Graveyard of Dreams: De Novo's "Night Shift"

De Novo sent this email out yesterday afternoon. $30 flat to start work the same day and pull a mandatory "all nighter."

If you are interested in the below project, please answer all questions following the job description. Feel free to forward to anyone you think may be interested. Must be bar admitted somewhere in the US.

Start date: Tonight, 3/15 at 6pm or 7pm (tba)for training. Case room is open tonight 6pm or 7pm-8am. MUST WORK 4 HOURS AT LEAST TONIGHT.
Rate: $30 flat (no ot or time and ½ for ot)
Hours: 10-12 hrs/day
Case room hours: Mon-Sun, 9pm-8am
Location: De Novo 555 Madison, 3rd fl
Breaks: 30 min mandatory
Approximate Duration: 3/15-3/21


The stampede of coders wrangling for this gig rivaled the Japanese earthquake's Richter-scale readings. Within minutes of this broadcast email, 80% of NYC's broadband bandwidth was swamped with hordes of coders frantically pressing the "send" button, racing to get their attached resumes across the finish line first. Skyscrapers began to gently shake as the stampede gathered momentum, with some coders even donning their suits in phone booths Superman style, breaking land speed records as they gang-rushed De Novo's midtown offices. "It's a bird...it's a plane....no, it's a CODER!"

This is what it's come to, kids. "Down the road," as they say in the big house. Four years of college, the LSAT, 3 years of law school, the late nights studying until your eyes bleed, 100 K plus in loans, the bar'zam, the dues, the CLE shakedowns: all to beg for a graveyard shift gig at a whopping $30 an hour, sans OT. Trying to pay down loans at this rate is akin to using a Folgers can to bail out the Titanic: you'll drown long before the bilge is emptied.

Rumor has it that 50 desperate suit-clad souls spent last night clicking away, all too happy to swallow their pride like a cocktail of Drano
and click those docs until their eyes wept blood. We can't imagine the depths of desperation one must be in to volunteer for such a pathetic endeavor. Sadder still is that, in all likelihood, hundreds (or thousands?) of schmucks probably cried themselves to sleep last night because they didn't make the cut for this gig.

This is a watershed moment, kids. How much more mistreatment, degradation, and abuse are you "lawyers" willing to endure? In the immortal words of Dante from the film Clerks, we ask De Novo: "What's your encore? Do you anally rape my mother while puring sugar in my gas tank?"

Quite funny too how this gig began only hours after the spiffy new 2011 US News rankings came out, the lemmings going ga-ga that their toilet of choice is now ranked 159th instead of 167st, the nascent "prestige" flowing like heroin into a junkie's bicep.

Ah Bartleby! Ah humanity!