Any hope of pursuing meaningful work was promptly crushed at 7:30 Monday morning when all twelve new litigation associates were sent into the abyss of Document Review.
Document Review was certainly not glamorous, but it was a safety net for all new associates. "You can always go there and find work that can be billed," Karleen said. "Eight hours minimum, but there is no max."
Their first case involved a client with the slightly ludicrous name of Placid Mortgage -- ludicrous in Kyle's opinion, but he kept his mouth shut as Karleen rattled off the more salient facts of the case. Starting in 2001, when a new wave of government regulators took over and adopted
a less intrusive attitude, Placid and other huge home mortgage companies became aggressive in their pursuit of new loans. They advertised heavily, especially on the Internet, and convinced millions of lower- and middle-class Americans that they could indeed afford to buy homes that they actually could not afford. The bait was the old adjustable rate mortgage, and in the
hands of crooks like Placid it was adjusted in ways never before imagined. Placid sucked them in, went light on the paperwork, collected nice fees up front, then sold the crap in the secondary markets. The company was not holding the paper when the overheated real estate market finally crashed, home values plummeted, and foreclosures became rampant.
Now the lawyers were trying to clean up the mess. Placid had been battered by lawsuits,
but the worst one was a class action involving 35,000 of its former borrowers. It had been filed in New York a year earlier. Beginning of Chapter Six at 118-119.
Karleen led them to a long, dungeon like room with no windows, a concrete floor, poor lighting, and neat stacks of white cardboard boxes with the words "Placid Mortgage" stamped on the end.
It was the mountain Kyle had heard so much about. The boxes, as Karleen explained, in came the files of all thirty-five thousand plaintiffs. Each file had to be reviewed.
"You're not alone," Karleen said with a fake laugh, just as both Kyle and Dale were about to resign. "We have other associates and even some paralegals on this review." She opened the box, pulled out a file about an inch thick, and went through a quick summary of what the litigation team was looking for.
"Someday in court," she said gravely, "it will be crucial for our litigators to be able to tell the judge that we have examined every document in this case."
Kyle assumed it was also crucial for the firm to have clients who could pay through the nose for
such useless work. He was suddenly dizzy with a realization that in just a few short minutes, he would punch in and begin charging $300 an hour for his time. He was worth nothing close to that. He wasn't even a lawyer. He opened a file and glanced at his watch -- it was 7:50.
Scully lawyers billed by tenths. A tenth of an hour is six minutes. Two-tenths is twelve, and so on. One point six hours is an hour and thirty-six minutes. Should he roll back the clock two minutes, to 7:48, and therefore be able to bill two-tenths before the hour of eight? Or should
he stretch his arms, take a sip of coffee, get more situated, and wait until 7:54 to begin his first billable minutes as a lawyer? It was a no-brainer. This was Wall Street, where everything was done with aggression. When in doubt, bill aggressively. If not the next guy will, and then you won't catch him.
