Law And More

Watching where Harvard B School alumni flock: Can this predict the next bubble?

There is a new predictive model being kicked around.  According to Ray Soifer, when Harvard Business School alumni flock to Wall Street that's an indicator that the market is overheating and your investment value is bound to tank.  Zeke Turner writes about that in NEW YORK Magazine.

Given the opportunistic nature of Harvard B students, that can be extended to all economic developments.  If the Harvard Bs are there, consider it the next possible bubble.  That means that we take our money and run.

Question: Since the law bubble is bursting, has anyone analyzed the number of Harvard Bs who also bulked up with either a double degree in law or picked up a JD before or after Harvard B?

Dickstein Shapiro: Business as a conversation vs. pre-packaged corporatese

Even the change-resistant law industry is getting it that business is a conversation, not pre-packaged corporatese. 

Chairman of Dickstein Shapiro Michael E. Nannes talked human and in an open-ended way when he announced the latest layoffs at the firm.  Elie Mystal in Abovethelaw.com provides the memo which says that the firm has to cut loose 3% of associates/counsels as well as 10% of staff.  Read it here.

Here is my how-to ebook on the paradigm shift in the tone/language of business.  For you, free  Download SavingSoulsJaneGenova.

Legal Media: Hot, now it's not

Like business media, legal media went through a hot phase.  Then everything from the industry itself - law - to user interest changed.  Just as with business. 

Remember the launches and then death of business publications such as RED HERRING, BUSINESS 2.0, and PORTFOLIO.  Today, reports Nat Ives in ADVERTISING AGE, business media still haven't found a way to halt the downward trajectory and get an upward one going.

Law in general had its heyday.  That went back to the counterculture 1970s when law was viewed as a key change agent in society.  Manhattan Institute's Walter Olson captured that era in his books such as "Rule of Lawyers" and blog Pointoflaw.com.  As society moves more into a regulatory focus, law is no longer "hot."  Remember how Congress tossed the U.S. Supreme Court's Ledbetter decision. In fact, those in establishment media circles tell me that coverage of the US SC does not make for high traffic.  The niche which is growing is legal gossip, as with wildly popular tabloid Abovethelaw.com.  But that could abate after the profession and business of law settle into their emerging models.

What do I recommend for legal media?  Fuse analysis of politics, defined as a broad category.  That ranges from macro doings in Washington D.C. to state-level activities of the legislature and attorney general to professional power issues. The latter are the most compelling, given that many lawyers are struggling just to survive.  Newbies, no longer idealistic, search to understand how did Jones Day partner Mickey Pohl get to be a player.  What is the underground network in the law firm.  What is the persona of the power of women who succeed. 

Politico.com has come to own part of that territory not only because it is doing digital just right.  It also has its finger on the national zeitgeist.

How do I see legal media shaking out?  As in all business, there will be a migration into clearly defined niches.  Those wanting scholarly interpretation will go to Publication X.  To become, remain or grow profits the legal media will have to keep making this niche relevant to audiences.

In-house: $229K average 2008 compensation, including bonus [Source: Hildebrandt]

No wonder educated one-time strivers are embracing Eastern philosophy.  One of our favorites has been Buddhist nun Pema Chodron's "The Wisdom of No Escape."  Those are exactly the lessons current lawyers have to sort out.

Pre-Crash, the burnt-out, the ones who didn't make partner, and those who recognized they had a bent for organizational life could migrate to in-house jobs.  Historically the positions were there, they paid well, carried prestige and power within the corporation, and left time for a life.  That's not the situation any more.  For too many lawyers, it is no longer an option.

For THE CONNECTICUT LAW TRIBUNE, Douglas S. Malan interviewed a number of legal consulting and placement companies.  The news was dark about in-house. 

To begin with, as corporate continues belt-tightening, vacancies are being left unfilled and the work done by temporaries.  Unless a lawyer's experience matches the company's business being hired will be tough. At the same time more work is being pulled in-house.  This is no refuge from the legal rat race.

Secondly, the money is relatively lousy.  Hildebrandt International says that the average compensation, including bonus, in 2008 for in-house was $229,000.  That's a lot of responsibility for not much more than a first-year associate's base salary.

