And those figures can go up, especially in big cities. "If an attorney has five-plus years experience, is involved in groups like [EDD thinktank] The Sedona Conference (www.thesedonaconference.com), and has a solid reputation, the number can creep into $225-$250K," says another EDD vendor.
Salaries typically are lower outside major metropolitan areas. New Orleans-based Connie Nichols,* director of technology with Docusource Digital Discovery Management & Trial Systems (www.docusource-lss.com), says attorneys can expect to earn $80-$100K for full-time project management work.
Minnesota's George Socha warns that top dollar spots ? as high as $1 million a year for consulting posts with top consulting firms ? often come with a huge psychic price. These high-stress jobs often have revolving-door turnover, and "seem to ask absolute devotion to the job," with no time for family, he cautions. But the lure can be potent, and some successful partners bolt to consulting jobs with vendors, hoping to hit the jackpot: "You know the drill ? options, going public, huge payout."
HEADHUNTER'S BOUNTY
Firms, law departments and vendors alike are turning to agencies for help finding talent. Kari Johnson is director of business development at Chicago's Lawyer- Link (www.lawyerlinkchicago.com), which provides temporary and permanent placement services, and also offers outsourced EDD review services at its Sears Tower facilities.
She sees "a huge surge in corporations and law firms hiring attorneys as EDD specialists. Right or wrong, attorneys are often hired into this position because they are seen as having more credibility than paralegals, or traditional, non-attorney litigation support professionals," says Johnson.
Many trial lawyers, she says, want an attorney to serve as a liaison with people "they perceive as IT personnel." Some firms and law departments hire both an EDD technical expert (paralegal) and a substantive expert (attorney) with a focus on EDD, she notes.
Attorney Andrew Jewel, vice president, national operations, of Hudson Legal (www.us.hudson.com/legal), has a similar experience. "No longer are our clients simply looking to us to assemble a review team," he says. In response to the demand, Hudson has expanded its services beyond providing review teams, to also finding and setting up space and managing the entire EDD process for its client firms.
CONTRACT CAVEATS
EDD can be a gold mine for contract lawyers who for various reasons want short-term or part-time job commitments, but contract lawyering (especially in law firms) comes with strong caveats. By definition staff and contract attorneys are second-class citizens, say many observers, who also worry about the effect these posts have on career opportunities for minority attorneys.
According to ALM's Minority Law Journal summer 2008 issue, a high percentage of staff attorneys are minority lawyers ? filling posts where they make less money than full-time associates, receive fewer (if any) benefits, and have little job security or real advancement opportunities. "Document review pits are a modern plantation," one anonymous attorney commented on Joseph Miller's JDwired.com blog.
An exception that may prove the rule is Hughes Hubbard. "A number of our staff attorneys have become associates, based on consistently excellent performance," reports Seth Rothman. But in most firms, a staff lawyer position never merges into a partner track.
Contract and temp lawyers are definitely at the bottom of the EDD food chain, typically earning in the $30-$40/hour range, with no health or retirement benefits, reports Minority Law Journal. One industry veteran, who asked for anonymity, says even those figures may be optimistic, saying in today's economy, $25/hour is not uncommon, and sometimes attorneys who are desperate for work will take paralegal jobs that pay $15/hour.
Another factor: U.S.-based contract work may soon evaporate as fast as arctic ice caps, warns Socha: "Tomorrow, the work will go to India (or parts similar) because those positions there are well-paying, wellregarded, career track positions. Rarely, if ever, is that the case here."
FRICTION
In any context, the introduction of more lawyers into traditional non-lawyer support staff turf can create tensions. One large firm partner, who asked not to be identified, says the new tier of attorneys "does cause friction. The litigation support staffers are all about getting work done. The attorneys seem more interested in writing memos."
But Craig Foster, marketing manager of Austin's IE Discovery Inc. (www.iediscovery.com), says the fissures in the traditional caste system help. It's much easier to deal with the friction today because EDD vendor jobs are "a much more accepted career path for a lawyer than it was in the past," he observes.
ESCALATING EXPECTATIONS
For non-lawyers working in EDD, roles are blurring between the traditional duties of paralegals and litigation
support staff. New non-lawyer positions are emerging, such as trial support specialist, and project managers, there are increasing opportunities to jump ship and make more money. Organizations such as the National Federation of Paralegal Associations (www.paralegals.org), ALM Events (www.almevents.com), Estrin LegalEd (www.estrinlegaled.com), and Thomas Edison State College (www.tesc.edu) are offering training to help support staff navigate the fastchanging waters.
Support staff are being pulled into trial teams earlier, and everyone's now expected to be facile with trial technology. Judith Flournoy,* CIO at Los Angeles' Loeb & Loeb (www.loeb.com), says her trial team is "expected to be experts in e-discovery, or, at a minimum, have the ability to coordinate activities with vendors as well as educate attorneys on best practices." They are required to be familiar with the spirit ? if not the details ? of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure amendments that went into effect in December 2006, she says.
Baseline technical IT skills are much higher than five years ago, says Wayne Smith,* MIS director at Columbus, Ohio's Chester, Willcox & Saxbe (www.cwslaw.com). Trial support staff must be well-grounded in computer forensics, native file formats, database systems, imaging and OCR, transcript programs, trial presentation systems, and Adobe Acrobat. And, he says, they must be able to maintain relationships with key EDD vendors, so that they can counsel and support attorneys with the greatest impact and economy.
