Law And More

The Internet - What Lawyer Hasn't Been Played

The Internet has failed to live up to the early promise that it would create a level playing field in just about everything.

Instead, the Barbarians are at gate.

That everything the internet was suppose to usher in ranged from universal access to media attention to being able to succeed in business without a huge budget or even a gold-plated network. 

Like the leaders of the emerging counterculture in the late 1960s, the front lines of the internet - the Netizens - were positioned and packaged as spiritually, socially, and intellectually evolved. 

And, the obstacles of class, gender, language, and geography in connecting with other human beings would no longer exist. 

Little of that has come to pass.

In Vanity Fair, Maya Kosoff documents the failure.

Sure, all voices can be heard. But the loudest ones on the internet tend to promote hate or seek to confuse.

Businesses using supposedly low-cost Facebook advertising are now suing Facebook for allegedly inflating, up to 900%, the user metrics associated with video. The higher the metrics, the more Facebook billed. And, how many lawyers have been badly burned by web con artists? 

As in Orwell's  "Animal Farm," many of the Netizens considered themselves more equal that other Netizens.

Some of those more equal than others seem to have the darkness and myopia of human nature of William Shakespeare's classic characters like King Lear. 

Yeah, as the counterculture movement hardened it seemed to mutate into propaganda endorsing sex-on-demand, drug-taking, cult thinking, violence, and throwing away a career. 

The impediments to connecting seem to be increasing, not melting away like the Wicked Witch in "The Wizard of Oz."

Who hasn't been flamed on the internet because they were different from those who had figured out how to attract, hold, and grow followers?

The gang of earnest freelancers at Mediabistro.com put me under attack for two days.

The fans of Gawker explicitly tormented me for about four years. Included were weekly executions in which the decision would be made if I would be granted clemency. 

Unfortunately, being on the internet, both web and mobile, is a necessary evil. The snail mail mode of developing business is dead. Attending conferences in-person to network and job hunt has become too expensive at this time of stagnant wages and fees.

Yes, google has become the resume for individuals. That's what Richard Bolles hammers in the 2019 edition of "What Color Is Your Parachute?"

Google also has become the homepage for businesses. It overrides websites. And in his book "The Four," Scott Galloway predicts it will eliminate the concept of branding. Instead of sticking with brand choice Planet Fitness when we move to Ohio, we know to key in on google "fitness centers - Eastern OH." A lower-cost fit might pop up on the first page of google. 

Here's an analogy to the wonderous potential of the internet: baby boomers' access to a college education.

That seemed like the exit from being regulated to low-status, low-earning work.

Then, soon enough, it became obvious that not all school credentials were equal. That is exactly what the current trial "Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard" is about.

The stink that stuck on our realization that the game was still rigged hasn't diminished. But, we tell our grandchildren that they must go to college - and beyond in higher education. 

Likewise, we are locked into the internet. 

Attention is the currency of the 21^st century. Jane Genova helps you get it for products, services, points of view, causes, branding, careers after-50, and college admission.

In addition, this blog welcomes sponsored content.

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"White Boy Rick" - Drug Dealing as Only Good Career Path in Town

Detroit in the 1980s was a prototype of too much of America today.

The 2018 film "White Boy Rick" is set amid the burned-out building of Detroit in the early 1980s. The economy for many is stalled. 

A 14-year-old white boy Richard - "Rick" - Wershe Jr. and his father make it by selling military weapons from the basement of their shabby home. They buy them at gun shows. So, the business is positioned and packaged as legal. 

However, the FBI investigates. Dad won't be bullied.

But, right then at the Werkshe home the agents see the potential of enlisting the boy. He has been accepted on the street. In fact, his nickname is "White Boy Rick." The agents, sort of seedy characters, make being a drug informer attractive to him. At the time he has dropped out of school. And no one seems to have noticed.  

Eventually Rick caves and becomes a an informer. Then the agents guide him from simple buying to selling. Rick has a whole new heady lifestyle, including junkets to Las Vegas. 

Then Rick has second thoughts when a small child sitting on a couch watching television is gunned down through shots through a shut front door.

However, Rick had had a taste of the good life available in the drug loop and returns, on his own not as an informer, to what's one of the few games in town open to him. He recruits his father. He does that even though his sister Dawn has become addicted.

The father balks, at first. But this is a situation of "Papa Don't Preach." Rick pitches successfully how they have become economic bottom-feeders and the only way out for them is to deal. 

