Law And More

Powerful in This Town Stopped Cold by Shutdown: Did the gods get angry?

Many of the power structures in Washington D.C. aka This Town were brought to a halt by the government shutdown.  Those range from Department of Justice lawyers handling civil cases to lobbyists pitching Congress and regulatory agencies on behalf of their clients.  More such as the U.S. Supreme Court could join them if the shutdown is long-term.

Here THE NATIONAL LAW JOURNAL details the disruption.  One wonders if the best-selling book "This Town" by Mark Leibovich made the gods angry and they unleashed this plague on the influential players inside the beltway.  Those the gods wish to punish they might first make unusually powerful. 

Law Students: Think old. Think geezer pain. Think inefficient

The difference between youth and geezers is that Millennials feel right at home in what Baby Boomers experience as the unbearable lightness of being.  That is the core problem with Millennials getting hired or even getting help from Baby Boomers.

Law students have to learn to think old. Think geezer pain.  Think inefficient.  Yesterday on his influential site Odwyerpr.com, wealthy (even though he started his career journey in journalism) commentator on public relations Jack O'Dwyer called it.  His observations were focused on young starving writers.  But they apply to most Millennials not in tech.   Here you can read how O'Dwyer nailed it. 

Essentially, the advice was: If you want to get work, communicate in the ways in which those who hand out work do.  Facebook, LinkedIn, and texting are all cool.  And the kiss of death in going after the professional goodies.  Geezers are in the email habit.  They phone.  They respond to those who get in their face, even if they seem annoyed.  That's because, once strivers themselves, they respect those who manage to gain access, against all odds.

That's just the tip of the iceberg.  Youth has to develop empathy.  Instead of looking inward they had to put their attention on figuring out the main sources of the geezer's pain.  Based on what they find, then they construct their plan for interaction.  Instead of scorning geezers' insecurity that their best days are behind them, provide ideas on how they can shine in new ways.

In addition, the judgment about inefficient ways to do things has to go. Life is inefficient.  After all, it takes nine months to become together enough to present ourselves in the world.  A Dale Carnegie beginner course runs less than two.  Here's a story.

Based a 90-minute Metro North commute from Connecticut to Manhattan, I was invited to a book-launch party.  Of course, that ritual is inefficient.  The bubbly mood could have been transmitted via Skype. No way did I want to be a part of that inefficiency.   I am a Leaning In woman.  

I did get my butt on the train.  I did get on the wave length of the group.  I did generously give ideas for obtaining further publicity in fresh ways.  

My follow ups were equally inefficient.  From the old-line tribal rite I have a new lucrative account.  My hope is that this contact will lead to more well-paying assignments from the man's network.  

 

"This Town" by Mark Leibovich - Can an introvert make it big in D.C.?

The "price" of making it in Washington D.C., a hotbed of lawyerism, is not selling your soul. It's being available to be totally social - in all mediums.  Those include in-person parties, tweeting and blogging, calling, not missing a birthday, funeral, or wedding or at least sending anything from a note to a gigantic floral arrangement, and scanning the horizon for fresh new contacts. 

That's one of the key messages of the book "This Town" by insider Mark Leibovich.  He chronicles, for example, all the socializing associated with the death, wake, and funeral of the late television commentator Tim Russert.  In exchange for being aggressively social, one gets wealth, influence, and power.  In addition, that's how one manages to remain in D.C.  Once there, the objective it not to have to leave.

The challenge for too many lawyers is sustaining that intense level of being a social animal.  After all, there are also concrete tasks to be done. Those range from writing briefs to being in court.  The reality is that by nature and years of paying more attention to the books than human interaction, some lawyers have become introverts.  Can they make it in D.C., a town tilted toward extroverts.

The answer is: yes.  Actually the gregarious tribes inside the beltway welcome in those content to be behind the scenes.  In many cases, if those backstage players rear their heads for attention in their own right, they will be punished. The ultimate penalty is being banished from the town. 

