TempAttorney

Law firm partners usually understand what temp attorneys are there for - we work, we are paid, we are dismissed.  It’s the way of the world.  Dismissal is expected, as is a varying degree of exploitation. It’s the way we make our living, and if you’re good, you can make a decent one.  You won’t have a life, but you’ll pay some of your bills.

Most partners also understand that temps are there to bill.  Temps, at least the serious ones, want to pile up hours as quickly as possible.  The site needs to be open 12 or more hours a day, and you need to be able to get food delivered so you don’t waste billable time. And if they’re paying overtime you need to get into the sweet spot - past 40 hours - as quickly as possible. We need the money.

Some associates get it too. Not only do they understand we have to pile up the hours, they know they’re one grumpy partner away from temping themselves.

On the other hand, some associates are clueless.  They are the entitled, and they are mostly Ivy League.  They are the children of privilege.  They are royalty.

And they don’t get temps.  They have a job at a top firm - why don’t you? Their family got them into Yale, Harvard, Columbia, Stanford, or another top law school.  Didn’t your dad know a senator?  And you don’t have a trust fund?  Quelle dommage!

On one project I heard two royals trying to figure out how to label and produce a rare sheaf of paper documents.  Unable to stop myself, I suggested they consult a particular section of the CPLR - New York State’s rules of civil procedure.

“How can you be so sure?” asked one of the chosen.

“I argued doc production motions in trial court all the time” I answered.

The look I got from both of them told me that neither had ever been in a courtroom other than to carry a partner’s briefcase.  But later I overheard them discussing the very rule I’d suggested.

The best example of cluelessness I witnessed was that of an associate we nicknamed “The Princess”.  She was our minder for the last 3 hour period each day (we weren’t allowed to work without a first-year in the room). Her hair was always in a chignon.  Her dresses were pastel and diaphanous, and she never wore pants.  She did wear a 3 or so carat engagement ring - standard equipment for female biglaw first-years. Perfect features, icy demeanor, and clueless. She was partner material.

It was the second week of the project, and it was payday.  The agency had promised to deliver our checks to the jobsite because direct-deposit hadn’t been set up yet.  Late in the day the word came - the checks had been lost, and we would have to wait 2 days for replacements.

“Oh my,” said the Princess.  “If any of you need me to lend you cab fare to get home, I will!”

Where to start?

She assumed that: 1) we had no money other than that which we’d just earned, and 2) we’d take a taxi home in a city with the best public transportion in the world.

Clueless.

Every project ends - let’s face it, it’s a temp job.  But not all projects end the same way.

One of the one-sided aspects of this work is the commitment law firms expect.  They, of course, can fire you anytime they want.  You, conversely, are expected to stay for the entire project.  Even if you get a better offer, you can’t leave or you risk getting blacklisted by the agency - literally “you’ll never work in this town again”.  This turns the employment-at-will doctrine on its head.  The capitalists tell you it’s OK that you can get fired at any time for any reason - the benefit is you can also quit at any time for any reason. Except in the temp world.

Some law firms understand that temps need to move on to their next project immediately once the job ends.  The rent and Sallie Mae must be paid.  One firm I worked for made us a promise: they’d do their best to let us know a week before the end so we could start firing off resumes.  And they kept their promise.  They even permitted us to leave with a day or two’s notice if we got a new gig before the end.

But most of the time you get no warning.  I’ve been fired at 5 pm on a Friday after being told the day before that the project would last another 6 months. I’ve been sent home at 4 pm and told to come back the next day, when they’d have loaded more documents, then fired that evening by telephone.  I’ve been fired by email, and one time I got canned on an elevator (on the way down).

Sometimes when the project ends they tell you how much they appreciate your hard work.  Sometimes they say they hope to work with you again. Sometimes they have you escorted from the building.

Sometimes the end is unprofessional.  The minders come into the room, tell you it’s over, and remind you that you should remove your personal items and not take any firm property.

Sometimes the end is simply childish.  On one project our minder was a legal assistant who kept reminding us that he had a masters degree in psychology - it took him 3 years, just like law school!  In his mind, this made him smarter than those of us who had passed a bar exam.

