You'd be really surprised (stunned really) if you spent a few years on the NYC doc review "circuit.

" There are people from all kinds of good schools: NYU, Emory, Fordham, Columbia, Penn, etc. But mostly it's Brooklyn/St Johns/Cardozo/Seton Hall/Rutgers kids- I'd say about 70% are from those schools. Kids from top, top schools usually make lousy coders. For example, I sat next to a guy on an O'Melveny [Meyers] project who I named "Dr. Smell-Good." He wore those Kenneth Cole dress boots that were popular about 8 years ago, but didn't wear socks with them. He'd take them off throughout the day and his feet smelled horrible. He was an NYU grad and got canned from a big firm in the downturn. He was literally boiling with rage at the doc review "lifestyle"- he didn't care for being berated all day and talked to like a 5 year old (which is how doc review just "is." For example, like 20 times a day there are "annoucements" and such and everyone has to move their chairs in a circle and "listen up." It's kinda like prison, but in a funny way. Once you've been on a few gigs you get used to the game and don't really notice anymore how downright sad and degrading this shit is. Poor ole Dr. Smellgood wouldn't have any part of it. When he told me he went to NYU and I screamed out "you went to NYU and are working HERE? With us losers?" he said "don't say it so loud" and "i'm not a loser, I used to make six digits." I tried to help him get on the beam, but this guy was grinding his molars down to nubs he was so angry at all the typical BS, like having to sign out to use the bathroom and not having soda at your desk, etc. Also on Fridays the temp agency usually brings in free pizza, but one coder has to act as "pizza monitor" because things usually get out of hand with the free grub and all. There are rules like only one slice at a time and no "seconds" until everyone has had a slice. Also no "hoarding" slices for your friends who are out smoking or asleep at their desks, etc. Dr. Smellgood would bitch and moan that he felt it was like kindergarten, etc etc. I got kinda scared he was gonna bring an AK-47 to work and take us all out in a rage. Luckily that case settled one day at like 10 am and we all got sent home- they even paid us until 12 noon, which is rare. Another dude from Yale was called "fade out" because he would just kind of babble in this soft voice about random shit and look around to see if anyone was listening. He was big on JFK assasination trivia and crackpot theories and such- he would usually get canned pretty quick because he was just too far out to be a somewhat productive coder. There was a really funny Asian chick from I think Cornell who I worked with at Lexolution, which is an agency with its own doc review workspace on 40th st. She brought like half her apartment to work: she had a coffemaker, all kinds of plates/mugs/cups, real silverware, little desk gadgets etc. Mind you that we sit at Bingo-hall type tables all packed one on top of each other, so your neighbor is like a cell

mate. So one day she shows up with this little electric space-heater to use under her desk. She plugs it into a power strip and BAM!- blows out the electric for the whole room! It was beyond awesome. The super for the building was stuck in NJ so we got paid to sit there all day in the dark and do basically nothing. I'll answer any other doc review questions you have- ask away.

-----------------The dude was a 100% legit Yale grad. He was no kid- this guy was in his mid 40s at least. I think he had some sort of nervous breakdown at another Biglaw firm where he was actually an associate. As I said, he was a really weird dude and pretty much had little to no grip on reality. One time he was washing his clothes in the break-room sink and talking about how "big cotton" had JFK whacked because he was going to ban DDT. He was one funny dude. He always wanted to have a beer with my crew, but he was a little too weird to hang with outside of work. You see, Sullivan [Cromwell] used to kick the coders $15 a day for food if you worked/billed more than 11 hours in a day. We'd usually head over to White Horse Tavern and just drink up the money (they had $2 McSorleys) and usually someone like Holbs would bring coke and everyone would do a bump or two, then head back to Sullivan with a nice buzz and fart around in the basement until like 2 am telling "chuck norris facts" to each other and maybe coding a document here and there. "Chill and bill" was the name of the game. Sullivan was like an ATM Machine for TTT grads to loaf around at, and you could easily make 3K or more a week if you wanted to sit there until 2 am every night. Here's a funny story- this one really preppy dude "Pat" from a good school has once been an in-house counsel at some large company, etc. Somehow he "washed out" and ended up down in the SullCrom cellar with the rest of us TTT losers. So one night at like 1 am this associate came down and asked if anyone was willing to go upstairs and vaccum/clean up the large conference room. Some geek partners from SullCroms London office were on their way from JFK for some zero-hour deal and the big conf. room was a mess from some reception earlier in the evening. All the cleaning crew were gone for the night, so it fell to the coders to go up there and clean the mess. So me & Pat volunteered and went up there and cleaned up all this dried-up food, empty glasses, papers, and other rubbish. It was pretty funny to think back on my law school days, hoping to have a nice career and actually amount to something in life. Instead I'm on the 30th floor of SullCrom at 1 am cleaning up garbage like a janitor. If you can't laugh about it, you'll quickly end up committing suicide. It kinda sucks having no idea when

