Law And More

Lawyer suicide rate 2-to-6 times that of general population [Source: ABA]

Here in Connecticut, there was a suicide of a respected real estate attorney James F. Ripper.  According to Douglas S. Malan in THE CONNECTICUT LAW TRIBUNE, Ripper gave off none of the usual signs that he was considering taking his own life.  Moreover, most weren't aware that he was having financial problems since the real estate market tanked.

The American Bar Association reports that suicides among lawyers are two to six times the rate of the general population.  Malan brings up the suicide of prominent appellate attorney Mark Levy who had been laid off.  It was high profile because Levy killed himself in his office.

The issue of suicide, active or passive, has been of interest to me because some family members also chose that way out.  From my research, there seems to be little known about why some people take that route and others don't.  Also, there seems to only be speculation about the mindset of those who attempt or succeed in suicide.  Is it an approach to solving a problem or a totally psychotic state of mind?

Seyfarth Shaw Mess: Made Possible by the Boiled Hard Drive Litigation?

It's a legal mess at Seyfarth Shaw.  And that was likely made possible by the breakthrough lawsuit of gay associate Aaron B. Charney. 

The Charney suit was against his former employer Sullivan & Cromwell.  The defendant settled.  Not only did the plaintiff have the boldness to sue his own law firm.  He was also able to get another law job afterward.  Incidentally, in the media, it was known as the case of the boiled hard drive.  Allegedly traumatized by interrogation by Sullivan & Cromwell, Charney went home and boiled the hard drive from his work computer.  After that amazing lawsuit, which claimed discrimination based on sexual orientation, it seemed that suing your law-firm employer was not necessarily a career-killer and a few bucks could be made.  Hey, why not. 

Here's the short version of lawsuit of partner William Lancaster against employer Seyfarth Shaw.  According to Leigh Jones of THE NATIONAL LAW JOURNAL, he is still employed there.  

Lancaster represented Billy Blanks as a client.  The lawsuit was against Blanks's former accountant who, explains Jones, allegedly acted as his agent.  That was a violation of the Talent Agencies Act.  The case was dismissed.  The ground was that Lancaster had missed a filing deadline.  Then Blanks sued Seyfarth for malpractice.  There was as $30 million verdict in 2005, which was vacated last February.  Meanwhile Lancaster was demoted from equity partner. 

The firm claims the demotion was part of the strategic plan to reduce the number of equity partners.  That kind of action is happening in a number of law firms.  Lancaster contends, says Jones, he "was coerced into accepting a demotion and unfair pay cut [and the firm] breached its fiduciary duty to Lancaster by forcing him to relinquish his equity share ... [and] misrepresented the benefits."  There is also a contention of being subjected to intentional emotional distress.  That too appeared in Charney's suit and made for lively copy in the New York media.

A good time could be had by all, just as with the Carney suit.  We will hang onto every juicy detail of how things are reported to go down in BigLaw.

Come on, of course you're not making partner

About three years ago, THE ECONOMIST warned about the glut of educated, particularly those preparing for law careers.  At the time, it predicted probably one out of nine in law school would ever make partner.  Perhaps THE ECONOMIST was too optimistic. 

The Great Recession has given law firms a wonderful cover story for promoting fewer senior associates to partnership.  And that's exactly what's happening in New York firms, reports Nate Raymond in THE NEW YORK LAW JOURNAL. 

Not that anyone who isn't a star or well-connected in the mighty underground network at law firms should have expected to have a shot at partnership.  That's not the game.  Actually, lawyers tell me it never was.  The aware entered the game with the objective to get as much experience as possible.  Then, in their seventh, eight, ninth or 10th year of being an 80-hour or more a week associate, when they were cut from the team, they had the skills to look lower in the food chain for legal jobs. 

That game is just more transparent now and with the rationale of increased cost-efficiency.  Just like every other aspect of 21st-century capitalism - and Tom Peters has been warning about this since his 2003 "Re-imagine!" - the game is about being a player.  Players plan and execute every move strategically, that is, in a what's in it for me fashion.  Yes, they do care about the clients.  And that's strategically shrewd.  That book of business could be portable.  But, no, they don't care about the law firm.  Anyway, that law firm probably operates for success in another era.  Not for '09 slouching into '10.

So, holidays won't be layoff-free: Faegre & Benson cuts

Any vestige of decorum is gone.  The holidays, it appears, won't be layoff-free. 

In Abovethelaw.com, Elie Mystal reports that he got word that Faegre & Benson cut 6 to 10 attorneys as the Thanksgiving weekend started.  That was in the midwest.

Here in the New York Metro area we can expect law firms affiliated with financial markets to leverage the Dubai debt default threat - to the tune of $60 billion - as an urgent reason to lay off and sadly inform the deferred not to bother waiting around for a start date.  The Great Recession, especially if it's a double-dip, is a use it or lose it situation to get rid of employees.  It doesn't matter a bit if the law firm is doing well or not.

Yeah, 21st-century capitalism ain't pretty.

Stiff mortgage lenders, advises law professor Brent T. White

These volatile economic times times [will Dubai default on debt?] call for radical messages.  So, no surprise, University of Arizona law professor Brent T. White advises the 15 million American homeowners with underwater mortgages to walk away from them.  White explains how that might not necessarily deep-six a credit rating and, anyway, those doing the stiffing can do it strategically, that is, make major purchases [including another house] before walking. 

LA TIMES reporter Kenneth R. Harney covers this provocative advice, from all angles.  For example, Harney quotes Fannie Mae's Brian Faith who opines, "Borrowers who walk away from their mortgage obligations face serious consequences including severely depressed credit scores for extended periods."  White counters that.  He states that if walkers keep up with their others debts, they can have a decent credit rating within two years. 

