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.
Comments