New Twists in the Lawyer Job Market
Published July 26, 2011
Forced Retirement…Unthinkable?
As perhaps the nation’s primary newspaper of record, The New York Times is typically on the leading edge reporting developments in many professions, including the law. When I was interviewed in a Times story several weeks ago, as reported in an earlier LawBiz Tips story, it was about the phenomenon of forcing lawyers to retire or otherwise quit from their firms before they’re ready – something that just a few years ago would have been unthinkable for most firms. But the Times has also recently reported on other formerly “unthinkable” developments that are new twists for the legal job market.
Electronic Discovery Software Replaces Human Lawyers
The headline of one such story should give any member of the profession pause: “Armies of Expensive Lawyers Replaced by Cheaper Software.” The article discussed how electronic discovery (e-discovery) software can analyze documents required for litigation discovery in a fraction of the time for a fraction of the cost when compared to using lawyers for the task.
1.5 Million Documents Searched for Less Than $100,000
It cited the example of one discovery software company that recently helped analyze 1.5 million documents for less than $100,000. Some programs not only find documents with relevant terms at high speed, they can extract relevant concepts and deduce patterns that would have eluded lawyers examining paper copies. One lawyer put the result this way: “From a legal staffing viewpoint, it means that a lot of people who used to be allocated to conduct document review are no longer able to be billed out.”
On-shored/Outsourced Legal Work on the Rise
Another story has slightly better news, but only slightly. It appears that outsourcing firms, the companies that in recent years sent work done by American lawyers to lower-cost countries like India, are now creating jobs for lawyers in the United States. Some of this on-shored/outsourced legal work by legal temp companies pays as little as $20 an hour for such tasks as document review. Other work involves hiring lawyers in the $50,000 to $80,000 range and basing them in lower-cost areas in the United States, like West Virginia and North Dakota. The lawyers receive less compensation because their work is limited to commodity work and because of the lower cost of living in the area.
Better Than Unemployment?
The best that can be said about such assignments is that they are better than unemployment – but is that really why anyone pays sometimes six figures to secure a J.D. degree?
Categorized in: Management, Technology
Audience type: Large Law Firms, Small Law Firms