your project will end, if you'll get another one quickly, what to do if you get sick (as i said, no health ins. for temps), plus all the student loans and having to pay your own CLE and bar dues, etc. Plus you do boring, miserable dead-end work for hour upon endless hour with no hope of promotion, advancement, or positive career development. At least doc review used to be an easy way to make decent $$$, but not anymore. Projects are few and far between and rates have fallen to 25-30 bucks an hour in NYC and hours are usually capped at 40. Also you get no health benefits since you're just a temp. You can buy a shitty plan from the agencies, but the minute your project ends you gotta go on Cobra which sucks too. Also many of the projects now require 2 or more years of "electronic discovery" experience. Gone are the days when any mouth breather from a TTT like Brooklyn, 'Bozo, NYLS, etc could just sign up with the agencies and get on a gig quick. Hell, in 2008 I was getting $45 an hour on a Dechert project doing priv. log work. Now that same gig is paying $30 flat. I don't recommend Dechert because their associates love to read verbatim from the training manual for hours on end, and also are scared shitless of the partners who are really, really nasty people. I actually had to interview with the partner before the priv log project and she was one nasty old witch. I can't imagine having to deal with her on an ongoing basis. I worked with some strange, strange people at Dechert. They have awesome snack machines where you can even get cereal and the snack machine pours the milk into it from a little spout. So this coder I'll call "JJ" would get his Rice Krispies in the morning, eat them at his desk, and then brush his teeth at this desk and spit the toothpaste into the empty cereal bowl and leave it there all day. It was f-ing gross. He also did push-ups like every hour under his desk, and sit-ups too. He never looked at any documents, he just downloaded Bob Dylan bootlegs all day and burned them on to CDs. He was a member of demonoid, which had all the best downloads and was always lording his demonoid password over everyone so we'd kiss his ass. Plus we were getting $45 to do priv log and they put is in a seperate room. The non priv log coders were in a big room and called our room the "bullpen." They were jealous of our room and would try and loiter around in there and pretend they were priv loggers too. We got $10 an hour more than them so they were pissed at that too. You see, the associate actually sat in their room and wouldnt let them talk or surf the 'net, but our room was unsupervised so we could do whatever we wanted, which was basically anything other than work. One thing to remember about doc review is not to bring anything you care about to work with you, because when the project ends you are not allowed back in the building. Usually it works like this: You

have no docs for 2 or 3 days and the associate claims he 'doesn't know anything' but that more docs are on the way, or being scanned/loaded, etc. So you'll leave work at say 9 pm and as you're walking to the subway the agency calls and says "Sorry, the project is over." See, they can't tell the coders face to face the gig is up, because many of them are insane and will download viruses into the computers, or start screaming/crying/yelling, etc. It can get very messy. So they lie and tell you there are more docs coming, etc and once you're off the property the agency calls and tells you "game over." So if you left your stuff up there, they have security bring it down to you, provided it doesn't get tossed or stolen in the meantime. I have done over 30 temp projects in NYC and every time you get canned it is after work and done via telephone. ----------------------

I will have to say that, in many cases, the doc reviewers don't do themselves any favors by usually abusing, exploiting, or otherwise f-ing up any little privileges the firms give them. For example, at Paul Weiss they have a really great cafeteria called the "Jury Room." They gave the coders $10 a day in credits to use in there- it was a little card that they punched each time you used it. The prices in there were cheap- they have a grill section and you can get a small delmonico steak with 'fixins for about $7 (this was in 2005). I ate the steak every day and it was always very tasty and often downright delicious. I eat my steaks Pittsburgh rare, and the grill guy got to know me and called me "p-burg" and always made my steak just the way I liked it. We used to roll up there as a gang and play "Price is Right." In this game you have to get as close as possible to the $10 food limit w/out going over (cause you have to pay out o pocket if you exceed the $10 food card limit). Some things like salad are sold by weight, so the game can get dicey if you start loading up with croutons and such. The sodas, coffee etc are all free in this cafeteria. You can just grab a cup and have as much as you want. You can see where this is going. This one really dirty guy we called "ShitFingers" (because he never washed his hands after taking a dump- there were like 10 witnesses to this fact) goes up there to get a soda, but he's pressing on the little bar that makes the soda come out with a glass he'd already used and had like slobbered all over. So this old lady next to him says "did you already use that glass- if you did that's gross, you're getting your spit on the soda fountain." It was kinda gross, the glass had like mayo and shit smeared all over it. So ShitFingers gets into this huge argument with her and they have it out there at the soda fountain (most of these coders have bad tempers and get offended at the drop of a hat). Turns out she was a partner- oops. So the next day the agency guy comes into the basement and says we can't use the cafeteria anymore. The agency said we would get a non-taxable $10 added to our checks so we could

