The success or failure of a proposed class action filed Thursday in the Southern District against Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom and Tower Legal Staffing hinges on a seemingly simple question: Is working on a document review considered practicing law?
It's a question that New York plaintiffs' lawyer D. Maimon Kirschenbaum has been trying to have a court answer since 2010, when he filed his first of three suits claiming document reviewers should be paid overtime under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act because the routine nature of the work requires no legal analysis and therefore qualifies the reviewers as nonexempt employees under the law.
