Law And More

News Corp - Murdoch crows about new newspaper, shareholders probably ready to sue

News Corp head Rupert Murdoch is back playing in his newspaper sandbox and is happy as a clam.  The newspaper he launched to replace the NEWS OF THE WORLD sold like hotcakes.  BLOOMBERG is carrying this story and is filing it in the legal section because the hacking and bribery scandals continue in the UK.

Something else is also going on.  And that's investors discontent about the publishing segment of News Corp.  It's the one losing money and causing all the trouble.  When the allegations about bribery popped up, the timing was perfect for Murdoch to lop off THE SUN.  No, instead he started another newspaper to replace THE NEWS OF THE WORLD.

I cover all this territory in detail for the financial information site Motley Fool.  Here you can read all about it.

Financial Innovation: It's back (of course it never left)

Lawyers who make a living preventing financial types from breaking the law can look forward to lots more opportunity.  The pace of financial innovation has picked up, reports the current issue of THE ECONOMIST.  Of course, it never disappeared and never will disappear.  Some of the most creative minds are attracted to the field and there can be a big payoff (much bigger than being an equity partner in a law firm) if the innovation pans out.

One not-so-new vehicle - Exchange Traded Fund or ETF - is bound to get the attention of regulators very soon.  The reason is both its success, which scares the dickens out of regulators, and its opacity.  So you might hunt out business there. 

THE ECONOMIST devoted a whole special section to how electric the financial sector is.  It makes us wonder why we didn't opt for that field instead of the ones we did.

Emerging Models in Legal Sector: Fewer equity partners

After the end of the golden age in the legal sector - circa 2007 - every firm which wants to grow has been searching for a new model.  Likely there will be an end to the monolith in how brandname law firms are structured and operate.

Part of one emerging model might be fewer equity partners.  In AM LAW DAILY, Ross Todd reports that Goodwin Procter explains a factor in its 2.5% increase in gross revenues of $695.5 million as smaller equity partnership.   This wasn't deliberate, that is, a strategic move.  Instead it happened through retirements and fewer promotions to equity partner. 

However, given the positive financial results, Goodwin Procter might adopt a limited number of equity partners as a best practice.

Being Kennedy: Misdemeanor makes all major media

Douglas Kennedy, youngest son of Robert Kennedy, has been accused of attempting to remove a baby from Westchester County Hospital.  That's a misdemeanor and all major media are reporting it.  The baby was his.  The two nurses who allegedly apprehended him say that he became violent when informed he couldn't take the baby out of the hospital.

Being Kennedy has many facets.

"The Artist" - George is every displaced lawyer

In "The Artist" George, like so many lawyers, becomes a prisoner of success.  When that process stops, George and the lawyers are clueless how to escape from that emotional cage.  George made it big in the days of silent film.  Then the technology comes for talkies.  George either can't or won't adapt.  He derides this force of change.  He hits the skids.  No, like so many unemployed lawyers, he doesn't even look for some kind of work.

But George turns out to be a survivor  after all.  He allows himself a comeback through the caring of his dog and a dame.  Caring means everything.  Sometimes it's through a spouse, friend, colleague, therapist, mentor or a four-footer.  Sometimes it comes from within and we finally learn to overcome the American epidemic of self-hate and love ourselves.

BigLaw: Don't come here right out of law school

Since the balloon burst in the legal sector around 2007, the meme has been the need for a new model for the business of law.  Technology and changing client purchasing patterns have changed the game, probably forever.

Now we are seeing definite signs of the emerging model.  Likely never again will BigLaw be where the majority of graduates of the top law schools start their career, at least not on the partnership track.

In the NATIONAL LAW JOURNAL, Karen Sloan reports that in 2007, 55% of JDs from the top 20 schools found partnership jobs at the BigLaw.  In 2011, that was 36%.  Sloan notes that no one expects the percentage of hiring to increase.  The business has changed.

That means in law schools students must select their courses, clinical work, and summer opportunities to help them land jobs in government, corporate, nonprofits, small/midsized firms, and solo practices.  There is also the growing option of leveraging legal training for jobs in other fields such as publishing and public relations. 

Talk to lawyers before this latest boom in the legal sector when first year associates were hired in at $170,000 and you usually bump into a tale of early struggle to land that first job practicing law or make a decent living doing so.  At Chevron where I had worked, there had been in public affairs a number of lawyers doing communications.  Given that the oil industry is highly regulated their legal background was a plus, probably still is.  But they had to learn to think like spin masters and argue public policy, not points of law.   Several Baby Boomers lawyers I had talked with had had law-related part-time jobs during law school but still didn't land full time jobs until almost a year after graduation.  In short, they had made all the right moves but still had to take a detour.

No question, the history of employment in practicing law has represented a struggle for most JDs.  The boom years, now we can see, were an aberration.  If this career path is chosen, graduates have to be prepared to, as with most of the rest of us out here in 2012, to "make it up" as they go along.  That's exactly why the new professional common sense is about having the alertness and flexibility to identify, pounce on, and exploit opportunity.

Nobody Trusts Your Client. So?

