In DC, you need an annual income of $600,000 to lead a dreamy upper-middle class life.

In DC, at $40,000 a year, you qualify as a low income person, and are, in fact, worse off than welfare recipients.

Are you happy in your delusional world?

I have met many contract attorneys who have a lot to offer, even outside of the law. We all had a whole host of accomplishments and talents before we went to law school. It is a mistake not to continue to develop those highly personalized skills–no matter how long it has been–because those are the talents that will allow you to bring added value, rather than just being another face in the crowd. It is equally, if not more important and fulfilling, I think, for one to continue to expand their horizons into areas in which they had never imagined. Dan Pink suggests this in his book, A Whole New Mind. Pink suggests reading magazines in which you previously had no interest, as a way to make new connections and develop “right-brained” skills.

This need to think in broader terms is the same for everyone whether they are a temp, CEO, or park ranger. Or whether one has been temping for one year or twelve. If you are 30, you have over 80% of your working life left to go. If you are 45, and you have been temping for ten years, you still have more than 50% of your working life to go–assuming that you retire at 70–and many work well into their eighties.

Many labor experts predict that the average worker will change careers–not jobs–several times over the course of their working life. If you stay in the legal profession, it will be unusual. If you want to be a lawyer, great. But if the difficulty of being a lawyer starts to get to you, there are innumerable possiblities out there–despite what the naysayers tell you. It’s that constant tug of war between the bulls and the bears–the optimists and the pessimists.

Document review is the same job that associates have done for years and has a definite potential for 6 figure income. You can slug it out in the trenches going through hundreds of clients for 3 or 4 that are good to work with, and hopefully turn a profit or make money, hmmmmm …

I am confused as to what this “real law” is - and if it is “real” then why the quotation marks? If you mess up your priv review, you are going to booted, that sounds real … a priv doc slips through and the privilege is lost, that sounds pretty real.

The stigma is a self fulfilling prophecy on both ends - big law keeps cutting their costs, they are going to get what they pay for … the coder thinks they are hopeless well, then they are ..

Before you start focusing your anger to all of the agencies, and there are some bad ones I grant you, what about the firms who make a minimum 200% profit off of all the work we do?

After you’ve done it a while, your conflicts list keeps growing. When you get conflicted out of several projects in succession, and wind up with no work for months on end, it can really stink. But that can happen in a firm, or as a solo.

Yes, you may be making more than some associates. But what are you learning? Are you doing anything that will make you a better attorney. After 8 or 10 years experience in doc review, you are only as valuable as the Noob sitting next to you that was sworn in yesterday.

And it may be good now, but when it gets outsourced, what skills have you developed? And you will find that it gives a stigma to your resume if you want to do anything in “real law.”