At first, it's days of heaven. The newly confident son and father rescue Dawn from her drug den. She does recover and stays recovered. She bakes cookies with grandma and loves it. She plays with Rick's baby daughter.

But the longer-term reality for Rick is grim:  Drug dealers all too frequently wind up shot or in prison. Both happen to Rick. 

Anyone who understands how the economy really works gets it that the only way to reduce drug-dealing is to create other ways for people in economically devastated areas to earn a decent living.

The Rick story is being played out here is Eastern Ohio.

Making and selling meth, just like cook Walter White from "Breaking Bad" did, is a solid career path. In addition, other kinds of drug selling also goes on. Most legit jobs pay minimum wage. 

When I had been a probation officer in the narcotics unit in Detroit back in the 1970s, what was obvious was this: Recidivism among drug dealers would only be reduced by having available good jobs.

All I had to offer those on probation was a shot at a job on the Chrysler assembly line training program. As part of my own orientation I visited the production plants. The tasks didn't seem to be dream jobs.

Dealing drugs, at least as long as the entrepreneurs stayed alive or out of prison, was easy action. In addition, it provided an enviable lifestyle, power, and status in the community.

Those in the front lines of combatting the current epidemic from meth, opioids, and more have to think alternate career paths for the producers and sellers.

That could take the form of Franklin F. Roosevelt's Public Works outreach, that is, establishing interesting or needed work during The Great Depression.

Or, schools for the performing arts can be launched in the inner city. Those bring hope. And hope prevents human beings from entering a line of work in which the odds are high they will be murdered. I made it out of the hood intact in Jersey City, New Jersey because a few teachers at the public secondary school encouraged my writing. The trauma I handled later in therapy, meditation, and workouts. 

Another option is free training for marketable fields such as in digital or long-distance truck driving. 

Without dealers, the supply line would be shut down. Users would have to find recovery or die. 

Already, in Eastern OH the medical doctors have been deterred from prescribing drugs that could be addictive. That has jacked up street demand. Never has that career path looked better. So what, goes the mindset, that they might have to die for that "paycheck." Actually, part of the perks of that line of work is living on the edge.

Perhaps the only way law enforcement and social workers can compete with that is to think: attractive alternate career opportunities. 

Attention is the currency of the 21^st century. Jane Genova helps you get it for products, services, points of view, causes, branding, careers after-50, and college admission.

In addition, this blog welcomes sponsored content.

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In-House Lawyers - Of Course, They Are Not Going to Badmouth Law Firms

It's very old news that you can be sued for badmouthing a job applicant when, for example, a search firm asks for the lowdown on that professional.

For that very reason, the reference game is becoming an anachronism.

Middlemen such as headhunters and employers have had to dig around in other ways. Those include casually poking around networks, not asking direct questions.

So, it should be no surprise that Sue Reisinger at Law.com found that in-house lawyers do not frequently disparage law firms, at least not in public. After all, they're lawyers. They should know better and usually do.

What in-house lawyers do do is recommend law firms they perceive as excellent. By not mentioning others the message is clear: Rule out those not cited. 

When I rolled into town, I asked a lawyer I met about X car dealer and the quality of its service work. His response was to recommend another car dealer. X never entered the conversation.

Takeaway: There are myriad legal ways to throw shade on other professionals. 

Attention is the currency of the 21^st century. Jane Genova helps you get it for products, services, points of view, causes, branding, careers after-50, and college admission.

In addition, this blog welcomes sponsored content.

Free consultation janegenova374@gmail.com

 

Gabriel MacConaill, Sidley Austin Partner Since 2014, Commits Suicide

What is it about high-powered success that seems to be transforming into the killing fields? Or, maybe that's the wrong question. 

Meanwhile, on the East Coast, New Yorkers Stacey Radin (clinical psychologist), Kate Spade (fashion designer), and Anthony Bourdain (chef) took their own lives.

On the West Coast, Gabriel MacConaill, a partner in BigLaw firm Sidley Austin, also committed suicide. Unlike those three on the East Coast it was by a self-inflicted shotgun wound, not hanging. Here are more details from Abovethelaw.com.

The Sidley Austin website provides the facts. In 2005, MacConaill received his JD from the law school at Penn State. He joined Sidley Austin in 2009. In 2014, he became partner. His special area of expertise has been restructuring. He had been involved in Mattress Firm's bankruptcy filing. 

Beyond that, much or all of what is said about the "why" will be speculation.

