On the other hand . . .

The same agency that listed the project I thought was pretty good that they were having trouble staffing is listing a project that sounds like they think there are still plenty of contract attorneys desperate for work, especially newbies:

[An agency I have worked] is looking for law school graduates (J.D.'s) and paralegals with a minimum of 3 years of legal experience to start a project next week.
Need all Word version resume submissions by 9:00am Tuesday 6/24/2014, the latest.
The ideal candidate will be a Juris Doctor graduate or a paralegal with 3 years of legal experience. Legal experience may include legal internships, document review, student clinic, law clerkships, law firm, temporary, full-time, etc., type work.
Experience reviewing contracts/agreements is a plus.
Pay rate is $18/hr. 40 hours a week. Duration: 5-7 weeks. Location: Downtown D.C. (next to Metro Center metro stop.). On-site work only.
This group will be starting Wednesday 6/25 or Thursday 6/26//2014. This is an add-on to an existing project. MUST have good computer skills and good Microsoft Excel skills to do this work.
If interested, qualified, and available, please reply to the link below with a Word version resume (no phone calls at this time, please):

Just for starters, most paralegals with three years of experience have actual jobs. The ones who don't, suck. This is the time of year JD-only people come to D.C., hoping to make the big time but having no job, and they wind up doing temp work. They haven't even taken their state bar exam yet, much less passed it, and so they can't become members of the DC Bar, either. They have to eat, so they take shit like this. Some of those people with JDs will take the paralegal jobs, just to have a job. It sucks, and in a market that seems busy, it really sucks. But most gigs these days require DC Bar membership, and this project is aimed at people who can't possibly have DC Bar membership. On the other hand, projects like this tend to depress rates, even in a tight market, as agencies and firms find ways to hire people who don't have DC Bar membership so they can pay them less -- and, in this instance, much less -- than the going rate.

Another data point in a long string of not-good developments for Temp Town

I've talked about computer-assisted review and predictive coding here and here. Probably elsewhere, too, but I'm lazy. Anyway, it's not good for the future of temps. Likewise, using attorneys in India and the Philippines, among other places, or even just lower-cost states like North Carolina, Ohio and West Virginia, also cannot be good news for DC-based temps. The proliferation of short, 40-hour projects is a direct result of the cost-cutting trends that birthed these developments. Now we're seeing other indications that the future is here, and it sucks, as shown by this post at the Temp Town job listserve The Posse List:

[An agency I work for from time to time] is staffing a JD document review looking to start 5/28/13. Please see the details below: 
*Only a JD required. The client has indicated candidates do not need barred or bar pending *Start date: 5/28/13 *Pay rate: $24/hr plus 1.5 for OT *Hours: 40/hrs week *Duration: 2 weeks 

Short, no OT and no bar required, and so shitty pay as a result -- as in a 20 percent cut from the more or less standard rate.   We've seen the occasional JD-only  project before, so this isn't a totally new development. I will be watching to see if it becomes more of a trend, however.  On the one hand, there is a June 2005 advisory opinion by the DC Court of Appeals Committee on Unauthorized Practice of Law that says “when a person is hired and billed as a lawyer . . . . When a client is paying for the services of a lawyer, and not a paralegal or law clerk, the person providing the services and the person’s employer must comply" with local rules requiring DC Bar membership for the practice of law in the District. (Sorry, no link -- I mentioned I'm lazy, right?) On the other hand, it's just an advisory opinion and won't stop clients from eyeballing that nice little 20 percent savings on labor. The Posse List post says straight up the client made the JD-only call. Think more of them won't? I won't bet against it.

How's that exit strategy coming?