Third, the prestige and power are less as the role of investor relations and public affairs grow more important.  As Jones Day partner Mickey Pohl frequently puts it, companies now realize that legal is just part of a complex problem which also involves other business priorities.  Those might include maintaining the stock price and reputational capital.  The company can win the litigation and never regain its former dominance in a market.

And, fourth, the hours and pressure can often be right up there with those of lawyers earning a lot more in law firms. This has been relatively recent.  During the Rhode Island lead paint trial - whose beginning has its first anniversary today - in-house attorneys not directly involved with the litigation would discuss it with me.  Those conversations continued into "Thomas" and the RI Supreme Court review. Then there was abrupt silence.  There was no time for anything but doing their own jobs.

In short, in-house jobs are no option to what lawyers are fleeing or were pushed out of.  Chodron as well as most Buddhists would assess that "no escape" as a good thing.  It forces us to face those universal issues we have been able to duck through pursuing achievement one-dimensionally.  In 2003, that wisdom was also superimosed on me Download Geezerguts.  It broke open my talent.  My take on chasing success "The Fat Guy From Greenwich" will be published early winter.  Here are the first two chapters Download FGFGchapters1,2.  On November 6, I celebrate my sixth anniversary as a FOB [Friend of Bill.]  Being trapped in what is turned out to be okay.

Novartis - Hunch it will settle with 5,600 female sale reps before 4/7/10 trial date

Corporations rarely win these gender-discrimination class-action lawsuits.  And the hit to reputational capital can be profound.  So, I have a hunch that Novartis will settle the class-action gender-discrimination lawsuit by 5.600 sales representatives.  That will be probably close to the April 7, 2010 trial date.

As Teresa Baldas reports in THE NATIONAL LAW JOURNAL, Novartis had tried to get the judge to toss the litigation.  No way Jose, the judge said, both to dismissal and a partial summary judgment.  Juries are usually sympathetic to this kind of allegation of discrimination based on gender.

Incidentally, since there are such continuous layoffs of pharmaceutical sales representatives and medical doctors's resistance to them, those 5,600 have little to lose and maybe some significant money to gain.

Present Lawyering Skills: Soon to be obsolete?

Think about the web service LegalZoom, co-founded by Robert Shapiro. It's configured to provide documents needed for legal transactions such as plain-vanilla divorces and simple incorporations, as well as some standardized advice from lawyers.  Readers inform me that LegalZoom already has competition.

Given that reality, Richard Susskind's article in LawJobs.com does not seem at all hyperbolic.  Those who have read Susskind's book "The End of Lawyers" know he can be persuasive.  Well, I didn't need any persuasion this time around to accept his predictions for a radical change in both the profession and business of law.  There will still be a demand for lawyers but their skill set will be very different from those currently employed in the practice of law or what students are learning in law schools.

What's generating the change are essentially several interrelated factors:

One is the need for corporate clients for cost control as well as their seeking ways to standardize more of what they do.  Regarding the latter, they could be recycling perspectives and materials from, say, the lead paint litigation to environmental suits. Also, in online communities they could be sharing their collective experience in diverse types of litigation.  Think a giant Fortune 1000 legal wiki.

Two, is the shift from litigation to compliance and preventing lawsuits.  Law firms are seeing this already as regulatory practices keep growing while other practices are shrinking.

Three, competition such as by outsourcers.  As we know, competitive forces can by themselves change everything.  Think the Japanese invasion into the U.S. auto industry in the late 1970s.

Fourth, and most importantly, the development of technologies which could require those with legal knowledge to program and operate them.  Obviously, that kind of software would reduce the number of "practicing" lawyers such as the masses once needed for document review.

When these forces come together, there will be very few of the Jones Day Mickey Pohl type lawyer who creates the strategy for complex aka bet-the-company cases and implements it in front of a judge and jury.  There will be many of the kind of lawyer Susskind calls "legal knowledge engineer."  That role will be to "organize the large quantities of complex legal content and processes that will need to be analyzed, distilled and then embodied in standard working practices and computer systems."

