Are You a "Contract Lawyer"?

Julie Kay has a nice piece today on the growing use by firms and clients of  "contract attorneys."

How's this for an exciting job description:

Contract or temporary attorneys are hired by firms large and small for jobs as short as a day or as long as six months. Their pay is significantly lower than full-time attorneys — typically $20 to $35 an hour in South Florida — and they receive no benefits.

Their work is usually limited to document review — reading through hundreds, if not thousands, of e-mails or papers in discovery and litigation preparation.

 I can understand having to do this kind of grunt work as a young BigFirmer, cutting your teeth until you finally get to actually go to court or take a real live deposition.

But full time?  As your entire job?  Oy.

There's more:

Some firms don't like to advertise the fact that they use contract attorneys, but Gregory Young, partner-in-charge of Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge's West Palm Beach office, said the firm has used contract attorneys for several large intellectual property cases.

"They're not engaged at strategic levels. It's more at levels that involve heavy documentation with some amount of specialization," he said.

"Law firms have really reviewed and taken steps to control expenses, and that includes the number of attorneys that are employed," Young added. "Rather than hire a lateral to take on incremental business activity, we might bring on a contract person."

Proskauer Rose also has turned to contract attorneys to reduce costs. The firm has used two or three over the last year in its Boca Raton office for document review and general litigation, said David Pratt, who heads the office.

It's interesting that 23 percent of managing partners surveyed by the DBR responded that they have hired contract lawyers.

But I wonder if Julie asked if any of these firms "upcharged" their clients for the work -- you know, paid $20 an hour for doc review, but charged the client $75 for the same billable hour.

Not that any respectable law firm would ever do anything like that, right?

We're All Contract Lawyers in India (Or Will Be Soon).

Hi folks, time for a little actual news about our biz -- intrepid reporter Julie Kay takes a look at the growing trend of hiring lawyers on an hourly or contract basis:

As law firms downsize, laid-off attorneys and new law school graduates unable to find jobs have been turning to an option they may never have imagined at law school: becoming contract attorneys — hired guns for $35 an hour.

Yet in the past couple of months, even that field appears to be showing signs of a slowdown.

Blogs devoted to the topic of contract attorneys are rife with complaints about the lack of work, particularly in New York and Washington; sudden ending of jobs that were supposed to be long term; and the demise of such formerly standard perks as free lunches and car fare.

"The combination of the economic climate as well as the year-end and the change in administration has had an impact on our business," said Andy Jewel of Hudson Legal, which has offices in 11 cities. "With the change in administration, any government investigation or other regulatory work is generally put on hold until the new people are in place. Work has been slow."

Also cutting into their business is the growing popularity of outsourcing to India. Hudson Legal has countered with an ad campaign that encourages law firms to "onshore," and choose U.S. staffing companies where there are no security or privacy concerns and where they operate in the Eastern time zone.

So it's not only the big document reviews where contract lawyers are getting hired -- it's in situations where firms can't afford to hire an attorney as an associate, and pay the related health care and overhead costs.

I found this part of the article interesting:

Howrey is one law firm that uses a large number of contract attorneys — and acknowledges pushing staffing agencies for better rates as of late. The Washington-based firm has a minimum of 75 contract attorneys on the job on any given day and has had as many as 350 with large merger matters.

"We use them in the discovery process," said Ralph Allen, chief operating officer of Howrey. "We don't normally put a $300-an-hour or $400-an-hour associate on first-level document review. We have a process where staff attorneys and associates are monitoring and driving this process, supervising these folks. It lowers the costs for our clients tremendously."

I'd be curious to know if firms employing such lawyers are marking up the rate, or simply passing through the costs directly to the client. We all know big firms frequently mark up research and copying costs, so why not contract lawyers?

This has been SFL, reporting in from Hyderabad.