White lays out his thesis in a 52-page white paper "Underwater and Not Walking Away: Shame, Fear and Social Management of the Housing Crisis."  Here is a copy of that.

Good-bye sexual harassment lawsuits: Just get those nails going

The hell with sexual harassment lawsuits, at least as a deterrent for that kind of behavior in the workplace.  Just equip female employees with a strong set of fingernails.  They can be artifically applied for about $30 on Dixwell Avenue here in New Haven, Connecticut.  The miscreant bothers us, just dig in those nails.  Mrs. Tiger Woods showed us how effective that methodology is.  The guy goes around with scratches forever.  And, if he's like Tiger, the bets are he won't press charges.

Sharp Nails: Don't go to work w/o them.

New Investment Fund for Attorneys: Buy Shares in Unhappy Childhood

Some lawyers are doing okay.  For example, if they went to law schools in Texas, where the Brookings Institution reported four of those cities as among the top 10 thriving during The Great Recession, they had a better chance of finding and keeping work.  But overall adversity has been the new normal.  For the best and brightest that's been difficult or impossible to manage.

I have a solution.  I plan to set up an investment fund in which attorneys with a charmed background can purchase shares of my and others's lousy childhoods.  The current marketplace isn't set up for professionals who don't know how to navigate an uncaring universe at best and an abusive, killer one at worst.  With ownership of aspects of horrific early years they will get a hang of cunning, being a player [as on the streets], gambling, and not caring about much except surviving. 

Meanwhile, the traits that bring in the bucks are all here in "The Fat Guy From Greenwich."  Here's the YouTube, made by Full Circle.  Eventually, it will be required reading for 1Ls.  Hunch: Barney Frank will read it into the Congressional Record.

No Question, Marx was wicked smart

Law.com, Abovethelaw.com, Bitter Lawyer, and this blog have become the valley of tears, recording the ruin of the best and brightest. 

How did it happen? How could it have happened? 

Through hope, of course.  Hope of interesting work, prestige, wealth, and reward for understanding how to play the game [ho-ho-ho.]  That all goes back to the Karl Marx notion of false consciousness.  The Ruling Class embeds it in the most hungry of strivers.

Can this generation of unemployed, underemployed and suicidal attorneys be saved?  Maybe.  Here is an up-to-date interpretation of Marx, created by a self-proclaimed Catholic white trash novelist.  The book is a short read and costs less than a movie and diet drink Download Marxwickedsmartcopy.  It's worth a try.  Here's the YouTube on it.

U.S. Roman Catholicism: What should its PR strategy be, NOW?

Clearly, American Roman Catholicism has been following a public-relations script of The Broken Record.  That is, it keeps insisting that it, the infallible institution it is, knows best.  That's how it defended its expensive, persistent legal attempts, all the way through three trips to the U.S. Supreme Court, to keep sealed the clergy sex abuse documents from the Connecticut Diocese of Bridgeport settlement of lawsuits in 2001.  This weekend, that message of infallibility resonated again when Bishop Tobin told U.S. Representative Patrick Kennedy he was not to receive the sacrament of the Eucharist.  That was because of Kennedy's policy positions such as pro-choice. 

Clearly that hasn't been effective, not in the court of law and not in the court of public opinion. 

The Diocese of Bridgeport, ordered a Connecticut Superior Court, has to make the discovery documents available to the media.  The date for that is around December 1st.  Expect the worst, for the Catholic Church when top-tier media such as THE NEW YORK TIMES make the content public and discusses implications. 

Although some supported the Bishop Tobin, most readers of my two blogs - the other one here - insisted on a separation of church and state.  Kennedy, they decried, is a public official serving the people, not the Catholic Church. 

So, what should the U.S. Catholic Church do now in terms of managing the situation which has escalated into a crisis and which could reach meltdown stage next month?  Here are some recommendations:

• Temper its dogma of infallibility without losing face.  It can do this by indicating that the divine often speaks through the people.  Open up a conversation with the people through parish hall meetings, clergy blogs, clergy on Facebook, online communities set up on ming.com, and listening tours.  From all that, establish new systems of checks and balances and transparency.

• Establish a national and ongoing day of atonement, akin to the Jewish Yom Kippur, in memory of the victims of clergy sex abuse.  Have special healing events for victims and their families since pain is usually a family affair.  Drape churches, exterior and interior, in black.  Have all parish members, ranging from clergy to nuns to laypeople, wear black armbands.

• Provide more leadership roles for laypeople, including those of other faiths.  That resurrects the spirit of ecumenical thinking that emerged in the 1960s and then vanished. 

• Make known fundamental Catholic beliefs which pertain to charity and justice. 

• Bring the powerful rituals and symbolism of the Catholic Church to popular culture.  This is a reverse-Madonna who leveraged all that in a mocking way.  Society is craving spiritual experiences.  The Catholic Church has that down cold.

• Put on the front lines, be in in the media or in leadership, men and women of high emotional intelligence [EI].  Here is a complimentary ebook on that which has had more than a million downloads Download CUsersjasneDocumentsjg.

• Hammer the theme of forgiveness.

Prediction: If American Catholicism continues its current way of handling its own wrongs and human conflict it will vanish as an institution of influence.

Suicide: Why weren't there more during Great Recession?

The real story is not that suicides have probably risen during this brutal downturn but why there wasn't more of them. 

In its coverage of a probable uptick in recent suicide rates, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL mentions cornered individuals like attorney William Parente.  He was allegedly involved in a Ponzi scheme. Of course, suicide likely made sense to him.  It did/does to a lot of us who saw no way out of their financial and other troubles.  The difference is that Parente took that giant step.

What would have been a more fascinating and maybe even uplifting article would be one focused on the non-suicides.  What changes that channel in people's troubled minds?