Quinn Emanuel Wins Overtime Challenge for Document Review
An attorney hired on a temporary contract basis to review documents at a law firm is not entitled to overtime pay because his work involved using his judgment as a lawyer, a federal judge has ruled.
December 31, 2015 at 06:06 AM
5 minute read
An attorney hired on a temporary contract basis to review documents at a law firm is not entitled to overtime pay because his work involved using his judgment as a lawyer, a federal judge has ruled.
William Henig sought overtime pay from Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan under the Fair Labor Standards Act, saying he did no more than review 13,000 documents for whether they were, or were not, responsive to a discovery request.
Under the Fair Labor Standards Act and the New York Labor Law, law firms are exempt from the requirement to pay overtime, but Henig said he was not engaged in the practice of law during his two-month stint at Quinn Emanuel as he was not required to exercise legal judgment and was simply engaged in the mundane tagging of documents on the firm's Document Review Project.
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