA should be focusing on the economic problems of these lawyers is “off-topic’ as well.  Evidently, in thinking that thousands of laid-off and temporary lawyers might pose an issue for the profession, I strayed into error.  Probably, these lawyers have let their ABA dues lapse in order to buy food.  My mistake.  Carry on then.

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7.

anon
Aug 5, 2009 9:57 AM CST

I see two issues at play here:
(1) The glut of law schools cranking out indebted students - if a graduate of HLS isn’t finding work, what are third and fourth tier law school graduates going to do?
(2) The outsourcing of document review to foreign countries.

The ABA needs to address both of these problems.

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8.

Tim
Aug 5, 2009 12:19 PM CST

Hey, kids!  Remember when we told you to do temp work til the job market stopped sucking?  Yeah, sorry.  Sucks there, too.  Oh, yeah, and you can’t do pro bono, because our laid-off white-shoe lawyers need to do that stuff, even though they don’t care about it.  Sorry if you do.

So… yeah, we don’t know.  Teach for America?

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9.

Charis P
Aug 5, 2009 12:32 PM CST

@5 anonymous - It wasn’t a resolution, it was a formal ethics opinion (I’m assuming you are referring to Formal Opinion 08-451), and it doesn’t “allow” anything.  ABA ethics opinions are not binding on any court or disciplinary body.  The opinion provided much sought after guidance regarding a lawyer’s responsibilities when outsourcing legal work domestically and internationally.  ABA ethics opinions are not, and should not be based upon the goal of protecting domestic attorney jobs over a client’s interests in receiving cost effective efficient legal counsel and services.  Any such opinion would violate the very ethics that it purports to uphold.

Are you and B. McLeod suggesting it should be otherwise?

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10.

B. McLeod
Aug 5, 2009 2:45 PM CST

Ah, a worthy question from the ever incisive and analytical Charis P.  I cannot, of course, speak for #5.

I am not suggesting that formal ethics opinions should violate ethics.  I am also not suggesting that such opinions should be “based upon the goal of protecting domestic attorney jobs over a client’s interests in receiving cost effective efficient legal counsel and services.”  Perish the thought. 

I do think that 08-451 had an interesting context and backstory.  Of course, it is not possible to discern from the text of the opinion who was originating the request for the “much sought after guidance.”  Based on some news articles and suggestions in marketing materials circulating from Indian firms at the time, I believe the request originated from US firms that were outsourcing without disclosure.  The firms were the original doorway to the US market, and the pitch was that the Indian firms would “ghost” the services, which the firm would then bill to clients at its regular rates, without disclosure.  Indeed, some of the news stories indicated the arrangements with the Indian firms included express undertakings not to contact the ultimate client directly.  Firms could pay for the work at $30/hour and bill the client at $300 - $500/hour, which really helped their balance sheets.  I believe that the pressure for the opinion was in part an attempt to seek the ABA’s imprimatur for the continuation of this practice.  It backfired.  A portion of the formal opinion actually requires disclosure and informed consent if any Rule 1.6 information is disclosed to the actual service provider.  A number of firms were undoubtedly in the middle of ongoing outsourcing arrangements when the opinion hit, and as a result, were effectively forced to disclose where the work was going and had gone.

Knowledge spread, as it sometimes has a tendency to do.  Clients were perhaps then confronted with the thought that it would be much cheaper to contract with the Indian firms directly, rather than paying the US firms’ lofty markups.  With that, the lid was off Pandora’s Box, and the middleman was out of the markup business (at least the outsourcing segment).  Best of all, 08-451 now no longer pertains to many of the arrangements at all, because it only speaks to the responsibilities of “the outsourcing lawyer.”  Neither the clients, nor the Indian lawyers are effectively bound by the unauthorized practice rules, so we will just need to get used to the fact that there will be a good bit of it hereafter.  Some clients may end up “receiving cost effective efficient legal counsel and services” and some may not.  In either event, the ABA has really lost the ability to speak to the matter further.  It is almost comedic.  For me, anyway, because I perform courtroom functions and a number of other functions not readily subject to performance offshore.  I do feel a bit of sympathy for our starving brethren (and sistern) who are now caught in the consequences of 08-451 having mainly functioned to steer these arrangements into totally unregulated channels to which it does not apply.  Heck of a job, ABA!

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11.

anon solo
Aug 5, 2009 4:24 PM CST

here is what I suggest—The ABA should be investigated by the DOJ to make sure that they were not paid off by BigLaw for cranking out that “ethics” opinion.

Mighty funny that the ABA goes to great lengths to ensure that we american lawyers have to jump through all sorts of ethical hoops to get and remained licensed, but when BigLaw wants to send legal work overseas to completely unlicensed lawyers so that Big Law Partners can make more millions, well, the ABA thinks that that is just peachy.

Oh, yes, the ABA is real keen on putting out reams of ethics guidelines for the little guy, for the solo lawyers, etc.
Model rules, this, Model Rules, that.

