My Attorney Blog

So your project is over…or you are trying to get onto a temporary lawyer assignment for the first time. You’ve been calling all of your legal staffing agencies every day inquiring about available projects but they never seem to return your phone calls or e-mails. Welcome to Temp Town my friend. It happens all the time and drives even project-seasoned grunts like myself nuts. When I first started out a few years ago, I always worried excessively when agencies failed to return my calls or neglected to offer me any updates about project availability. Over the months, I’ve learned to develop a thick skin and a better understanding of why some agencies choose to ignore their bleating contract attorneys.

Why Are The Agencies Showing You No Love:

1. You’ve Been Blacklisted - This is the worst case scenario but it happens more frequently than people think. There is temporary blacklisting and then there is permanent blacklisting. Temporary banning occurs if you commit an act such as bailing on a project, but can manage to later come up with a relatively credible excuse. The agency may be initially loathe to submit you for further projects but may reconsider in a few months or so, particularly if the market picks up and they are strapped for workers.

   Permanent blacklisting is bad news. This means you’ve done something that has really pissed the agency off or demonstrated that you are an individual that cannot be trusted to handle the duties and responsibilities of the position. Perhaps you severely inflated the hours you worked or you walked off the assignment without a valid excuse. Usually it has to be extreme for the agency to permanently ban you.
   

   If you’ve been blacklisted, you might not know it for certain but you are likely to never hear from the agency again either through email or phone. They will simply ignore your inquiries. My advice if that happens is to try to get back into their good graces, particularly if it’s an agency that frequently has a lot of good projects. Try to reach a live rep and explain your story with a convincing explanation. Even seemingly permanent blacklistings can be reversed with some fancy verbal spins.

2. There Are No Projects Available - If there are no contract jobs out there, agencies have no incentive to call back because there is nothing to report. Since there is no financial gain to be had, some may choose to ignore the hordes of people calling in when things are slow. There is always something going on in Contract Attorney Land, but not all agencies have an equal hand in it. It all depends which agency was able to successfully bid out the competing staffing firms. That’s why I recommend registering with a wide range of agencies - so you can maximize your leads and chances.
3. You Are Not On the Agency’s Preferred Short List For Regular Assignments - Some agencies have a short roll of regular permanent temps they frequently work with as they have built up a good relationship over the years. When the market is slow and projects are harder to come by, agencies will usually turn to their own internal lists to fill staffing needs before blasting out an all public bulletin request for applicants. To get onto the short list you have to butter up your agent over time and become friends.
4. You Do Not Keep In Touch With Them Often Enough and They’ve Forgotten You - Staffing agents get bombarded with e-mails and calls daily. Here’s one way to look at it - think of the agency as the parent, with a few hundred screaming babies representing contract attorneys. Mom can’t attend to all of the babies at once. If you really want her attention, you had better learn to drag your diaper over there to tug at her pant leg or scream louder than the other toddlers. So, bug the agencies persistently but cordially.
5. You Are Not Telling the Staffing Agent Which Project You Want To Be Submitted For - Like most employers it makes their job much easier when you tell them exactly which project you want to be a candidate for. Rather than taking the easy route of asking them to submit you for any project, rise to the top of the pile by telling them exactly what you want, e.g. “I want to be submitted for that project down in Fall Church that no one wants,” for example. Or, “please submit me for the project requiring an accounting background because I have the necessary degree qualifications.” I recommend scouring the job forums, the Yahoo Contract Attorney Groups, Craigslist, and the PosseList for leads and then contacting the agency staffing the project in question with directions to submit you for it.
6. Some Legal Staffing Agencies Focus Mostly On Permanent or Lateral Hires - One notable example would be Kelly Law Registry. They are a big name in the legal staffing world but I’ve rarely seen them staff a contract attorney project. Inquiries for contract attorney positions are likely to go unanswered with similar agencies as well.

I’m not trying to get religious but I just want to draw an analogy (maybe it’s a bit of a stretch). Ever heard the phrase - “there are no atheists in foxholes”? Well then similarly, there are no atheists in Temp Town. If you’re not one who can comfortably rely on a degree of positive faith that a project will find its way to you again after your current project is over, then you will likely be under frequent and persistent anxiety in the contract attorney world.

With Contract Work Just Learn To Embrace The Fact That It Is Unpredictable

Contract legal work is very fickle. There is very little durational or job description guarantees. When an agency submits you for a project and promises you 2-3 months work of solid work, the duration terms frequently and do change depending on project conditions. I’ve had 3 month projects turn into 1 week ones, and even a 2 month assignment drag into a 9 month mess. It all depends on the project activity.

This is just the trade-off and essence of contract work. Law firms and corporations hire contract attorneys for short to medium duration assignments because it is more cost effective than retaining a fleet that might not be needed for long durations due to unexpected or indefinite work flow.

When I first started doing this work, I used to always gripe and blame the agencies for falsely advertising and misleading me into taking on a particular assignment that ultimately turned out to be significantly shorter than was originally projected, meanwhile forcing me to give up other opportunities. I think there are a few tricky agencies that do try to inflate the expected hours and duration to snag a few contract attorneys for project submission, but on the whole, I’m not certain that even agencies really know just how long a particular project will last. You should always try to take an agency’s duration estimates with a grain of salt. Don’t nail down irrevocable vacation plans based on their estimations because these type of details tend to waiver. Some agencies are bigger inflaters than others - if they tell me the project will last 2 months, that’s essentially code for 3-4 weeks. If they announce a one month project, be prepared to be there for only 2-3 weeks. It takes some getting used to but the more contract experience you have under you belt, the better your B.S. detector gets.

But It’s All About Knowing That There Will Be Something For You After Your Current One Is Over

As for my expectations of where I’ll end up after the project is over, that is all up to faith - but it’s not blind faith. It’s based on my own previous experience and knowledge about the condition of the market. From my past experience I know that projects are almost always available but that sometimes it may take a few days or a few weeks longer to roll from one into the other. There is no sense in flipping out or panicking when the project is finished. Hopefully you had prudently saved up enough funds to carry you over during periods of downtime and have wisely filed for temporary unemployment benefits to cushion the momentary financial hit. Don’t fret so hard because a project will come knocking soon enough. There is always something going down in lawyer central. Even during recessive periods, there will always be some form of business or legal activity happening in the D.C. metro area.

If you feel like you are waiting around for a long while, take the time to interview and register with the multitude of smaller legal staffing agencies that are popping up everyday. The small fries want to earn your business too so give them a chance by speaking to them during your down time. I’ve found that smaller agencies tend to be more customer oriented than the big agency conglomerates. Of course, faith and expectation only applies to big contract attorney cities like Washington D.C. and New York. Contract legal jobs and projects are not as plentiful or predictably present elsewhere.

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.