Document Review #3 - How to Get Paid and Not Fired
DOCUMENT REVIEW SERIES #1:The Market #2:The Actual Work #3:Get Paid Not Fired #4:Career Strategies #5: Tales from the Shift #6:Resumes: HARD CLEAN & QUICK Crab's List Crab Media Home
Not everyone doing or seeking document review work has a substantial amount of job experience or, in particular, law office experience. In addition, document review work is almost unique in its dynamics; it has more in common with crisis consulting and PR management than it does with "Perry Mason" lawyering. Perhaps This may help.
1. At the risk of sounding both egotistical and self-serving, read Document Review #1 - the Basics and Document Review #2 - the Market, ideally in that order. Then check out Crab's List, a temporary attorney resource that will be growing over the coming weeks.
2. You will encounter a great variety of personalities, characters, etc., in document review. There is no "type." Some jobs have disheartened me with the amount of rank immaturity on display from fellow contract attorneys, staff attorneys and associates; others have been extremely gratifying experiences that I will always value. LLM students and graduates often sit next to first-year Bambis. You will see a variety of approaches to work ethic, diligence, honesty, etc at all levels. Take the high road - not because it's a cliche but because the low road will muddy your character (what you, in fact, are) and also your reputation (what decision makers think you are.)
3. Remember that your primary job is to make your boss look good for entrusting you with work. Who is your boss? Your individual recruiter, her or his supervisor at the employment agency, the HR department at the law firm at which you do your work, the staff attorney who supervises you, the associate or counsel attorney who supervises you, the partner who supervises you and the client who writes the Big Check are ALL your boss. Subject to ethics and decency, your job to make every single person in this chain look and feel like a big winner for hiring you and giving you work. Remembering this will help you obey the 11th Commandment: Protect Thy Check.
4. Know your agency. Some agencies are known for highly technical placements, i.e. "vertical market" placements of multi-lingual or specialist attorneys. Others are looking for law licenses and pulses, nothing more. Most agencies have a tight relationship with one or at most two law firms, and only bid secondarily for other law firms' jobs. If you burn or embarrass an agency in front of its client law firm #1, you are likely to be deader with that agency than last week's fried chicken. Who can get you the inside dirt on different agencies? Not I, as I don't want to get sued, but others can clue you in.
5. Know your project. Some projects are brain intensive, with a multitude of technical issues, unusual spec terms, vexing legal issues that even contract attorneys need to grasp, etc. Multi-lingual antitrust litigation projects fit this category almost per se. Others are the equivalent of sorting blue and red ping-pong balls by color. Some want intense, brainiac feedback and comments worthy of a case note in a law review; some want you to hit a certain number of documents per hour and could not care less whether you were conscious when you were doing so. Some are insanely deadline driven; others want routine steady work but won't lose their cool if you ask for a day off.
6. Know your law firm. While large law firms have a variety of partners with various styles, local corporate culture is important. Some firms are unmistakably nicer than others, more structured than others. Some have happy hours every day at 5:00 PM because that's what the founding partner did in 1910 pre-Prohibition; you may be permitted to sneak over and enjoy left-overs. Some hold the position that you are a peon and let you know that in unmistakable ways. The best ones, in my opinion, are the ones that are most demanding; they seem to hold the contract attorneys in the highest professional regard when they are the most demanding of them. Some encourage contract attorneys to bring music (e.g. iPods) to cut down chatter; others ban iPods completely.
7. Be a grown-up. This is 65% of doing well in this line of work. Keep your hands to yourself. Wash your hands after you go potty. Jokes aside, I have seen people get thrown off of projects more often for acting like a lunatic than for any other reason. Do your job. Be pleasant and professional, but efficient and task-oriented. Do not engage in contentious debates. If you are opinionated about politics like me, shut up about politics. Observe typical professional North American hygiene; this involves soap and daily bathing (particularly for the projects that don't close and run all night for unlimited hours.) Some of the stories I have heard and personally witnessed in this area are breathtaking in their awfulness. Do not pick quarrels with other attorneys on any topic; if you have a problem with another attorney, go to your agency first (since they sign your check) and then if directed to the law firm.
