My Attorney Blog

I’m not a contract attorney because I’m not motivated or because I’m lazy or incompetent, but because it’s the best thing going for me at this time in my life. Although sometimes you just want to look back and try to remember what originally inspired you to attend law school in the first place and compare those reasons to what motivates you today.

Many of my former classmate friends and I left law school with high hopes of working inspiring jobs and living comfortably. Others pursued their dreams of working in organizations where they could help the needy and less fortunate. Since that time, I have seen many of my friends and former classmates grow disillusioned with the law and leave the profession altogether. Others, such as myself, have eventually found ourselves performing contract attorney work. It is so disheartening when I hear stories of people becoming beaten down so early in their careers, and burdened with the relentless weight of unforgiving student loans that presses down heavier with each passing day.

I know many law school graduates who end up working in low paying attorney jobs ($40,000) for years with little hope of advancement. They stay on because they are unable to find any other positions out there and because it affords them the apparent security of a steady paycheck, albeit a tiny one. Some end up working in areas of the law they have no interest in that won’t prepare them for future work in any field they really enjoy. Many keep working in the same dead end job like a good worker bee - just like they were told would be the path to success when they were little. This goes on until they finally burn out and have enough. Hearing all this, it all makes me wonder if I’m really in a worse position because I work as a contract attorney.

What I Always Hear From Non Lawyers

I’ve been told frequently that temporary attorney work is a dead end job, that I should go get a “real permanent position” that will allow me to grow with the firm and ultimately make a million dollars a year. Many of the people who are constantly blabbing in my ear are usually non-lawyers (namely my family members) - people who have bought into the media-spun fantasy image of what attorneys do and the fabulous lives they must live.

But the reality is that being an attorney is not what it used to be. Competition for jobs is fierce and even for the fortunate few who make it as associates working in the big law firms, a tremendous amount of their life energy is demanded of them. Many find themselves working well in excess of 80+ hours a week for many years with little time for anything else.

Is that the working life I really would want to have for myself? Frankly, if I didn’t have people telling me that I needed to go find a stable full time position, I would be feeling pretty okay about my working situation. After all, I currently have a reasonably steady paycheck, a set of growing retirement accounts, paid holidays, and the ability to work as little or as much as I’d like. I can afford to live in a nice apartment with reasonable utility bills and have the means to save a sizable portion of my contract attorney income, even after satisfying my regular student loan payments. True working freedom means that when work time is over, I go home without having to worry about what happened on the job today. Unless I am working weekends, that time is my own and I will never have to rush into the office on a Saturday night because a demanding partner wants me to prepare an emergency brief.

In fact, I am now making a lot more than most of the people I know who took permanent positions at smaller firms where their salaries have yet to experience any appreciable increase, and where they continue to struggle mightily with student loans in the hopes that someday their financial ship will arrive. With the legal job market the way it is, I personally could not wait around forever like them. Suffice to say, my job as a contract attorney has been very good to me.

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.