My Attorney Blog

I’ve had a wide array of contract attorney experiences. Some bad, but mostly good. I must say, the great majority of the limited number of shady and underhanded actions I’ve experienced have come from the staffing agencies. Most of the law firm associates I’ve met have treated contract attorneys with a reasonable amount of respect and professionalism. Dealing with overbearing partners probably humbles them a bit.

Although my current project has since been extended, it was originally scheduled to end early. The managing associates held a small meeting on a Tuesday and thanked us for our diligent work and gave us the heads up that the pace had been much faster than they had expected and that the project was likely to end at the end of the week. In return, we were all very appreciative of their honesty in choosing to share with us the prior notice. They could have chosen to spring this information on us at the very last moment on Friday but I respect them very much for choosing to give us the information earlier. Actions like that leave me with a very favorable impression of their law firm and I would certainly want to work with them again in the future, and help them succeed in their case.

Professional actions like that help to make me want to be more sincere in the work that I do. Many of the contract attorneys such as myself are likely to be recirculated back into the mix and may even end up back at the same firm in the future. It’s in everybody’s best interest to maintain that honesty and candor - both firm and contract attorneys alike.

I don’t get it. Why do some people try to avoid joining the privilege review team? One of the important things that contract attorneys always strive for is longevity. By denying privilege review work you are essentially cutting yourself short. My current project was slated to end weeks ago after months of first level work. By joining the priv team, I ensured that I would work for a while longer. At the looks of things, I might be around for many more months based on my assessment of the privilege review pace.

Weeks ago, the associates went around recruiting a select few for the privilege review team and made their selection based on those who had prior related experience. However, more than one person turned it down when they were asked to take on the assignment. Their real reason? It’s too much work and they don’t get paid more to do it so they don’t want to take on the extra responsibility.

That’s the part I don’t understand. We are all professionals so we should act like professionals. You don’t just turn down additional work because you aren’t getting paid more to do it. It’s very tacky and makes them look like slackers.

Let me clarify, I’m not one of those “supertemps.” I do take it very easy at times, but I do try to do the work to the best of my ability. Unfortunately, it’s not hard sometimes to see why contract attorneys get such bad reps.

It’s never too late to start thinking about investing in a retirement plan. If you haven’t already done so, you should start maxing out your IRA or ROTH accounts every year.

Did you know that contract attorneys can participate in their legal temp agencies’ 401k plans? I didn’t know they offered these tax deferred retirement plans until a few months ago. Since then I’ve been trying to learn more about them.

Just One 401k Example

There are many of them out there but I’ll just use Compliance Legal Staffing’s 401k plan as an example. Like most of the 401k plans offered by other temp agencies, initial eligibility requires that you work for a certain predefined number of hours for the agency. Compliance is owned by its parent company Vedior. Vedior requires that you work 1,000 hours with them before you can qualify for their retirement plan. Through automatic payroll deduction, you can contribute between 1% and 30% of your eligible pretax income into the plan, which is run by Fidelity NetBenefits.

The good news is that Vedior does match a portion of your 401k contribution, but the match doesn’t vest for several years. According to the plan, Vedior will match 100% of the first $750 that you contribute and 50% of the next $1,500 that you contribute annually. This brings us to the bad news. The maximum annual match is only a measly $1,500. But hey, it’s free money!

If you sign up and work with several temp agencies over a number of months and years, you can strategically max out the matching contribution limits of more than one agency’s 401k plan. I think that would be a pretty smart way to take full advantage of company matching and the tax deferred benefits of 401k’s.