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."