But even behind the scenes introverts must develop the protective coloring of extroverts. They must appear open, available, eager to listen, generous with favors.  As the conventional wisdom goes, all the world's a stage ...

Law firms in D.C. are lagging the national average in growth.  However, a law degree still is marketable ticket.  Figuring out where the fit is requires experimentation and patience.  Careers inside the beltway aren't built in a day.

Wilson Sonsini Joins Law-Firm Conga Line for Laying Off Secretaries

Legal secretaries can't say the handwriting wasn't on the wall. In the past several months major law firms such as Schulte Roth have been cutting the number of secretaries.  

The lastest to join this conga line, reports Staci Zaretsky at Abovethelaw.com (ATL), is California law firm Wilson Sonsini, noted for its technology practice.  Here are the details from ATL.  Note that Wilson Sonsini Profit Per Partner (PPP) had dropped 6.8%.

Everywhere, staff in the legal sector should be prepared to get the ax.  The go-away package may or may not be good.  The bottom-line is that it is unlikely they will find comparable jobs elsewhere.  

The smart approach is to take an inventory of skills, knowledge base (such as understanding how professional services firms operate), experience, and contacts.  Then study the help-wanted in services to learn where the demand is.  Craigslist - Cities is a useful place to start.  The best strategy is to try to stay as close to your original expertise as possible.  For example, ideal would be to create a resume and cover letter to go after administrative jobs in placement firms for professional services, full-time and temporary. That's the field you have down cold. Eventually, you might be able to set up your own placement agency for specific disciplines in professional services. 

The challenge is not to panic. Panic, as Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Kanter hammered in her book "Confidence," prevents reversing a downward spiral.  Before severance and unemployment run out, look into survival income.  At the top of the list is working in a call center or in loss prevention. Never be without income. 

Blogging Edge: Opportunities to review books, live-blog events generate job/assignment offers

Bloggers in all fields have an edge for those shots at jobs and assignments.  Abovethelaw.com columnist Mark Herrmann tends not to believe that.  But I do. Both directly and indirectly blogging has been my most effective new business development tool.  But it has to be leveraged.  You can't just sit there.

For example, it's well known that the way to influencers' pocketbooks is through their ego.  So, you bet, offer to review their new book.  The odds are they will be delighted and have their publicist send a complimentary copy. Make the review different from the usual stuff being put out there. Then email it to the author.  Follow up that with details such as what discovery engines or brandname media linked to your review.  

Eventually, publicists will come to you automatically to review books. About once I month I get new business as a result of the reviews.  But books are only the beginning.  You can open doors by reviewing documentaries, television programming related to law, and magazine articles.  Send it to those in the loop.  Or they might automatically pick your post up.  Last weekend I blogged on the documentary "Salinger," then tweeted the post.  The producer linked to it and contacted me.  Yeah, heady stuff.

Another way to leverage your blog is to live-blog events.  I had made useful contacts live-blogging a presentation on Obamacare.  For a client I live-blogged her client's classroom lessons for teen drivers.  Those posts are part of his company's Media Center (a section on the website everyone must now have.)  My client paid me a fat bonus for the success of that live-blogging.

The buzz is all about tweets.  But the reality is that blogging remains an industrial-strength form of outreach for the professional breaks we need.  Also, whatever we post we can integrate on our tweets, which should be linked to our Facebook account.

Is it too late to start a blog now? No.  Focus it on a very narrow niche.  Learn from information on the Internet the fundamentals of search engine optimization (SEO).  And take provocative points of view.  The biggest risk is not taking a risk.

Lawyering Is Mostly Talk: "Conversational Intelligence" by Judith E. Glaser deconstructs applying neuroscience

As a 1L we all took legal writing.  But success in most niches in the legal sector depends on our oral skills.  That extends from how lawyers present themselves to prospects to the performance art during a jury trial. 