He got to fire us from the project after about 3 weeks on the job, and it was clear he enjoyed it. Late one evening he came to the room where we worked and held up a pink sheet of paper.

“HA HA!” he said, “a pink slip.”

Very classy.

There’s always a pecking order at law firms, and sometimes there’s one on a doc-review project as well.  On most projects the temps review the documents first, then their work is reviewed by first or second-year associates.  On other projects, a temp can actually get “promoted”.

I was surprised on one project - they pulled me into a conference room with a bunch of other temps and said I was now on second-level review.

When I went back to my desk I had new folders in my queue, and they were filled with the documents that my cohorts had already tagged.  My task was simple - go through the folder and change the tags if I thought the document had been coded incorrectly.

Very rapidly I learned that some first-level reviewers were dead accurate (at least to my eye).  I found nothing wrong with the calls they made - even privilege calls, which are sometimes tough to make.  We knew whose calls we were reviewing because we had the ability to pull up the document’s history, which told us who had applied which tags when.

On the other hand,I also learned that some temps had seemingly coded the documents without reading them.  When you switched to a new folder and had done about 10 documents, you knew what you were facing.  If the temp was good, we blew through 500 documents in an hour.  If the temp was bad, 500 documents took 4, maybe 6 hours to review.

My buddy Omar, who sat next to me, was also on second level.  After a day, he asked me if I’d noticed anything.

“Yeah,” I said, “some folders are a lot worse than others.”

“Indeed,” said Omar, “some of them are fucking disasters.”

“Who’s your worst?” I asked.

We compared names.  It was the same guy.

“Do they want us to report someone if it’s just really total shit?” I asked.

“I’d say we just do the job, let them look at the new stats, and they’ll make their own conclusions.”

Sure enough, after we’d been at it about 2 weeks, the people who had been consistently lousy were purged.

Once I was even on third-level review.  I could review a document, mark it as I saw fit, and it would be produced to the other side without another lawyer’s review.

But usually it’s not like that.

If you’ve been legal temping long enough there are a few things you know to be true:

• Slow and steady wins the race.

If you code too fast you make mistakes (and you also run out of work faster, which means unemployment).  I’ve seen temps try to make up for goofing off by tagging 500 documents in an hour and then get canned for inaccuracy.  I’ve even seen a temp code a few hundred documents by block-tagging - applying the same tag to the whole group.  It never works - you make too many mistakes.  Look at each document, make your best call, and move on.  Otherwise it’s malpractice.

• If they buy you lunch, you’re working too fast.

Big law firms have a vested interest in keeping associates at their desks - billing.  Some firms even have subsidized cafeterias - if you don’t go out and get your lunch, you’ll spend more time working.  I’ve even seen a firm deliver lunch orders to the associates’ desks.

The temp version of this is to buy you pizza or sandwiches on a project.  It’s usually a reward for production, and it usually means your going too fast.  If you exceed their expectations, it not only results in less work for you but in reduced accuracy … in my humble opinion.

• Temps are blacker, shorter, fatter, more foreign, more female, and older than other lawyers.

Of course being white, tall, and male isn’t what it used to be, but it can’t hurt when you’re looking to get into BigLaw.

• System meltdowns must be long enough to be useful, but short enough so that you’re not sent home.

When the computer system goes down, you can’t work, so you usually wind up surfing the web or perhaps working on your own stuff. But if the system stays down more than a few hours, they might send you home to save some money.  It’s a fine line.

• If they send you home because they’ve run out of documents and tell you to come back tomorrow at 11 when they’ll have loaded more documents, the project is over.

You’ll get a call that night telling you not to come back.  Here in NYC it’s often from a guy called Fred, who works for one of the larger agencies.  He sounds very urgent on your voice mail, telling you to call him ASAP - that’s because if you don’t get the word and show up the next day, they’ll have to pay you for 4 hours.  Once Fred left me a message (he didn’t say it was to offer me work), and I left him a message telling him he couldn’t fire me because I wasn’t then working for his agency. Poor guy - he’s used the sword so many times nobody believes he’d ever offer you an olive branch.

Some temps get paid for doing almost no work.  Some temps get paid for doing almost all the work.  But sometimes the temps that do most of the work get paid for doing no work.  I will explain.

