Where do contract / temp attorneys come from? Forum

[areyouinsane]

I forgot to mention that on "office days" (when you don't have court or depositions, which rarely happens) you have to "Jam." "

Jamming is when you call an insurance adjuster on some bastard "no-pay" case as many times a day as you have to to jam their voicemail box full- you do this by leaving your phone off the hook after leaving your message, and leaving the same message like 10 to 20 times in a row or until the mailbox is reported full.

You see, insurance adjusters get paid crap and usually have like 20,000 files to handle, so you can pretty much never get one on the phone. So to get a callback you have to do everything possible to fuck up their voicemail, like leaving the same message 100 times in a two hour period. My old boss was such a prick that he had a police whistle he would blast into the speakerphone after leaving his voicemail messages. Then when they called back all deaf and pissed he'd say the insurance company must have a shitty phone system and he'll help them sue for their hearing damage. He was a real character.

One other time he started swearing at this one poor adjuster and calling her a cunt and things like that because she wouldn't settle some fender bender case. A week later I was going thru the mail and the CEO of the insurance company had sent this nasty letter saying how his employee was abused and called a c_nt and a b_tch and all these other names. You know that trick where you substitute a __ for a letter in a curse word? So I show it to the boss and all he says is "this asshole needs to learn how to spell cunt- he left all the letters and shit out. What does he think this is, "Wheel of Fortune?"

Oh, there was this other hilarious shyster that used to be friends with my boss. I'll begin by saying that under NYC Sidewalk Law, an unlevel sidewalk slab must be at least 2 inches apart or it's considered "de minimis" and you can't get any $$$ for the trip n' fall. So this clown had a special fake ruler made where one inch was really one half inch, and he'd photograph the defect with the fake ruler next to it. He was smart and knew the city were too lazy/incompetent to actually send someone out there and take their own measurements, so he'd roll into a deposition or court settlement conference with photos showing a two-inch separation (which of course was in reality only one inch, if that) and settle the cases for whatever he could get.

Finally some judge or another lawyer smelled a rat, and his office got raided and turned up the fake ruler and tons of other neafarious frauds. At his disbarrment hearing he tried to claim he bought the ruler at Staples and it was "made wrong at the factory." That dood was like a legend in NYC personal injury. He was later prosecuted for like 200 counts of fraud and now resides in Attica, NY, which is a bit upstate lol.

[quixotical]

The "jamming" technique and the fake ruler is just so over-the-top crazy that I don't doubt it at all. Areyouinsane, you really, really should consider writing a book. You have a great deal of talent and a natural voice-- you convey the absurdity of the situations you encounter while maintaining believability. It's very hard to achieve both pathos and humor, but you do it naturally with your storytelling. I really think a memoir or novel based on your experiences would appeal to publishers and would sell. I think your voice and style would make a compelling narrative.

[shoeshine]

The fact that I am the only one that realizes this is thesealocust is ridiculous. Troll on thesealocust. Troll on.

[Total Litigator]

Yeah, the stories are both halarious and frightening/depressing at the same time. That's a good combo for hooking readers. That, and a best seller like this might help blow the lid off this "law school scam." Here's what I reccomend areyouinsane, as you probably don't have all the time in the world to sit down and write a novel. Write a good 20 pages. Make it your best writing ever, include your best stories, but make it read like the 20 pages would be found consecutively in a novel. Then mass mail (ever mass mail before? )that to all the publishing company's you can asking if they'd be interesting in seeing another 40 pages or signing you for a book deal. Can't hurt to try right? To write a full-on first novel you probably won't have to write more than 100 word pages single spaced (there are page restrictions for first timer's anyway).

1% of American's have a law degree. I think lawyers are a heavily under targeted market.

[Total Litigator]

The fact that I am the only one that realizes this is thesealocust is ridiculous. Troll on thesealocust. Troll on.

Well then thesealocust knows his shit then. What's the big deal?

[shoeshine]

The fact that I am the only one that realizes this is thesealocust is ridiculous. Troll on thesealocust. Troll on.

Well then thesealocust knows his shit then. What's the big deal?

It isn't a big deal. It is still great writing. But the point is it isn't genuine. Thesealocust never temped. The stories are still entertaining but less genuine. It would be like finding out Tucker Max was a virgin.

I was just pointing this out before Thesealocust has a James Frey moment.

[ChiCity22]

LOL @ people thinking this dude is a gifted writer or something

[Br3v]

LOL @ people thinking this dude is a gifted writer or something

lol @ lol

[quixotical]

1% of American's have a law degree. I think lawyers are a heavily under targeted market.

1% sounds a little high. Where are you getting that number from?