get food from outside. Goodbye delmonico steak- hello street meat. The only good thing about this is that we got to meet Rachel Ray- there is a really good Halal food cart at 56th st and one day her and her film crew rolled up and offered to buy everyone in line lunch who let her cut in front of them. In real life she is literally like 4 feet tall. She was also smoking a cigarette. The other problem with getting banned from the cafeteria was that everyone was now eating at their workstation. We were in the basement under the Rock Center, down in the bowels of the building with the furnaces and HVAC equipement, etc. With all the food garbage from like 200 coders eating down there, the place got infested with cockroaches. They were even crawling inside the computers and such. So Paul Weiss had the place roach-bombed and the day after the dead roaches were everywhereon the keyboards, in the printers, all over the floor. Pretty gross. Even ShitFingers thought it was a little too dirty, even for him. I forgot to mention that we weren't allowed upstairs period after ShitFingers pissed off the partner with his soda fountain debacle. So we couldn't use the Paul Weiss bathrooms- we had to use the public bathroom in the Rock Center. It only had one stall and a homeless dude named "Bones" pretty much lived in there and would holler "i'm in here motherfucker" every time you went to take a leak. So everyone started using the Heartland Breweries bathroom, which was pretty dirty too. Anyway, that was a JD project- you didn't have to be admitted to work the gig. Because of that we only got $21 an hour. Most everyone there was waiting to get admitted to NY, because the minute you did you could jump to a SullCrom gig which paid $32 an hour plus OT. I got admitted right after the roach bomb, and was at SullCrom the day after getting NY Bar admission up in albany. After Paul Weiss, the SullCrom cellar was like a 5 star hotel. At Sullivan the coders have their own bathroom, break rooms, and even a little kitchen to use. That makes a lot of sense. It's kind of like "steerage" on those old ships- hell, would you want a dirty old TTT coder coming upstairs to use the firm's associate-level facilities? Of course not. Sullivan thus gives their coders their own little basement "world" which they never have to leave. It was really funny one day about 3 years ago when I was starting a gig at SullCrom. My project was starting the same day that the SA class was starting, and they had this big reception table set up in the lobby with 'Welcome Class of '08" or whatever. I went up to the table and told them I was there for the doc review gig- they actually told me to wait outside and they'd come get us when the SA's had cleared the lobby! God forbid a TTT grad contaminate their little party! Later in the day they took all the SA's to the basement (i think they were getting a grand tour of the firm) and the associate was telling them "these are all just temps." The SA's looked at us like we were

animals in a zoo or something, it was degrading in kind of a funny way though. In doc review you work at whatever spare broom closet, furnace room, or other hovel they stick you in (manhattan office space is pricey and why waste good $$$ on space for TTT loser temps?) On big projects you literally sit elbow-to-elbow with each other, for up to 16 hours a day. You also have to use the beat-up old furniture from the 1970s that really belongs in a dumpster. Its very much like prison, with everyone so cramped into small spaces and tensions all flaring up. Chairs are a big, big deal- sometimes a wiseass newbie will try and switch his chair with a "veteran's" chair if he gets their early that day or something. Big mistake. You see, since the furniture is all pretty much garbage, there's a real pecking order as to who gets the "best of the worst" when it comes to chair allocation. Most of the time the backrest or the swivel (or both) are broken, so if you end up with a decent chair you hang on to it for dear life. If the staff attorney or supervisor moves your seat for talking too much or causing problems, you have the right to take that chair with you to your new workstation- it's part of the "unwritten code" of the temps. I have literally seen fistfights start over people trying to nab chairs that didn't belong to them. Another problem are those "one serve coffee" machines that are often in the break room. You know those "Green Mountain" machines with the little one-serve pods? Being dirt poor, the coders are prone to "hoarding," and the popular flavors like hazelnut will often vanish the second the case/box is opened. That's because some coders will take like 50 of them and hide them near their workstation, usually in a file cabinet or under document boxes, etc. So usually all that's left for coffee is like Dark French Roast Decaf and other crap flavors. Another big thing is the take-out menu folder. There are certain Chinese restaurants that rarely give out menus, so people are very fussy about keeping the "rare" menus in the folder. It is very bad form to take that menu from the folder to your desk, because if you lose it it's the only one we had. Also do not write on the menu, ever, unless it's something funny. -----------------------------------------

I graduated in 2004 from an NYC Tier One school with a 3.1 GPA. Did an intership both summers, but the gov't agency I interned with did not have any openings when I graduated. I sent out tons of resumes, but when $$$ ran low I registered with the temp agencies and got into Paul Weiss. Then I did a couple Sullivan Cromwell gigs and left temping for a personal injury firm where I worked as an associate for 45 K and no health benefits. That firm was so miserable I seriously thought about suicide and basically started drinking and doing drugs to cope with stress and depression. I had to keep deferring loans and really couldn't survive on the low salary. I was in the personal injury firm for about one year. Then the partner at the PI firm got disbarred and the other PI firms wouldn't interview me because of having a "stain" like that place on my resume. So my only substantive experience was basically worthless because it came from a place where a guy was getting disbarred for all types of sleazy shit, etc. I didn't really like that type of work anyway- it's a nightmare dealing with injured

people and if you can't bring in cases you're pretty much topping out at 50-55 K for a salary. So I went back into temping for another 3 years or so, and also waited tables and did other non-legal jobs between projects. Doc review wasn't too bad in terms of $$$, but you have to accept being treated like complete and utter garbage all the time. You are in no way a "professional" or accorded any respect or dignity on these gigs. They lie about the project length, lie about the hours, and terminate people with no warning by calling you at 11 pm to say the gig is over. On many projects you can't have your cell phone with you- you have to check it in with the front desk before going to your worskstation, other crappy childish rules like that. Sometimes I really do wonder how things turned out so bad. Basically my "career" has been nothing but dead-end temp jobs and working for a scumbag firm. At this point I'm pretty much a ruined shell of a person, and plan on moving abroad with my fiancee so we can escape my massive student loan debt and start over elsewhere. She is a former ballet dancer and has an offer to dance with a company in Turkey, so I might take an English teaching job when we get there. It's too bad student loans can't be discharged in bankruptcy. I'd gladly resign from both bars I'm admitted to for the chance at a clean financial start. I've accepted that my legal "career" so to speak is beyond dead, and dead-end temping is the only legal job I'll ever have any chance of getting. With the debt, it's simply impossible for me to "start over" in this country and change careers. Why struggle to pay for another 25 years for an education I'm not even able to use? My hunch is also that things are going to get far, far worse in the USA over the next few years, so it's probably an ideal time to run for the exit.

