Law And More

Public Works Program for Jobless Lawyers: Campaign 2012, role of the state

"America has inspired most of the interesting thinking on the role of the state in the past 50 years, from deregulation in the 1970s to New York's 'broken windows' policing."  - THE ECONOMIST, July 28, 2012

The Creative Class, although that term hadn't been coined yet by Richard Florida, got a shot at fame and enough money to pay their bills through public works programs in The Great Depression.  The current analogue is digital publishing outfits which give us exposure and pay us something, which is better than nothing, to fill cyberspace with information and insight.  By the comments readers pen and the new business we develop we know this is working.  Unfortunately, there's no comparable vehicle for jobless lawyers to pitch in and help with the surge of legal problems and make about $40,000 a year.  Instituting a public works program in the legal sector deserves to be a presidential campaign issue.

Who doesn't need legal guidance and can't afford it?  Most legal aid societies have found their funding gutted.  The 1400 unit Bella Vista complex, in New Haven, Connecticut, where I have lived for six years, could sure use a lawyer based in the community room in Building B.  There Catholic mass is celebrated on Saturday evenings, folks play Bingo several nights a week, politicos meet with voters, and subsidized lunches are served.  About 40 hours weekly, a lawyer can take on the kinds of end-of-the-world issues my neighbors are in angst about.  They include:

• Personal bankruptcy
• Filing for SSI
• Creating a living will
• Alleged wage and hour violations by employers
• Elder abuse.

Lawyers who serve in this kind of community outreach could have some of their average $100K student loan debt forgiven.

 

All That Law School Debt: Hey, it's only money

Will the Class of 2012 be in old old age before they pay off their,  on average, $100,000 in law school loan debt?  Not necessarily.  It must be a slow news week.  AM LAW DAILY has yet another another article about the big amount owed and the lousy job situation in law. 

The reality is that these Millennials were smart enough to get into law school and cagey enough to pass all the obstacles and graduate, they will likely get over their passion for law and get other kinds of good jobs.  So, they still have to pay off the loans?  My generation had to pay off big houses and vacation homes we couldn't afford.  That was how we had to live back then.  It made us house poor and terrified that our income wouldn't keep going up.  Millennials with JDs just have a different version of financial hell.

 

Sheldon Adelson: Can he help win the White House for the GOP?

The name Sheldon Adelson is coming up a lot in top-tier media.  And his influence can be a wild card which helps determine the outcome of presidential campaign 2012.

POLITICO cites Adelson as a major contributor to the GOP which is significant for two reasons. One is that money is everything in a political campaign.  And two, his example could get Jews in America to consider voting for conservative Mitt Romney. 

Adelson is also featured in the current issue of THE ECONOMIST.  In a special section "Judaism and Jews," THE ECONOMIST explains how Adelson is helping fund Birthright Israel, a program which provides free 10-day trips to Israel for Americans.

Although, as POLITICO points out, Jews are a minority constituting only 3% of the U.S. population, many have professional positions of influence.  Not all voices resonate equally.  Those of members of the media, academia, healthcare, legal sector, entertainment, and finance tend to be heard.

Adelson is a man the Obama Administration should be concerned about. 

Europe's Fail-You're Finished Ethos: Template of lawyers who don't make partner

Here in America, where failure is celebrated as a rite of passage, one thing seems strange to  us.  That's the pattern in the legal sector of the associates who don't make partner and are, more or less, "finished." They might get one more decent-paying job after that but that often doesn't work out and that's that.  Their careers, as lawyers or as anything else, rarely catch fire.

This model resembles the way of business in much of Europe.  The current issue of THE ECONOMIST reports that one reason for the slow economic growth in Europe is that the commercial culture cannot absorb failure.  Fail and you're finished.  Not only that.  "A business blow-up leaves a lasting stain, akin to a moral failure," THE ECONOMIST notes.

Careers in the legal sector remain a peculiar ball of wax.  The big ones can take place only in institutions, be that a law firm, as an in-house lawyer, or in government entities.  Sure there are solos but they usually don't become major brandnames or generate lucrative compensation. Therefore, it's imperative to stay as part of the establishment.  In itself that reality might be constraining how lawyers think and act on the job.  After they lose that job they, as THE ECONOMIST put it about European entrepreneurs, can't seem to "dust themselves off and start all over again."

If lawyers changed their own mindsets about career setbacks they wouldn't be holding themselves back.  In other disciplines, the rest of us have learned to factor in the possibility of failure when we take a job or assignment. That's just the Schumpeterian way in America.  

Star Power: Should law schools train lawyers to twinkle twinkle little star

Are law schools doing their consumers, who pay six figures for their professional education, a disservice by not training them in "star power?" Those in marketing and public relations such as Kate Sirignano, Millennial founder of Image Marketing Consultants, know celebrities constitute the dynamics for 21st century laws of attraction.

Consider confident king of the legal jungle David Boies of Boies, Schiller & Flexner.  Not only does he capture extreme attention for his opining.  According to THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, Boies bills at about $960 an hour. 

Without his aura as "sheriff of Wall Street," perhaps Preet Bharara couldn't put together so many high-profile insider trading cases to try?  After all, prosecuting them requires lots of taxpayer money.  The previous sheriff of Wall Street Eliot Spitzer has huffed and puffed but can't blow down obstacles to regaining stardom.

When I was blogging the Rhode Island lead paint public nuisance second trials (Download Statev.LeadIndustriesAssoc.,Inc.), a lawyer from a brandname firm contacted me to flag him when Don Scott of Bartilt Beck was doing a cross.  He was smitten with Scott's performance art.