8. Be strict about your billing. Most projects don't care if you refill your coffee cup or use the bathroom; those are essentially never "punch-out" items and I am not sure that the latter one can be, legally. If your job lets you take phone calls on the clock, observe local custom; some are fanatics about punching out and some don't care if the call is not obscenely long. Most projects require rounding to the nearest quarter hour, but some go by 5 or 6 minute intervals. Sometimes the agency and the law firm will have different intervals; respect local custom but with strict honesty. Your reputation is your most valuable asset; as the DC judge who swore in a large group of fellow transfer admittees including me in October 2005 warned, your reputation for honest dealings is your most important asset. Billing fraud is (and should be) a disbarrable offense.
9. Observe protocol. This is a subset of 3. and 7. above. Observe how duties get defined between the agency and the law firm. Billing, time off, HR issues, etc., can be either an agency or law firm issue but it is incumbent on you to get it right or to ask. If you have a problem with another contract attorney, your agency will ordinarily expect to be the first to be contacted; if you go to the law firm, you may embarrass everyone involved and damage yourself. Similarly, get titles correct. I once embarrassed myself by confusing [names changed] "Cinci" the senior associate with "Ceci" the paralegal. Address and refer to all partner-level attorneys on projects by surname and salutation unless told otherwise.
10. Internet cheesiness. Don't be cheesy. Some law firms are fine with incidental use of the Internet on client time so long as your work does not get hindered. On the other hand, if you are on Craigslist looking for a hot date or (worse) another job for an extended period while you are billing the law firm, that's cheesy. At a MINIMUM mark that time as break time but it's really cheesy to do it on a company machine even on a break unless they designate a bank of machines for personal use on break as an on-site "internet cafe" for a large project (in which it's fine.) Others want no Internet use at all, or want you to punch out for all time spent on the Internet not related to work, etc. Respect their wishes and don't make yourself be or look like an unethical cheesehead.
11. Prepare a folder with copies of your updated resume, personal business cards, cancelled checks for direct deposit, your proof of your right to work in the United States and three pens and keep that in your briefcase. Consider getting a phone with email connections (e.g. BlackBerry) for such services; my BlackBerry has been invaluable for getting new assignments promptly.
12. If you have a BlackBerry or similar wireless device with internet service, consider emailing yourself a copy of your resume and then forwarding that copy to prospective agencies when you get a last-minute notice of an opening.
13. Consider getting a laptop if you don't own one. It's very useful to be able to port your resume and your own internet access and Office software for downtime or breaks. Most of downtown DC is within three blocks of a Caribou Coffee offering free wi-fi for an hour. In addition, if you have a side practice (more on this topic in another essay), much of your efficiency will depend on your use of downtime on breaks, on commuter trains or network downtime on your project. Obviously, you must observe all ethical strictures in this regard but the laptop pays for itself, if only in helping you to find and apply for projects during your lunch hour.
14. When you prepare a resume, you put the most important information at the top. Resumes to placement agencies are no exception. Agencies generally do not want to know whether you made law review, graduated Order of the Coif or have an L.L.M. unless their client (i.e. the law firm) has specifically requested that as a credential. They want to know that you are experienced in document review (if true) and that you are licensed to practice in DC (or have at least applied to the Bar, in many cases.) So your licensure in DC with of swearing-in/application and your document review experience should all be above the fold on page 1.
15. Your resume should ideally list the different software packages on which you have worked (e.g. DocuMatrix, EED, Kroll, Attenex, Summation, etc.); these can be listed by project.
16. Occasionally dress better than required. Most projects are business casual but I wear suit and tie or shirt and tie occasionally as a way both to remind my supervisor that I think like a professional and, implicitly, that I might be looking for another project. Obviously if you are a woman, calibrate this to your attire. In general, a successful professional is hungry for a new opportunity and looks hungry, and the one thing you can never be faulted for is dressing better at a law firm than what is strictly required. It's also harder to fire someone who dresses consistently like a professional when others dress like slobs, even if you make a significant error or blow a privilege tag (a firing offense per se at some law firms on some projects.) I have gotten a lot of compliments when I have dressed "above par" on projects and recommend doing so at least as an occasional choice, particularly in the cooler months when DC's heat is not oppressive.
17. Keep a running list of conflicts by agency, law firm, client, project name, very general subject matter of case (e.g. "antitrust litigation, DOJ 2nd Request, etc.") and dates of work. Much of this information will be included in a properly drafted resume but it's useful to have the chart. In general, identifying that information alone to an agency does not constitute a release of either "privileged communications" or "professional secrets" under the DC Bar Rules.
