I almost forgot I was working at a law firm for the past 4 months. No pressure, no expectations, come and go as we please as long as we make the Monday status meeting and clock 8 hours a day. Economic downturn? Like lightning, it hit around our protective contract bubble.
Today, however, was a little different. Deadlines for production of documents are coming up. As usual, there are problems with the doc review programs/systems. Transferring the documents from one to another for redaction are met with delays and errors and mistakes. Deadlines loom closer. Associates are working more on the case. Managing associate pokes her head in our room and 1) the tech person has noticed that duplicates of documents are coded vastly differently. We need to talk more to get consistent coding. 2) there are thousands of docs to do by next week. The partners have been against OT for contract attorneys, but now since the deadlines will not be moved they have approved OT for some reviewers, but not all. Decision for who gets OT will be based on accuracy and speed in coding.
When managing associate leaves the room there were a few minutes of silence. Then the complaints, excuses, and indignation started. "They want us to be fast? And accurate?" "How many documents are you doing in a day?" "I know I'm not the speedy one." "What a silly pronouncement, it will have the opposite effect." In short, others are worried that they are being watched, aren't measuring up, and want to all stick together in mediocrity and coding numbers. I can see sticking together to get inter-rater reliability with the docs, but I don't agree with the "let's all code slow so we all get OT" (ain't gonna happen) or "let's all code the same speed so no one gets in trouble." What's the joke? I don't need to outrun the lion, I just need to outrun you?
For OT, all bets are off. I finished my 200 docs and was assigned more this evening to start redacting in the am.
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1 comments:
In my last project, one of the document reviewers was totally against the number of documents we had to code a day. The document reviewer thought the number was an insult and the law firm had no right in telling us how many documents we should code.
My feeling was they were paying us to do a job. If they had a quota, we should meet it or exceed it. I always exceeded the number and I was accurate as well.
I think you need to have a strong work ethic. And slowing down is a bad. It shows you have no respect for the law firm.
Sure, they're not paying us mega-bucks. However, they're paying our bills and putting food on the table. And that's something document reviewers should respect in these times where so many lawyers are out-of-work.
So keeping up your speed and accuracy is good. It shows you have a strong work ethic.
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