Keep me in the dark and feed me bullshit

That might make me a mushroom, I supposed, and perhaps mushrooms like being kept in the dark and fed bullshit, but that hardly seems a viable way to direct a career path, or even a job path. And yet, that seems to be the way agencies -- and by this I mean all agencies, even the "good" ones -- treat contract attorneys. Case in point: I just turned down a job I never would have submitted for, simply because I did not have the information that would let me know that this was not a job I would want. Certainly there was a way to give me that information without revealing the firm name or anything else confidential, although, frankly, I don't see why I should not know the firm name, as well. There are firms I refuse to work for, and it can get awkward if I get accepted for a project only to find that it is a firm for which I will not work. I think it is emblematic of contract attorneys' status in the legal community that we alone, among all attorneys, are not allowed to know to whom we are applying for work.

The implication is that you will take it and you will like it, and if you don't like it then, well, suck it. We don't care. Perhaps if there were more pushback by contract attorneys, we might get kept in the dark a little less. Unfortunately, because contract attorney ranks are swelled each spring by new graduates who can't find work and are desperate to do so, no amount of pushback by veteran contract attorneys is likely to help. We simply will get left behind in favor of the newbies who don't demand information. This, of course, is the impetus behind the argument what contract attorneys should unionize, a shitty idea that I will address at another time. Suffice to say that, much as we might like it, we are unlikely to get more information on which to base our decisions about what gig we want to apply for. Don't like it? Suck it.