Law And More

Death of Common Sense Among Law Students

This is a puzzle worth airing on "Masterpiece Theatre ."  Applications are up 62% at Iowa Law School, reports Elie Mystal at Abovethelaw.com.  They are also up at many other law schools across America.

This is at a time when both the profession and business of law are going through a revolutionary change and those changes are negative for the number of new hires needed and for compensation trends.  For example, client demand for seasoned lawyers on their accounts, outscourcing, and technological change are reducing the slots open for new JDs.  The growing glut of lawyers makes it increasingly difficult to fly solo, that is hang out a shingle.  In addition, web services such as LegalZoom.com further reduces the need for lawyers.

And, compensation after two decades of spiraling upwards is in a downward trend.  That upward trajectory peaked at over $160,000 for first-year associates.  Some are predicting that starting salaries, even in BigLaw, will settle down at about $75,000 or less. 

"Masterpiece Theatre" can investigate if some villain has put a strange chemical in the drinking water of Americans, making young people flock to law schools.  Or there could be a virus attacking the nervous systems of those around 21, impairing their ability to make common sense decisions about how to make a buck.  Most likely, it's simply the human tendency of magical thinking: The delusion that somehow things will work out for moi.  Damn the tuition and opportunity costs, full speed ahead with that law degree.

Hey, Client: Did your law firm pass on any Phillies tickets?

Sensitive stuff.  The PHILADELPHIA BUSINESS JOURNAL, reports Jeff Blumenthal at PORTFOLIO, interviewed 22 large law firms about how they were using their Phillies tickets.  Only three talked on the record. 

Why the hush-hush?  One attorney opined, off the record, that clients who didn't receive any tickets would not be happy.  So, leave the situation ambiguous, as are most points of law.

Reflection: Perks, the lack of them or the alleged inequitable distribution of them make or break commercial relationships and create centuries-running feuds.

Law Partner, Gay Academic Pull in $2 Million, Can't Stop Spending Money

DETAILS Magazine carries the anti-Abovethelaw.com story.  It's about those still rich who can't stop spending. 

One example is a couple who is pulling in $2 million.  They are a law partner who makes a bundle and his gay lover in academia who contributes a little.  They, reports Doree Shafric in DETAILS and comments Hamilton Nolan in GAWKER, have just spent $1 million on renovations on just one of their global residences.  The academic branch notes, "There's a perilous, exciting feeling to having zigged when other people zagged." 

Tomorrow, Elie Mystal will bring us fresh news about the zagging crowd.  Meanwhile, this couple represents the anti-heroes of the age of post-affluence.

That Hunger for Prestige

They're in six-figure debt.  They pulled serial all-nighters for an employer who cut them loose.  They have little chance of landing a comparable job in law or any job that pays well.  And still there's that hunger for prestige.

It comes out during coaching sessions after I hammer the unemployed lawyers about what they really want back from their old life.  Surely it can't be the horrific hours.  Surely it can't be the tedious tasks of document review.  Surely it can't be the compensation which would be exponentially higher on Wall Street.

It comes spilling out, usually with tears: Prestige or nothin' - Talk about a lacking in a sense of self and a feeling of inner worth.  Some of these burdened with the hunger for prestige went the law school to make a difference.  Yet, at the end of the day, it too was about prestige.

Dealing with this in a marketplace which offers few prestigious positions is a must.  I bumped against that requirement to move on to something, anything in 2003 Download Geezerguts.  Worse than losing my mind, my savings, and eventually my house was losing the prestige of creating speeches for the captains of industry.  Microsoft's PowerPoint was taking care of that task, quite nicely.  I had been a FOB [Friend of Bill] since 1981.  In our little club the philosophy is to be a worker among workers aka just another Bozo on the bus.  Yet, I still felt the mandate to be "special."

How do lawyers get over that craving for specialness?  Not easily.  Usually, after the severance and unemployment compensation is gone and several survival jobs are worked [including $45 an hour document review, if you can get it], there's surrender.  Perhaps that's the gift of survival: We're grateful we are paying our bills, slouching toward a fresh career path, and not carrying the load of needing To Be Important .  We never again figure in prestige as what matters in working or in life. 

Incidentally, my novel "The Fat Guy From Greenwich," is dedicated to those who wound up in lost and found.  Those in the chapters exist For More.  Here are the first two chapters Download FGFGchapters1,2.  The rest will be published early winter.

The Underground Economy - Lawsuits [not excessive] always part of that

"Unemployed on the Left Coast?"  The speaker seemed puzzled when I decried how high unemployment was in California.  Then the speaker, who was vacationing on the East Coast from Carmel on the Left, explained how "everybody" makes their living through the underground economy.  Some of the career paths are dealing drugs, sex work, care-giver, dog groomer, tutor, shaman, marriage, and professional plaintiff.  The money is usually not reported to the IRS. 

Anyone growing up pre-World War II affluence will find those ways of making a buck familiar.  Members of my immigrant family were often without conventional jobs but never skipped a beat earning money. The lion's share of the economy back then was underground.  In fact, every neighborhood in downtown Jersey City, New Jersey had its professional plaintiff.  It was usually a she and her MO was to slip and fall in a relatively deep-pocketed location. Her favorites included the A&P, Lord & Taylor, and the New York Port of Authority.  She wasn't greedy so defendants just paid off and had their people seek to bar her entrance in the future. 

The underground economy will also provide income for those who can't or won't enter mainstream employment.  Their earnings keep the official economy purring with their purchases.  The lawsuit part would have continued to effortlessly pour money into the system had plaintiffs and their attorneys not over-reached. Less is more.

