A MAP OF TEMP TOWN

Petty Esquire: A fictional account of the extraordinarily petty, six figure, underbelly of the legal world.

I have now spent time in a place I’ve come to know as Temp Town. It’s not really a town or any other type of geographical location. It’s certainly no place that a lawyer would or should plan to go. It’s located in basements and office buildings in every big city in America and even a few small cities. It’s a gritty, dirty place where lawyers land when all of their dreams of earning a position at a law firm or holding a respectable post at a government agency or working as counsel in a corporation have withered under the hot light of reality and crumble into short-term contract jobs at the very law firms, corporations and government agencies that wouldn’t have them as associates or regular employees. There are lawyers there who discovered, too late, that they should never have gone to law school at all. Their gifts lie in another profession or field.

Temp Town is a fictional place where organizations pay qualified attorneys to work on a short term, contract basis to do the same jobs as employees but for much less pay and no benefits or job security. This place can be a lay over for those who want to pursue their passions or change careers or it can be a cesspool of dying souls swirling down into a dark hopeless drain where visions of a career as an attorney wash away like sewage.

As for me, I hope to emerge from Temp Town in a better state than I am in now.