JD preferred jobs

[Anonymous]

Doc review attorneys are so whiny and refuse to help themselves. They love to complain on the internet about how hopeless it all is, but won’t work at creating opportunities for themselves. There used to be a board where they could all whine to each other but maybe it got shut down.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Options:

1. Start volunteering at legal aid pro bono to get some lawyering experience under supervision. They have training programs specific to the advice you will be giving. Here is a link to training if you are in DC: https://www.dcbar.org/pro-bono/resources-and-training

2. HR certification: Get an entry level job in HR, do it for one year and then start the process to become certified. Once you do that you can move up the ranks in HR and your law degree will be of value. https://www.shrm.org/certification/about/Pages/Not-Sure-Where-To-Begin.aspx

3. Start attending every and any training sessions available at your bar association. This is about training and networking.

4. Invest in your next step: get a masters degree in legal studies in a compliance area that interests you. Health care is an excellent and extremely marketable choice, and you can do it on line: https://www.online.drexel.edu/online-degrees/law-degrees/cert-hc-comp/index.aspx

Take control and take action. Also consider seeing your doctor for depression.

Good thoughts.

OP, I worked in e-discovery when I first moved to DC (over a decade ago). I was pregnant at the time and wasn't getting hired elsewhere (surprise!), though I had 1-2 years prior experience in my field. E-discovery was easy and flexible and paid well given the language bump. However, the flexibility allowed me to simultaneously open a sole proprietorship that admittedly made peanuts initially. I kept e-discovery as a steady paycheck until the side gig started to gain traction. Though e-discovery I did meet folks, passed my name around in my niche area, and made 1 really good connection (of the dozens of feelers that I put out). I finally opted to quit e-discovery to be hired as a FREAKING asst/paralegal in my field of choice because the small firm needed someone virtual and was willing to train. I worked with them doing the grunt work but more importantly getting valuable experience and learning the ropes so that I would feel more comfortably going out on my own. That ended after about a year because as the gods would have it, my managing atty wanted to leave that field and do something new. She passed off one of her corp clients to me for my budding practice after we negotiated a reasonable fee between us. Since I'd simultaneously been working on my own business it was enough to get me moving. That was about 10 years ago and I now do well enough to support my solo practice. I don't make a ton by DCUM standards but I bring home between 300-350k. That is really all that I need, though I do hope to keep growing.

I share this because, honestly, if you humble yourself and start at zero you can build up. You also have to really want to make it work badly enough. I know that lots of people will say that it may not be financially feasible for all, and they are 100% correct. I do offer the story, however, because I did drudge it out in e-discovery for a few years and backtracked to a paralegal position. I cried about that for a year but it was a great classroom for me. This may be helpful to OP to push her to something new.

I'm not trying to attack you, just making an observation. 300-350 K is a lot of money. For a solo, it is an enormous sum of money. You are to be congratulated because obviously you have a skillset that people will pay for. However, someone who says 300-350 "is all you really need" is living in a different world than the rest of us. I know it is DC and I know some people make far more, but its a delusional to downplay that kind of money. That's a significant sum of money and unless you're paying 80K a year for your kids to go to private school, you should be able to live a very full and robust life on a lot less than 350K a year.

I made that comment to deflect the biglaw attys who, in the past, have told me that amount is "unlivable" and less than their bonus (because I have heard that from people before). I know that there are many of that type in DC. Among lawyers, the pay scale is massively skewed, and I understand that. I mean, I used to work in doc review. I make the point above only to highlight to OP that there are other options if you're willing to work in the trenches for a bit. WE are attorneys. We can work for ourselves if all else fails. My first year as a solo, I made $15K. The following year was $35K. And year three was $55K. Every year after that increased slightly. I have now been solo for 10+ years so I wanted to highlight that this has been a gradual work in progress whereby I had to go hunt for business annually to get the business pipeline running.

And yes, I'm very happy with where I"m at now and do not discount that - particularly since I know what it's like to function with income of $15K. Point taken. But I always try to emphasize to attorneys that we absolutely can be self sufficient by nature of our trade.