Now why didn't we biz people think of this: Consumption drops, raise prices like Cooley Law

We should have thought of this during the worst of The Great Recession: As consumption of our services and products declined, we raised prices.  Essentially that's why one law school told its students it's doing.  Thomas M. Cooley Law School, reports Eli Mystal in Abovethelaw.com, has experienced a drop in enrollment and a higher than usual transfer rate.  This is at a time when applications to law school are surging [Don't ask me why.]  In response, the law school announced it is increasing tuition.

Will this go down in organizational history as the Edsel Strategy of the 21st Century?

US Chamber's Pricey Gush about Free Enterprise: But will it create 20 million jobs?

On Wednesday, the under-attack US Chamber of Commerce is rolling out a multimillion-dollar program championing free enterprise aka the anti-Michael Moore.  The goal, says the US Chamber, is to create 20 million jobs during the next 10 years.  Noble goal and a needed one, especially for the young.  Less than 50% of those under-30 have been working, according to a BUSINESS WEEK SURVEY.

Mike Allen at Politico.com reports that this initiative came from extensive grassroots "listening sessions" as well as polling. This outreach is intended to motivate business to come up solutions to the loss of jobs in America as well as the lack of growth of enough new ones.  

The question: Will the cheer-leading be effective?  Currently, each business is struggling to survive, thus [with the exception maybe of Google] holding off hiring.  The mindset is Darwinian.  Can the US Chamber reset that mindset on behalf of the common good?  Time will tell.  I wish the campaign well.

Monkey Business, The Common Bad, Nobel Prizes for Nothin'

Those of us who threw in the towel on ever being accepted into The Establishment [high-paid work is still there] and cunningly carved out our professional space might be in the catbird seat.  The Establishment seems to be making all the wrong moves with the wrong tone and with way-too-windy content aka preachy.  Could the members of it actually be on the breadlines?  You decide.

Twice the U.S. Chamber of Commerce [lady does protest too much, methinks] has held press conferences proclaiming it hasn't been influenced/threatened by the mau-mauing type resignations of memberships.  A number of utilities, then Nike and then Apple have protested their opposition to the U.S. Chamber's policy on climate change by pulling out.  The head Tom Donahue has indicated he will not deviate from the organization's anti-green stance.  However, we haven't been hearing much about the Monkey Business the Chamber was up to.  It was talking about staging a Scopes-like trial to bring home the error in the green ideology. 

Tort leaders including Philip Howard, head of Common Good, press on with their pontifications in Establishment media such as THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.  Their mission is the do everything possible to help the common good.  However, at this time when there's no light at the end of the tunnel about creating new jobs in America they might open their hearts and minds to assisting those of us hammered by the common bad.  Currently, I labor in the vineyard 18 hours a day just to keep my cats, who like all Americans know their brands, in Fancy Feast.  I pray to be groped by a deep pocket like Dr. Phil so I can sue.

Then there is the matter of Establishment folk receiving a Nobel Prize for Nothin'.  This great honor was bestowed on the graduate of Harvard Law School Barack Obama, although he has been in office less than a year.  Two American wars are raging.  New York City could blow up any time.  War is peace, as George Orwell put it.

The weight of all this has to become the tipping point for The Establishment to join other Crusties like Tony and Charlene Marshall in being outed for some type of awful crime against common sense and underestimating ordinary people.  How did the Marshalls, the Donohues, the Howards, and the Obamas figure they could pull this all off?  I have found that the game is best played straight, that is, without smoke and mirrors. 

My first novel "The Fat Guy From Greenwich" will be published late fall.  It drills down into the many paths to traditional and not-so-traditional success.  Here is the first chapter Download FatGuyFromGreenwich.  Hey, maybe I will win the Nobel Prize for literature.

On a clear day, you can see the rats scurrying on Greenwich, CT streets

Those in the legal profession in a panic over money have lots of company.  Former hedge-fund managers who made Greenwich, Connecticut Wall Street to the north got hit so hard in the crash they had to rent out their mansions, along with selling their jets.  Unfortunately, some of the rentals haven't worked out so well.

In NEW YORK Magazine, Jessica Pressler reports that those leasing have been so careless with the property that parts of the little town have come to resemble Detroit ghettos, only with white people in them.  Rats are now scurrying in the streets. 

And timing is everything, at least in the book business.  My first novel "The Fat Guy From Greenwich," will be published in a few months.  It takes a look at the underbelly of ambition and success in the late boom days.  Here is a complimentary peek into the first chapter Download FatGuyFromGreenwich.  It's dedicated to those who wound up in lost and found.  I have no idea if the fallen Masters of the Universe in Greenwich see themselves as lost or found.

Roger Williams Law School Fundraising: Your money now or dinner interrupted later

Roger Williams Law School is getting tough with its alumni.  It wants them to pony up money for its latest fundraising effort.  As Elie Mystal points out in Abovethelaw.com, we hyper-educated tend to give back more to our college than where we obtained advanced degrees. 

In a threat not veiled, reports Mystal, Roger Williams informs prospects that if they donate now, it won't be a situation of dinner interrupted later.  Fair enough, I guess.  At least the terms and conditions of begging are spelled out by Roger Williams Law. 

Not so out there was my undergraduate alma mater Seton Hill.  The head of the English Department, a nun of course, would invite me in for a cup of coffee, then shake me down for a contribution to a scholarship fund named in her honor.  "You don't have a husband so $75 will be okay."  That was how she showed me mercy as well as reinforce my despair about being different, i.e. not married.