Posted by wlansden |
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By Brian Malcom
The ABA Journal posted a story today about a lawyer being pressured to review 80 documents an hour. Now, is a "document" a single page? Is a "document" a collection of pages? Either way, this "mandate" seems a bit absurd.
The story first appeared on the blog, Temporary Attorney. The contract lawyer reviewing documents received this email: “Please pick up the pace. They are expecting you to do about 80 docs an hour and all of you are less than half that. Changes will be made soon if this does not change asap.” I am betting the "changes" would not be an increase in pay or a nicer office overlooking a park.
Apart from scanning for keywords or looking for bloodstains on a document, how can an attorney carefully and responsibly review more than one document per minute? How can an attorney thoughtfully review more than one page per minute? This is assuming, of course, the contract attorney is not reviewing one-sentence emails or enlarged images of Sunday comic strips. According to an anonymous comment post on Temporary Attorney, these are "dense scientific reports."
I wonder if the employer is supplying the contract attorney with malpractice insurance. I am betting it does not. According to a commenter at Temporary Attorney, some of the pressure to review documents at such an absurd rate is coming from the threat of outsourcing. Apparently, the outsourced labor bills by the document and not by the hour.
The final paragraph of the Temporary Attorney post reads:
"What a dump this place is. Every week half the project leaves. We drew a little graveyard with tombstones and the grim reaper on it. Soon, it won't be able to hold all the contract attorney dead [sic]."
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