Hypocrisy

While I was away last week, an interesting story came out regarding disciplinary action taken against a contract attorney in Chicago:

The story generated some interesting commentary on the various legal websites. One of my favorites:

"As Atticus Finch told his daughter Scout in the famous film To Kill a Mockingbird, 'you never really know a man until you've walked around a while in his shoes.'

Have you ever done document review? Do you know what it's like to sit in the windowless sub-basement of Paul Weiss in midtown NYC for 16 hours a day, lacking health insurance while people cough and wheeze in an unventilated room 6 inches away from each other? If there was a fire, we'd all have burned to death since the fire exits were blocked with box upon box of corporate documents.

Topping it all off, the pay was a whopping $21 an hour for admitted lawyers. We'd sit for mandatory 16 hour days on cast-off furniture from a dumpster staring into burned-out tube monitors from 1989.

They'd come and spray for roaches down there each evening, and the next morning the dead critters would be all over your keyboard and even on your chairs!

We weren't allowed to use the firm's bathroom- they made the temps use the 'concourse' restroom under Rock Center, which was open to the public. Homeless people would bathe in there and defecate all over the floor."

"Where was the ethics committee when Paul Weiss sprayed toxic insecticide in a windowless sub-basement where temps were confined for 18 hours a day? How about when Paul Weiss blocked the fire exits with their bales of makework shitpaper? People from shit law schools are less than fucking human to Paul Weiss. That {expletive} Alfred Youngwood (PW managing partner) lied to the American Lawyer about the work the temps were doing.

Fact is that many illegal aliens working in kitchens and slaughterhouses had better OSHA-compliant workplaces than the fucking ATTORNEYS at Paul Weiss.

I applaud that contract attorney- he's a modern day Robin Hood. Those {expletive} have all the money in the world & raise associate pay by leaps and bounds, yet contract lawyer pay remains stuck at the same $32 an hour it's been since 2002.

We need a contract attorney union to stop this shit cold. It's nothing short of scandalous what these "firms" get away with. Even the lowest lowlife ambulance chaser on Lower Broadway treats lawyers with more respect than Biglaw."