Poor Attorneys

So recently I've been reading a few blogs and forums about the problems many east coast lawyers are facing (I don't know is west coasters have the same problems, all the info I can find seems limited to east coasters). Apparently since the time I graduated lawschool tuitions have risen significantly at "lower tier" schools (i.e. the ones not at the top - Harvard, Yale, etc.) so students resorting to student loans, come out in debt to the tune of $100,000 or more. Thereafter, unless they are at the very top of their class and on law review (or have connections), they can't find worthwhile paying jobs, and many end up doing document review for "biglaw" firms.

Document review is where big company, like Merck, gets sued, due to Vioxx for example, and there are literally hundreds of thousands of documents that have to be produced in discovery in this mass tort claim. Each document must be reviewed to determine whether it must be produced (i.e. relevant to the case) and if so, whether there is any privileged information in it that needs to be redacted. I did a little bit of work in this field when I first got my law license in PA (and frankly I was annoyed that the headhunters didn't tell me about this stuff when I first moved to PA, I could have done with my CA license and made more money than the paralegal jobs I got, but back to the main issue). It was easy work, you pull the document up on a computer screen, code it, go on to the next document. You could set your own hours, 9-5 was pretty much necessary, but you could work more or sometimes a little less, if you wanted or needed to. The only thing is that most of this 'contract work' provides no benefits (although some staffing agencies will allow you to buy into their benefits package) and, of course, its not really stimulating work nor does it provide any real legal experience.

As it is, I feel for document review attorneys who are struggling to pay off these huge loans, working jobs for $25-$30 per hour ($50,000-$60,000) without benefits. Now apparently the ABA (who accredits the multitude of these lower tiered but expensive lawschools) has decided that its "OK" for biglaw firms to outsource their document review projects to India. You have got to be kidding me. Work that requires a US law license can now be done by someone with who knows what legal training and certainly no US law license in another country? Naturally the lawfirms love it. Why pay a US attorney $30 an hour when his/her Indian counterpart will do the same work for $5 an hour? Hell, they might not even tell their client they've outsourced the work, thereby pocketing the difference when they bill out the work at $150 per hour.

Its bad enough that the market is glutted enough with too many lawyers, with huge debts, that sink non "biglaw" salaries down to $60,000-$70,000, even for lawyers with significant experiencee (just no clients). Now there will be even more out of work attorneys, who will be forced to take just about any job, so employers will lower salaries even more. All the while lawschools advertise that their graduates earn up to $160,000. Yeah, some do, but only some, not the majority, yet everyone has to pay the high tuition. You don't get a tuition refund if you fail to make top 10%. Maybe they should.