True. It's a good idea, even if in a law firm. Try not to rely on others and make yourself essential/indispensable (or, at least, "less" dispensable :wink

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was a SAHM for many years and got back into my legal career with legal temp work. I had an assignment that lasted fir a few months and was able to get a job as attorney in that company - doubt they would have interviewed me without getting to know me during those months. Is that a possibility?

Only as a staff attorney at best

Staff attorney is better than doc review. Do that for 2-3 years and then look elsewhere

[Anonymous]

You might want to do hospital/healthcare risk management.

https://www.ashrm.org/education/hrm-certificate-program-modules

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What kind of ediscovery job do you have? We can help you translate those skills into something else. But just saying “ediscovery” and I am “hopeless” shows an inability to think outside of the box. I’ve been in ediscovery for over a decade and I don’t feel hopeless at all. In fact, I love what I do.

I also work in real ediscovery, and I'm frankly a little annoyed that a bunch of contract attorneys/document reviewers are conflating what they do with what I do. What I do is challenging and fun and requires real motivation, intellectual curiosity, and an ability to solve problems. I also haven't made $40K since my second year out of college and currently get paid more than junior-level BigLaw associates. Contract reviewers, please don't run around telling people you work in "ediscovery" - you do not. Your job has just moved from reviewing boxes of paper to Relativity (or whatever online platform is used). If you can't administer Relativity, get data into it, set up batches and review queues for both linear and tech-assisted review, you're not in the game.

Honestly, OP, I can see why you've been stuck in document review for almost two decades. You seem to be looking for other people to provide solutions for you rather than actively participating in solving your own problem. It's really frustrating to see people ask good questions about your skills/experience, share theirs, and try to help you and have you give terse, unhelpful answers and accuse people of bullying you. This is your life and your career, and you need to be actively involved in the process!

Also, applying to government jobs is an art form. If you want to be successful there, it's a whole different process than applying for private industry jobs. You have to use keywords, address KSA points using the same language in the posting, and some other federal hiring oddities. If you want to do that, make sure you're looking at the online resources geared to maximizing your application package.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Doc review attorneys are so whiny and refuse to help themselves. They love to complain on the internet about how hopeless it all is, but won’t work at creating opportunities for themselves. There used to be a board where they could all whine to each other but maybe it got shut down.

There are some really good ones, but they usually get plucked out to be the project manager liaison with the supervising associates really quickly. There are also some good ones that do it as a lifestyle choice. Most, though, wow, no idea how they made it through law school We've also run across our fair share of conspiracy theorists who are reviewing documents for something other than the coding criteria looking for evidence of some tinfoil hat idea.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What kind of ediscovery job do you have? We can help you translate those skills into something else. But just saying “ediscovery” and I am “hopeless” shows an inability to think outside of the box. I’ve been in ediscovery for over a decade and I don’t feel hopeless at all. In fact, I love what I do.

I also work in real ediscovery, and I'm frankly a little annoyed that a bunch of contract attorneys/document reviewers are conflating what they do with what I do. What I do is challenging and fun and requires real motivation, intellectual curiosity, and an ability to solve problems. I also haven't made $40K since my second year out of college and currently get paid more than junior-level BigLaw associates. Contract reviewers, please don't run around telling people you work in "ediscovery" - you do not. Your job has just moved from reviewing boxes of paper to Relativity (or whatever online platform is used). If you can't administer Relativity, get data into it, set up batches and review queues for both linear and tech-assisted review, you're not in the game.

Honestly, OP, I can see why you've been stuck in document review for almost two decades. You seem to be looking for other people to provide solutions for you rather than actively participating in solving your own problem. It's really frustrating to see people ask good questions about your skills/experience, share theirs, and try to help you and have you give terse, unhelpful answers and accuse people of bullying you. This is your life and your career, and you need to be actively involved in the process!

Also, applying to government jobs is an art form. If you want to be successful there, it's a whole different process than applying for private industry jobs. You have to use keywords, address KSA points using the same language in the posting, and some other federal hiring oddities. If you want to do that, make sure you're looking at the online resources geared to maximizing your application package.

real ediscovery means you run metrics and fire peolle for not reviewing quick enough . I bet you sleep well at night with that lack of conscience

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What kind of ediscovery job do you have? We can help you translate those skills into something else. But just saying “ediscovery” and I am “hopeless” shows an inability to think outside of the box. I’ve been in ediscovery for over a decade and I don’t feel hopeless at all. In fact, I love what I do.

