My Attorney Blog

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.

Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the winter holidays are nearly upon us. You know what that means right? Overtime!

While most people see the holidays as a time to relax and take time off to spend with family, many contract attorneys, such as myself see it as the bonus months. There will always be plenty of time to take a vacation and unwind - after the project is over. When the project is still ongoing, my commitment is to taking advantage of overtime opportunities and maxing out my available hours.

Extra Overtime For Holiday Work

Most legal staffing agencies and law firms have a policy of providing contract attorneys paid holidays. What this means is that if you come in to work on an official paid holiday such as Fourth of July or Christmas for example, you are automatically paid at the overtime rate for all hours worked that day, and all hours logged will also be applied towards the usual 40 hours for the week. Once you hit 40 hours, the usual overtime rules kick in again and you get overtime thereafter. In essence your hours worked during paid holidays are performing double duty.

I know, it sounds like I’m all about the money and like I place less importance on family time during the holidays, but you should know, there is no obligation to stay the entire day. Most agencies and firms are more lenient during those paid holidays. You can usually come in and stay for as long as you want up to the maximum allotted time to earn your automatic overtime and leave earlier than usual to be with your family. Work schedules during paid holidays are generally more flexible, and even the supervising associates are usually eager to get home soon so they frequently don’t stay the entire time.

Remember, the double bonus hours you get during paid holidays don’t come along that often. Most of them occur during the winter season so do try to take advantage. It’ll help pay for all the Nintendo Wii’s and stocking stuffers you’ll be buying when December rolls around.