My Attorney Blog

The answer to this question is the same answer that every law school graduate and trained attorney should be prepared to quip for any question they are asked - “it all depends”.

Of course, whether contract attorneys are currently being paid fairly as a whole is another issue entirely. For the purposes of this piece, I’m just making a market observation. Although contract attorneys generally get paid the market rate for their geographical location, there are a variety of other factors that determine whether the offer rate exceeds or fails to reach the generally accepted standard:

1. Geographical Location - Probably the biggest factor that determines the appropriate market wage rate and compensation for contract attorneys is where the project will be located. Big cities generally get the bulk of the labor intensive contract attorney work, thus they also tend to offer the highest wage rates and most perks.
   

   New York City and Washington D.C. both currently have the highest rates at $35 an hour with time and a half for overtime. New York City probably flirts in the neighborhood range of $38-40. Any parity with D.C. rates is probably due to oversupply caused by the abundance of city law schools that seem to graduate more and more lawyers every year. Certainly the lack of work due to the current economic recession is causing the job market to noticeably slow down. Disturbingly, many NYC agencies have been taking advantage of the slump by slashing rates, an ominous trend that is frustrating many contract attorneys.
   

   Los Angeles also offers comparable rates, although the city isn’t exactly overflowing with projects, and the lack of steady gigs always seems to put downward pressure on rates. The smaller doc review cities of Chicago, Philadelphia, and Boston get the lower end of the wage scale at around $28-$30 an hour plus time and a half for overtime. That’s likely due to the fact that contract project are not as abundant in those metropolitan areas. See this unofficial but handy wage and salary chart for more info.

2. Job Description and Role - Most contract attorneys that perform straight document review get the standard rate for their geographical area. However for mega projects, individuals may sometimes be brought on board to serve as team leaders or quality control reviewers. They are not always guaranteed or given a higher rate, but when they are, the rate is usually a few dollars extra at around $37 an hour for D.C.
   

   Specialized projects that require foreign language knowledge and review skills on the other hand pay substantially more. More common languages like Spanish and French generally pay around $40 an hour. Slightly more obscure languages like Norwegian, Finnish, or Russian pay around $45-50. The premium, most difficult to staff projects involve the Asian languages such as Chinese, Japanese, or Korean. Asian language projects can fetch anywhere from $50 to 65 an hour with time and a half for overtime. If you are an attorney that can translate Asian language documents, I encourage you to price gouge your local staffing agency up to $70+ if you can. They will bend over backwards for you and more because your skills are a rarity and in extreme demand.

3. Bar Status - Interestingly, even though the DC Bar has already opined that being barred in D.C. is a prerequisite to performing contract attorney work in the state, many D.C. agencies still continue to staff projects using non-D.C. barred J.D.’s. However, many agencies do express high preference for those with the proper D.C. license and most will refuse to pay the standard contract attorney rate without it. Expect to be either rejected outright for project submission if you don’t have your D.C. bar certification or be offered only a paralegal’s wage of about $25 an hour.
4. Experience - Fortunately or unfortunately depending on how you look at it, contract attorney work consisting of mainly document review does not require substantial legal experience. However, for those of you with more years of document review management experience, you may have more opportunities to be assigned to the privilege review and quality control team. Keep in mind that although it’s sometimes negotiable, usually you aren’t offered any extra compensation for the higher level work. That’s probably why some people avoid second level or privilege review work.
5. Length Of Project - Longer duration projects tend to pay slightly less than those that have shorter duration, at least initially when agencies are fielding candidate offers. The rationale is that - what you lose in wage rate you gain in longevity. From my experience, most people tend to glaze over the duration aspect and prefer to lock onto projects that offer short sprints of high billable hour opportunities. It’s just something I’ve observed and is not necessarily a consistent occurrence.
6. Size Of Staffing Agency - Due to their greater bargaining position, bigger staffing agencies are less generous about negotiating with contract attorneys over their wage rates and more willing to withhold benefits and posture. Small potato agencies have little choice but to negotiate sometimes. They can’t compete on brand recognition so they have to offer greater incentives to entice contract attorneys - thus they usually pay more. For a project that a large agency like Ajilon may pay the standard $35 an hour for, a smaller agency may be willing to shell out $36-$38 an hour. Go with the smaller agencies if you can, although it is true, the number of projects they have to offer simply isn’t as high as the big boys.
7. Market Supply and Demand - When the market’s booming, contract attorneys rake it in. Unfortunately the boom has past and we are currently in a bust period as evidenced by all the recent law firm layoffs. The market is pretty bad right now. There are projects out there but most are for shorter durations and offering less hours. Also, expect to wait longer than usual to come across an offer. Without consecutive, multiple, and simultaneous demands for contract attorneys, wage rates will stagnate in the interim. However, when the market eventually picks up again in the near future and law firm business returns, demand pressure should drive wage rates up. That’s my hope. It’s happened in the past before and it should happen again.
8. Specific Law Firm Managing the Project - Certain law firms are well known for running generous projects - Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom for one. They seem to have a reputation for providing projects that offer full meals, transportation reimbursement, and extended working opportunities for their contract attorneys. They also have a propensity to offer slightly higher wage rates for team leader type positions. Of course, it’s not always this way for every project they manage, but it’s just an interesting tidbit to keep in mind when you hear about projects.

