The Law Firm of Simpson Thacher, described as a litigation powerhouse, has placed in the ranks of the top 50 law firms in the nation in terms of both revenue per partner and prestige. One then has to wonder why a law firm praised for its record "revenue per partner" achievement in a sluggish economy, would need temps to subsidize it with free labor.

It is now clear that, in at list one instance, Simpson Thacher's Word Processing Center requested that a temp agency send in a temp for unpaid "training", and that Simpson Thacher had this temp do production word processing work which Simpson Thacher then billed it Clients for. In other words, in at least one instance, Simpson Thacher billed its Clients for labor done by a temp that Simpson Thacher got free from a temp agency (by claiming that the temp would do training).

"After taking the Simpson Thacher word processing test, I was told by my agency that Simpson Thacher required that all temps do eight hours of "training" and that the training would be unpaid.

While I was in Simpson Thacher's Word Processing Center doing this alleged training, I noticed that not only was I doing regular production word processing work like everyone else, but that the Supervisors were entering my time into their billing system so that they could bill their Clients for the work I did.

Since I was not being paid by my Agency, there was no way that I was going to sit there for eight hours and donate labor to Simpson Thacher. After about three hours of Simpson Thacher's "training", I told this Madalia (sp?) person that I had to leave because I was not being paid to work. She said, "Isn't your temp agency paying you?". I said no they aren't and left." Temp Who Initiated Complaint Against Simpson Thacher.

Simpson Thacher's Director of Human Resources, Eric Edelson, is currently claiming that he is "investigating" whether the above described event was an isolated occurence. The information we have available to us seems to indicate that the event was not an isolated one.

Since at least 2001, we have observed that Simpson Thacher has routinely sent out invitations to temp agencies, inviting temp agencies to qualify as an official source of temp labor to Simpson Thacher. And, it appears that every temp agency qualified as a source for temps with Simpson Thacher has had to send each one of their temps wishing to work for Simpson Thacher into Simpson Thacher for what Simpson Thacher claimed was eight hours of "training". Simpson Thacher has no formalized training program that we are aware of which Simpson Thacher can point to to show that these temps did anything other than regular production work during this eight hours of training.

from our observation, once Simpson Thacher obtained the eight hours of free labor from the new agencies's temps, it rarely called these new temp agencies to provide paid services. Simpson Thacher has used the same two major temp agencies since 2001, but each year (around the June/August time period) Simpson Thacher has invited new temp agencies to apply to become approved sources of temp labor.

It appears that the two major temp agencies supplying temps to Simpson Thacher have accepted the fact that they must donate eight hours of free labor to Simpson Thacher for each Temp that they send to work at Simpson Thacher. In fact, it was only because one new temp agency refused to pay its temps for the Simpson Thacher training that this whole situation came to light.

It now appears that the majority of the temp agencies sending temps to Simpson Thacher paid their temps (either at the regular production word processing rate or at a reduced training rate) for the eight hours of training at Simpson Thacher. So, the temp AGENCIES would have been the entities donating eight hours of free labor to Simpson Thacher rather than the temps themselves. There therefore would not have been any reason for the temps who actually did the work at Simpson Thacher to complain about not being paid.

It does however appear that the new temp agencies that were led to believe that they would get tons of paid work from Simpson Thacher after sending in temps to do Simpson Thacher's eight hours of unpaid training, are a bit bent out of shape over the fact that they have, in effect, subsidized one of the most profitable law firms in New York City with free labor.

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if Simpson Thacher claimed that you failed their WP Test and/or if you temped at Simpson Thacher, it may be possible to be part of a Class Action Lawsuit Against Simpson Thacher

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