Business, of course, has long been about celebrity chief executive officers (CEO).  Remember Jack Welch and Lee Iacocca? Now security analysts wonder if Apple is "toast"  without Steve Jobs.  And as Boy CEO Mark Zuckerberg loses his brand power since Facebook stock tanked, it's not unreasonable to assume that the world has made one of those paradigm shifts.  This time it's from a veneration of social media networks back to predictable consumer businesses like value-added Tide for even the most stubborn stains.  Instead of chasing after business from mobile app startups we in communications consulting are trying to get on the radar of those Organization Men and Women.

Along with legal writing and contract law, 1Ls should take a six-week seminar titled "Strategies for Stardom."  Abovethelaw.com has its influence, power, and advertising bucks because its head writer Elie Mystal knew on some primitive animal level the moves to dominate legal media.  Both in BigLaw and now in house at Aon Mark Herrmann, who also blogs at ATL and published "Inside Straight," exhibited an intuitive grasp of how stardom happens.

Dutiful, loyal worker bees are doomed to a career of looking over their shoulder, fearing to be cut from the team.  Stars scan the horizon for what will constitute their next stage.

"People v Holmes" - Formal Charges on July 30

The legal system, which of course must exist, sometimes seems as anachronistic as an Old Testament prophet.  Bloomberg reports that Jame Holmes could be charged with 12 counts of murder in the first degree.  That would occur on July 30th.

However, the man is not right in his head. That's obvious.  Likely his kind of mental disturbance might even fit the the legal definition of insanity.  Yet all these proceedings must take place. 

Facebook = Associates who don't make partner

Facebook, as a big brand, is finished.  That's just the way it goes.  Even though its earnings exceeded Wall Street estimates, Wall Street kicked it to the ground with a 8.52% decline in the stock price.  Facebook closed at 26.84.  (In after hours trading there was more carnage.)  Seems the growth rate has slowed, profit margins are smaller, and expenses are out of control.  It's rare that companies can be like Apple which returned from the dead.  Mark Zuckerberg is no Steve Jobs.

The analogy here of being finished and professionally dead are the associates who don't make partner.  There they were associated with a premier brand with big time clients.  As Mark Herrmann points out in his new book "Inside Straight" (here you can order it), the powers that be are unlikely to give signals to associates that they are on short time.  After all, they want to keep the help pulling those serial all nighters.

Not making partner after seven, eight, nine years is understandably the end.  I have only heard of a few situations of those who went on after that.  One  was a she and she landed happily in journalism.  Somehow she made peace with not making $300,000.

The dynamics of the collapse seem two fold. One society cleans its hands of you.  You're first tormented, then become invisible.  Two, you can't forgive yourself.  One expatriot from the legal sector has been in executive communications, that is ghostwriting and scriptwriting, forever.  Even during boom times in which $100,000 was low and $250,000 was about right, he pulled in $40,000.  His wife left him. Years before that, his mind did.

Can associates exit this emotional march to death?  A guide which really does help is "Radical Acceptance" by Tara Brach. (Here you can order it.)  It's saved several lives of those I have coached. They started with Chapter 8 "Awakening Compassion for Ourselves."

Antonin Scalia & SCOTUS: Protecting the right to be clobbered

At POLITICO, Dylan Byers reports that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anonin Scalia has commented in public that SCOTUS "gets clobbered by the press all the time."

Had Justice Scalia a public relations pro advising him he might have framed that observation as, "Thanks to the wonderful right of freedom of speech, both individual judges and the institution of the U.S. Supreme Court get clobbered all the time.  That demonstrates the vitality of free expression in this wonderful nation."

The prevailing meme in these harsh economic times is to position adversity of all kinds as a gift.  We are counseled by everyone from our Buddhist coaches to our Cognitive Therapists to embrace the pain and figure out the lesson it contains.  Had Justice Scalia done that he might have gained insight into the need for the High Court to reform itself from within, before the American people force change on it.

 

Age Discrimination Lawsuit against Baylor: When should age be allowed to be factored in

Age is a reality.  The insurance companies are allowed to factor that in when pricing policies.  Government determines the right to buy alcohol, drive, and vote based on age.  Yet, elements of liberalism have created a concept in the legal system called "age discrimination."  Maybe that was a bad idea.

C. Michael Kamps, now 55 years old, filed a pro se lawsuit, reports Karen Sloan in THE NATIONAL LAW JOURNAL, against Baylor University School of Law.  Based on documents which were released by the school regarding grades and LSAT scores for an incoming class, he concluded he was discriminated against because of his age.  He had been denied admission and a full scholarship.

Let's hold the details of this pro se lawsuit.  The reality is that law is a very difficult discipline to master.  Since the bubble burst in the legal sector in 2007 and there was a shfit to a buyer's market, clients have cried out about having newbie associates, who knew nothing about practicing law, on their accounts.

Perhaps law schools should bundle into admissions criteria a bias against age.  I have a hunch that the U.S. Supreme Court will be reviewing a case associated with the appropriateness of including age data in the selection process for schooling, hiring, and layoffs.

Law: Fourth Generation Kennedy

The fourth generation of Kennedys is becoming increasingly visible. 

POLITICO reports that Conor Kennedy, 18-year-old son of Robert and the late Mary Kennedy, has been granted by the court permission to be the administrator of his mother's estate. 

At the court hearing in White Plains, New York, his father did not object.  His mother's sister Martha Richardson was there but indicated she hadn't decided whether to object.