"I'm back in my pj's," a friend of mine told me.
At 2p.m. today, those were not the words I'd expect to come from a licensed attorney. But they did.
They're the new 'dying breed': Lawyers. Highly educated, well-respected, hardworking and unemployed.
It's 2012, and again, I see how the 2008 recession changed everything. I get a glimpse of it from my friend(s) -including myself -who are trained professionals. The legal industry took a hit and earners from that career path (except maybe criminal attorneys) faced a financial challenge.
But for my friend, who was accepted in to law school, graduated, and passed the bar exam before the financial crisis exploded, the question isn't so much about will he make six figures, it's when will he start working again.
The legal market in D.C. is saturated but, being an attorney in the 20005 (or whichever variation) zip code is a better alternative if your not at law firm or in house. Contract attorney work, sometimes called "doc review" is so ubiquitous in D.C. that it's become another career for attorneys who are not in law firms. Document reviewers are licensed attorneys that review one parties' set of documents early in the litigation phase. It's part of the discovery request. A firm will hire an agency to staff a group of lawyers to review documents that they will turn over to the other party. With the amount of work in DC, there are new doc review project that start everyday or even every week. It's incomparable anywhere else in the country. The other great thing about it is that you don't need the D.C. bar to do this kind of work, so an attorney from Florida could come to D.C. and do this kind of work immediately.
Things have changed.
Recently, the D.C. bar issued a rule saying that doc review is "the practice of law". The practice of law requires a license and attorney's must be licensed in that particular jurisdiction. This is important because before the rule was implemented, doc review was done by licensed attorney's from any jurisdiction. When the D.C. bar implemented this rule, all attorney's not licensed in the District were scaled considerably from taking on most of the doc review projects.
Isn't it bad timing to implement a rule such as this one when the nation is struggling to keep people employed?
Heretofore, we have more lawyers in their pajamas sitting on their couches waiting. Not for money to come, but to use their skill set again.
What do you think?