Document review programs are now web-based -  you sign in on a particular website, go to the folder you’re working on, and start tagging. You can even work from home if they’ll let you - this rarely happens because the overseers want to watch your every move.  Last year I was on a project that let us work at home on weekends, and the numbers showed that I was more efficient on those days.  But I digress.

Because doc review programs are web-based, you can’t work if the internet provider goes down.  That doesn’t happen very often, but what does happen is the software provider’s servers can go down.  If the program freezes or goes in the tank, you can’t work.  But they have to pay you. The programs are usually pretty stable, but sometimes lots of temps signing on at once or other demands can crash them.

During an outage, you can surf the internet, take a walk, or even go shopping.  The trick is to be there when the system comes back up. You can’t appear to not want to work.

One weekend on a big project we were faced with a dilemma.  They allowed you to work one weekend day.  On Friday night, the internet switches were disassembled and were to be replaced overnight.

So we had a decision to make.  If we came in on Saturday and the system wasn’t back up, they’d have to pay us for 4 hours.  If we came in Sunday, we could put up 10 or 11 hours, but we’d have to work.  What to do?

The group I was with decided to give Saturday a go.  Of course the project site wasn’t ready - the new switches they’d promised to install were laying on the floor, surrounded by heaps of ethernet cables.  We got paid to surf the web and talk about the Giants for 4 hours.

The occaisional outage is good for the soul.

Many lawyers turn to temp gigs after a disaster.  Sometimes you get fired from a BigLaw job.  Sometimes your solo practice crashes and burns.  Sometimes you’ve got a toilet law job, and Sallie Mae is after you because you’re 5 months behind on your student loans.

I’ve heard tales of temps sleeping in the office space reserved for the project.  A lawyer I know told me of a temp who was homeless before he got on a project.  And some temps milk a project for all it’s worth.

I tried it once.  The project was pretty decent - Town Car or taxi home after 8 pm, $20 dinner allowance, and a decent rate.  They didn’t object if you did 60 or 70 hour weeks - they wanted the work done.

Early on a buddy of mine on a project taught me how to maximize your return.  If you order a dinner that the client pays for, you have lots of choices (see SeamlessWeb and MenuPages). Make a smart choice and you can eat for free.  Here’s how I did it.

The project I was on provided bagels and cream cheese every morning - they set them out in a dingy kitchen on the floor we were on - a floor mainly used for storing boxes of documents.  They also had fairly-decent coffee, so you didn’t have to spend money on that.

Since breakfast was free, and the client bought your dinner, the task was to buy a dinner that would serve as the next day’s lunch.  The best choices were Chinese or Indian food.  If you ordered Moo Shi Pork (with extra pancakes) you could get one, maybe two lunches out of the leftovers.  And Saag Paneer with Chicken Tikka Masala cost about 19 bucks and gave you a nice lunch the next day.  Sure, if you wanted extra onion kulcha to go with lunch you had to spend more than the allowance, but it was worth it.

So there you have it.  Law firm provides breakfast, and the client provides dinner, then lunch.  You can, with careful planning and the right project, have all your food paid for.  I’m living proof.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again - doc review projects are strange places.  For one thing, if you walked into the room all you’d hear is the clicking of mouses (mice?). Once in a while there’s a hushed conversation, but that’s about it.

Another thing you’d notice is that most every temp has headphones or earbuds on.  We’ve already (WARNING: lawyer lingo alert) stipulated that the work is beyond boring.  So the only way to stave off the boredom is to listen to something.

For me, it’s usually NPR.  And here in NYC, that means WNYC.  I know the hosts of the talk programs intimately - I can almost predict the next question they’ll ask a guest.  I could be a producer or an announcer for All Things Considered I’ve heard so many shows.  When I overdose on NPR, it’s usually George Carlin or Lewis Black YouTubes, or maybe one of the hundreds of podcasts on my iPod that I’ve never listened to.

Other temps listen to music, or maybe bar review CDs if they’re getting ready for a bar exam. I even knew a temp who listened to Italian CDs all day long - by the end of the project, she had basic Italian down cold.

