EDD Update

Isom & Santalesa join InformationLawGroup

InfoLawGroup reports that David Isom and Richard Santalesa have joined the firm as senior counsel. Isom was formerly co-chair of Greenberg Traurig's EDD practice group. Santalesa, based in New York City and Fairfield, CT., focuses on electronic commerce, internet, privacy issues and other commercial arrangements involving intellectual property and technology-savvy companies.

More here.

 

Cowen Group: PM is Exploding

The Cowen Group a New York-based legal recruiter and consultancy, has announced the results of its 2009/2010 eDiscovery and Litigation Support Professionals Salary Survey. According to managing partner David Cowen, 487 professionals at 100 major firms shared their salary data with TCG for its 5th annual report. The data was gathered between November 2009 and February 2010.

As usually occurs, salaries are highest on the East Coast, lowest in the central part of the country. TCG broke the results into six different categories, with these median 2009 base salaries and projected 2010 East Coast figures: 

* analyst $67,500 ($72,000) 
* specialist $91,000 ($93,000)
*  project manager $115,000 ($125,000)
* regional coordinator $135,000 ($145,000)
* national manager $165,000 ($205,000)
* and firmwide director $267,000 ($295,000).

The Right Fit

With so many vendors using the same 12 words to describe their electronic data discovery services, no wonder general counsel and outside firms often feel overwhelmed when trying to evaluate companies.

 But the key to vetting, hiring and managing vendors is asking the right questions, say John Reilly and Stephen Schutter in "The Right Fit," part of Law Technology News' October issue, EDD Showcase: GC Perspectives.

Reilly, an associate GC for Lorillard Tobacco Co., and Schutter, of counsel to Shook, Hardy & Bacon, offer concrete suggestions for drafting vendor contracts, reminding readers to address a wide range of topics, including quality control, warranties and remedial provisions, training and support, pricing, disaster recovery and reports.

Cowen Group Optimistic about EDD Hiring

The Cowen Group has launched a newletter, "The Career Corner," and leads off with a report on career trends, by Jared Coseglia and David Cowen.

After recently polling 100+ HR and lit support managers/directors (and subsequent conversations with these folks and senior EDD attys and mgrs) they ID three "hot trends:"

1. Demand is exceeding talent on the West Coast by a factor of 3:1: 32% of law firms in the U.S. "expect to add litigation support staff within the next six months — and 44% of these openings would be in the West Coast."

Shame, shame: Gender gap in paralegal pay.

On our LegalBlogWatch, Bob Ambrogi spotted this report from Chere Estrin, noting that there appears to be a gender gap in paralegal pay (and no, the women are not making more than the men). Here is his commentary:

Pay Inequity for Women Paralegals

Given that women have long outnumbered men among the ranks of paralegals, it would seem safe to assume that here is at least one segment of the legal profession where salaries are blind to gender. Surprisingly, such is not the case. In what Chere Estrin at The Estrin Report calls "the legal field's dirty little secret," it turns out that gender is very much a factor in pay scales for paralegals and legal assistants, with women earning only 93.2 percent of what men earn.

Based on an August report from the U.S. Census Bureau, Estrin writes that women paralegals and legal assistants earned a median salary in 2007 of $42,600. Men earned a median of $45,700. This was not as bad as the gap between female and male lawyers, where women earned a median of $93,600, just 77.8 percent of the median salary for men of $120,400. But still, writes Estrin, this is a field that was originally made up almost entirely of women and where women continue to far outnumber men. "No one can claim ... that men had the upper hand in terms of having a head start in the field."

So, what on earth has happened? Are you telling me that the majority of men do a better job than all women paralegals? So much so, that men will automatically get paid more?  Are you telling me that men are promoted to the manager position faster than women?  Not according to the International Paralegal Management Association whose membership lists approximately 90% of its members as women.

For Estrin, there is only one explanation, and that is that we still face a lack of equality between the genders. While we are less surprised by that in other fields, it is a shock for a field whose genesis is women. As Estrin says, "C'mon, Joe. Say it ain't so."

I think this is outrageous, and I challenge every law firm managing partner, GC, and EDD vendor to drop everything, call HR, check records, and remedy this TODAY.

Update: Turns out, the paralegals and lit support women are in just about the best posture within legal: because the news is far worse about our industry as a whole. The census figures reveal even more grim statistics: across the board, our women are earning 51% of what our men earn. FIFTY ONE PERCENT!!!!! Here's the NLJ report.

Why? Read some of the comments here and on The Common Scold  -- but one big reason appears to be that too many women don't negotiate effectively, and often take the initial salary offered to them without countering.

Arkfeld's eLawExchange.com

We are excited to launch our new web site Arkfeld's eLawExchange.com (www.elawexchange.com) and its many free resources for the eLaw legal community.

The web site provides FREE access to:

•    State Ediscovery Caselaw and Rules - This database contains ediscovery caselaw and procedural rules from all 50 states. Check back often to see the status of ediscovery law in your state.

A New Tier of Staff Atty Jobs (Elefant)

Carolyn Elefant, co-editor of Law.com's Legal Blog Watch Alert, says "staff attorney" posts are morphing into a new Big Law tier. Will that change the traditional "second class citizen" role of these lawyers, especially when they are functioning in e-discovery roles? Check it out here.