--------------------------Another funny thing about doc review is that you can get "promoted" on long term (like 3 or 4 month projects) to QC (quality control) or "second level review," which means you double-check the work of the regular coders on some sort of random audit basis. That way you can't just "green light" the shitty or non-existent coding of your friends (you see, there used to be projects in the more primitive days of software where you could "batch code"- this is where you hold down CTRL and just mark a whole batch of docs "non-responsive" w/out even opening or reading them). It was great b/c you could do like 100 docs in 10 seconds and then surf the Internet or bullshit for the other 59 minutes of the hour. But the firms wised up to this and can now see how much time you spent on each doc, etc and get all other kinds of stool pigeon software to abuse and monitor the temps. Usually you get this QC "promotion" by being a hot chick or; alternatively, not constantly falling asleep

and/or drooling on your keyboard. It helps not to cause all kinds of problems either like complaining the room is too hot or chewing up all the pens, etc. Sometimes it's just plain dumb luck- they spin the "Wheel O' Coders" and your number pops up. You don't get any extra $$$ to be a QC coder, but you often will get to hang on a few extra days after the gig wraps up to finish any stray docs and double-check docs that might actually be responsive (though almost none are- would you trust TTT coders with anything potentially important? enough said). So I was on this huge doc review for a pharma tort case and somehow got promoted to QC. One day the staff attorney tells me to go help this old bald Indian dude who called himself "Gahdhi" (like prison, most people in doc review have "street names" while on project, in case you haven't noticed). He was a really nice guy and was saving money so he could retire in India. His wife was already over there scouting out houses, etc. His real name was impossible to pronounce unless you have a certain kind of tongue or something, according to him. Bigger problem is, apparently Gandhi had zero experience using computers, which isn't exactly great news when your job involves using one 16 hours a day. According to the staff attorney, all of the PDF docs that Gandhi was doing redactions on were seriously screwed up, with like half the page blacked out. Rather than "redactions," Gahndi's docs looked like random grafitti or modern art or whatever. Furthermore, his redactions were over parts of the page that were blank to begin with, so something was seriously wrong. So I go to his workstation to see what's going on and have him pull up a PDF doc. He does and the doc is displayed on the screen sideways. I tell him to rotate the doc and Gandi grabs hold of the whole computer monitor (this was pre-flat screen) and starts trying to turn the entire rig sideways. It was mounted on one of those swivel, ball-joint type bases (remember those?). Before I could tell him that he didn't need to move the monitor upside down and shit, somehow the wires from his monitor unplugged the computer of the chick sitting next to him (as I said, everyone sits elbow to elbow and there are wires all over the place, and like 500 things plugged into one outlet, etc). So the screen of the chick next to home goes dark, and she starts going utterly batshit crazy and says "This guy is a terrorist, I can't fucking stand him- he does this like 50 times a day! " She was livid and said 'he shouldn't fucking be here if he can't use a computer" and things of that nature. I guess it never occurred to her to investigate why Gahndi turned his monitor extremely sideways like 200 times a day, but coders aren't always the most helpful or cordial people. This chick in particular had a reputation for being really aggressive, and for some reason she had like a hundred Bic lighters all over her work

table and used to chew on them, etc. They were all gnawed down like those toys you give a gerbil or whatever. Anyway, Gahndi got really offended that she called him a "terrorist" (this was back when the Iraq war was still big news and such). He was threatening to report her to the staff attorney for racial slurs, etc, and the whole situation was becoming a huge scene. I crawled under the table to try and get the wires plugged back in while the two of them were having at it. It got out of hand pretty quickly and Gandhi starts marching up and knocking on the staff attorneys door. I got the computers back up and running and like 2 minutes later the staff attorney comes out and calls the chick into the office to get her side of the story. Then like 2 minutes later the aggressive chick storms out, grabs all her lighters and shit off the table, says "Fuck you" to me, and rolls off the project. These randomly aggressive incidents are actually pretty common on doc review, so it wasn't really as big a deal as it would be at a normal job. In fact, my definition of "normal" is now so screwed up I could probably never return to any type of legitimate office environment. Another funny guy on this project we used to call 'Sloshburg" because he showed up for work reeking of booze every day. One time he came back from lunch all lit up and started turning the lights on and off and like "breathing on people" and such. We're talking heavy Stage IV alcoholism here. He was always bragging about this million-dollar injury case he was "this close" to settling, and how as soon as it came through he was leaving doc review for good. It wasn't unusual. Many coders suffer from what I call "Willy Lohman" syndrome- their grip on reality and their place in the economic pecking order is just totally lost on them. There isn't a coder alive without a stack of cheesy Vista-Print business cards with all sorts of official titles and such like "Law Office of Thomas Montgomery Coder, Attorney and Counselor at Law, Master of Chancery, King's Bench, Member of the Bar, Juris Doctor, Esquire." It's like some kind of closet "prestige injection" for them, apparently. I think one guy even has his LSAT score on his card, but it was probably like a 149 or whatever. These cards are of course for their "side practices," which involve getting their brothers/moms/ realtives etc. out of speeding tickets and other occasional rinky-dink stuff. What's really funny is that almost all of them use the same Regus mail-drop company in NYC as their "office address," and when they swap cards they'll say things like "oh, our practices are in the same building" and act all important for a few minutes. It gets depressing after a while seeing these fools carry on this pathetic charade on project after project. The only time I ever had business cards was when I was an associate at the personal injury shop, and they were those cheesy ones from Staples that come on perforated cardstock sheets to print yourself. About a week after I started working there the secretary printed them up and

left a stack on my desk. I'd carry the whole sheets in my little briefcase and if someone wanted a card I just ripped one off the sheet, like a dispenser. It was kind of handy, really. -------------------------