Most lawyers have heard about many of the findings in neuroscience.  Those range from how mirror neurons represent an efficient Wi-Fi system to the mental clarity from mindfulness.  However, they rarely had an easy way of integrating those discoveries into their menu of public relations skills.

The good news is that there is a new book which does the job on integration. It's "Conversational Intelligence" by Judith E. Glaser.  She's a heavy in public relations.  That includes being chief executive officer of Benchmark Communications and chairman of The Creating WE Institute.  

Glaser explains, for example, how to trigger the fear reaction as well as the willingness to collaborate.  The more oral communications skills in the lawyers' tool box the better the odds for success.  It is downright useful, we know, to scare the jesus out of the other set of lawyers sitting across from you.  That's exactly how hefty client settlements happen.  It can also make lawyer brandnames, such as that of Michael Pohl at Jones Day, to be able to be the good cop with the expert witness for the opposition.  That tactic tends to resonate with jurors. 

"Conversational Intelligence" could also be a game-changing read for law students beginning their search for clinical internships, summers, and actual jobs.  Applying discoveries from neuroscience hands newbies a distinct edge in getting some breaks. 

"Salinger" - Documentary shows power of nervous breakdown to re-configure the pieces

Being a soldier and intelligence officer during World War II was the most formative experience in the career of J.D. Salinger.  That's what the new documentary "Salinger" opines.  Part of that experience was a brutal nervous breakdown for which Salinger had been hospitalized.

During his meltdown and recovery, some of the pieces of Salinger's psyche seemed to be re-configured. Not only for his fiction but how he was going to position himself for being a major brandname in the arts.  The rest is history.  Not only did Salinger achieve fame and wealth.  He operated his professional life on his own terms. Some see his supposed repulsiveness as a brilliant Machiavellian strategy.

Since some displaced lawyers and unemployed newbie JDs are approaching or in the midst of breakdowns, they might also luck out like Salinger.  That meltdown can remix everything in new ways.  Finally they could succeed on their own terms.

"Salinger" is worth seeing for the insights about how to engineer success.  

Murder of Matthew Shepard: Framing it as hate crime served its purpose

The October/November article in gay publication THE ADVOCATE on the Matthew Shepard murder is titled "Have We Got It All Wrong?" Here you can read it.  Written by Aaron Hicklin it presents the findings of journalist Stephen Jimenez which contradict the interpretation of the Shepard murder as a hate crime.  

In "The Book of Matt," Jimenez frames the event as the kind of crazed act which happens when people are on drugs. Shepard and his killers supposedly all used meth (in days before Walter White was cooking it in Arizona.)  Jimenez is chasing the truth. 

However, as we know in law and communications the truth isn't always the most important thing.  More critical can be the consequences which happened because X was framed, interpreted, and promoted in a particular but not necessarily 100% accurate matter.  The status of gays in society was helped by the fallout from the perception that Shepard's murder was a hate crime.  That became the platform for lobbying for rights such as to marry and share in the benefits of the married.  The truth, as the old saying goes, might set us free. But it won't put a partner of the same sex on your medical benefits or allow that partner to make decisions for you when ill. 

Truth is relative.  King George's truth was that George Washington and John Adams were traitors. For many of the colonists the truth was that King George was a greedy tyrant.  

In addition to being relative, truth may be over-rated. In the early 1970s, I explored my psyche with psychologist David W. Harder at the University of Michigan Medical Center to find the truth about my pain. I don't know if we found it. However, that didn't stop the suffering.  Dr. Harder went on to a career at Tufts University. For years I continued to underachieve.  What stopped all that was the desperate need to make a buck  Download Geezerguts. Truth became downright irrelevant.

Law Firms & Lawyers: What's your wattage?

