Temping in BigLaw

Temporary Attorney writes about temping in BigLaw.  The blog’s author, Tom the temp, has been thinking a lot lately about how law schools report their employment numbers:

Isn't the legal profession and the law schools one big "Enron" kind of scandel? Think about it. Every year thousands of college graduates decide whether or not they want to "invest" in a legal education. (often a $100,000 proposition). They decide the feasibility of this investment not by relying on a 10(k), but rather by relying on the career statistics put out by the schools. The career statistics are standardized not by the SEC but rather by something called the NALP.

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Whether law schools "outright lie" on their NALP forms Tom the temp wouldn't know. This did get Tom the temp thinking about something he heard recently concerning a recently unemployed 2004 tier 2 law school graduate. Supposedly this woman was unemployed after passing the bar exam. Her career center wanted to know what she was up to because it was time to file their annual NALP employment report. At the time she was working a two day temp job stuffing envelopes in a law firm for four hours a day. Guess what the school reported? They took her hourly rate multiplied it by 2000 and claimed that she was an attorney in a 20-30 person law firm making a "projected" income of $50,000-60,000 dollars per year. Wow! Talk about an arithmetic trick. Under this mathematical model maybe Tom the temp isn't doing so bad after all. If only the mathematical illusion matched the reality of Tom the temp's unfortunate existence.