Other things let you to relieve the boredom - some temps make a big deal out of their lunch choice.  Chipotle or Chicken Barn?  Indian or Italian?  The steam tables at the lunch place next door or the delicious lamb from the food cart two blocks down?  Ah … the possibilities.

Some projects are so demanding that you wind up eating all 3 meals there. If you’re having dinner at the worksite, you get to spend some time fantasizing.  You’d be surprised how you can stretch 15 or 20 bucks, especially if the client is paying.

The documents you review on a project are almost always dull, but it’s not all contracts, emails, and memos.  Sometimes other things get through the filter. The companies that download the documents usually filter the electronic ones to catch things that couldn’t possibly be responsive to a document request, but those filters miss stuff.

Most of what’s missed is personal email because it’s nearly impossible to catch with software.  And realistically you have to review it in case there’s a piece of a personal email that deals with business.

You can learn a lot from other peoples’ email.  For instance, I’ve learned the names and locations of the best strip clubs in Connecticut, where to get the best pint of Guinness pulled in the city, and how to unlock a car with a cell phone.  On the other hand, I’ve seen more pictures of Paris Hilton’s snatch than I care to think about.  I’ve seen so much subpar porn that I could write a guidebook.  How many times can you look at a Photoshop of Britney’s head on some other woman’s naked body? Lots, it turns out.

Lousy jokes are also popular - it’s the same crap people you barely know forward to you, just more of it.

One of the best things I ever saw was a florid email from a French lawyer breaking up with his girifriend. “I break with you!” he said.  A few weeks later, we found an email from the same guy - breaking up with his boyfriend.

Sometimes you have to sort through personal photos.  I’ve virtually-vacationed in Greece, Italy, and what I think was Sardinia.  I’ve paged through dozens of photos of bored-looking kids standing in front of ruins, national monuments, and various Disney icons.  I’ve endured the vacation photos of one woman who photographed almost nothing  but stray cats.  One guy specialized in surreptitiously photographing random women sunbathing on the beach.  I also once sorted through hundreds of photos of what seemed to be the fronts of clothing stores somewhere in Italy.

Then there are the baby pictures.   Let me tell you - there are some funny-looking kids out there.  And not just domestic kids - Germany, France, and Switzerland have their share.  Not all babies are cute.

You also get the normal detritus of e-life - receipts for online purchases, online newsletters, and spam.  Sometimes you even get a folder full of the internet graphics that your computer saves - Microsoft logos, banners, all that crap.  And you have to go through it.  On the other hand, it’s easy coding and permits you to put up some nice numbers if you need to.

As you can see, doc review isn’t all fun and games, but it does have its lighter moments.

Doc review projects are strange places.  Temps on cell phones wander the halls or hide out in vacant offices whispering to the person on the other end.  Some work feverishly at their desks on paper documents that they hide as soon as a minder walks in.  Some disappear for hours at a time - who knows where they go?

Some temps try to run their own law practices on the side.  Some look for permanent work.  Some try to start new careers.  And that’s where things get interesting. This is because you’re still a lawyer (sort of) and you have to bill your time.

I’ve seen a temp spend part of the day on Ebay running her selling business.  I’ve seen someone write an entire brief by taking five minute breaks every hour.  A temp on break might be working on a novel, writing an aromatherapy blog, or working on a unified field theory.

It depends on the project, but somtimes the overlords don’t object to temps engaging in other pursuits as long as they don’t bill the client for it.  On the other hand, sometimes the overlords want you working every minute of every day save half an hour for lunch.

But sure as shit someone will screw it up for everyone else.  I once worked on a project that feautured the most flagrant display of overbilling ever.

The guilty party was a guy trying to jump start a modeling career - we’ll call him Justin.  He’d been featured in print ads and done a couple of minor TV commercials, but he couldn’t seem to break through.  So he used temp gigs to generate cash.

On this project I had a work wife called Sharon.  For those of you not familiar with the concept, a work spouse is someone with which you have all the interactions you’d have with a husband or wife save one - sex.  We shared secrets, we fought, we criticized each others’ spending habits, we just didn’t screw.

I sat next to Sharon, and she sat directly behind the model.  There were problems from the beginning.  For one thing, Justin wasn’t there much of the time.