[Total Litigator]

LOL @ people thinking this dude is a gifted writer or something

lol @ lol

He would definitely need a professional editor, but the content and style is there. Obv its not Hemmingway. He would also get good PR from having a rags to riches story. The morning talkshows would love that shit. And yes, it is pretty funny how serious I am about this lol

[Br3v]

1% of American's have a law degree. I think lawyers are a heavily under targeted market.

1% sounds a little high. Where are you getting that number from?

You bought an odd lot on purpose?
well at least thats helpful

[Total Litigator]

1% of American's have a law degree. I think lawyers are a heavily under targeted market.

1% sounds a little high. Where are you getting that number from?

Honestly I just thought I heard that number a long time ago. I checked it out and there is actually around 1,100,000 lawyers who have currently registered with the bar (so .3% of Americans). Add the number of lawyers who didn't renew their bar memberships or never passed the bar ever, and the number of people with a JD is probably closer to .4%. So yes I overstated quite a bit apparently lol. But still... a lot of lawyers out there....

Here is a Hahvad law study on it: http://www.law.harvard.edu/programs/plp ... s.php#nusl... 1 lawyer for every 140 working adults.

[quixotical]

1% of American's have a law degree. I think lawyers are a heavily under targeted market.

1% sounds a little high. Where are you getting that number from?

You bought an odd lot on purpose?
well at least thats helpful

... I don't know what this means or why you quoted me

[flcath]

LOL @ people thinking this dude is a gifted writer or something

There is not another poster on here for whom I'd read even one post as long as the ones he's been dropping, and now I've read like six of his.

The style is remarkably similar to that dude who ran the one really good scam blog... it was like "Skadden farts" or something. I like that our guy also has (or purports to have) PI experience.

[leftistboy]

Welcome back, S. Really good to hear from you.
Why not post on the email list and let us know how you are doing?

Btw, TLSers, S/areyouinsane also did a solo gig. Some good stories there, too.

And what about that book, dude?

As for his experiences, I also did a short doc review when my own solo practice was going broke (I am a nontrad magna cum laude grad of a TTT; too old (40s) and not the right academic pedigree to get a job; not enuf $$/rich relatives/working spouse/social network to build a solo practice (it takes years unless you get are located in the right area/location(and you cannot just move to one--it requires a social network already in place))). My doc review gig was not as hellish/dreary/comical as the ones that S/areyouinsane posted in this thread. Pretty nice, actually. But doc review is much harder to come by these days. That is why I had to take a non-legal, govt clerical job.

But then again, my doc review experience was nowhere near the roses and honey that the law school employment stats promise. The truth is out there....somewhere in between S/areyouinsane's version and the law schools' stats. More toward areyouinsane's depiction of it....

[Borhas]

ambulance chasers are clever little bastards

[Rooney]

I forgot to mention that on "office days" (when you don't have court or depositions, which rarely happens) you have to "Jam." "

Jamming is when you call an insurance adjuster on some bastard "no-pay" case as many times a day as you have to to jam their voicemail box full- you do this by leaving your phone off the hook after leaving your message, and leaving the same message like 10 to 20 times in a row or until the mailbox is reported full.

You see, insurance adjusters get paid crap and usually have like 20,000 files to handle, so you can pretty much never get one on the phone. So to get a callback you have to do everything possible to fuck up their voicemail, like leaving the same message 100 times in a two hour period. My old boss was such a prick that he had a police whistle he would blast into the speakerphone after leaving his voicemail messages. Then when they called back all deaf and pissed he'd say the insurance company must have a shitty phone system and he'll help them sue for their hearing damage. He was a real character.

One other time he started swearing at this one poor adjuster and calling her a cunt and things like that because she wouldn't settle some fender bender case. A week later I was going thru the mail and the CEO of the insurance company had sent this nasty letter saying how his employee was abused and called a c_nt and a b_tch and all these other names. You know that trick where you substitute a __ for a letter in a curse word? So I show it to the boss and all he says is "this asshole needs to learn how to spell cunt- he left all the letters and shit out. What does he think this is, "Wheel of Fortune?"

Oh, there was this other hilarious shyster that used to be friends with my boss. I'll begin by saying that under NYC Sidewalk Law, an unlevel sidewalk slab must be at least 2 inches apart or it's considered "de minimis" and you can't get any $$$ for the trip n' fall. So this clown had a special fake ruler made where one inch was really one half inch, and he'd photograph the defect with the fake ruler next to it. He was smart and knew the city were too lazy/incompetent to actually send someone out there and take their own measurements, so he'd roll into a deposition or court settlement conference with photos showing a two-inch separation (which of course was in reality only one inch, if that) and settle the cases for whatever he could get.

Finally some judge or another lawyer smelled a rat, and his office got raided and turned up the fake ruler and tons of other neafarious frauds. At his disbarrment hearing he tried to claim he bought the ruler at Staples and it was "made wrong at the factory." That dood was like a legend in NYC personal injury. He was later prosecuted for like 200 counts of fraud and now resides in Attica, NY, which is a bit upstate lol.

