3 ms·

a point of clarification...you (aka employer) do not decide if a lawyer (aka employee) gives you "spec" work. He does. And he only does it if he thinks it will

a point of clarification...you (aka employer) do not decide if a lawyer (aka employee) gives you "spec" work. He does. And he only does it if he thinks it will give him a sweet payout or he is guaranteed the $ (win the case). This works well for him because those "sweet payouts" are often in the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. Comparing spec work for designers and developers to a lawyer is, well, not exactly reasonable. It's more accurate to compare large ad agencies to the lawyer analogy. Which then, makes complete sense. Back to my analogy. You will never go into a lawyers office and demand he "write a case study and strategy document" for how he plans on dealing with your crazy neighbors because they killed your dog. He will laugh you out of his office, while sending you a bill for wasting his time. But...you can walk in and ask his opinion, get a feeling for his ethics and ask for references. This is akin to the interview for the designer or developer. I see nothing wrong there, on either side.

tptacek 14y ago
I really don't follow this at all. Is your point that designers should avoid doing spec work for clients that are unlikely to be lucrative? Ok. How about a step further, and recommend avoiding doing all work for clients who aren't lucrative? Life is short. As someone who has done pretty significant work with lawyers, especially lately: I think you're drastically underestimating how much lawyers will do up front for free.
- stevoyoung 14y ago
  My original point is that if managers took recruiting more seriously and spent more time and money on finding the correct person they wouldn't need to ask for spec work. My point in this rabbit hole is that doing "free aka spec" work for a lawyer vs designer/developer is completely different. With a lawyer you are talking about possible payouts that can equal to months, or even years of salary. For designers/developers the typical payout for spec work (for freelancers) are more like weeks. Granted, this whole discussion around lawyers doing spec work vs designers/devs doing it is a bit convoluted. I shouldn't have used lawyer in the example, though I still don't think someone goes into a lawyers office and says "in order to work with me you must complete the following tasks". That's what happens to designers and developers, which I think it BS.

tptacek 14y ago

I really don't follow this at all. Is your point that designers should avoid doing spec work for clients that are unlikely to be lucrative? Ok. How about a step further, and recommend avoiding doing all work for clients who aren't lucrative? Life is short. As someone who has done pretty significant work with lawyers, especially lately: I think you're drastically underestimating how much lawyers will do up front for free.

stevoyoung 14y ago
My original point is that if managers took recruiting more seriously and spent more time and money on finding the correct person they wouldn't need to ask for spec work. My point in this rabbit hole is that doing "free aka spec" work for a lawyer vs designer/developer is completely different. With a lawyer you are talking about possible payouts that can equal to months, or even years of salary. For designers/developers the typical payout for spec work (for freelancers) are more like weeks. Granted, this whole discussion around lawyers doing spec work vs designers/devs doing it is a bit convoluted. I shouldn't have used lawyer in the example, though I still don't think someone goes into a lawyers office and says "in order to work with me you must complete the following tasks". That's what happens to designers and developers, which I think it BS.