Now it’s one thing if you take a 2 hour lunch and don’t bill for it.  It’s quite another if you do.  Normally the rule on doc-review projects is that temps try not to notice what the other temps might or might not be doing.  But sometimes you can’t help but get angry.

Sharon noticed first - he wasn’t getting any work done.  When Justin was there he answered email or surfed the web, and when he wasn’t … well, he wasn’t getting shit done either way.  Sharon boiled over.

“I’ve been keeping track!” she whispered near the end of one particularly egregious day.  “I’ve kept track of the time his ass has been in that chair, and it’s less than 5 hours.  If he’s billed more than 5 hours, I’ll fucking bust him!”

Over the next few days, Sharon kept track of Justin’s every move.  At one point, she leaned over and hissed - “I have to go to the bathroom … keep an eye on him!”

After a few days, we calculated that Justin was “working” about 4.5 or 5 hours a day but billing for 9 or more (based on Sharon’s review of the sign-in sheet).

In the end Justin was busted - not for overbilling, but for telling the boss his grandmother had died when he really went to a fashion show in Madrid.  Did they fire him?  No - he was so pretty they let him finish the project.  Like that would happen to me if I did the same thing.

One of the bad things about doc review projects is that they’re unpredictable. I was on one where they told us we’d be there at least four months and more like six because of the volume of work they had.  They’d hired 10 of us to complement an existing group of 10 temps.  We were fired 2 weeks after the project started.  On the other hand, I once spent nearly 13 months on a project that was promised to last just 4 months at most.

Another issue is the purge.  An individual temp can get fired because he’s incompetent or doesn’t work hard enough, but sometimes the client decides to cut costs.  The placement agency certainly doesn’t want to get rid of any temps - they pay us maybe $40 an hour and charge the law firm $65.  The law firm doesn’t want to reduce the number of temps - they pay the agency $65 an hour and bill us out at maybe $150-180.  We’re a profit center, just like a law firm’s copy and print department.  You thought law firms charged their clients cost for copies?  Nope.

I’m good at surviving purges.  Usually they’ll call the unlucky temps on their cell phones after they’ve left the jobsite and tell them the project is over (for them). I’ve also seen them call 50 of 100 lawyers on a large project into a conference room and fire them.  I’ve even heard a tale of one temp on a small project that found out he was canned when his ID wouldn’t swipe one morning.  He was escorted from the building.

The project I was on for 13 months was a real endurance test.  At the outset there were 120 lawyers, including 10 French translators.  After a few weeks and a few meetings regarding our performance it was clear that heads would roll.  After lunch, the Angel of Death (a big guy from the agency) appeared behind each victim, and they were gone - about twenty of them.

Later in the day they had a meeting to tell us what happened.  We already knew what happened - nothing travels faster on a project than news of a purge.

“We had to make some cuts based on numbers” said the suit from the agency.  “We’ve been seeing daily averages in the 600 range …”

Stony silence - if you weren’t sure whether you were slow, you were now.

“… and one of those terminated did 12 docs. In one day.” Nervous laughter.

“So for now we’re not replacing anybody, but we want you to up the numbers. Just stay focused and put some hours up and you’ll be fine.”

This sort of thing happens a lot on these projects.  Sometimes the goal is cost-cutting, or getting rid of the deadwood, or maybe both.  They also want to remind the rest of us that we too could be cut at any time if we don’t produce.

After the first 20 people got canned, there was a second purge about 2 months later - the claim was their coding wasn’t accurate enough. Another twenty gone, but then a new group hired - about 40, plus some new foreign-language reviewers.  The crew now numbered around 100.

The project rumbled along like this for about 5 months, but then a fateful day came.  Half of the temps had to go because we were getting close to the end.  There wasn’t enough work.

Each of us was told to come a meeting in a large conference room at either 11:15 or 11:30 am. Those of us who drew the 11:30 slot were pretty sure we’d survive - good news usually comes last on these projects.

And that’s how it happened.  Our office space was reduced, there were 4 more purges and, at the end, there were 10 of us batting cleanup.  We ran out of documents on a Tuesday, and the project ended quietly that Friday. It was a good run.