Nah, the worst thing about the legal industry is how mind-numbingly boring the work is. For example, on the Dechert case where I did the priv. log, the case was (from what we were told as temps) about some audit of all these complex credit-swap "deals." Each deal had a code name like "Peachtree" or "Applewood" or other fruit-inspired names. The training session for this was the day before Thanksgiving 2008, and we sat in a small conference room with the associate from 9:30 am until 10 o'clock that night going over a huge Powerpoint presentation all about the tri-lateral sub agreements, addendums to the agreements, etc etc. Take the most boring thing you've ever read or done in life and multiply it by 10,000, and that will give a rough idea of how boring most Biglaw cases are, even for the associates. This associate was like 29 going on 60. The dood told us he hadn't slept in like 4 days and was going to miss Thanksgiving for the 3rd year in a row, etc. Those years and memories he will never get back. I really do hope the $$ is worth it to him, because he struck me as someone depresssed to the point of suicide. Toward the tail end of my coding career, I actually had the chance to become a "perma-temp" case analyst at Weil Gotshall. My ex-GF grew up in Manhattan and her two best friends (a husband and wife) worked there as 4th year associates. They both absolutely despised (not just merely hated) their jobs, but as usual got way overboard with a huge apartment, a maid/nanny, etc and couldn't afford to quit. They offered to get me in their as a staff attorney on a doc review gig they were running, which was going to last over a year. It was depressing hanging with them, since we all graduated law school the same year (albeit they both from Columbia), and were all technically "lawyers." Yet I would never be anything more than a deadend lackey at the firm, a 4th class loser on par with the janitor or restroom attendant. I tried to explain this to my non-lawyer GF, but she just didn't "get" it. She was like "oh, won't it be great to work with Mike and Kate at a big firm?" She had no idea (and they were too nice to tell her) that I was going to be in the basement and have no future at the place. So one night I got drunk and told her how we were NEVER going to have anything, and the best I could ever do was probably 65-75 K a year and no health insurance. Since she wanted kids, she dumped me shortly thereafter. So yes, the pain of not "making it" in this industry can indeed bleed over and ruin almost every aspect of your life. It sure did for me. It's not that I'm jealous of people like them who make the big $$$, just

"awkward" since they knew damn well what I was and the type of "lawyer" (if that's what you want to call it) I would always be. They were very nice people and never in any way condescended or berated me in any way, but that sting is just always kind of "there," you know?

-----------------------I have tried [careers outside the law], but there isn't much of a market (esp. in this recession/depression) for people with no useful business experience, a TTT law degree, and a resume with about 30 different temp jobs over 5 years time. Plus, with substantial student debt, I can't really afford to "start from the bottom" and make 25-30 K a year in another business or industry. I already have loans in default and there's really no way out of this mess. Hell, bar dues alone are $375 for NY and $400 for NJ, plus another $300 for CLE's. I was scraping by last year doing re-fi mortgage closings for Quicken Loans, but a new loan manager took over for NJ and now they send notaries for $50 to cover the closings rather than $150 for attorneys. More and more, businesses & people are phasing out lawyers wherever they can. I covered a traffic court appearance for a buddy yesterday and, of the 200 or so people there, only 4 had attorneys with them. (And no, you can't go up to people in court and ask them to hire you- it's against the ethics rules and can get you in trouble). A couple people actually did ask if I was a lawyer, and they wanted to discuss their cases, but of course had no $$$. From TV shows and such, the general public have become enamored with the idea that lawyers are provided free to everyone for every problem. Even personal injury, once the "golden ticket" for TTT grads, is really, really tough nowadays. The carriers will NOT settle any car accident cases without bone fractures, and fight to the death over all the herniated disc cases and such. You can do OK with employment law- I did settle a sexual harassment case for my sister's friend for 18 K last spring with a letter and half dozen phone calls. But to get enough cases like that to earn a steady living is very, very hard unless you already have a "spare" 50 K or so laying around for google adwords or your own sleazy TV commercial, etc. The typical newbie solo gets only drips & drabs, hence their constantly running back to these temporary doc review projects to supplement their meager incomes from their own "practice." NYC and NJ are really just too saturated with lawyers to make a go of it as a solo, and I'm too ground down by this industry to sit another bar and relocate to another state. At this point it just isn't worth it. Non-legal employers don't understand the world of doc review, and often ask "why were you never made permanent anywhere" and things like that. They don't understand that doc review is transient work, and that lowlife TTT coders like me are not offered associate positions no matter how many docs you code.