Overbilling has always been a problem in the legal community among law firm associates, law firm partners, and even contract attorneys alike. Such matters have traditionally been either overlooked or summarily resolved internally due to the prevalent nature of the practice among all tiers of law firm practice from top to bottom. However, rather than starting at the top and addressing the pervasive padding and markup fraud among the high priced partners and associates at many of the big law firms, the disciplinary arm of the Illinois State Bar has decided to target one particular contract attorney for his indiscretions, sparking debate and denounces of hypocrisy.

According to the official bar complaint, the respondent contract attorney signed an agreement with Ajilon Legal Staffing to perform contract attorney work for the law firm of Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw. The contract attorney was staffed onto a document review project that paid $35 per billable hour. His work was performed on an online document review system that presumably tracked his review activity. During the 2 week working period, the respondent submitted time sheets presenting that he worked a total of 135 hours. However, it was later allegedly discovered that he had only actually worked 51 hours and 45 minutes, quite a large discrepancy for such a short period of time. The complaint indicates he was paid $4,725 for his time sheet hours, but that he fraudulently overbilled by $2,913.75, improperly inflating his billable hours by more than 84 hours during that 2 week period.

My Thoughts - Yes There Is A Lot Of Hypocrisy Going On, But Unethical Behavior Is Still Wrong

As a preliminary matter, I think official bar sanctions against this contract attorney would be perfectly warranted if the facts are found to be true. If the allegations are verified and confirmed, it’s difficult to offer him much sympathy due to the specifics of the facts, although I personally feel the case should have been resolved internally. He allegedly overbilled by more than 84 hours in a 2 week period! We’re not talking about tacking on a lazy 1 hour or rounding up to the next 30 minute mark every day. The attorney overbilled by more than 10 full working days, an astonishing number. Calling him a modern day Robin Hood because he robbed from the rich (big firms and agencies) to pay the poor (um, himself?) is a tad misguided. We can find better ways to boost the wage rate and increase project compensation than performing such unethical activity. It’s not that I’m preaching against such activity, I just feel such activity undermines our objectives completely and only serves to make contract attorneys look even worse than some already view us.

However, I’m curious as to what motivated the Illinois State Bar to tackle on this particular case when there are much bigger fish to fry among the denizens of the large law firms where overbilling is a frequent way of life. For example, I’m currently on one of those projects that keeps getting dragged out with little end in sight. After a few conversations with the managing associates, it seems the law firm partners are in no hurry to rush the case so long as they can continue raking in the billable hours. I got the unspoken vibe from the associate that she had no problem with us dragging out our review and continuing to let the firm bill the client, a company that has continued to pay its legal fees without much protest.

If the various state bars wanted to tackle this growing billable hour inflation issue, rather than going after contract attorneys, their resources would be better served going after the chief operators, the law firm partners and senior associates that cave to the pressure of generating billable hours and profits. There is truly a lot of strange hypocrisy going on today in the legal world where deceptive markup practices are prevalent, but its members still talk about fair compensation and billing. While contract attorneys like myself are sometimes offered little in terms of professional movement and prestige - having to fight and scrape for every project and permanent offer opportunity, we are still expected to abide by the high strict standards of professional conduct among full fledge attorneys.

Articles like the ones discussed help to serve as eye openers for contract attorneys. Document review programs do use sophisticated metrics to track worker productivity and usage statistics, so if the firm wanted to, it could certainly verify the accuracy of billable hours. If you do things like round up your hours, it’s important to at least be cognizant that there is indeed a digital trail that is retained. Most cases do seem to go unnoticed, but outrageous violations are bound to be caught - such as the story of this one guy who decided to straddle two different staffing agencies that were staffing the same project. He somehow ended up being separately assigned to the same project location by two different agencies who were unaware that the other agency was also staffing him. The contract attorney ended up collecting two pay checks for some time but was eventually busted. I don’t think bar sanctions were levied but he was summarily let go. Fortunately for him, he was not working or barred in the state of Illinois.

