想飛 I WANT TO FLY

(Great view from the law firm--overlooking No. 2 and No. 3 World Financial Center)

The new year has started, and I've been busy working around the clock from last December.

Here is the basic info of my job:

I am hired by a legal staffing agency to work for one of the big law firms in New York for a litigation case. The client of the law firm is one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world, and its China operation is allegedly in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practice Act ("FCPA").

Since this project involves a possible FCPA violation for the client's China practice, the US government has seized computers of 40 high-ranking officers of its China office to look for possible illegal operation (mostly from the emails). The emails were written in Chinese (simplified Chinese, of course), and that's how we came into place. Our job is to decipher the emails brought up from the seized computers, and help the firm decide if the client's operation or the order of the top notch officers is illegal.

Since the firm expects that there is whole lot of information to be brought up, several legal staffing agencys together have hired 30 Mandarin speaking attorneys to work on this project, and expect this project to last for 2-3 months.


The pay is somewhat equivalent to those who work for the big firms in New York, except we don't have bonus. It is paid at an hourly rate, and there is overtime ("OT") pay for hours worked in excess of 40 hours per week. In the beginning the law firm requires a minimum of 60 hours a week, possible to be pushed to 72-91 hours/week, but then we discovered that the firm is pretty flexible about the work hours. Since the pay is a lot higher compared to the average workers, and we can accumulate a good deal of money in a short time, some attorneys actually come from different states just for this project.


TO BE CONTINUED....