Another thing I forgot to mention is that most firms make you sign a paper before you start the temp job which states you may NOT put the firm's name on your resume or do anything to make others think you actually worked there. God forbid a bunch of TTT grads were shopping their SullCrom or Paul Weiss resumes around! Instead, you are only allowed to put the name of your temp. agency (like HireCounsel, Lexolution, Update Legal, etc) and the duration of the project. The firms want to make damn sure some TTT'er doesn't soil their name by putting it on their garbage resume. And as I said, my only substantive experience was in personal injury law. Understand that most injury lawyers who don't advertise on TV bribe "runners" to get cases for them- like hospital orderlies, nurses, ambulance drivers, etc. Here's how it works: the runner gives an accident victim the lawyer's card with a $20 bill wrapped around it and says "call that # and you'll get another $100 later today." The runners do this to people they "know" will not think it's anything unusual, like someone who's homeless or otherwise not very educated (most of the really good cases come from very poor urban areas- they tend to have more accidents since they frequent places which are in bad repair- housing projects, dive bars- and also tend to not wear seat belts or have cars with airbags). So when the accident victim calls, the lawyer sends another dood out to the hospital (or their apt. or house if they've been discharged), gives them the $100, and has them sign a retainer. Bingo- they get a case worth thousands in lawyer fees for fronting the client $120 bucks. The runner gets paid a "commission" based on the quality of cases he/she brings in. This isn't some TV show script, it's business as usual for NYC/NJ personal injury. How the hell else do you think some solo in Brooklyn or Queens you've never heard of makes big $$$ doing PI? Hardly anyone ever gets caught, about twice a year the AG's office plants some undercover folks in the ER to catch a few ambulance chasers, but mostly it gets ignored. The other way these places get cases is by paying sleazy "medical mills" in the outer boroughs to "refer" cases to them. If someone is treating at a walk-in clinic and the "doctor" learns they were in an accident, he calls the PI lawyer and offers him the case. The catch is that the fee for the "medical reports" (wink wink) vary based on the injury. For sprains and soft tissue cases, it's usually 1200-1500 bucks, for a fracture it can be like 3 K or more. It's really sleazy shit and most of the clinics are run by Russian mobsters. To play this game you have to have enough cash to get the "medical reports," which is more expensive than paying runners. But there is much less chance of getting busted. So for anyone considering a career in personal injury law, that's the 5 minute primer. You can see now why associates in this area are paid almost nothing: they don't bring anything to the table. Getting the

case is all that matters: the "legal work" is mostly cut and pasted stock pleadings and depositions where you try your best to get these illiterate, often crack-addicted clients to put some kind of coherent story together about the puddle of urine they slipped on at Roy's Billard Hall or wherever. Trials are very, very rare and mostly are reserved only for VERY high value cases (like 200 K+). Usually the trials are "farmed out" to a stable of silver-haired shysters who are very slick at getting juries to open the floodgates and get a huge payday. The per-diem trial guys get a 1/3 curt of any verdict they get. No lawyer in their right mind would let a young associate do a trial, because when you guy to trial you have to pay for the doctor upfront to testify, which is 5 K or more. And this money is coming from the firm's pocket since these are contingency cases (YOU DON'T PAY UNLESS WE WIN!- you've all seen the commercials, lol). The "typical" auto or trip n' slip case you just scrounge whatever you can from the insurance company and move on. It's a volume business, as that's the only way to make $$$.

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 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 nefarious frauds. At his disbarment 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.

-------------------------------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 paralegal 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.

-------------------------------Oh, I almost left out the best story of all. So on the big pharma review project (Seroquel), there was this really creepy older skinny dude who, immediately upon getting to his workstation, would peel off his shoes. That's not terribly unusual in itself, since a lot of coders kick off their dogs since you're sitting for like 16+ hours in the same chair once you get to work. But this guy wore these "pedophile socks," you know: always in a loud color like pink or bright green. Also they were stitched so there was a receptacle for each individual toe, and had like gold glitter lines and shit on them. Weird, right? About 2 days into the gig I go to take a leak and here's this guy yakking on his cell phone in front of the urinal wearing nothing on his feet but those socks. C'mon now, who struts around a public restroom like that? Esp. one where like 500 coders a day are pissing and spitting all over the bathroom floor? He was literally standing in a soggy puddle of urine with nothing but those socks on. I'd never before seen a coder who went to the restroom with just stocking feet. So after that my crew started calling him "Piss Feet" behind his back. But that's not the funniest part.... One day we roll on to the job at like 9 am and there's a message on the dry erase board that the URL to get your documents has changed. Apparently the firm had switched software companies or whatever. The staff attorney made like 10 announcements that day to look at the board for the new URL, since obviously w/out it you couldn't pull a batch of shit to review. Around 7 pm that night the staff attorney does a routine "cruise by" (kinda like a warden makes the rounds in a prison) to make sure everyone had docs and was actually working and not screwing around,

