Covington & Burlington Strikes Again

From the Posse List. I wonder what Yolanda Young's discrimination suit has to do with this. Could Covington be trying to fill up their staff attorney ghetto with white bread associates?



DC Antitrust Project



PLEASE NOTE THE REQUIREMENTS OF THE PROJECT ARE NOT FLEXIBLE. PLEASE DO NOT APPLY UNLESS YOU MEET THE REQUIREMENTS.



Start: Monday 3.23.09



Duration: 4-6 weeks



Hours: 50 hours a week are anticipated.



Location: Project will be located at Hudson Document Review center in the Metro Center area of Washington DC.



Firm: TBA



Rate: $33/hr plus OT



Required:



* Must be DC barred (not DC pending). DC bar must be active and in good standing at time of submission.



* MUST HAVE LAW FIRM EXPERIENCE AS AN ASSOCIATE.



* Significant substantive Antitrust experience STRONGLY preferred.



If interested, please send a resume in WORD format and a brief description of your qualifications in an email cover letter to DCLegalProject@hudson.com





http://gabesguide.com/?p=3167

AIG And The Biglaw Snakes

The map below, which shows institutions receiving the payments and other interested parties, illustrates the global reach of AIG’s problems. Several recipients of bailout money from AIG had already received direct bailout funds from the Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program. I am glad to see that several of our own favorite document review sweatshops are proud participants in the economic web of death.

No Work? Become a Solo

Hi Tom, it's Skadden Farts - here is my JD Underground post with my thoughts on "going solo." Feel free to re-post on your site under my name "Skadden Farts"

Here's a nice intro for the new guest post that I wrote:


Remember in the "glory days" of doc review how many coders harbored the starry-eyed pipedream of one day "going solo?" Hell, some even passed out business cards on the projects for their little shitlaw "side practices", most of which were nothing more than a stack of flimsy Vista-Print business cards and a mail-drop address. In the restrooms and hallways of Biglaw, many a coder's cell phone hummed with $750 real-estate closings and other sad, bottom-feeding crap, hoping to supplement the pathetic $35 an hour shitrate with some real "lawyering" on the side. With doc review now all but gone, many may now attempt "the plunge" into solo practice full-time. It's understandable. For most former NYC coders the options are few and far between: boiler room craigslist "firms" paying south of 40 K, moving to Cleveland for $20 an hour, or simply committing suicide. One can't really blame these poor souls for the harboring the delusion of self-employment. But.....

Fact is, with 100 K+ of student loan debt, the typical "shingle hanger" will be hung out to dry.

Skadden Farts aka Law is 4 Losers

Going "solo, eh? Have your checked your local Yellow Pages lately? Just count the number of attorneys begging for rinky-dink auto accident, DWI, and divorce/wills/ general shitlaw crap. Then tack on even more lawyers who don't (or can't afford to) advertise in the yellow pages. Then, for areas like personal injury, count the number of television commercials on daytime TV from the "national" feeder/referral PI firms like Jacoby and Meyers et al.

See what I'm getting at? The saturation level is staggering; really beyond comprehension. Scratching out a living in solo shitlaw is like selling saltwater on a lifeboat: people are already surrounded (literally drowning in)an endless supply of a totally worthless commodity: SHITLAW LAWYERS!

Come on, how many DWI's are there in a given suburban county/town? Read the local paper's police blotter. In a whole week maybe 15-20 (a few more on holiday weekends like 4th of July etc).

How many of the 15 or 20 DWI victims have even $2500 to pay a lawyer (and that's the low end of the scale for DWI)? Many are unemployed for Christ's sake and that's why they're drinking! Any of the higher-class types probably already know a lawyer from their peer group or will Google something like "NJ DWI LAW" and get the "mills" that can spend enough for a high Google bump. With 150 K in debt from a shitlaw school and no experience to practice law anyway, why the fuck is anyone going to retain you in the first place? Even shitlaw areas are somewhat complicated and involve at least 98,357 pages of tedious hypertechnical make-work paper churning and hours of sitting in shit-court at 10 pm waiting to argue with a nasty part-time troll "judge" who himself is a nasty, balding loser and lords his Napoleon complex over the pathetic night-court riff raff to inflate his own sorry ego. "Your honor" my ass. That robe means as much as a kid's Halloween costume.

Same way with small-time criminal work. If a guy had $2500 to pay a defense lawyer, would he be robbing a 7/11 or prying someone's window open at 2 am to steal a DVD player he can pawn for $20 to score a bag of crack?