Yessiree, Bob!

But when it comes to BigLaw, seems like the ABA takes the position that “what BigLaw wants, BigLaw gets”

The ABA sez: “oh, you wanna send massive amounts of american legal work overseas to be done by foreign lawyers who have never set foot in america? Okee-Dokee!! Can Do! Thank you! Come again!”

Seems strange to me…

What I think the DOJ needs to do is to investigate whether any money changed hands in order to secure that “ethics” opinion.

The question is—is the ABA a “coin operated” outfit?

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12.

B. McLeod
Aug 5, 2009 5:00 PM CST

I do not think they cranked that particular one out in the form BigLaw desired, and the unintended consequences have come home to roost.

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13.

Former clerk
Aug 5, 2009 8:15 PM CST

#11 hit the nailon the head. Ethics opinions are used to smash solos and small law over the head with at the slightest transgression. Yet ethics opinions are ignored or rewritten or a new one fudged out when it is expedient to do so.


08-451 is a good one. Another is the recent
Massahusetts opinion thta said it was ok for Biglaw deferred associates to clerk for judges on the Mass Sup Court, while their salaries were paid by their firms!!! It was an obvious conflict of interest but suddenly it didn’t matter…because the trial court had its budget cut so much that it could not afford to pay for the usual 50 or so clerks that are employed for a year on the state budget. (I was a clerk in 2006/07).

So the ethics board fudge out an opinion that said it was A ok.

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14.

Charis P
Aug 6, 2009 2:39 PM CST

An interesting analysis B. McLeod, notwithstanding #11 and 13’s bizarre and inaccurate conclusion that 08-451 is favorable to Big Law or punitive towards solo practitioners and small firms.  The requirement for client consent and disclosure however was not driven solely by Rule 1.6.  If it was, then there are certain kinds of mundane legal work including certain types of document review and production which might not be covered by the opinion.  The opinion also cites several other relevant rules including Rule 1.2(a), requiring lawyers to consult with clients as to the means by which the clients’ objectives are to be pursued, Rule 1.4, relating to client communication, and a rather dubious reference to Rule 8.4(c) prohibiting dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation.  Additionally the opinion emphasizes a distinction between the supervisory relationship between an attorney outsourcing work to a domestic attorney working on site, where a high degree of supervision is possible, and the supervisory relationship between an attorney outsourcing work to a foreign attorney overseas, where it is not possible to maintain the same level of supervision, in noting that the basis for exemption from notice to clients of the outsourcing in the former situation was not available in the latter.

As B. McLeod implied, the use of overseas attorneys is limited to certain kinds of legal work.  Only clients with in house lawyers will be able to use these legal service providers as they are still prohibited from providing services directly to non-lawyers.  08-451 has no direct negative impact on solo practitioners and small law firms.  The use of overseas attorneys by clients capable of supervising such outsourcing was inevitable unless the ABA was going to reverse decades of prior opinions on the use of non-lawyers by lawyers in providing legal services.  Pointing fingers at the ABA for the evolving situation is both misguided and ignorant to the realities of the emerging global market for certain kinds of legal services.

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15.

Doug
Aug 7, 2009 7:11 AM CST

“he ABA passed a resolution allowing document review work to be outsourced India.”  thank you, ABA

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16.

Doug
Aug 7, 2009 7:14 AM CST

#11 and #13 are good postings

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17.

myrtle
Aug 7, 2009 8:39 AM CST

The ABA Journal had a glossy cover story in 2007 about the fabulousness of life for Indian attorney—in India—doing U.S. firm document review.  The article told about how wonderful life was in the Indian office cubicles, where lunch and other amenities were provided on rolling carts to the workers.  I was doing doc review in upstate NY at the time, in a cubicle, with my keystrokes monitored by consultants and associates.  Chained to the damn computer, coding, coding.  Oh, well.  Now, in current economy, one of the highly paid associates who monitored the staff attorneys’ coding has been let go and is teaching paralegal courses at a trade school.  Oh, well.

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18.

B. McLeod
Aug 7, 2009 8:57 AM CST

Dear me.

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19.

Lisa Solomon
Aug 7, 2009 6:59 PM CST

I agree with most of #14’s analysis.

The “debate” over Op. 08-451 re-surfaces every few months. Back in June, there was a spirited discussion in the comments on an Above the Law post about a New York City Bar Association panel discussion about alternative careers for lawyers (http://abovethelaw.com/2009/06/career_alternatives_panel_discussion.php?show=comments#comments).

What those who complain about Op. 08-451 (and other opinions like it) fail to realize is that the same principles that allow firms to send legal work overseas also allow law students and law grads awaiting admission to do actual legal work when they’re working at firms, rather than making copies and getting coffee for the partners. These principles also allow lawyers to work as contract attorneys in jurisdictions in which they are not admitted.