I also work in real ediscovery, and I'm frankly a little annoyed that a bunch of contract attorneys/document reviewers are conflating what they do with what I do. What I do is challenging and fun and requires real motivation, intellectual curiosity, and an ability to solve problems. I also haven't made $40K since my second year out of college and currently get paid more than junior-level BigLaw associates. Contract reviewers, please don't run around telling people you work in "ediscovery" - you do not. Your job has just moved from reviewing boxes of paper to Relativity (or whatever online platform is used). If you can't administer Relativity, get data into it, set up batches and review queues for both linear and tech-assisted review, you're not in the game.

Honestly, OP, I can see why you've been stuck in document review for almost two decades. You seem to be looking for other people to provide solutions for you rather than actively participating in solving your own problem. It's really frustrating to see people ask good questions about your skills/experience, share theirs, and try to help you and have you give terse, unhelpful answers and accuse people of bullying you. This is your life and your career, and you need to be actively involved in the process!

Also, applying to government jobs is an art form. If you want to be successful there, it's a whole different process than applying for private industry jobs. You have to use keywords, address KSA points using the same language in the posting, and some other federal hiring oddities. If you want to do that, make sure you're looking at the online resources geared to maximizing your application package.

real ediscovery means you run metrics and fire peolle for not reviewing quick enough . I bet you sleep well at night with that lack of conscience

I remember doing that years ago to make some money part time during college. I channeled my inner Yosarian when we were supposed to be blacking out a set list of items. No one ever said anything even over the sheets that were entirely black save a random 'the' I can only assume that no one ever reviewed anything

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What kind of ediscovery job do you have? We can help you translate those skills into something else. But just saying “ediscovery” and I am “hopeless” shows an inability to think outside of the box. I’ve been in ediscovery for over a decade and I don’t feel hopeless at all. In fact, I love what I do.

I also work in real ediscovery, and I'm frankly a little annoyed that a bunch of contract attorneys/document reviewers are conflating what they do with what I do. What I do is challenging and fun and requires real motivation, intellectual curiosity, and an ability to solve problems. I also haven't made $40K since my second year out of college and currently get paid more than junior-level BigLaw associates. Contract reviewers, please don't run around telling people you work in "ediscovery" - you do not. Your job has just moved from reviewing boxes of paper to Relativity (or whatever online platform is used). If you can't administer Relativity, get data into it, set up batches and review queues for both linear and tech-assisted review, you're not in the game.

Honestly, OP, I can see why you've been stuck in document review for almost two decades. You seem to be looking for other people to provide solutions for you rather than actively participating in solving your own problem. It's really frustrating to see people ask good questions about your skills/experience, share theirs, and try to help you and have you give terse, unhelpful answers and accuse people of bullying you. This is your life and your career, and you need to be actively involved in the process!

Also, applying to government jobs is an art form. If you want to be successful there, it's a whole different process than applying for private industry jobs. You have to use keywords, address KSA points using the same language in the posting, and some other federal hiring oddities. If you want to do that, make sure you're looking at the online resources geared to maximizing your application package.

real ediscovery means you run metrics and fire peolle for not reviewing quick enough . I bet you sleep well at night with that lack of conscience

No, it does not. You clearly have no idea what e-discovery is. The closest I get to contract reviewers is setting up user IDs and permissions, batching documents, and creating metrics reporting for the supervisors to deal with. Sometimes, we help review supervisors with creating question logs and example document sets. And that's going to go down with advances in technology assisted review and predictive coding because the computer does a more reliable job at document coding than humans do. (They're not more accurate, that comes from the reviewer, but, once parameters are defined, the computers are far more consistent.)

