Wow! BigLaw Really Is A Factory!
Even I was not ready for this.
In my post “BigLaw = GargantuLaw, A Bloated Behemoth” I said that “As an escapee from BigLaw, I experienced first hand the grinding machine that it is. Not for nothing is it known to its unhappy denizens as a law factory.”
However, I did a double take when I noticed the headline “Orrick’s Lawyering Factory Featured On NPR.”
Wow!
Yuki Noguchi wrote about contract workers for NPR and said that “A new NPR/Marist poll finds that 1 in 5 jobs in America is held by a worker under contract. … Workers across all industries and at all professional levels will be touched by the movement toward independent work — one without the constraints, or benefits, of full-time employment.”
She then reported that the BigLaw firm Orrick had set up shop in an “an old metal-stamping factory that was once part of Wheeling, W.Va.’s industrial past.”
An old factory? What for?
“Unlike the old factory, it relies heavily on new kinds of work arrangements. ‘Contractors are hired by the hour,’ says Daryl Shetterly, director of the Orrick firm’s analytics division. ‘So we might have 30 people working today, and tomorrow we might have 80.'”
He noted: “[I]t is a factory in that we work to drive efficiency and discipline into every mouse click.”
Wow. Glad I got out in time!