"Family" law? Pray tell! For every hedge-fund divorce there are tons of trailer-trash people who reek of kerosene and haven't a pot to piss in or window to throw it out of, much less money to pay a lawyer a retainer + hourly rate. Half these losers will just use legal aid or a form company like "We the People" and toast their newly-found freedom from Bubba the wife beater with a can of Keystone Light and some crystal meth. They didn't and won't need a worthless shitlaw "lawyer" to help with custody of their obnoxious maladjusted satan-children who will probably grow up and score a 136 on the LSAT and attend Cooley's night program, bringing "prestige" to their family when they earn $13 an hour on a doc review in Newark NJ in 2018!

Wills and estates? Ever heard of Legalzoom? They have the same shitlaw templates from your CLE books for ordinary (non-millionaire) folks to print out and take to a notary for $50. And at the rate of this meltdown no one's going to have much to leave anyone anyway. High-end estate & trust clients are all referred to their lawyer by an investment adviser. Any investment guy worth his salt already has a 92 year old gray-beard expert estate lawyer that he feeds all the referrals to. Good luck breaking into this niche area. Stockbrokers aren't sending their rich clients to a newly minted shitlawyer who doesn't understand the nuances of IRS Sub-Code 45-B(II)V with regard to bilateral spousal exemptions under revised footnote 567(b)9 of the 2005 semi-annual quantum stimulus updates.

And even doing a proletarian's shit-will you still have to meet the losers and make nice for an hour, then hire a moron to type up the needed shitpaper (or waste an hour cutting and pasting it yourself), then have 'em come back AGAIN and explain idiotic legalese shit like "per stirpes" and then find witnesses, etc while also pretending you actually did something worth paying for. A huge headache and hassle to make $200 or whatever shitlaw wills go for in your town.

Or you could try the nightmarish (and all but totally dead now) field of residential real estate closings. Have fun filling out 75,357 pages HUD-1 forms and other pointless God-awful dreck, balancing trust accounts, cutting 18,253 different checks, dealing with scumbag title agencies, and having people bicker for hours over a $15 broken light switch at 1 am the night before closing. All so you can get a FLAT FEE of $750 for 73 hours of grunt work while a bimbo realtor w/ a GED and big tits walks away w/ a 5 grand commission and laughs in your face.

See kids, you can't charge more than "market rate" in your area for shitlaw. People do price shop (esp. in real estate closings- these people often use a lawyer referred by the realtor who wants someone cheap so that the deal goes thru). No realtor is going to recommend an expensive shitlaw closing lawyer because any $$$ to the lawyer is more chance the deal might break apart. Even very good real estate lawyers admit the practice area is decimated. Lawyers in the 1970s and 1980s used to get a percentage of the sale price as a fee for a typical closing. Now the rate is $750 flat no matter how long it takes. That's law. You make practice more and more miserable and complicated, while simultaneously reducing lawyer pay to sub-poverty levels. Layers and layers of added shitpaper for a smaller pile of dough. Welcome to Law 2009! In inflation-adjusted dollars (hell, even in "raw" dollars) most shitlaw lawyers are doing exponentially worse than their counterparts of 20 or 30 years ago were. This trend cannot improve and indeed will get worse as the ABA accredits more schools and shameless liars like Pat Hobbs fill diploma mills like Seton Hall to the rafters with over-leveraged liberal arts losers.

Personal injury was for years the main revenue source for most "shitlaw" lawyers. A "wild card" of sorts. Those days are gone. Time was, every shitlaw lawyers could count on at least an auto case or two a month. Back then (1920 to about 2001)soft tissue auto cases used to settle pre-suit for 15-20 K. Now they settle for ZERO thanks to tough "threshold" laws. And even decent cases (like broken bones and surgeries)are harder and harder to get money on quickly, because insurance companies have lost billions in bad investments and tightened the screws on pay-outs across the board. Insurance defense "lawyers" are so cheap thanks to the oversupply that its easy to fight off the plaintiffs until they give up. And many have given up.


Check craigslist in your area under "Legal Services" and you'll see scores of lawyers "outbidding" each other to do the cheapest DWI or traffic ticket or real estate closing or whatever. Its a fact of life.

As the economy continues its meltdown, less and less "ordinary folks" will have the dough to pay even cheap lawyers.

Fact is, almost no newbie solo will be able to generate the volume of business needed to sustain a living. The numbers just don't work. Deduct paying your own health insurance (300+ a month), office rent, self-employment tax, malpractice insurance, etc. You have to get a relatively steady flow of PAYING clients just to break even, much less profit.


There is no way any rational person can "spin" a TTT law degree into a good investment, or any kind of investment period. It is a costly & worthless albatross that will be worth less tomorrow than today as the morbid oversupply of lawyers continues unabated and, sadly, accelerates. There is no way from here but down.