18. Unless it is your defined job to rat out or "shiv" another attorney for misconduct, do not do so unless the conduct is absolutely horrendous or you are absolutely convinced that it would constitute an ethical violation on your part not to do so under a Bar/ethics "squeal rule." What goes around comes around. If you get someone fired, you can bet that that attorney will name you to the next 150 contract attorneys that she or he meets, and will seek payback if you are ever placed together again. In addition, your agency may take a dim view of you as a troublemaker or as someone who is more interested in playing document review "cop" for other people's work than in working your own documents. The question, "Did you bill the client for the time that you spent playing cop instead of reviewing documents" is a fair one. In addition, unless you know for a stone-cold fact that someone is not marking off a break on her sheet or dealing with "company business," you are slandering another member of the Bar on a matter involving honesty. Does your renter's insurance cover slander suits? Better not to win the war but to avoid it. If you think the Bar rules require you to take action, call the Bar Ethics Hotline first and document your calls. Only if they tell you in writing that you must go forward should you do so.
19. In general, getting cut, let go or fired from a project comes from three sources: downsize, errors/omissions and misconduct.
Sometimes projects downsize for simplicity or due to client anger at the size of a monthly bill, or because a major deadline has passed. Usually a downsize is held in concert with cancellation or reduction in overtime. Sometimes the software vendor cannot process more than X-thousand documents per day and so having a 2x-thousand/day capacity document review team is foolish. So some get cut. One could categorize the end of a project as a 100% downsize. The decision on who gets cut and who does not can be arbitrary or based on production numbers, seniority or on who worked which document sets most recently for continuity. The best way to address such a cut if asked is to say "I was not fired or let go, but was cut at a production milestone [with others, if true]." While not an asset on your resume, it is no shame either.
Errors/omissions can get you let go but are not usually a significant damage to your long-term success. I got either downsized or let go for errors/omissions on my first project and to this day do not know (or care) which it was. The most common "letting-go offense" on an error/omission is blowing a clear privilege call, i.e. releasing an unambiguously privileged communication to the opponent/Justice Department. Some slow production rates may also fall into this category on some high-speed production projects. The best way to address this is "It appears I made an error in my coding on project Q; regrettable but I am grateful for the learning experience." In general, getting let go is unhelpful but hardly fatal, particularly on a first or second project. On a small project, you are more likely to get forgiveness and a reprimand than on a large bulk project. Experience and learning the "tricks" of quality control on document reviews will reduce or eliminate most embarrassing gaffes.
Misconduct is defined differently by different law firms and agencies, but in general if you flagrantly disregard "house rules," lie, cheat, steal, don't produce documents at even 40-50% of a reasonable pace or do aggressively stupid things on a jobsite, you will get outright fired. You will get fired if your lack of hygiene is extremely visible as opposed to olfactorily detectible (don't ask.) You will get fired if people think you are truly crazy or if you cannot get along with others in a simple, straight-forward way. You will get fired if you get caught cheating on your bill/sheet or radically fail to meet the basic hours requirements without good cause well explained (e.g. hospitalization, religious requirements, etc.) A mature, honest adult (i.e. what the Bar determined you to be when you got sworn in) will not get fired for misconduct except in the most extremely unusual circumstances. If you get fired for misconduct and you are over the age of 25, I want you to go find another line of work so no advice from me here. I have never heard of a misconduct fire that didn't have it coming, though sometimes people do get dropped without explanation or without good cause.
20. If you blog, do NOT blog about the specific details of your work. It's OK to identify your agency and, if you get explicit permission from your law firm, the law firm, but I would recommend against doing even that. It's OK to identify generally what you do (e.g. "I participate in a multi-lingual antitrust litigation project" or "I am working on a major merger.") You should not identify your project to the general public; that constitutes a "secret" under DC Bar Rules. Theoretically you should not do so verbally to anyone either but in practice attorneys will let you know if they worked on the XYZ merger or on the ABCDE antitrust litigation. It's OK to talk about the software that you use (e.g. Kroll, Summation, etc.) because those do not realistically constitute a secret of a client. Expect that your blog will be used as a means to get you fired or blacklisted if ANY blowback comes from it. Expect that any criticism you have of the specific terms of your employment will be used against you, especially by the agency who has the most to lose if you embarrass their client.
I wish you the best in your document review work. Please feel free to bookmark this page or to link to it in email or online for the benefit of other contract attorneys. I would also gladly receive questions at the "Contact the Crab" email link in the upper right column.
Labels: attorney ethics, document review
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