Young Lawyer Plays Major Role in Multi-Million Pound Dealt
A young man in a suit alights from a black cab. He is dressed in a suit. There is a chill in the air but no one is on the street. It is early. It is also a public holiday. He enters a building in London's business district and enters a lift. Disembarking on the sixth floor, he unlocks the door to office 608 and walks in. Turning on the lights he sees that the room contains a long desk with 22 big black folders, arranged neatly on top and another desk towards the end of the room. He puts down his bag and takes a seat at the far desk... 12 hours later, the young man locks the door behind him, goes down the lift and exits the building, bound for home. It is now 9pm. You might have guessed by now that the young man is me. What you might still be asking yourself is what happened during those 12 hours, heh? I'll tell you. NOTHING! Sweet FA! "What do you mean?" I hear you ask. Well, lets start from the beginning. After two weeks of job hunting, an agency finally called with news of a job at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer (one of the largest and most prominent law firms in the Western world). I was told that the role of paralegaql would consist mainly of data room supervision. My previous paralegal experience at Mallesons in Melbourne had told me that this is where bidders for a business gain access to sensitive information about their prospective purchase in a controlled and secure environment. As a supervisor, I would assist in the filing of documents, make sure that only authorised people had access to the room and maintain a sense of order in the operation. Without wishing to breach the confidentiality agreement I signed on commencement, lets just say that I expected a �580 million sale of a renouned retail chain would be a rather important deal. On its face it appeared so with 10 data rooms open at various, discrete locations around London's City district. There was plenty of inportant material to sift through... or so I thought. Someone failed to mention this to the potential bidder that was assigned to my room as no one showed up for the whole day I previously described. Nor for that matter , did anyone show on the 3 days before it, or the 2 after it. Now I can hear many of you saying, "Sweet gig, Sammy D. Why all this diatribe? You should be so lucky." Now I realise you gotta kick some shit to get anywhere in this world. And, OK, I'll admit, there are moments when I wake from a 60 minute snooze and think, I just got paid A$20 to do that ($35 on weekends), but there is something fundamentally wrong with this role. If you've ever been on a long flight, say from Singapore to London, or Melbourne to LA, you should be familiar with the immense sense of boredom and agitation that begins to creep in after a couple of hours. You can only read for so long before the novelty wears off and eye lids start to droop. And knowing that the best part of a day is left to pass in the same rom only makes things worse. Not to mention the lack of some bad in-flight movies and food to help pass the time. Now, I don't want to offend any of those fine public servants out there but I now know what it must be like to work in 'particular departments' of the State |government (sorry, Simon... couldn't resist). Give me barrel counting any day, heh Dan. I am still alive to tell you all this because of 3 things: 1) the Sony Ericsson T68i's extensive games menu - battleship, solitaire, et al can be fun for hours. I knew there was a good reason for buying such a crap phone; 2) The Creative Jukebox III mp3 player - 300 CDs, 4000 songs and 22 hours of battery life - truly the soundest investment I have ever made (I need to discuss payment with you David); and 3) The Times - probably the best newspaper I have ever read and it can take up to 3 hours to read from front to back (especially the Sunday edition which would clear a small rainforest every week just to produce). What really gets my goat about this whole set up is that you need to have, as a bare minimum, a law degree and preferably some paralegal experience to get this job in the UK to begin with. Put simply, a 'trained monkey' could do this job. In fact, that is just a nice way of saying 'untrained monkey'. And hell, that's just a nice name for 'monkey', isn't it. On top of the inhumane working conditions (i.e. bring lunch or starve) and the fact the operation is compllletellly llllacking in llllogic (Bill Lawry at the mic!), there are some other ethically and morally reprehensible aspects of data room invigilation that I feel I must vent. Despite the incredible sum of money being invested in this deal and the unquestionable wealth of the parties involved, the client is charged �1200 for my services to man an empty room each day. �100 p/h. A$250 p/h. And I don't even do anything! My agency charges me out to the firm for at least �15 p/h and of that I'm lucky if I see �8.50 p/h before tax. I have come to a few conclusions: 1) Clients are being right-royally stung through the proverbial nose; 2) Firms are getting richer and richer by the day, while their reputations are sullied; and 3) Put bluntly, agencies are just blood-sucking parasites with a monopoly on the marketplace. At the end of this dark and depressing tunnel is the light that is the prospect of traveling. At this rate I calculate that I need to work for another 8 weeks and 2 weekends to cover the costs of accommodation and traveling expenses. Of course, this is all dependent on getting a steady flow of work over the next few months. However, I take solace in the thought that if there are more suckers like Selfridges (ooops!!) out there, willing to waste a fortune on a monkey in suit babysitting their documents in an empty room then I should come home a very rich chimp, if not highly introverted and possibly a tad insane to boot. Signing off, Samuel J Dwyer LLB BA Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer Professional Data Room Invigilator & Smartly Attired Primate Note from Author: Please be advised that this email was scripted after 9 hours of data room supervision, henceforth the author requests that the reader acknowledge the complete lack of a grip lost on reality at the time of writing. Thank you.