Furthermore, after the opinion identifies some areas of concern that outsourcing lawyers should address (including data security and, of course, the credentials of the individuals providing contract legal services), it raises additional issues relating to foreign lawyers, including whether the system of legal education under which the lawyers were trained is comparable to that in the United States; whether the foreign lawyers are subject to a professional regulatory system that inculcates core values similar to those in the United States; the “legal landscape” of the nation to which the services are being outsourced (and, specifically, whether personal property, including documents, may be susceptible to seizure in judicial or administrative proceedings notwithstanding claims of client confidentiality); and whether the judicial system of the target country will provide prompt and effective remedies to avert prejudice to the client in the event of a dispute between the service provider and the outsourcing lawyer. The ABA’s flagging of these concerns is good news for US-based contract lawyers because hiring lawyers who are US-trained and based avoids the issues that arise when hiring foreign lawyers.

So, actually, Op. 08-451 is good news for US lawyers, if you understand all its implications.

However, I don’t read 08-451 as drawing a distinction between “the supervisory relationship between an attorney outsourcing work to a domestic attorney working on site, where a high degree of supervision is possible, and the supervisory relationship between an attorney outsourcing work to a foreign attorney overseas, where it is not possible to maintain the same level of supervision” as #14 posits. Rather, the opinion points out that the ethical responsibility of an outsourcing lawyer to make reasonable efforts to ensure that the contract lawyer conforms to the Rules of Professional Conduct is no different from the responsibility of a lawyer supervising the work of another attorney who is employed by the supervising lawyer’s firm.
Whether a contract lawyer is sitting few hundred feet or a few thousand miles away from the hiring attorney when performing work is irrelevant to the degree of supervision the hiring attorney can exercise over any document-based work that is outsourced.

I have been providing legal research and writing services to other lawyers since 1996. I work from my own office, never at the hiring attorney’s office. Nevertheless, I interact with the lawyers who’ve hired me to assist them just as often as I would if I were a partner or associate sitting in an office down the hall - the only difference is that we don’t see each other’s faces when we discuss the matter we’re working on (and that’s only because none of the lawyers I work with seem to be interested in videoconferencing).

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20.

starving solo lawyer
Aug 8, 2009 3:51 AM CST

the end result is that the biglaw partners get to make more millions by sending more american legal work overseas, and the ABA gets to keep getting “donations” from Biglaw firms.
And of course the recent grads of non-elite law schools get lower wages because there is less low level legal work left in america now, which of course lowers wages and for law school grads and thus puts more money in the pockets of millionaire Biglaw partners, which means that those Biglaw partners could therefore send more “donations” to the ABA.

As Gomer Pyle would say, “SURPRISE SURPRISE SURPRISE!”

Now, I am not saying that any specific aba “ethics” opinion was bought and paid for, but, well, the motive is obvious.

I would like to see how much “donation” money the ABA gets.

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21.

B. McLeod
Aug 8, 2009 7:28 PM CST

Oh, please.  Formal Opinion 08-451 did not grant BigLaw the hoped-for answer.  This opinion has cost BigLaw millions.  This opinion is akin to a prickly-pear cactus in BigLaw’s lower gastro-intestinal tract.  As a result of the opinion, work that would have been milked by BigLaw will be directly outsourced by the clients to India.  BigLaw will not only not get to keep imposing 3,000% mark-ups, they will not get the work at all.  They will not make even $1 from it.  In a way, this outcome is not without justice.  But, there will be many collateral losers who did not engage in the conduct, nor press for the opinion.  That is the sad part.

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22.

Terri
Aug 9, 2009 2:51 PM CST

This is good news.  The good lawyers will find jobs.  The people who shouldn’t be lawyers in the first place will go find other work.  We need these times to week out the bad lawyers from the good ones.

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23.

PM
Aug 10, 2009 6:36 AM CST

Very insensitive comment #22.  You should be very proud of yourself.

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24.

albert
Aug 10, 2009 6:47 AM CST

there are so many lawyers now that most of my law school classmates from the class of 04 had to get a job in another field.

Some 30 percent actually got a real job as a lawyer, and many of them had parents who were lawyers.

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25.

Rath
Aug 10, 2009 2:43 PM CST

#20 Please reconcile your comment with what appears to be the actual result of 08-451 with Rio Tinto’s direct retention of an Indian legal services company in lieu of using its traditional Washington D.C. law firm ,with an estimated loss in legal fees for said law firm in excess of 1 million dollars.

You can find an article covering it right here on the ABA Journal website.

With deficits in legal analysis skills like that, one can only wonder whether you will ever be anything but a “starving solo practitioner.”

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26.

sarah
Aug 11, 2009 2:28 PM CST

what we see in the bar associations and the interplay between that industry and the legal establishment is unbridled greed.

The bar associations and the major players are all out for more money, and they don’t care what rules they break or who they exploit.

And then they have the nerve to arrogate for themselves the position of arbiter of so-called ethics.

A bunch of charlatans in charge of ethics?

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