Mental Health and Temporary Legal Work
Everyone HATED ME. I was confused. It was temporary work, but we were still lawyers. “Slow down!” managers admonished me. My teammates gave me dirty looks. In #legal temp work, the reward for hard work is getting fired… and it SUCKS for attorney mental health.
I’m not going to sugarcoat it just because NOBODY talks about it. For those who don’t know, it’s common for big law firms to hire agencies to find lawyers who can’t find other work, to work on legal projects. Lots of these are document review projects for discovery.
Most lawyers on these projects are just as smart and capable as the lawyers working at the firms. But the lawyers at the firms get 6 figure salaries, benefits, sick time, etc etc… Attorneys on the temp projects usually get $20 – $30 an hour, no time off, no perks, nothing. Most people who have worked on these projects are scared to speak out because they don’t want to lose the work that they can get. So I’m speaking for all of them.
When you’re used to working hard, and suddenly the only work you can find comes with unspoken rules to work as slowly as possible, it’s terrible for self esteem and mental health. When the project ends, that’s it. Lawyers who are efficient and work quickly are HATED for it. There’s no reward for good work, no incentive, and no exceptions. If you do a great job, the managers and firms won’t notice you and hire you. It’s not healthy to think otherwise. And it SUCKS.
When there’s extra work, if contract attorneys get “really lucky,” they’ll get the “gift” of overtime approval. When overtime is approved, suddenly the hard work rule gets reversed and you’re an outcast if you won’t work all hours of the nights, weekends, sacrifice sleep, all that fun stuff. And this happens a LOT. So you do get to work hard, but only when self care is out the window.
In the age of Covid, some lawyers work their asses off for managers who don’t know their names. Then when they meet the crazy deadline, they’re rewarded with the bulk email thanking them for their hard work and telling them the project is over. Back to being unemployed. Congrats though!
In most states, these projects require a law license to work on them, but legally and in terms of credentials, when you work on these projects, you’re not actively practicing law. That sucks too. Especially if you haven’t been actively practicing law and want to move out of state one day without having to take the bar exam again. For most states, reciprocity only applies once attorneys have practiced for a certain amount of years consecutively.
Some lawyers are ok with this; maybe they don’t want to practice law, or maybe they have some other reason… but for MANY lawyers who would much rather do something else, this can be a really degrading, never ending nightmare. When you worked hard, you are perfectly capable of getting the job done, no one will hire you, and if you get upset, you’re told to stop being so entitled and privileged and that you’re lucky at least these projects are available to you, IT SUCKS. When you know no one considers you attorneys anymore, not even your own state or its bar association, IT SUCKS.
When you realize that the above statement isn’t entirely true because of the exception that you’re still a lawyer to the state bar every 2 years when you have to pay for CLE classes and to renew your law license in case anyone ever hires you for a real job again, IT SUCKS. And if you’re someone like me who has worked at law firms as a practicing attorney and you know that if you were doing the exact same work at a law firm, you somehow would be a practicing attorney, you guessed it… it sucks!
There are a TON of intelligent attorneys out there whose brains are being totally wasted. They want to work hard and they want that to be a GOOD thing again, not a ticket to unemployment. But when they look for work, they’re ridiculed for having document review on their resumes. According to the attorneys with jobs, it doesn’t count as legal work. I recognize that sometimes law firms have too much work for their staff to handle, but this is not a fair way of handling it- not with the lifestyle disparity. We need to figure out how to reconcile this. There’s work to do, attorneys who need help, and smart attorneys who need work, but need respect too. What are we going to do about this?