In our school days, including law programs, when we were green in judgment, most of us took a lot of conventional wisdom seriously. For example, we believed trust was important.  Now we know it's not, at least not as much as we had assumed..  Don't trust the person you're marrying 100%?  Set up a pre-nup and get the names of PIs.  A trust gap is not necessarily a reason not to move forward with a venture.  What really counts is the utility factor.

So, by now you probably realize that the fact that nobody trusts your client might be irrelevant, at least in many contexts.   Only 14% believe Congress is doing a good job, says an ABC poll.  But folks are still spending millions to get elected there and we're helping fund those campaigns.  If elected, that job can be starter one for big things for that person and a useful contact for us.  Utility factor, again.

I look at trust for the financial information site Motley Fool.  Here is what I come up with.

"Porn" - Must-have keyword for cost-efficient SEO in legal sector

You lawyers are supposed to be smart.  Well that brain power usually isn't extending to the bang for the buck you're getting from your SEO (search engine optimization) consultants.  Increasingly, they are dishing out-of-date formulas about how to attract interest from search engines. 

Fire them.  Instead get a creative person in your law firm to simply play around with the term "porn" as a keyword in the "Title," first few sentences, and here and there in the rest of the copy.  A study by Symantec of 3.5 million online searches found that the 6th most used term was "porn." 

Of course, you have to be artistic in how you leverage this keyword in your copy. One suggestion is to dilute it with modifier "soft."  A personal injury firm might have the title "Insurance companies foist soft porn on victims." 

If you're not convinced about this tactic, remember that porn is in essence an experience.  Leveraging the term or even the real thing is not so different from what experience economy players like Starbucks, Target, and Sephora do.  The challenge is to do this in a masterful way, one that converts into sales.

Still not convinced?  Then default to that old cliche that porn is in the eye of the beholder.

One more thing.  You will get even higher search engine rankings if you  attach online video.  According to Forrester research, text with online video has more than a 50 times chance of getting on the first page of Google than naked text.

Interviews: The ambush

It's an ambush.  Usually we can trust our feelings so if we're feeling ambushed we probably are.  That's not what's important.  All that counts is that we manage the situation to our advantage.

Sometimes ambushes are tactical.  The interviewers are playing around, testing out who we really are and how we handle ourselves under pressure.  Sometimes they happen because the interviewers are jerks and maybe even insane.  In those situations we might want to re-think if we want to work there.

Okay, then, it's an ambush.  What are the smart moves for us?  Here are some:

Relax.  We can do that if we frame this exprience as simply practice.  With practice we get better at performing in interviews.  Observe the situation. Instead of focusing on the reality that you really want the job or assignment, consider your options.  You can do this or you can do that.  Since we're bright we enjoy the game.   That sense of pleasure will have us come across as smarter and more confident.

Don't engage. The force field is hostile.  So?  There is no reason we have to respond in kind.  Smile. 

Change the conversation. This is an art.  But we can learn it.  The easiest way to do this is to ask an intelligent question about their operations.  People feel flattered when they are asked questions.

Have no expectations.  There's that old cliche that expectations are simply the raw material for disappointment.  Everything is a learning experience.  The guaranteed result is that we have learned plenty being in this negative situation.

News Corp & "Conspiracy to Pervert the Course of Justice" - Relax, they got Gerson Zweifach

 The media are having a great old time  breathlessly and gleefully covering each new development in the News Corp hacking scandal. 

This morning the breaking news was that Cherie Blair, yes the wife of that Blair, is suing News Corp for allegedly hacking her phone.  Also the first civil trial in the hacking scandal starts next week.  Most of the rest of the lawsuits have been settled.  

This evening Adam Taylor at BUSINESS INSIDER reports that access to new documents from the UK's High Court "suggest News International (the UK wing of Murdoch's News Corp) deleted hundreds of thousands of emails on nine separate occasions."

If that can be proved, the law involved is, Taylor tells us, "Conspiracy to pervert the Course of Justice."  The maximum sentence could be life imprisonment and/or a fine.

And, if it is proven, some in management and the rank and file will have to fall on their swords. But likely Rupert Murdoch will remain legally insulated.  That's why News Corp hired wicked smart Gerson Zweifach as General Counsel.  Remember he's the lawyer who got former New York Stock Exchange head Richard Grasso off when former New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer accused him of unjust enrichment. 

No matter how broad and deep this hacking scandal and the later alleged bribery one get, that's not News Corp's number-one problem.  The biggest challenge it faces - and this could cause a shareholder revolt - is Murdoch's focus on and continued investment in newspapers. 

As I explain in my syndicated post on the financial information site Motley Fool, the publishing segment of Murdoch's empire is losing money and it's the spot where all these scandals are happening.  Other segments such as cable, TV, and film are making money.  But that won't be for too long unless Murdoch switches his focus and invests more in online video.  The imperative is streaming.  Yet many in the investment community don't anticipate that Murdoch will back off from playing in the newspaper sandbox. 

Here you can read my Motley Fool post on how I see this attachment to newspapers as Murdoch's tragic flaw.  Yes, that could be what could do him in.  Strategic positioning in online video is another matter all together.