Real ediscovery is consulting with clients and attorneys about where to find and how to get data based on the issues of the case and client's business, getting that data processed, indexed (search and analytics), and working with attorneys to figure out how to find what they're looking for the fastest and what tools will do that, figuring out how to deal with new data types, especially for production, drafting discovery agreements, and managing projects and budgets. Mobile and collaboration data is huge right now, and the traditional tools don't handle it well, so we're doing a lot of consulting work on that. I also work inside a law firm, so I manage about a million dollars with of contracts and pricing/cost recovery as well as several teams of timekeepers. I get to do some neat pro bono projects as well.

I sleep just fine at night. I'd also sleep just fine at night firing reviewers who were not performing well enough. I've designed and run those reports for those who make hiring decisions, and the people who get fired are the far outliers (reviewing 20 docs an hour when other reviewers are doing 75-100) and those whose QC rate is atrocious. Our clients are paying for that work, often by the hour. Are you saying that people who can't do a job well should be allowed to perform poorly with no consequences?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What kind of ediscovery job do you have? We can help you translate those skills into something else. But just saying “ediscovery” and I am “hopeless” shows an inability to think outside of the box. I’ve been in ediscovery for over a decade and I don’t feel hopeless at all. In fact, I love what I do.

I also work in real ediscovery, and I'm frankly a little annoyed that a bunch of contract attorneys/document reviewers are conflating what they do with what I do. What I do is challenging and fun and requires real motivation, intellectual curiosity, and an ability to solve problems. I also haven't made $40K since my second year out of college and currently get paid more than junior-level BigLaw associates. Contract reviewers, please don't run around telling people you work in "ediscovery" - you do not. Your job has just moved from reviewing boxes of paper to Relativity (or whatever online platform is used). If you can't administer Relativity, get data into it, set up batches and review queues for both linear and tech-assisted review, you're not in the game.

Honestly, OP, I can see why you've been stuck in document review for almost two decades. You seem to be looking for other people to provide solutions for you rather than actively participating in solving your own problem. It's really frustrating to see people ask good questions about your skills/experience, share theirs, and try to help you and have you give terse, unhelpful answers and accuse people of bullying you. This is your life and your career, and you need to be actively involved in the process!

Also, applying to government jobs is an art form. If you want to be successful there, it's a whole different process than applying for private industry jobs. You have to use keywords, address KSA points using the same language in the posting, and some other federal hiring oddities. If you want to do that, make sure you're looking at the online resources geared to maximizing your application package.

real ediscovery means you run metrics and fire peolle for not reviewing quick enough . I bet you sleep well at night with that lack of conscience

No, it does not. You clearly have no idea what e-discovery is. The closest I get to contract reviewers is setting up user IDs and permissions, batching documents, and creating metrics reporting for the supervisors to deal with. Sometimes, we help review supervisors with creating question logs and example document sets. And that's going to go down with advances in technology assisted review and predictive coding because the computer does a more reliable job at document coding than humans do. (They're not more accurate, that comes from the reviewer, but, once parameters are defined, the computers are far more consistent.)

Real ediscovery is consulting with clients and attorneys about where to find and how to get data based on the issues of the case and client's business, getting that data processed, indexed (search and analytics), and working with attorneys to figure out how to find what they're looking for the fastest and what tools will do that, figuring out how to deal with new data types, especially for production, drafting discovery agreements, and managing projects and budgets. Mobile and collaboration data is huge right now, and the traditional tools don't handle it well, so we're doing a lot of consulting work on that. I also work inside a law firm, so I manage about a million dollars with of contracts and pricing/cost recovery as well as several teams of timekeepers. I get to do some neat pro bono projects as well.

I sleep just fine at night. I'd also sleep just fine at night firing reviewers who were not performing well enough. I've designed and run those reports for those who make hiring decisions, and the people who get fired are the far outliers (reviewing 20 docs an hour when other reviewers are doing 75-100) and those whose QC rate is atrocious. Our clients are paying for that work, often by the hour. Are you saying that people who can't do a job well should be allowed to perform poorly with no consequences?

do you realize how pretentious you sound ? Oh I don’t want to be associated with doc reviewers! I’m different! They are beneath me. The fact is you couldn’t get a job as an associate or a good federal job either and now you bully down. Thr partners abuse associates, associates abuse staff attorney managers and staff attorney managers abuse staff attorneys and temps. You are nothing but a bully

[Anonymous]

I'm a NP. Am reading this thread with great interest. All I can say at the moment is:


I really admire you 05/18/2021 10:28 !

