
Cheaper by the Hour
Temporary Lawyers and the Deprofessionalization of the Law
- English
- PDF
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
Recent law school graduates often work as temporary attorneys, but law firm layoffs and downsizing have strengthened the temporary attorney industry. Cheaper by the Hour is the first book-length account of these workers.
Drawing from participant observation and interviews, Robert A. Brooks provides a richly detailed ethnographic account of freelance attorneys in Washington, DC. He places their document review work in the larger context of the deprofessionalization of skilled labor and considers how professionals relegated to temporary jobs feel diminished, degraded, or demeaned by work that is often tedious, repetitive, and well beneath their abilities.
Brooks documents how firms break a lawyer's work into discrete components that require less skill to realize maximum profits. Moreover, he argues that information technology and efficiency demands are further stratifying the profession and creating a new underclass of lawyers who do low-end commodity work.
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Information
Table of contents
- Contents
- Preface
- 1. Degraded and Insecure: The āNewā Workforce
- 2. āBasically Interchangeableā: The Creation of the Temporary Lawyer
- 3. Life on the Concourse Level: Doing Document Review
- 4. Box Shopping in āNike Townā: Struggles over Work
- 5. āKeeping Count of Every Freakinā Minuteā: Struggles over Time
- 6. āA Glorified Data Entry Personā: Struggles over Identity
- 7. āI Would Rather Grow in Indiaā: The Emerging Legal Underclass
- Appendix A: Document Review Project Summary
- Appendix B: The Questionnaire
- Appendix C: The Attorneys
- References
- Index