An attorney working through a staffing firm on a document review project might be entitled to overtime pay. A federal Appeals Court overturned a decision by a lower court to dismiss a case brought by contingent attorney David Lola. The case now goes back to the lower court for continued proceedings.

Lola worked on a document review project for 15 weeks starting in April 2012. He claimed to log 45 to 55 hours per week, but received the same rate of $25 per hour for all time worked despite putting in more than 40 hours per week. He sued the buyer — law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom LLP — as well as staffing supplier Tower Legal Staffing. The class action lawsuit for overtime pay was dismissed in September by a federal judge in New York.

The appeals court disagreed with the district court’s conclusion, on a motion to dismiss, that the document review project was necessarily “practicing law” within the meaning of North Carolina law, and therefore exempt from overtime rules.

“A fair reading of the complaint in the light most favorable to Lola is that he provided services that a machine could have provided,” Circuit Judge Rosemary Pooler wrote.

“We think this hopefully will open the door for contract attorneys to assert their rights with respect to money owed to them, and to get money paid to them in the future," Bloomberg quoted Maimon Kirschenbaum, a lawyer for Lola, as saying.

The case is Lola v. Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom et al, 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 14-3845.