Need to vent about this somewhere. I’m an attorney. I spent the past year consulting for a firm and finally getting close to having a specialty – I’ve had SUCH bad luck with the firms I’ve worked at, I’m constantly excluded, treated poorly, I’ve had attorneys steal from me, etc, so the past year actually having people treat me like a human was nice.
I’ve been monitoring the opioid crisis trials and doing summaries and complex legal analyses for a big law firm. Here’s why I’m losing that job and basically getting kicked out of the first field I know more than the average attorney about. A company, CVN, got exclusive permission from the courts to take videos of the trial somehow. This was not permitted when they tried to do it in other places as far as I know, I’m sure of it in NY. The company is charging $600 PER DAY to view the trial. I reached out to the company to see if they’d make a deal, no, not a possible one.
Now only wealthy lawyers can watch if they’re not nearby, I can’t afford the trial, you can’t even read about it online- probably because the medias not paying either. I originally was hired for only one case and kept talking the firm into letting me monitor more. They were about to say yes to this one before this happened. I find it so unfair. I contacted the court but they didn’t care at all, and everyone just tells me to stop whining, it’s just business, that’s how it works. Not sure how other lawyers get jobs.
*edit to clarify: these trials last a month +, my shortest so far has been 3 months. The price is astronomical.