Human beings, including the person himself or herself, know so little about the pull and push forces going on in an inner life. Of course, there can be factors discussed such as a recent clinical depression or even a sustained history of that condition. But many others also struggle with clinical depression and come out the other side, without committing suicide.

Also some might trot out the statistics that there is a higher rate of suicides in the legal sector than other lines of work. Many recall the cluster of more than a dozen suicides among trial lawyers in Kentucky within a short timeframe.

There are also the platitudes about what the chase to the top of one's industry could cost in emotional, social, and spiritual wear-and-tear. However, the world is jam-packed with high achievers who don't check out. 

The reality is that we know so little and the person committing suicide also knows so little about the unconscious dynamics, thought processes, and lack of impulse control which may be drivers in taking one's own life. 

In the film "A Star Is Born," musician Jackson Main tried suicide when he was in his early teenage years. The ceiling fan, to which he had tied a belt, fell down. Somehow he got through the next years via fame and addiction. Later, after he lost his hold on his career he tried again and succeeded. To attempt to explain the fatal darkness within him would be pure arrogance.

At Johns Hopkins University, Kay Jamison did take on the issue of suicide in her book "Night Falls Fast." She herself had made a serious suicide attempt. However, her book really leaves this enigma intact. 

This blog passes along sympathy to those who loved Gabriel MacConaill. Survivors are the real victims of the decision to commit suicide.

In my extended family, there have been five suicides. There will probably be more. I don't and never will understand all that. Since age 11, I have been plagued with suicidal ideation. But somehow I have maintained the upper hand. Already I have lived on planet earth longer than any member of my family. I am clueless why.

 

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"A Star Is Born" - It Makes Addiction Seem, Well, Worth It

The latest remake of "A Star Is Born" can convince the already-troubled that addiction is a small price to pay for success - even if that success peters out.

From the get-go, music star Jackson Maine had a tough go of it.

His mother died when he was born.

His father was a drunk.

His older brother who looked out for him was one of those guys we met in high school who had a sense of direction and determination that we less emotionally and socially didn't. Of course, we couldn't bond. 

In his early teens, Jackson even attempted suicide by hanging but the ceiling fan gave way. He fell to the floor. Later, his hanging himself with a belt in the garage does succeed.

So, the message of the film could be interpreted as: Without booze and pills, Jackson could never had been able to put it together to develop into a performer.

That could be way too seductive to youth whom the universe didn't bless with a loving, non-chaotic start in life. 

Not surprisingly - who hasn't been exposed to the Alcoholics Anonymous mantra - the substances took him over. Another factor was simple aging. The years aren't kind to most of those in the performing arts. We content-providers have it easier and a longer shelf life.

But, along the way, Jackson had it all. That included the authentic love of struggling song-writer/singer Ally. That's more than many of us from difficult backgrounds are able to grab onto from life. Currently, I continue to struggle.

A sort of heretic in a recovery program for alcohol abuse, way back in the early 80s I declared that boozing bought me time. In its predictable way it empowered me to function until I could access the tools I needed to create my own life. Eventually, as with Jackson, its role was counterproductive. I was fortunate. I could and did stop. I stayed stopped. 

So, what do members of law enforcement, the courts, high school guidance counselors, college mental health therapists, recovery experts, researchers, friends, and family tell at-risk youth and kids already in trouble about the dangers embedded in substance abuse?

That's the rub.

How can they replace the "help" which addiction seems to be delivering at the time? Already, youth probably knows that the success rate of traditional program Alcoholics Anonymous is quite low. Here is the iconic The Atlantic article on that. Most courts route substance abusers to that mode of treatment: X amount of meetings a week and have the attendance verification document signed. 

Meanwhile, the whatever which does create and reinforce sobriety is less available in 2018. That includes affording college, being able to pony up the rent to live away from the toxic nuclear family, landing work with a future, and hope. 

Those committed to rescuing youth from despair have to reimagine their message. That could start by analyzing how Jackson could have prevented the start of his addiction or could have found a sustainable way out of it. Love, obviously, was not enough.

In that other new film "Unbroken," that path is giving up the illusion of control and surrendering to some higher force. 

As the uncontained opioid epidemic hammers, traditional approaches aren't effective. The times are different from when the recovery movement has been launched in the 1930s. Yet, there has been no Big Woke.

Attention is the currency of the 21^st century. Jane Genova helps you get it for products, services, points of view, causes, branding, careers after-50, and college admission.

In addition, this blog welcomes sponsored content.

Free consultation janegenova374@gmail.com