Contract attorneys are everywhere. Wherever there is an over saturation of law schools, you can be sure there are attorneys who have turned to temporary lawyer work to make ends meet. Although my musings are based mostly on my own active temping experience in the Washington D.C. area, I occasionally like to share what I’ve learned from those who perform contract work in other big hubs such as New York City and Los Angeles.

The contract attorney experiences of those in New York City tend to be a bit nuttier and off the wall than those in other locations. I’m not sure if this is because of the type of people who do contract work in New York or because I’ve only been exposed to a skewed and limited cross section of opinions, but New York City projects seem to be in a weird world by itself. But for this entry let me just discuss what I’ve learned so far about the L.A. contract attorney experience.

Differences Between Los Angeles. and Washington D.C.

I have a friend who has worked in both Washington D.C. and now in the city of L.A. as a contract attorney, so I decided to ask about the differences between working in these two locations. My friend also solicited comments from current L.A. contract attorney co-workers and here are a few interesting observations:

1. L.A. contract attorneys spend 2-3 hours driving in traffic every day to get to work and spend a ton of money on unsubsidized parking and on the nation’s priciest gas. Most of the work is centralized in the city or on the west-side so getting in and out is a daily nightmare. In D.C., commuting by car is difficult but not impossible. Many choose to avoid D.C. traffic altogether by taking the more convenient Metro subway trains. Yes, they seem to have a propensity to break down and spark mini fires, but they generally run predictably.
2. Subsidized limousine and taxi rides are unheard of for L.A. contract attorney projects. With the nation’s most congested highways and longest commute times it’s not hard too see why subsidized rides home wouldn’t work in L.A. Washington D.C. and New York City are more compact and many live in the city - so it’s a more workable option for the latter two.
3. Projects in excess of 50 hours are rare in L.A. I’ve worked 95 hour projects in D.C. but apparently in L.A., such lucrative extended overtime hour projects are almost unheard of. I’m sure they exist, but they are just very few and far between. D.C. and NYC tend to get the bulk of the juicy long hour projects.
4. Catered meals are not common in L.A. either, although they are the exception not necessarily the rule here in D.C. They are usually offered by agencies and firms to encourage contract attorneys to stay at work longer so you’re more likely to receive catered meals or subsidies when the project office hours extend into the late evening. Since L.A. projects tend to have shorter hours, there is less need or motivation for agencies and law firms there to provide them.
5. The L.A. contract attorney market is very unpredictable and stagnant right now. Welcome to the unstable world of contract attorneys! It’s like that everywhere, although D.C. and NYC tend to have more established and predictable contract attorney job outlooks. Even in a tough economy like this though there are still projects to be had. You just have to dig deeper but they’re out there.
6. There are many non-California barred attorneys doing contract work in L.A. I’m not familiar with California’s bar requirements, but unlike Washington D.C., California does not seem to overwhelmingly require contract attorneys to be barred in their own state. At least not yet.
7. Wage rates in L.A. average around $35 but sometimes they can be as low as $30. Factoring in the high cost of living there, it’s not hard to see why L.A.’ers get the short end of the bargain. Here in D.C. it’s pretty stable at $35 although I’m hoping it’ll rise sometime. NYC seems to have the highest wage rate, but their cost of living is astronomical as well.
8. Overtime regulations in California differ from D.C.’s. In D.C. contract attorneys get overtime of time and a half for hours worked in excess of 40 cumulatively for the week. In California, they get time and a half overtime after working 8 hours every day up to and including 12 hours. They get double rate after 12 hours. Good deal, except they never get to fully take advantage of it due to their mostly low hour projects.
9. Apparently, there are many contract attorneys in L.A. who are also part time aspiring actors, writers, and movie producers. Surprise, it’s L.A. where everyone thinks they are a model or an up and coming actress, hoping to get discovered. Not too many of those in D.C. although I’ve seen and met a few contract attorneys who are always working on their novels and hoping to get published someday.
10. On the whole, L.A. projects tend to be well managed and not very “sweat-shoppy” as my friend put it. I think D.C. projects are generally well managed as well, although there is at least one agency here that enjoys running their projects like a boot camp.

The verdict? Contract attorney work in Washington D.C. pays better, offers better hours, better perks, and offers greater stability with more project opportunities than our brethren enjoy on the west coast. Although I must point out that over there they have much better weather and much better places to eat than here in D.C.