"After the ill are revived and wheeled out, Ralston steps forward on the stage and resumes, tactfully acknowledging the intensity of his story." - Leigh Gallagher, in book "The End of the Suburbs," page 3

Aron Ralston has wattage or the ability to transmit an electric current.  That has become far more important in influence, power, and concrete selling than charisma.  He has been fortunate in that nature and his own grit gave him a good story to become the wattage grid. Ralston had been trapped by a boulder in Utah and to survive cut off his own arm.

But that's only one of myriad ways to transmit the kind of electric current which has become a must in getting and keeping attention and embedding that experience in collective and individual memory banks. 

We all know of law firms like Jones Day and individual lawyers like John Tarantino (Rhode Island lead paint jury acquittal for ARCO) famous for wattage.  But what we often lack in knowledge is two-fold in the legal sector: Measuring your own wattage and increasing it.  

The analytics are simple.  They include revenues, visceral feeling of the law of attraction (The Secret) operating, and the amount of resources needed to get anything accomplished (the fewer, the higher the wattage).  The second piece is also simple, for those open to the world and willing to modify behavior.

Boosting wattage entails:

Listening.  That's a habit.  Acquire it.  Practice on being totally engrossed in how the oil-change counter guy is recounting how I-95 was blocked and how anxious he was about arriving late for work.  Eventually, you can fine-tune this skill so as to effectively tune-out without making anyone feel less-than.  Listening is the most powerful tool in human relations in this era of distraction.

Caring. It's not enough to be proficient in law.  Tarantino throws his soul into caring about the law per se, the specific point he's making, and the client.  Coolness is verboten.  Let the Millennials on cable shows be cool.

Lack of self consciousness.  This is nothing new.  Athletes who focus on themselves and not the game choke.  You can't watch yourself or watch others watching you.  You have to be one with client presentation or instructing the associate what you need. 

Gratitude.  Every religion, spiritual program (think Alcoholics Anonymous), and effective therapy (cognitive) stands by an attitude of gratitude.  If you are grateful for what you got you are not being eaten alive by emotions which distance you from others.  At the top of the list is envy.  You can be grateful for the feeling of jealousy in that it clues you in on what you really want.

Non-celebrities have wattage.  The buttoned-down middle-aged salesperson who sent me out of the dealership with a car I only intended to look at had set up his own grid.  He was atypical in that East Haven, Connecticut dealership.  Unlike the others, he was there and it seemed that it was only for me. 

Judge, My Mirror Neurons Made Me Do It: Someday we could be sentenced to hang around with a different crowd

"Almost instinctively we humans tend to synchronize our movements ... It also turns out that the more people like each other, the more they seem to imitate each other ..." Neurologist and neuroscientist Marco Iacoboni in book "Mirroring People: The New Science of How We Connect With Others."

Science has provided convincing evidence that it is our mirror neurons which are the basis of man the social animal (and monkeys too).  Those mechanisms are the foundation for our ability to intuit what is going on in others.  That's why we can empathize.  Also, mirror neurors are powerful enough to influence our behavior.  Joe is eating an ice cream cone.  Soon enough we are flagging down ice cream truck buying our own cone.

For those of us educated in Roman Catholic schools, this is nothing new.  The Baltimore Cathecism warned us against the "near occasions of sin," that is all persons, places, and things which could get us off the path of righteousness. Also, ethnic parents of Baby Boomers had watchful eyes that we kept away from those they designated as "bad kids."  And some therapists posited that if you really wanted to know who another person was (e.g. future husband), observe the people that person hung with.

Respect for the scientific findings about mirror neurons has brought mainstream these hunches about the influence of people on each other.  As a result, they could have signficant implications for the legal system.  A defense could be that I had the bad luck to wind up in a neighborhood of miscreants.  Their mirror neurons got to mine.  My lawyer could request as a sentence that I relocate from that neighborhood to one with law-abiding middle-class people.  

That's not far-fetched. Already judges sentence those with drinking problems to Alcoholics Anonymous (AA).  That program operates according to the principle of peer influence.  The drunk shifts exposure to mirror neurons from the bar crowd to those whose priority it is to abstain from booze.