etc. So she rolls by PissFeet's station and he's sitting there in his piss-socks reading a paperback novel under his desk. She says "hey man, is there something wrong? Why aren't you doing work?" (I forgot to mention that this gig was uber-Gestapo style and there was basically zero tolerance for blatantly screwing around, etc. We'd use code-words to tip each other off if we were bullshitting with a neighbor and the guy with his back turned didn't see her making rounds: on this gig the code word was "apples." If you had your back turned and were in the middle of a story and your neighbor said "yeah, I like those apples" it was a cue to turn back towards your screen and look busy ASAP. As I said, this shit is much more like prison culture than any sort of "career") So she rolls up on PissFeet and catches him red-handed with his nose in a Stephen King book. She says "PissFeet (real name omitted), "what is your problem? Don't you have a batch?" PissFeet says "I'm sorry, my machine is broken. I haven't been able to pull a batch since 9 am today." Did I mention this guy looked and talked just like a stock child molester from a 1980s sitcom? What a fucking weirdo. So she says: "Piss Feet, you know our URL changed today, right?" He plays all dumb and says "It did? When did that happen?" She says, "about 11 hours ago- didn't you hear the announcements and check the board?" He says, "oh, I didn't know we had to check the board ourselves?" Mind you, on doc review there's a dry erase board in each room and, like a preschool, you're told at orientation to check it every day for updates and new rules, etc. So to make a long story short, Piss Feet was never seen again after that evening. Hell, the dude didn't even have his computer turned on, much less doing any work. It's called in temp. agency lingo being "rolled off the project." They never come out and say you got fired, or give any feedback or criticism. It's always either "the project ended" (true), or "you were rolled off this project-it wasn't a good fit" (i.e. you were canned for being a retard or troublemaker). I myself got canned several times for being a general asshole and troublemaker. For example, there was a project on Rector Street that was actually pretty cool. This gig was for the NYC Law Dept, Civil Division. We got $30 an hour from an agency called "The Dine Group" to code docs for a construction

lawsuit case involving the new Bronx Criminal Courthouse. There were lots of cool coders on this gig, we'd smoke pot during lunch, sneak beers and shit into work, etc. It was great. Also my seat-mate and I won the New Yorker magazine cartoon caption contest, which was a big deal at the time. We spent like 90% of the "workday" on that, so winning for once was a really, really big deal. We were the talk of the coder community after that score. It was the best feeling I've ever had in my entire life. But soon we started running low on docs on this gig, and everyone was waiting for the ax to fall. It was right before Xmas 2009, so everyone was trying to stack as much $$$ as possible since Jan/Feb are usually very slow for doc review work. So the staff attorney on this gig was a good ole' Southern belle from Tulane who really wasn't very hot. She also had sort of an annoying personality. She really thought she was a "Carrie Bradshaw" (that's what I called her) even though she shared some dump studio in Astoria, Queens with another loser coder. She was in love with her pathetic "authority," such as it was. Always bragging about hanging at "Corner Bistro" and fighting off all these I-banker suitors, etc. Like most coders, it was a complete fantasy world she'd spun for herself. Chick was a 6 at best. So when the docs really began running dry, I started taking like 200 cigarette breaks a day since my buddy Holbs had just been to visit from New Hampshire and dropped off like 20 cartons of Parliaments his girlfriend had shoplifted from the smoke shop. There was hardly anything else to do. And every time I'd leave the room, I'd say "see y'all later, if there is a later" and, at the end of the day, "see you all tomorrow, if there is a tomorrow." Things like that. Gallows humor and all. The gig was just about done, as I saw it. Docs were few and far between. But Carrie Bradshaw, being a southerner, didn't really find the humor in it. She called me aside like 20 times and lectured: "you're stirring up trouble, you smartass" and "I know for a fact there's more documents coming, that's why I'm the staff attorney." The old brag-a-rino. She really thought she was better than us regular coders because she went to Tulane. So one morning in front of everyone I asked if she grew up in a "double wide" down in Armpit, Arkansas or whatever and she got royally pissed. You could say she took great offense to it. So I went to lunch thinking nothing of it, fuck her.... and BAM- good old "Dine Group" agency calls before I cleared the lobby and says I was "rolled off the project, effective immediately." It was like 12 below zero outside, so I went to Blarney Stone and mowed a huge corned beef sandwich, then went to see a movie. Guess Carrie Bradshaw had some major juice to get me canned that quick. I was lucky.

--------------------

Another funny thing about personal injury firms is that they're almost pathologically cheap when it comes to office space & office supplies. Usually these firms are in some grungy little bodega-sized storefront in an outer borough, or in like windowless D-class Manhattan office space (mine was the latter). You see, personal injury "clients" are mostly dirt poor, uneducated folks- in fact, many are homeless. That said, it's pointless to piss away $$$ on nice offices and such since anywhere with chairs and running water is likely to be a huge upgrade from what they're used to. So when I first started at the firm I finished cutting/pasting a boilerplate motion together, and asked the boss where the exhibit tabs were kept. He looked at me like I'd asked him when my new Ferrari would be ready to pick up from the dealership. "I don't waste money on that shit," he said. Then he tells me to go next door and ask X (the other partner) where to get them from. So I roll in and X is screaming on the phone at some angry crackhead about her trip n' slip case and why she hasn't "got paid yet" and the typical ranting & shit. When he's done I ask him if he has any exhibit tabs. I forgot to mention that his office looked like the inside of a recycling depot, with about 10,000 old newspapers thrown all over, motions stacked up the ceiling, garbage pretty much everywhere. He grunts and then fishes a Defendant's motion from a pile of shit next to his desk, then pulls a bent flathead screwdriver from the desk drawer and proceeds to pry the Velotext binding apart. The he tosses me the loose exhibit tabs and says "I'll leave this screwdriver on the desk so you can use it whenever." That's how they rolled. Prying apart incoming motions to plunder their office supply content. Another funny thing was that they bought those knockoff printer toners from a dood on Canal Street who sold them off the back of a station wagon. They were terrible and all our papers looked like a charcoal briquette had been rubbed across them. One time a judge in Queens asked me if I moonlighted as a chimney sweep and was cracking up at how illegible the shit was. Another funny habit of my boss was bringing dead batteries back to Duane Reade. The office had one of those electric combination locks on it, since turnover there was so high that he'd have to change keys about 6 times a month if it had a regular lock. Easier just to re-program the combination when

