Very, very true. But the large law firms employ only a handful of attorneys, comparatively speaking.
I won’t reiterate what’s been said, but I will echo those who have recommended that your brother get involved in the legal community, either through doing pro bono work or (what I think would be better) by getting involved in the various bar association activities. Those are excellent for networking, if he’d like to get out of temping.
I temped for a lot of legal firms, my last “temp” job was at one law firm for over five years! (Long story, I didn’t want to go permanent, and they were happy to have me continue to temp.)
I agree with a lot of what people are saying on this thread, but one upswing is that he is really gaining a lot of experience that might not seem important now, but will be valuable later.
Plus, a lot newer, smaller law firms like to have people with real experience, and for a young guy, he will be exactly what they are looking for. Sometimes young attorneys are nothing more than glorified paralegals - no matter where they work. It takes the grunt work to get them up to speed.
It is one thing to read and know what you need to do, as per college course exams - but it is far better to have real experience looking through the documents and seeing exactly what needs to be filed when, and how, and in what order, and how to create those documents, and learn from other attorneys mistakes.
When he finally starts taking on cases of his own, with his own staff, he will know exactly what needs to be done and not make first-year attorney blunders that could cost him dearly.
I thought this thread was going to be about administrative temping at law offices - my advice was going to be, “Run! Run for your life! Law offices are soul-sucking and treat administrative professionals like scum!”
But never mind.
I’ve temped for a long time - I just lump the short term temp jobs together on my resume, but I do separate out the long-term ones and treat them as real jobs. You’re right about him probably not looking very hard for a permanent job, though - it’s easy to go from assignment to assignment without looking seriously when the paycheques are rolling in. It is a great way to try on different companies, though - he might find one or two that he’d really like to stay with, and he can focus on getting hired by them permanently.