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What kind of ediscovery job do you have? We can help you translate those skills into something else. But just saying “ediscovery” and I am “hopeless” shows an inability to think outside of the box. I’ve been in ediscovery for over a decade and I don’t feel hopeless at all. In fact, I love what I do.

I also work in real ediscovery, and I'm frankly a little annoyed that a bunch of contract attorneys/document reviewers are conflating what they do with what I do. What I do is challenging and fun and requires real motivation, intellectual curiosity, and an ability to solve problems. I also haven't made $40K since my second year out of college and currently get paid more than junior-level BigLaw associates. Contract reviewers, please don't run around telling people you work in "ediscovery" - you do not. Your job has just moved from reviewing boxes of paper to Relativity (or whatever online platform is used). If you can't administer Relativity, get data into it, set up batches and review queues for both linear and tech-assisted review, you're not in the game.

Honestly, OP, I can see why you've been stuck in document review for almost two decades. You seem to be looking for other people to provide solutions for you rather than actively participating in solving your own problem. It's really frustrating to see people ask good questions about your skills/experience, share theirs, and try to help you and have you give terse, unhelpful answers and accuse people of bullying you. This is your life and your career, and you need to be actively involved in the process!

Also, applying to government jobs is an art form. If you want to be successful there, it's a whole different process than applying for private industry jobs. You have to use keywords, address KSA points using the same language in the posting, and some other federal hiring oddities. If you want to do that, make sure you're looking at the online resources geared to maximizing your application package.

real ediscovery means you run metrics and fire peolle for not reviewing quick enough . I bet you sleep well at night with that lack of conscience

No, it does not. You clearly have no idea what e-discovery is. The closest I get to contract reviewers is setting up user IDs and permissions, batching documents, and creating metrics reporting for the supervisors to deal with. Sometimes, we help review supervisors with creating question logs and example document sets. And that's going to go down with advances in technology assisted review and predictive coding because the computer does a more reliable job at document coding than humans do. (They're not more accurate, that comes from the reviewer, but, once parameters are defined, the computers are far more consistent.)

Real ediscovery is consulting with clients and attorneys about where to find and how to get data based on the issues of the case and client's business, getting that data processed, indexed (search and analytics), and working with attorneys to figure out how to find what they're looking for the fastest and what tools will do that, figuring out how to deal with new data types, especially for production, drafting discovery agreements, and managing projects and budgets. Mobile and collaboration data is huge right now, and the traditional tools don't handle it well, so we're doing a lot of consulting work on that. I also work inside a law firm, so I manage about a million dollars with of contracts and pricing/cost recovery as well as several teams of timekeepers. I get to do some neat pro bono projects as well.

I sleep just fine at night. I'd also sleep just fine at night firing reviewers who were not performing well enough. I've designed and run those reports for those who make hiring decisions, and the people who get fired are the far outliers (reviewing 20 docs an hour when other reviewers are doing 75-100) and those whose QC rate is atrocious. Our clients are paying for that work, often by the hour. Are you saying that people who can't do a job well should be allowed to perform poorly with no consequences?

do you realize how pretentious you sound ? Oh I don’t want to be associated with doc reviewers! I’m different! They are beneath me. The fact is you couldn’t get a job as an associate or a good federal job either and now you bully down. Thr partners abuse associates, associates abuse staff attorney managers and staff attorney managers abuse staff attorneys and temps. You are nothing but a bully

DP, but what is your problem? PP simply explained what a real e-discovery professional does. It's important and marketable work. If I had her job, I'd also take offense to doc reviewers coopting the term too. And PP made the correct observation that distinctly poor performers shouldn't be retained. That's not bullying; that's a simply observation of how the real world works.

On a different note, the assumption that a law firm is simply a long chain of abuse is simply not true in most instances.

With this attitude and hostility, I'm not surprised that you've been stuck in doc review for a decade.