someone quit/got fired/committed suicide etc. So about every month or so the lock needed 4 new "AA" size batteries. The cheap ass would keep the battery package and have the secretary bring the dead ones back to Duane Reade scotch-taped into the pack and tell the clerk that they were dead when we bought them, etc. It worked every fucking time and was one of his big claims to fame. He said he learned that trick growing up in East New York, where he had a bunch of toy robots in the 1950s or whatever and always got free batteries by using that "trick." He was very popular because his robots always ran full steam on fresh batteries, which were apparently very expensive back then. He was the talk of the town. Here's another story: In NYC, when you settle an injury case for a minor under 18, the judge has to approve the settlement and review its terms, etc. If the judge thinks its a shit deal, they can void the settlement and force you to trial. It's called an "Infant Compromise Order" and these appearances are very dicey, since so many PI firms are sleazy and try to inflate phantom "expenses" and other stuff to grab a few extra $$$ from the kiddies. The judge sets up the bank account for the child directly, and NO ONE can touch a dime of the loot without court order once deposited. Esp. not the parents, who would of course piss it away in 5 minutes if given the chance. So I roll into this Infant Comp hearing in the Bronx one day and find the clients (a 9 year old kid) and his dad sitting on the bench outside the courtroom. Dad is a real gang-banger- gold tooth, gang tats, scars, etc. He greeted me by saying "Where the fuck is Mister X?" (my boss). I told him I worked for Mr. X and was there to cover the appearance and explain the settlement terms to him. This was a "heavy" case (in PI lingo anything worth north of 100 K is called a "heavy case" fyi.) The kid had lead poisoning from eating the flakes & stuff like potato chips in whatever housing project they called home. Anything over a 10 is a high lead reading, this kid had a 64 and had suffered permanent brain damage and learning disabilities, etc. The settlement was around 450 K, so the kid would take home 300 K after our fee. So the dad says "Did you bring my check" and I told him "that's not how it works, the judge puts the money in a bank account until the kid turns 18." Oh boy was this guy pissed. I forgot to mention he had an Escalade brochure in his hand and apparently

planned a visit to the Cadilliac dealership right after court. He said he needed a car to drive the kid to day care, and how he was going to explain all of that to the judge. I told him it was highly unlikely that the judge would let him buy a luxury SUV with his kid's brain damage money, but this guy wanted no part of listening. He already had put his headphones back on. There was no way I could let this settlement get voided. You see, in Shitlaw every single thing that ever goes wrong is all YOUR fault. There is also absolutely no training whatsoever, it is "sink or swim" from day one. Questions are not encouraged, since these guys have to spend every working minute scrounging for and signing up new cases, and settling old ones. Asking questions is a quick way to get canned, I saw it happen to about a dozen guys in the year and a half I worked there. Thank God it turned out this guy wasn't even the kid's real father or guardian. The judge's clerk asked for his ID before the hearing and, seeing a different last name, asked a few questions. Turns out he was the mom's current boyfriend and she sent him over there to pick up the check. He started getting loud and all, so the bailiff came over and they bounced outta there real quick. I told the clerk to recalendar the thing and we'd try to track down the mother for the next appearance. So back at the office I get screamed at for not "following up" and getting the mom into court. I told him that I only learned of the appearance yesterday and was in deposition until 5 pm and had left a message on their machine, etc. He said next time to use "Sherlock." That's another funny story. You see, it's very hard to keep tabs on injury clients, since many are in gangs, homeless, moving around public housing etc. When you finally get a fucking settlement, the work has only just begun because you then have to track these losers down and have them sign the release. So we used this shady "private eye" named Sherlock who was a former NY cop who I think did some jail time in the 80s. Sherlock's trick was to put word out "on the street" that the client had won millions in cash and had to show up at the courthouse at 9 am to have the claim form notarized. It was a great trick to get them in there, but not much fun when you have to explain that in fact they're getting 9 K for a herniated disc from their fender-bender. Oh, those were the days. BTW don't go getting all excited about signing up lead paint cases. That horse long ago limped off to the glue factory. You see, almost ALL the NYC lead cases were against an insurance carrier named Firemen's Fund, who insured all the public housing in NYC and a lot of ghetto private properties. Some genius left the lead paint policy exclusion out of almost every policy written in 2000-2001, so it started a shitlaw feeding frenzy once word got out. My boss scored millions on this shit by having doorknob-hanger ads made up and hung from every crackhouse & hovel in NYC. Some lawyers were even having runners scrape lead paint off abandoned buildings and dumping it in people's

apartments so they could cash out if the kid's lead levels were marginal (even marginal cases could get you 25 K or so nusiance value). Those cases are now mostly all gone/settled. ALL the new policies have lead paint exclusions, so even if the kid is pouring skim milk on a bowl of lead paint flakes each morning, you ain't getting a dime. -----------------------------