Temping is exactly what you need, if you are unable to let yourself grinded by full-time legal job’s long hours. The legal industry now a days automatically convert to temporary staffing as a means to keep a lid on costs. Industry analysts estimate that legal temporary staffing, whether for lawyers, paralegals, or clerks, represents a $300 to $500 million market, with growth rates of over 25 percent annually.
The increase in the temp numbers has been accompanied by an increase in the reputation for temporary lawyers. Jeff Silber, an analyst at institutional research group Gerard, Klauer, Mattison, & Co., recently told The National Law Journal: “Temp lawyers used to have a stigma, but the legal staffing business is really starting to move upscale.” For job seekers, the increasing availability and prestige of legal temping jobs means a better lifestyle, higher compensation, and the chance to crack some of the country’s most exclusive firms.
There are two categories in which legal temp field breaks down: traditional temps and “wholesale lawyers.” the latter term that is wholesale lawyers was coined by David A. Robinson, author of the ABA’s “Practicing Law without clients,” he defined this lawyers as a freelancer lawyers who finds their own assignment, producing legal product for the “retail lawyer” working for the client. ” Most of what now a days wholesale lawyers do that is ghostwriting,” Robinson told the NLJ, giving an example of the West Virginia lawyer who worked writing administrative law judge opinions for 15 hours a week at $75 dollars an hour.
By contrast, many traditional temp lawyers, like their counterparts in other industries, go through the intermediary of the temp agency. These organization have nourished up in the 1990s, as law firms remain wary of over hiring. Legal staffing agencies include New York’s Strategic Legal Services (www.strategiclegal.com), Washington DC’s Pat Taylor and Associates (www.pattaylor.com); and Law Corps (www.lawcorps.com). Pat Taylor and Associates boasts a sparkling client list featuring top notch firms and organizations such as Latham & Watkins, Patton Boggs, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Arnold & Porter; Skadden Arps; Mayer Brown, National Geographic Television, and Paul Hastings.
Temping arrangements offers many advantages over traditional lawyering. Fr wholesale lawyers, many say that most well known advantage of working part time is simply working part time. Wholesale lawyers can easily make their own hours and easily telecommute, a boon to those who wish to spend more time with their family members or pursue interests other than the law.
There are two important advantage for those lawyers who works through an agency. First these lawyers can ignore being pigeonholed into a particular career path or substantive area of the law, increasingly the fate of full-time associates at many firms. Granted, temporary lawyers may often get assignments in less exciting jobs, notably document management or discovery chores. However, as one temp attorney told the NLJ, “discovery is on par with the rest of law – it’s no more or less exciting.”
It is true that second temp jobs are not always temporary. Temp staffing specialists estimate that 15 to 20 percent of temps get permanent offer. And for those who got rejected during campus placement, the temp job can provide a handy back door.
Of course, temping isn’t all hearts and flowers. Pay can stoop as low as $14 dollars an hour (far, far below the compensation of most full-time lawyers). Although many law firms hire temp attorneys to cover themselves in case business goes down. Should things slow down, the temp gets the axe before anyone else. Many temp attorneys, however, seem willing to live with these risks to enjoy the independence and other benefits that temping affords.
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