[Anonymous]

I was a staff attorney at a major dc firm and my project manager assaulted me. I got in trouble not him

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What kind of ediscovery job do you have? We can help you translate those skills into something else. But just saying “ediscovery” and I am “hopeless” shows an inability to think outside of the box. I’ve been in ediscovery for over a decade and I don’t feel hopeless at all. In fact, I love what I do.

I also work in real ediscovery, and I'm frankly a little annoyed that a bunch of contract attorneys/document reviewers are conflating what they do with what I do. What I do is challenging and fun and requires real motivation, intellectual curiosity, and an ability to solve problems. I also haven't made $40K since my second year out of college and currently get paid more than junior-level BigLaw associates. Contract reviewers, please don't run around telling people you work in "ediscovery" - you do not. Your job has just moved from reviewing boxes of paper to Relativity (or whatever online platform is used). If you can't administer Relativity, get data into it, set up batches and review queues for both linear and tech-assisted review, you're not in the game.

Honestly, OP, I can see why you've been stuck in document review for almost two decades. You seem to be looking for other people to provide solutions for you rather than actively participating in solving your own problem. It's really frustrating to see people ask good questions about your skills/experience, share theirs, and try to help you and have you give terse, unhelpful answers and accuse people of bullying you. This is your life and your career, and you need to be actively involved in the process!

Also, applying to government jobs is an art form. If you want to be successful there, it's a whole different process than applying for private industry jobs. You have to use keywords, address KSA points using the same language in the posting, and some other federal hiring oddities. If you want to do that, make sure you're looking at the online resources geared to maximizing your application package.

real ediscovery means you run metrics and fire peolle for not reviewing quick enough . I bet you sleep well at night with that lack of conscience

No, it does not. You clearly have no idea what e-discovery is. The closest I get to contract reviewers is setting up user IDs and permissions, batching documents, and creating metrics reporting for the supervisors to deal with. Sometimes, we help review supervisors with creating question logs and example document sets. And that's going to go down with advances in technology assisted review and predictive coding because the computer does a more reliable job at document coding than humans do. (They're not more accurate, that comes from the reviewer, but, once parameters are defined, the computers are far more consistent.)

Real ediscovery is consulting with clients and attorneys about where to find and how to get data based on the issues of the case and client's business, getting that data processed, indexed (search and analytics), and working with attorneys to figure out how to find what they're looking for the fastest and what tools will do that, figuring out how to deal with new data types, especially for production, drafting discovery agreements, and managing projects and budgets. Mobile and collaboration data is huge right now, and the traditional tools don't handle it well, so we're doing a lot of consulting work on that. I also work inside a law firm, so I manage about a million dollars with of contracts and pricing/cost recovery as well as several teams of timekeepers. I get to do some neat pro bono projects as well.

I sleep just fine at night. I'd also sleep just fine at night firing reviewers who were not performing well enough. I've designed and run those reports for those who make hiring decisions, and the people who get fired are the far outliers (reviewing 20 docs an hour when other reviewers are doing 75-100) and those whose QC rate is atrocious. Our clients are paying for that work, often by the hour. Are you saying that people who can't do a job well should be allowed to perform poorly with no consequences?

I’ve seen people like you get upper high rate accurate reviewers fired becayse you were told to find a reason to get rid of them because they were not going to be promoted to management .

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What kind of ediscovery job do you have? We can help you translate those skills into something else. But just saying “ediscovery” and I am “hopeless” shows an inability to think outside of the box. I’ve been in ediscovery for over a decade and I don’t feel hopeless at all. In fact, I love what I do.

I also work in real ediscovery, and I'm frankly a little annoyed that a bunch of contract attorneys/document reviewers are conflating what they do with what I do. What I do is challenging and fun and requires real motivation, intellectual curiosity, and an ability to solve problems. I also haven't made $40K since my second year out of college and currently get paid more than junior-level BigLaw associates. Contract reviewers, please don't run around telling people you work in "ediscovery" - you do not. Your job has just moved from reviewing boxes of paper to Relativity (or whatever online platform is used). If you can't administer Relativity, get data into it, set up batches and review queues for both linear and tech-assisted review, you're not in the game.

