My Attorney Blog

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.

I previously touted the financially joyful benefits of working during official holidays to earn double overtime. Now I have a concession/confession to make. I personally won’t be working during Thanksgiving or during the upcoming Christmas holiday break in December.

Earning extra overtime is certainly great, but it’s just not worth the extra sacrifice for me right now. There are more important places I need to be at and more important people I need to be with during this time than spending it cooped up in an unventilated, stuffy room clicking away on a computer.

Knowing When To Keep Time Off Information To Yourself

It’s been a wonderful luxury to be able to set my own working schedule. Since the summer I’ve been working on the same project and have taken a few days off here and there. In general, agencies don’t mind when you take very infrequent time off but when you do it too often they are likely to see it as a serious problem that warrants prompt terminative action. Some agencies are more stringent than others and will ask before submitting you for a particular project whether you intend to take any time off during the expected duration of the assignment. If your response is anything but an emphatic no, it is likely that the agency will take a pass on you and choose to submit someone else for consideration. Some agencies won’t even submit you if they believe you intend to take time off while the project’s ongoing. When you are not working, you are not billing hours. When you are not billing, the agency is not earning their cut off of your efforts. Thus, unless you plan on taking a very significant period of time off, my suggestion is to keep tight lipped about any anticipated vacation plans when asked by the agency.

Agencies are notorious for providing very inaccurate projections and overestimations of project duration. I understand that sometimes it’s not possible to pinpoint exactly how long something will last, but I think certain agencies frequently provide exaggerations to coax more interest from prospective contract attorney applicants. This makes it extra difficult to plan vacations around project estimations.

So I think it is in every contract attorney’s own working interest not to reveal whether he or she plans on taking time off when inquiring about project availability. Disclosing such information to the agency will only lead to negative results in you not being considered for projects that you would otherwise have been submitted for. Besides, deciding when and if you plan on taking time off in the contract attorney business is a very fluid decisional process. Originally I thought I would try to maximize my working hours and overtime opportunities by plugging through the holidays, but I ultimately reconsidered and decided my time would be better spent with family and loved ones. Money is important, but it’s not every thing. Heeding my own advice, I didn’t alert the agency until the last possible moment (a few days before my planned time off), although I did reasonably make sure the project would not be too understaffed while I was away.

Would it surprise you to learn that different contract attorneys are not always paid the same wage rate for doing the same exact work? This discrepancy holds true even for those staffed on the same project and responsible for performing the same set of duties. If you are working on a temp assignment, you could very well be earning less than what the person sitting next to you is making. Unless you are performing contract work due to some inexplicable, altruistic motivation, this should come as disturbing news. Like it or not, this is a well documented common agency practice. Not all agencies engage in this manipulative practice, but it happens much too frequently.

I Was Paid Less Than The Other Temps On the Project

When I first started doing contract work not too long ago, I was staffed on a long term project by an agency that offered me a wage rate slightly lower than the market rate of $35. Despite my initial hesitation, I took the assignment because there were promises made by the agency that the project had the potential to last a very long time. Because longevity is a valuable commodity in the temporary lawyer business, I agreed to the slight wage reduction as consideration for the opportunity to work on a longer duration project.

A few months into it, I was sitting at my computer command station with my headphones on when I casually overhead two contract attorneys discussing their document review experiences. One temp had been on the project before I came along and another had only recently joined the team. The subject of wage rate disparity came up and the newer temp mentioned that the agency was paying him a rate of $35 an hour. The older temp immediately became agitated and expressed his shock and incredulity. Apparently the older temp was only being paid $33 and had been under the impression all this time that everyone else was being compensated at the same rate. The only reason he had agreed to the pay cut was because the agency had promised a long stint.

This information disturbed me greatly. After all, I later learned, we were all DC barred and likely being billed off at the same rate. Eventually more contract attorneys joined the conversation, and we discovered that only the newer temps were being paid the slightly higher wage rate. Several of us immediately called the agency to demand an explanation. After several attempts at feigning innocence and putting the blame on the law firm, the agency agreed to bump the wage rates of those affected to the same rate as everyone else. Requests for retroactive application were rejected.

Comparatively, my story is tamer than the ones I’ve heard from some other people. One individual being staffed on a supposedly lucrative foreign language review was being paid a rate of $40 an hour. It was not until a few months into the project that she learned that her similarly situated peers were being compensated at $53.

While not legally improper, the practice of paying different wage rates is very distasteful and underhanded. While not all legal staffing agencies practice this, some do, and those that do this give the rest a bad name.

Temporary Legal Staffing Agencies Try To Limit Information To Maintain their Competitive Edge

Many legal temp agencies try to make the discussion of certain subjects taboo. Most, if not all contract attorney staffing agencies have their own boiler plate employee policies that expressly prohibit temps from discussing topics such as wage rate. The conclusion I can draw is that agencies want to adopt policies that will allow them to maintain competitive control over their temps. While they want the strategic right to offer different deals to different contract attorneys, they also want to limit key information that could cause rebellion or unrest in Temp Town.

I think these agencies must be really naive if they think they can perpetually keep their contract attorneys in the dark. You know what they say. You can fool some of the people all of the time, and you can fool all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.

Agencies will not be able to fully prevent contract attorneys from talking among themselves regarding subjects like compensation. If legal staffing agencies want to encourage loyalty among their contract attorneys and ensure quality of effort and work, it’s in their own interest to maintain fairness in how they treat their contract employees. There is nothing good that can come out of paying similarly situated workers differently.

I will not list names at this time, but I know many contract attorneys are already well aware of which agencies have this type of shady practice. Their tainted names are routinely circulated among those in Temp Town.