Document Review To $17 An Hour

Let us thank the American Bar Association for giving the green light late last year to allow the corporations and corrupt TARP receiving banking institutions to ship our jobs overseas. Mumbai wages have arrived in NYC.



"Document Review Attorneys (Midtown)

Reply to: job-zxpfg-1073986135@craigslist.org

Date: 2009-03-13, 8:39PM EDT



Midtown V100 law firm seeking admitted Document Review Attorneys for a 1-2 month project scheduled to begin March 23rd. Must have previous large scale discovery experience. Experience with Concordance a plus. $17 an hour. No OT expected at this time, but that may change as the project progresses.



Must be admitted and in good standing in at least one state.



* Compensation: $17 an hour

* This is a contract job.

* Principals only. Recruiters, please don't contact this job poster.

* Please, no phone calls about this job!

* Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests."



http://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/lgl/1073986135.html

Ghost Town

"Tom,

There are agencies that have overextended themselves in the boom years and are stuck with idle equipment and empty prime leased out document review space. Any guess as to which of the agencies are going to go under?"

Washington Post - "Recession Sends Lawyers Home"

"Unlike previous recessions, during which lawsuit filings increased, litigation this time is down sharply because the credit crunch is forcing corporations to curtail their legal spending, experts said.



Law firms spend as much as $40 billion a year on document review, experts said.



Over the past six months, the work more and more has been outsourced to lawyers in such faraway places as India. Since 2006, the number of lawyers working at offshore firms doubled to 2,000, said Ron Friedmann, senior vice president for marketing at Arlington-based outsourcing company Integreon.



Five years ago, the companies mainly digitized legal documents for law firms. Now corporate legal departments are hiring the companies to save on spending by their outside firms. And the companies' staff lawyers are being called upon to review the documents, work previously done by the firms' associates and paralegals.



'We have 300 people in India. We've added 50 people' in recent months, said Michael J. Dolan, chief executive of the Tusker Group in Austin. Dolan said his lawyers charge $25 an hour, compared with $150 to $300 an hour billed by paralegals and associates doing the same work at law firms. 'We're in the process of adding another 30 people.'"



http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/08/AR2009030801549_pf.html

Eli Gottesdiener - Hideous Lawyer of the Week

Putting job candidates though the following nonsense in this economy when people are fighting to merely put food on the table is certainly an assholic thing to do.

"Gottesdiener Law Firm, PLLC, a plaintiffs’-side ERISA class action firm, is looking for a senior litigation paralegal with extensive electronic discovery document review and processing experience or a law clerk with a J.D. to do same together with higher-order fact research and analysis. We are only interested in receiving applications from candidates who meet our criteria, which include an ability to follow the instructions in this ad for applying.

Minimum Requirements

• If applying for the senior paralegal position, you must have 5 years of large law firm experience and at least 3 years direct, hands-on electronic discovery document review and processing experience. If applying for the J.D. position, you must be able to teach yourself the legal and practical ins-and-outs of ediscovery under the Federal Rules. In either case, you must be able to work a minimum of M-F from 8:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. and some weekend and evening hours as needed. • You must be good with numbers, fast and efficient with Excel and all kinds of computer software, and be able to organize and make sense of large volumes of data. • You must have a can-do spirit and understand the value of the opportunity to work on the front lines of sophisticated federal civil class action litigation.

A Successful Application Will Consist of (and Only of):

1. A three-paragraph “cover letter” that is pasted into your email reply. The first paragraph should state your reason for applying, with specific reference to your suitability for our firm (including the requirement that you be good with numbers, fast and efficient with Excel and all kinds of computer software, and able to organize and make sense of large volumes of data). In this paragraph, we expect not empty cookie-cutter statements about your “strong interpersonal and communication skills”, “multitasking ability” “commitment to excellence”, etc. but concrete facts that show you are different from the pack and can immediately contribute to our operations. In the second paragraph, please indicate (1) your current position (Confidentiality assured), (2) salary/benefits package and (3) your earliest start date. The third paragraph will explain your transition from one job/educational pursuit to the next, concluding with your current situation. If you are currently without a position, you should explain what you have been doing since your last position.

2. A resume that is succinct, clear and no more than one page that is pasted into your email reply below your “cover letter”.

3. A separate list of references that is pasted into your email reply below your cover letter and your resume. You should not list academic or other references: only work-related references. You should provide a one sentence statement explaining your relationship to the reference and the period of time you worked for the reference. If you cannot provide a reference from your current position, explain why not. (No references will be contacted without your permission, so confidentiality is not a sufficient reason for not providing a current reference).

4. The subject line of reply email must contain only the following: the last name of the judge who agreed with us that PricewaterhouseCooper LLP's definition of normal retirement "age" as the date on which an employee completes 5 years of work for the Firm regardless of age, is invalid."