From Profession to Factory Worker: the Rise of the Contract Attorney from the WSJ

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article today that should be mandatory reading for anyone considering law school, although it's nothing new for those already in the know. It's about contract attorney/doc review gigs and how experienced attorneys have turned to these temporary gigs to pay their bills.

This new "third tier" of the legal world illustrates the commoditization of the legal profession, which once offered most new entrants access to prestige and power, as well as a professional lifestyle. It also shows how post-recession belt-tightening is permanently altering some professions.

For 10 to 12 hours a day—and sometimes during graveyard shifts—contract attorneys such as Mr. Aponte sit silently in a big room, at rows of computer monitors. Each lawyer reads thousands of documents online and must quickly "code" every one according to its relevance in litigation or an investigation.

Supervisors discourage talking and breaks are limited. The computer systems count each lawyer's speed...

About 10% of all private practice jobs accepted by last year's law school graduates were reported as temporary, a steady increase from 5.4% in 2007...

The article notes that many of the 3rd-party companies have seen surges in their business this year from large white-shoe firms that used to actually hire more associate attorneys (or summer associates or clerks) to do much of this grunt work. The article's only mistake is thinking this is a recessionary phenomenon. It's not - doc review has been growing since before the recession.

And consider, young law aspirants, that the ever-expanding pool of unemployed attorneys will continue to drive wages down in these monotonous, soul-crushing, factory-type environments. That 40-50k cited in the article (note: that's not even worth the law school tuition price) will likely drop as a function of market dynamics. Oh, and don't forget that what they're doing is easily off-shorable, moreso than all the factories that easily packed up and abandoned the U.S. in the 70s. (for more on outsourcing, see this recent post from Brett Clark at Minnesota Lawyer).

No one in their right mind would spend three years of their life and a six-figure investment to do this type of work. Yet it was the destination for a few thousand graduates of last year's class, and will likely be the destination for even higher numbers until the the Indians can do it. And those are graduates who get to be counted as "employed."

India: Just Like U.S.!

Inspired by the NYT piece, an Indian law professional has taken his own nation's legal education system to task for high tuition and fudged employment numbers, although because it's India he takes more of a class-based focus than many in the U.S. would. I frankly don't understand all the nuances of the Indian educational system, but I thought I'd repost some choice bits here for comparison's sake:

Each institution considers it its claim to fame to have ‘X’ number of people joining law firms with a salaries ranging from Rs. 8,00,000 to 25,00,000 (Rs. 8-25 lakhs) p.a. There are few who join foreign universities to pursue higher studies. The remainder of the students, those joining the bar or pursuing social careers (NGOs etc.) form part of a group characterized by the irony they represent. On one hand law schools propagate their commitment to society and Convocation dignitaries urge students to join the bar and stress on the ‘social commitment’ of lawyers, while on the other hand these students don’t form a part of the law schools achievements or even get their picture in the prospectus for the courageous step they’ve taken.

... I assert that national law schools are generally catering to the needs of the upper middle class society thus alienating themselves from a vast majority of the Indian population that wish to receive quality Indian education....

About a decade ago, the Supreme Court stated that education in this country still ought to serve a socialist purpose and not be regarded as a profit making industry. The present structure of National Law Universities defy both these ideas....

A student from a disadvantaged section of the society then surely doesn’t stand a chance in this system.

Education being run like for-profit and causing problems for lower- and middle-class people - sound familiar?

They've Outsourced Spam, Too

Sorry for the brief break. It's been a hectic few weeks. I finished my finals last Thursday and was on vacation over a rather busy weekend.

I was looking around for topics today and lo and behold I found the answer in my spam filter, for this putrid company not only exists (which is bad enough), but decided to spam one of the posts where I mentioned outsourcing. I've been meaning to make some posts about attorney advertising, but I think this outsourcing company's disgusting website is a good place to start, even though I know I'm preaching to the choir here.