Anyone who doubts this scenario only has to review what is happening in my field of communications.  Digital technology had decimated advertising, publishing, and marketing as we have known those industries.  Those of us who have been able to reframe our analog skills in communications into digital ones are still reeling - but making a good living.  Actually, some aspects of social media pay more than what I used to earn as a ghostwriter for print material.  Here is my resume for that service Download Resumesocialmediagenova.  Note how different the resume for social media is from my resume for those more traditional kinds of communications tasks Download Resumejg.  Not only are the skills very different but so are the tone, mode of presentation, and length.   

This latest article by Susskind can't be overlooked - particularly by law schools.

Hit to those events at trade associations, think tanks, and more

Tucked into Hildebrandt International survey of law departments is that they're "limiting attendance at events."  Trade associations, think tanks and others who sponsor those events for prestige, networking, lobbying, and revenues better take note.

With the new model of frugality and the availability of digital communications, those middleman organizations can witness their role shrinking.  Already, the American Bar Association is experiencing declining membership.  This cost-cutting focus on the event piece could signal the beginning of the end.  Vital briefings can be done via the web.  That means a loss of the hold the organization has on those being briefed.  No longer does the herd stampede to an ABA meeting or one hosted by the Federalist Society. 

This combo platter of cost control and options to getting together in person is a tremendous threat to all middleman entities, be they related to law or publishing or public relations. 

Copycat Violence? UCLA Chem Student Throat Slashed by Lab Partner

Did the murder of Annie Le at Yale spur a copycat attempt?  Maybe.  At UCLA, in the chemistry laboratory a female student's throat  was slashed by a fellow male student.  The two were reported to be lab partners.  Because of the difficult of the subject matter - organic chemistry - lab partners tend to bond.  The victim is in stable condition after surgery.

Office vacancy rate - at 16.5% - will continue to rise as law goes virtual

In metro areas, renting office space can represent significant overhead.  That's why organizations like the New York City Bar Associations advise law startups to be virtual, getting their NYC presence from a mail drop.  For members the NYC bar provides free conference-room space for a few hours to meet with clients.

No surprise in this downtown, the vacancy rate for office space hit 16.5%, reports Christian S.N. Lewis in THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.  That could continue to grow if even established law firms decide to go virtual, maintaining only a small office for meetings.  That might be an option they have to consider as clients demand alternatives to the billable hour.  Last night on "The Good Wife" the subject of billable hours came right up at a staff meeting.  That seemed so pre-crash, almost out of date.  If law firms embrace fixed fees, then high overhead has to go.  Real estate has usually been high overhead.

"Bankruptcy is a very clumsy tool. It's extremely expensive." - Steve Miller, Former Delphi Executive Chairman

Maybe bankruptcy isn't the tool troubled companies should be encouraged to use.  Lawyers, whose shell-shocked firms are being held together with bankruptcy work, won't like to hear this.  But it may be the reality, one that Steve Miller has just lived through at Delphi.  As he leaves the position of Executive Chairman at that auto-parts supplier, Miller had plenty to opine on bankruptcy. 

In his "exit interview" with THE WALL STREET JOURNAL reporter JoAnne S. Lublin, Miller observed, "Bankruptcy is a very clumsy tool.  It's extremely expensive."  His mixed review of this standard procedure will have hands-on leaders as well as management theorists re-thinking the road more traveled.  Attorneys: Help out with new legal instruments.

The hero of the Iacocca-led Chrysler miracle and architect of the Bethlehem Steel and Federal Mogul turnarounds, Miller encountered a perfect storm at Delphi.  The auto industry was in the crapper.  And things were going to get lots worse.  Many jobs had to be cut, both salaried and hourly.  Survivors had been receiving compensation even higher than the already-high standard-auto packages.  Miller's comments about that wage scale enraged workers.  Yeah, it got personal.  During the ordeal his wife Maggie died of a brain tumor, rather suddenly.  The autobiography we were all begging him to publish was put out prematurely.  And, no, the auto industry has not had a turnaround.  In fact, it probably hasn't even stabilized.

Given this extreme experience for a genius in finance, Miller's observations about bankruptcy should carry weight.  Perhaps the best and brightest in all disciplines related to commerce should be brought together to brainstorm about alternatives.  Now that Miller is without a job, he might make that his new mission.

Full Disclosure:  At Chrysler, I wrote speeches for Miller and made Maggie Miller my role model for being smart, sophisticated, yet real.  Many readers have contacted me about how much they miss Maggie.