The ABA is enabling the legal industry's downfall, but it still won't buy me a drink

So I've been reading a few anti-ABA blogs written by lawyers lately. Some of them are written by relatively recent law school grads who are failing to make ends meet, between their crushing law-school debt and the extremely low-paying, temporary contract document-review jobs that they feel forced to take. Others are written by long-time associates who never made partner -- whether from lack of skill and drive, or from lack of cash to buy into an equity partnership.

The articles are interesting, but unfortunately in a trainwreck kind of way. As a rule they're fantastically bitter, and for good reason. Many of the authors (or their informants) work in filthy, airless, roach-infested cubicles in the basements of prestigious BigLaw firms, mostly in New York, doing mind-numbing document review. They work 50 or 70 hours per week for ever decreasing fees, like $28/hr before taxes, and with no benefits. The work pays so low because there's been a trend for BigLaw firms to outsource this kind of document review to India, with the blessing of the ABA, and because there is a lot of competition from new law grads.

Outsourcing low-level document review tasks can be cost-effective, and it can make running a law firm, which is a very expensive type of business to run, more profitable. You could even say that law firms are late to get on the off-shore bandwagon, considering how every other industry in America, from manufacturing to customer service, has been doing it for years. So it's really not surprising that the ABA, a mouthpiece for BigLaw and a group very interested in preserving the status quo of big law firms charging big fees and making big profits, has given 2 thumbs up to shipping document review jobs overseas.

But the ABA is trying to have it both ways. On the one hand it's accrediting new law schools left and right, generating literally thousands of new law grads every year that weren't flooding the marketplace just 5 and 10 years ago. Yay! More lawyers, more lawyering work, more big fees, and more big profits! Right? Well, wrong -- when the work that new law grads tend to do, namely, low-level document review, is now being outsourced, with the shiny stamp of ABA approval.

The predictable result when the economy tanks and firms lose both clients and lines of credit: layoffs, salary cuts, new hire deferrals, and rescinded offers to the class of 2009. It's not completely the ABA's fault, as some of the anti-ABA bloggers insist; but the ABA's position isn't helping. The ABA hasn't changed its offshoring policy, though it's been printing on its website and in its monthly magazine nice articles about spunky attorneys thinking outside the box and pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps and getting fabulously remunerative, non-lawyering jobs.

Some individuals at firms are seeing the writing on the wall. The chair of K&L Gates seems horrified to see that the economy appears to be driving more and more kids into law school lately, because "[w]e will be pouring tens of thousands of young people into a market that I suspect is not going to be able to absorb them at the remuneration levels that would have justified them taking on that debt" of 6 figures that law school will almost certainly leave them with.

Which makes me wonder if something isn't going to give soon. Shouldn't the invisible hand drive down law school prices one of these days? If there is a glut of law schools, and grads can't get decent-paying lawyering jobs afterward because they have a useless 4-year liberal arts degree, a law degree from a non-prestigious law school, and no life nor job experience because they're still in their early 20s -- sounds like a bubble to me.

I feel really bad for the low-paid contract document review lawyers. And I feel a heck of a lot of resentment that I've been getting zero help from my own law school's career office (though I wouldn't want to be in their position . . . except that they're getting paychecks). But mostly I feel sick and angry when I see people complaining about any aspect of their jobs right now, or about their lack of job when they have a partner at home helping out, and my tongue is starting to hurt from biting it so hard.