<p>I wasn’t sure where to post this but my friend referred me to an attorney who needs editing help and I was wondering what would be a reasonable rate? I want to do this to help to pay for school but according to him he is very “cost-effective” (for lack of a better word).</p>
<p>Are any of you involved or know of anyone who does this and what a reasonable rate would be?</p>
<p>Editing help for a lawyer? Editing what? Contracts, briefs, motions, jury instructions? Be careful. Sounds alot to me like practicing law without a license.</p>
<p>I have a friend with a data-entry business: she pays around $20to $30per hour for intensive and careful work by students, but it’s seasonal work and insane hours - not a “normal” job.
That’s assuming the “editing” is just for form, not for content. I’d be really careful if it was more than that - see wjb’s post. If it’s just normal office stuff, then normal office pay is slightly above minimum wage where you work. Maybe $10 per hour.</p>
<p>I can’t imagine any lawyer needing someone to “edit” their work–have to agree, sounds like practicing law w/o a license. Spouse is an atty-the only editing he does is when he edits what an associate may have written, as spouse is the partner. Be very careful!</p>
<p>Thanks for all of your advice-- I don’t think it’s legal stuff, just documents that need to be edited. </p>
<p>I was thinking from $10-11 an hour would be reasonable but I just wanted to know if you all agreed. He will mostly just be e-mailing the items to me and I will reply with the edited product.</p>
<p>I remember hearing that big law firms in New York have people who proof read documents. The work wasn’t paid much.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>I don’t think it’s practicing law without a license at all. I would love it if I had a smart student to proofread/copyedit my stuff. It’s hard to charge my full rate for that, but it’s still valuable. And I have often thought about hiring history grad students part time to draft stuff that basically has to be document-based (subject to my review, of course).</p></li>
<li><p>What a reasonable rate is depends in part on a few things. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>Where are you? You should get more for this work in Chicago than in Mayberry, I suspect.</p>
<p>What kind of practice is it? If your work is going to be billed to corporate clients, you probably ought to get paid about a third of the billing rate. If you are working for a lawyer who works on contingency, probably expect less (but decent bonuses, one hopes).</p>
<p>How regular is the work? Steady, guaranteed hours at scheduled times (or at times YOU choose) get paid a lot less than work that may be feast-or-famine, 30 hours one week and 8 the next, with lots of emergencies you don’t control.</p>
<p>Are you an employee or an independent contractor? If the latter, remember that you have to pay both the employee’s and the employer’s share of FICA. That alone is worth another 8-9%.</p>
<p>I’ve worked in textbook publishing for 15 years and left the field about 5 years ago. We paid our copy editors (depending on the extent of the editing) anywhere from $20-30 per hour. However, for many jobs (especially second editions, etc.) we paid by the page. This way, we could control our costs.</p>
<p>Are you going to edit online? If so, get familiar with the Track changes features of MS Word. It’s not brain surgery, but it helps to have a basic knowledge of how editing online works.</p>