[TNFSkier16]

At what school rank are you pretty much guaranteed nothing but contract/temp work? areyouinsane is saying TTT but on TLS, TTT could be anything from GULC to Cooley. Just want to see if we're talking Cooley range or also 50-100 rank.

[Paraflam]

The fact that I am the only one that realizes this is thesealocust is ridiculous. Troll on thesealocust. Troll on.

What makes you think this? The level of knowledge and detail in his posts makes it obvious that he's not a law student or 0L, he's clearly had a lot of experience with how stuff works. If this is flame then it's the most researched, time consuming, thought out, perfectly executed goddamn flame I've ever seen.

At what school rank are you pretty much guaranteed nothing but contract/temp work? areyouinsane is saying TTT but on TLS, TTT could be anything from GULC to Cooley. Just want to see if we're talking Cooley range or also 50-100 rank.

I graduated in 2004 from an NYC Tier One school with a 3.1 GPA.

[robotclubmember]

The fact that I am the only one that realizes this is thesealocust is ridiculous. Troll on thesealocust. Troll on.

What makes you think this? The level of knowledge and detail in his posts makes it obvious that he's not a law student or 0L, he's clearly had a lot of experience with how stuff works. If this is flame then it's the most researched, time consuming, thought out, perfectly executed goddamn flame I've ever seen.

[/quote]

Shoeshine is just being silly, or he's sheltered and just refuses to accept any version of the reality of the legal field which shows how shitty it can be.

[ndirish2010]

I'd imagine it's Cardozo, though it could be Fordham?

[crossarmant]

I'd imagine it's Cardozo, though it could be Fordham?

I'd think Cardozo. Despite not being Tier 1 or NYC strictly speaking, he does have a vendetta against Rutgers-Newark as evidenced by his other posts, so I wouldn't be surprised if that's his alma mater.

[areyouinsane]

At what school rank are you pretty much guaranteed nothing but contract/temp work? areyouinsane is saying TTT but on TLS, TTT could be anything from GULC to Cooley. Just want to see if we're talking Cooley range or also 50-100 rank.

There is no "guarantee" of contract/temp work in doc review anymore. In fact, almost every project now requires 2+ years of "electronic discovery" experience. In fact, most agencies will not even allow recent grads/bar passers to register with them anymore, since they know they won't be able to place them on a project. The market is just beyond abysmal, thanks to outsourcing and the recession. When projects do pop up, they usually are VERY short-term, like a week or two. Sometimes they're even as short as a couple days. Also I said earlier, the rates have plunged from $35-$40 an hour down to $25-$30 an hour, and no overtime. Or if there is overtime, it is not paid at time and a half anymore. This is perfectly legal under the "professional exemption" to the NYC Labor Laws. Once in a while a project will be labeled "junior level," so a new grad might get on the gig, but these projects usually pay $19 to $22 an hour.

NYC took a big hit also from "domestic" outsourcing of doc review to states like WV, NC, etc. Since cost of living is lower in these areas, they pay the temps as little as $17 an hour.

Oh ,and for the poster who asked if law students can get these gigs, the answer is no. While there are some projects that require only a JD and not bar admission, I have never been placed on (or heard of) a project that accepted law students. Non-JD projects are usually marketed/listed as "paralegal" projects and often state "No JD's please" or "admitted attorneys need not apply." They also usually require some type of Biglaw para experience. What's sad is that para projects don't really pay much less than projects which require bar admission. The value of a non-Top 14 JD has plunged down to levels that, quite frankly, are a complete embarrassment.

It's probably not worth repeating since the bi-modal salary distribution is common knowledge, but understand that if you miss the biglaw cut at OCI, chances are excellent that whatever job you find (at least in NYC/NJ) will pay south of 60 K, and more likely south of 50 K. There are some exceptions, for example Wilson Elser pays about 65 K starting, but nowadays they mostly want people with 2 years experience and can get them for that price in this market. Also, they require Biglaw type billable hours for that $$$. There is also no bonus.

[Verity]

What a price to pay for writing material. You're like the Elie Wiesel of the (sub)legal world.

[Kunfor]

The fact that I am the only one that realizes this is thesealocust is ridiculous. Troll on thesealocust. Troll on.

Well then thesealocust knows his shit then. What's the big deal?

It isn't a big deal. It is still great writing. But the point is it isn't genuine. Thesealocust never temped. The stories are still entertaining but less genuine. It would be like finding out Tucker Max was a virgin.

I was just pointing this out before Thesealocust has a James Frey moment.

Everything he says is genuine. You may learn this first-hand one day, as this thread could just as easily have been titled "where do many big firm associates go after being laid-off or failing to make partner?"