Attention all lawyers,
Great case for you newer grads or those lawyers looking to pad their experience list.
We are a small firm who wants to sue Microsoft and its board for being responsible for producing some of the crapiest software through the years for mac users like us.
We need your help to prepare our case and file for action.
The lawyer who comes up with a solid case and pulls together all the facts and papers and such, the best, we will pay $100.
Good luck and tell all of your best lawyer friends to respond as well!
Love, Idea Design.

No, I jest. This isn’t for real. In “real life” we would never ask a pool of lawyers to do work without proper compensation would we?
This is a issue that I feel really strongly about. The issue of spec work. (I written about it here before as well.)
Sadly, I hear about this issue far too often in our sector and as a creative person who values what I, and my creative colleagues offer to this sector – I take exception.
And let’s not confuse pro-bono with work being done on speculation.
I do a lot (too much) of pro bono work – where I either offer my services at no cost to the charity or I am asked to offer my services for a specific task.
Compare that to a charity or business looking for designers, or writers or whoever, to provide a service for free and if they like it, maybe they will pay for it.
I really want to ask you – please do not do this.
That means no “contests” for new logos, or “open calls” for web site redesign ideas…
This is a great site called NO! SPEC which I invite you to check out for further education and reading.
Poster by Chad Behnke.

EDIT: I posted this post over at the Communication Arts group on LinkedIn and have been astounded at the comments that have been pouring in. The consensus seems to be it would take an industry of people to say no to see this type of work go away but sadly, I think that there will always be those who try to take advantage of those desperate for work. I plan on posting this in some of the Fundraising groups in LinkedIn. I don’t expect the same level of commenting but would love to hear from you about this issue nonetheless.

I leave you with: (some of this sounds way to familiar to me…)