reading the paper this morning, i came across something that bothered me. i know, that’s nothing new. it is, in fact, why i’d stopped reading the paper for longer than i care to admit.

what bothered me this morning was this: the d.c. attorney general has fired ten attorneys. the primary motivation for the cuts was to close a budget deficit; the particular attorneys were chosen due to their substandard performance. several of the attorneys are members of a union,¹ which plans to challenge the terminations. the president of the union had this to say about the firings:

“it may be the way things are done at big law firms. i don’t think it’s a good way to run civil service.”

i’m boggling at that statement. it seems to me that big law firms are efficient, successful operations. why wouldn’t you want to run the civil service in the same way? granted, civil servants get paid a fraction of what an associate at a large firm can make, and if we can’t afford pay parity, there should be other inducements to attract the best and brightest to public service jobs. good health care, a decent pension plan, generous vacation benefits, perhaps. but i don’t think lax performance standards should be among them.
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¹ i’m philosophically pro-union, as i believe they rectify the inherent power inequality in the company/worker relationship. being an attorney myself, though, i wonder if attorneys need such assistance - we’re generally a well-educated (or perhaps just overeducated) bunch, capable of making rational decisions and by dint of our J.D., commanding comfortable salaries without the enhanced bargaining power of unions.

that said, i do think that contract attorneys should organize. not necessarily to secure better pay ($35/hour plus overtime isn’t anything to sneeze at, even in dc and nyc), but perhaps for better benefits and to minimize the profiteering of the temp agencies that place them. contract work is essentially white-collar piecework, where the attorneys are kept on a very short leash and working conditions can aggravate a host of chronic health problems. (no joke; just try sitting still for ten to twelve hours a day, staring at a computer screen, clicking clicking clicking away. and remember: these aren’t teenage gamers we’re talking about.)

that said, if contract attorneys were to unionize, it might just speed outsourcing doc review to places like india.