You know it's a bad sign when a business has to rationalize its own existence. And there's plenty of it on SDD' website. Take this for example:

The ABA ethics opinion on legal outsourcing [ABA Comm. on Ethics and Professional Responsibility, Formal Op. 08-451 at 2 (2008)] described the trend towards outsourcing as: “a salutary one for our globalized economy.” The ABA Committee concluded that “there is nothing unethical” about the outsourcing of portions of legal services, so long as all services are provided with the “legal knowledge, skill, thoroughness and preparation reasonably necessary” for representation, and the lawyers involved satisfy their other professional obligations. The Committee also stated that outsourcing "affords lawyers the ability to reduce their costs and often the cost to the client to the extent that the individuals or entities providing outsourced services can do so at lower rates than the lawyers' own staff."

Right, and the ABA has shown itself able to understand ethics or economics...when?

Channel 4 Television Corporation hired SDD Global to assist in defense against a high-profile media libel case filed in the Superior Court of California, Los Angeles County. The case involved a plaintiff who sought US$800,000 dollars in damages, all allegedly due to the inclusion of her name in a comedy routine. SDD Global’s US-law-trained Indian attorneys handled nearly all of the litigation work for the defense, with supervision by U.S. attorneys. Granting Channel 4’s motion for summary judgment, the court threw out the lawsuit with a landmark decision that could benefit comedy writers, performers, television broadcasters, and film studios across the United States....
Channel 4 was delighted that it chose to fight and defeat the lawsuit, with the high-end yet low-cost offshore legal services provided by SDD Global. Without legal outsourcing to India, battling this lawsuit would not have made economic sense. With SDD Global doing most of the work, it was less expensive for Channel 4 to fight the suit, than to settle it.

This was one of the cases where some idiot sued Sascha Baron Cohen for making fun of them as his character Ali G. It's no where near the ballpark of "landmark" and was "thrown out" on two independent grounds, neither of which required going overseas or would have been too costly without outsourcing. "Battling this lawsuit would not have made economic sense" is a blatant lie.

SDD Global has also provided its services to solo practitioners in California. These attorneys were so overburdened with work that they had to turn down new clients.

So they then could absorb clients that could have gone to other struggling solo attorneys and kept them in business? That sounds wonderful, Random Indian Guy!

People who defend outsourcing often argue that American workers don't have the right skills to compete. Well, there is an excess supply of 15,000 government-backed, indebted lawyers pumped out in America every year who are trained specifically to write memoranda, draft basic documentation, and perform legal research. New graduates may not be ready to go to court or fly solo, but they certainly have the skills that this ridiculous leach of a company provides.

I continue to believe that anyone who defends outsourcing is mentally deficient in some key respect. The only people who benefit in outsourcing are the owners of the businesses (here, law firm partners). Cost savings to clients are marginal, and only rarely would they be passed to consumers. While a small number (business owners) may profit enormously, the decrease in jobs is an immense loss to a far greater number. The business owners who benefit disproportionately have a tendency to horde their wealth and not redistribute it by spending more on domestic products and services.

That, in five sentences, is the history of the last 40 years in America. It's sad that an organization like the ABA - who should be the ethical guards of the industry - can't see that it's become part of the problem instead of part of the solution. It's not merely a matter of economics when you bankrupt two generations and cripple the United States in the process; it's a moral one, too.

India, Our Brother of Legal Standards

With so much of our legal work in this country going overseas to India, we should expect the Indian legal field to live up to our American ideals of law and justice, right?

Currently, there's a dispute in India between graduating law students and the All-India Bar Exam, which just got postponed to the students' collective anguish. Could you imagine American law students taking this position?

We will be going to courts and starting our practise. If we are wrong let us face contempt...We have a right to practice. The only thing that is required to practice in courts is the enrolment certificate issued by the State Bar Councils, which has already been given to us. Already there are a large number of students who are appearing in the Delhi High Court without writing the AIBE and if the BCI were to do a check they would be astonished at the number of graduates who are practicing without having written the exam.

BCI is the Bar Council of India. So what you have here is a bunch of students telling the Indian equivalent of the ABA (which in India is a government body) to go piss off.

Good or bad, these are the people - this is the legal system - that our own legal system has become inextricably intertwined with by farming out legal labor. They don't require bar passage and have the stones/sense of entitlement/lack of respect for process to face contempt rather than waiting a short amount of time for a test.

Make of it what you will. I find it interesting.