Honestly, OP, I can see why you've been stuck in document review for almost two decades. You seem to be looking for other people to provide solutions for you rather than actively participating in solving your own problem. It's really frustrating to see people ask good questions about your skills/experience, share theirs, and try to help you and have you give terse, unhelpful answers and accuse people of bullying you. This is your life and your career, and you need to be actively involved in the process!

Also, applying to government jobs is an art form. If you want to be successful there, it's a whole different process than applying for private industry jobs. You have to use keywords, address KSA points using the same language in the posting, and some other federal hiring oddities. If you want to do that, make sure you're looking at the online resources geared to maximizing your application package.

real ediscovery means you run metrics and fire peolle for not reviewing quick enough . I bet you sleep well at night with that lack of conscience

No, it does not. You clearly have no idea what e-discovery is. The closest I get to contract reviewers is setting up user IDs and permissions, batching documents, and creating metrics reporting for the supervisors to deal with. Sometimes, we help review supervisors with creating question logs and example document sets. And that's going to go down with advances in technology assisted review and predictive coding because the computer does a more reliable job at document coding than humans do. (They're not more accurate, that comes from the reviewer, but, once parameters are defined, the computers are far more consistent.)

Real ediscovery is consulting with clients and attorneys about where to find and how to get data based on the issues of the case and client's business, getting that data processed, indexed (search and analytics), and working with attorneys to figure out how to find what they're looking for the fastest and what tools will do that, figuring out how to deal with new data types, especially for production, drafting discovery agreements, and managing projects and budgets. Mobile and collaboration data is huge right now, and the traditional tools don't handle it well, so we're doing a lot of consulting work on that. I also work inside a law firm, so I manage about a million dollars with of contracts and pricing/cost recovery as well as several teams of timekeepers. I get to do some neat pro bono projects as well.

I sleep just fine at night. I'd also sleep just fine at night firing reviewers who were not performing well enough. I've designed and run those reports for those who make hiring decisions, and the people who get fired are the far outliers (reviewing 20 docs an hour when other reviewers are doing 75-100) and those whose QC rate is atrocious. Our clients are paying for that work, often by the hour. Are you saying that people who can't do a job well should be allowed to perform poorly with no consequences?

do you realize how pretentious you sound ? Oh I don’t want to be associated with doc reviewers! I’m different! They are beneath me. The fact is you couldn’t get a job as an associate or a good federal job either and now you bully down. Thr partners abuse associates, associates abuse staff attorney managers and staff attorney managers abuse staff attorneys and temps. You are nothing but a bully

You're absolutely right - I can't get a job as an associate because I don't have a JD nor have I completed a Virginia legal apprenticeship that would qualify me to sit for the bar with no JD, and those tend to be required for attorney positions. Instead, I started as a paralegal and worked my way up. And no, I'd prefer not to have my hard-earned skillset conflated with doc review. I also did a lot of document review at the beginning of my career as a paralegal - it is really not that difficult. The hardest part is usually to stave off boredom and not mentally check out after the first batch. I've also written review instructions and designed database coding forms. It's not rocket science, which is a big reason why it doesn't pay well. Someone in actual e-discovery on my team is a former review attorney and would agree with that assessment - difference is she built skills, networked, and got out of it within the first two years and moved up the pay- and opportunity-scales.

I also work at a really good firm that is tough and requires a lot of hours but does not perpetuate a culture of abuse. I have good working relationships with partners (I save their clients money and keep review dollars in-house) and associates (I save their weekends and make them look good to partners). I like the vast majority people I work with a lot, both attorneys and professional staff.

Honestly, you sound like a really unhappy person, and if this is how you present in interviews, it's easy to see why you're struck.

I’ve seen people like you get upper high rate accurate reviewers fired becayse you were told to find a reason to get rid of them because they were not going to be promoted to management .

As previously stated, I do not manage reviewers or make any decisions about them. I provide progress reports to the supervising associate who makes the call. We also don't have review attorneys in-house, that's contracted out - what typically happens is they're taken off our review and put on another one. I have no control over how the review provider promotes or staffs anything other than my project. It would be stupid to remove a fast, accurate reviewer from our project, and there's no incentive for me or anyone I work with to do so.