Chicago's Bruce Blokell, firmwide litigation support manager for Bryan Cave (www.bryancave.com), sees "far more involvement in the front end of a matter, especially as a project consultant," a view echoed by numerous sources.
In the past, "the paralegals avoided the IT staff at all costs," says Dave Tiller, owner of Peoria, Arizona's Studeo Legal (www.studeolegal.com), which offers a range of EDD services. But now, "the more a paralegal gains expertise in the use of technology, the more valuable he or she becomes for the organization."
LawyerLink's Kari Johnson concurs: "Paralegals can no longer expect to be hired or promoted without technical skills, database knowledge, or a general comfort level navigating computers and new software."
RETENTION CHALLENGES
Trial support staff retention has become a critical issue, says just about every employer as they try to swat away poachers with high salaries, perks and bonuses. LawyerLink's Johnson says several very large firms are experiencing "major attrition" of litigation support/ EDD professionals. "The grass isn't always greener, but when there are so many options, these professionals are choosing to find out for themselves."
Chicago's Bruce Blank, director of litigation support and services, at Foley & Lardner, says getting quality litigation support people "has been a massive challenge. Once on board, keeping them is even harder. The market keeps bidding the salary higher and higher. Most firms don't market-adjust quickly enough," he says. "We have 'No Poaching Allowed' signs on all the doors. It's not working."
Loeb's Flournoy feels the pain. Over the last two years, "hiring, recruiting, retaining has become expensive ? going for five- to six-digit salaries in some cases. . . . The nature of litigation practice at Loeb five years ago was very different from what it is today."
Studeo Legal's Tiller says his company now offers incentive bonuses to lit support project managers during and after projects, the company's salary structure has spiked 20% in the last five years. A key incentive, says Tiller, is that his lawyers, paralegals and lit support staff can work from home, reducing costs for both employees and the company.
But it's still cut-throat, he says. When word gets out that a vendor is having challenges or is for sale, "the recruiters and competing vendors (vultures and poachers) are contacting employees." He cautions peers to be extremely vigilant. "In today's market, incompetent employees can bounce from job to job, while increasing their compensation and title."
Further complicating staffing decisions are generational differences and expectations, observes Melbourne's Michelle Mahoney,* of Mallesons Stephen Jaques (www.mallesons.com). "For Generation Xs, a career in a law firm was respectable and could be your end destination," she notes. But today's young adults often see legal technology jobs as "an experience, or a place to visit on their life journey, rather than their end destination." This outlook forces firms to compress technical learning and increase practical learning.
"The ability for a law firm to milk feed young or new staff on the smaller or less complex tasks is being compromised by the very nature of EDD and transaction support. The risk factor for law firms has never been higher when dealing with corporate information."
OPPORTUNITIES
Despite worries that the current economy may chill some litigation, or that companies will settle cases sooner to avoid expensive EDD, the general consensus is that EDD is here to stay ? and is a good thing. When run correctly, and effectively, it can save both firms and corporations time, money and resources, and help provide the golden grail: "better, faster, cheaper" services to clients.
And it will be a feeding frenzy for trial support staff. "There simply are not enough qualified EDD personnel to go around," says Phoenix's Arkfeld.
But there are at least two major challenges confronting the profession: getting trial lawyers to accept and understand e-discovery; and then finding and using the right tools and people.
Matthew Levy says his biggest hurdle is "finding ? or teaching ? that balance between technology and the law. It is critical that litigation support staff be able to convey often-complicated technology issues to attorneys and their clients in easy to understand terms." Both firms and corporations are "increasingly relying on both litigation support professionals and tech-savvy paralegals to help bridge the gap between IT and legal," he says.
But many trial lawyers, say experts, simply won't get their heads out of the sand. Arkfeld routinely cites surveys that consistently say that as many as 99% of practicing lawyers admit they don't understand EDD, including litigators. Browning Marean estimates that only about 20% of active litigators have a reasonable understanding of EDD, a figure mirrored by a recent survey of in-house counsel by EDD vendor Kroll Ontrack (www.krollontrack.com) that found that only 25% of U.S. in-house counsel, and 17% of U.K. in-house counsel say they are fully current with EDD case law, developments and regulations.
"There is still a powerful echelon who think this will either go away, or pass them by," observes consultant Craig Ball. When they end up in a courtroom facing tech-savvy opponents, or a forensics-wise judge, or a jury that watches TV's CSI, the fireworks can be spectacular.
"Lawyers are delegating too much substantive legal impact to junior lawyers, paraprofessionals and vendors, who end up dancing around blurred lines, because the lawyers refuse to admit what they don't understand, or expend the requisite effort to learn it. This stuff isn't that hard ? but I've never seen anything that caused lawyers to get impatient, grasp for half-assed shortcuts, and tune out quicker." LTN
California attorney Monica Bay, editor-in-chief of Law Technology News, worked her way through law school doing discovery support. E-mail: lawtech@alm.com. *Member, LTN's editorial advisory board and/or author, EDD Update blog (www.eddupdate.com).
Law Technology News June 2008 | 
