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.

I would like to think that I am an educated, professional adult. After all, I studied hard through college, graduated from a top tier law school, and passed the bar on the first try. I’ve worked hard in everything I’ve done, whether it was a clerkship position, in government, doing litigation, or even document review work.

However, as a contract attorney, sometimes I forget that I am an adult, let alone a trained attorney with past working experience. There are many moments in this line of work that sometimes make me feel like I am not a real lawyer.

Based on my experience in the last few years, some legal staffing agencies seem to feel the need to run their projects like a day care for adults. They monitor our actions, track our minutes like an obsessive parent, and even mandate the use of bathroom passes to account for our billing accuracy. How is one supposed to feel like an adult when your supervisors require you to sign in and sign out for even brief activities like performing a routine bodily function. In high school I had to raise my hand to request a pass to use the bathroom because the teacher didn’t want students randomly wandering the halls. But when college and law school finally rolled by, the permission requirement went out the window since the expectation was that we should now be responsible enough to monitor our own actions. It is almost comical how things have regressed since then.

Feeling Like I Am Working At a Daycare For Grown-Ups

I was on this one project where one of the head agency administrators actually felt the need to come before everyone and make a long winded speech about the agency’s zero tolerance policy towards anything that could be remotely construed as controversial. I’m not just talking about things that are patently wrong either, such as sexual harassment. But the insinuation was that any joke or comment within earshot of someone that could remotely be considered offensive would not be tolerated and would result in prompt firing.

Such stringent rules leave little room for much social interaction outside of clicking away at one’s workstation. It makes things even worse when they’ve taken away internet access. The only thing I can really think about when I’m on one those types of projects is to hope that it ends sooner rather than later so that I can find another one that offers a better working environment.

I think experienced contract attorneys can offer a lot of review experience and guidance to supervising associates, who are frequently novices to managing document review projects, but when working conditions are so stifling, it severely discourages people like me from really caring about the case at all. I like to feel that my work is appreciated, but when it is not and conditions are terrible, I really have little motivation to be involved.

It Can Be a Bit Sweatshoppish Sometimes

Once in a while, associates or agency strongmen will pull us aside to discuss our numbers - basically your productivity level compared to the other members of the contract attorney team. It’s amazing the degree of data they keep a running tally of. Many document review programs are able to compile user information into neatly diagrammed charts that can track when and how often you code documents to determine your level of productivity. Unproductive workers are usually quickly canned. Every time I am pulled aside to discuss my numbers, I feel sort of like a little garment industry worker being called into my boss’ office to explain why I’m not hitting my button sewing target number.

At the same time though, I understand there has to be a mechanism to keep productivity and quality up, and perhaps it’s just the linear nature of contract attorney work that makes it very mechanical and numbers based, but I wish there was a more professional and befitting way of handling it.

But come to think of it, even big law firm associates have their own numbers too. They have pressing billable hours they must meet and they too have partners who will pull them aside when their numbers are below par and not up to snuff. In this world unless you are at the top, you’re really just an ordinary cog in a giant working wheel.

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.