Speecwriters like myself are paid a king's ransom for creating the illusion of candor. As well we should be since simulating candor in an era in which it hasn't been heard for decades is a rare art form.
So, it's no surprise that in POLITICO Roger Simon reports that he has observed Hillary Clinton being candid. And therefore he interprets that as a sign that she has thrown in the towel on any plan to run for U.S. President. To me, that seems to make a lot of sense.
Former elected leaders Anthony Weiner and Mark Sanford, reports POLITICO, are trying for comebacks. They will probably pull those off. It is simply easier for politicos to make it back than it is for disgraced lawyers.
Politics requires the ability to raise money and get votes. End of story. If the politico who has fallen from grace can do that than that's that. However, in the field of law, where so many lawyers are getting nailed for embezzlement or not paying their taxes, a license is involved.
Getting that license in the first place demanded evidence of high character. For example, former NEW REPUBLIC journalist Stephen Glass, who was found to make up stories, wasn't admitted to the bar in New York or California. He is appealing the second turn-down. Those following that chronicle wonder why in the world he studied for law when he knew that in order to practice it he would have to be admitted to the bar.
Disgraced lawyers, especially those who serve prison time, could come back in another line of work. The classic example of that was former Special Counsel to President Richard Nixon Chuck Colson who received his law degree from George Washington University. In prison he found spirituality and went on to become a famous religious evangelist.
Given the 24/7 media cycle and the fierce competition for traffic, likes, shares, comments, and tweets, a professional's misdeeds or even stupid moves become public property quickly. That's the new normal. So, another bit of emerging new normal has been the art of reputation rehabilitation. The rules for that are different for each line of work.
The most successful lawyers and the worst miscreants they defend, including in the financial world, might have one thing in common: They are both psychopaths.
That's what research psychologist Kevin Dutton hammers in his new book "The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What saints, spies, and serial killers can teach us about success." Lawyers are often functional psychopaths, that is they don't go as far in letting their impulses rip as their clients who wind up committing extraordinary crimes. On the other hand, Ponzi-scheme master Bernie Madoff might well be a psychopath who couldn't keep a lid on that mental disorder and wound up going way too far. There are degrees of psychopathology.
Among the typical traits of psychopaths which serve as both tools for success and tickets to prison or even the death penalty are:
Extreme focus, ruthlessness, lack of empathy, self-centered impulsivity, dominance, mental toughness, charisma, high intelligence, coolness under pressure, charm, persuasiveness, fearlessness, and stress immunity.
Perhaps it's because some successful lawyers have these traits that we read in the legal and general media about how they embezzle the escrow accounts of clients, overbill clients, get into domestic abuse situations with lovers and spouses, and use and distribute child pornography. Having a psychopathic personality might also account for the higher-than-average rate of clinical depression, substance abuse, and suicide among lawyers.
In pop culture, law partner Will Gardner on "The Good Wife" might well be a psychopath. So might have Denny Crane been on "Boston Law."
Most of the information, analytic skills, and persona which go into being a successful lawyer undermines the ability of that professional to shift to other lines of work.
On a voluntary basis, for instance, lawyers might decide to enter politics, starting as an aide writing speeches for their senator. Or, by necessity they have to find an alternate to practicing law. The path to that goal can be rocky if they don't take an inventory of how they approach working and present themselves in all mediums - in-person, in print, digitally, on video and through audio.
Last week at a retreat at the New Haven Zen Center the "guiding teacher" (that's his title) Ken Kessel help participants get unstuck from whatever. He pointed out that we like to do what we're good at. That can range from productive tasks like creating marketing materials for law firms to unproductive ones like losing our temper in professional settings. Like the rest of us, Kessel has to make a living and he does that through being a psychotherapist.
Since lawyers are good a certain ways of thinking and acting which usually aren't marketable in other career paths they will probably have to take an inventory of them (become aware) and then clear off the shelves, replacing them with more marketable behaviors.
Another obstacle in transition is preoccupation with debt. Debt comes in many forms. Student loans are just one. The new parent is looking at future debt of hundreds of thousands to put the child through college. The entrepreneur has significant debt now and intends to add to it. Debt is simply a fact of life, not a determining force.
A third bit of poison in shifts is a fantasy of what could have been in a career in law. There is an image of this and that, along with regrets about not doing this or that to make it happen. The reality is that none of us know what the outcomes could have been if we did Y rather than X.
Lawyers and law students in Connecticut can sample what the New Haven Zen Center can offer. The website provides the schedule for meditation on Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings, workshops, and attending special events in Providence, Rhode Island. Get on the mailing list and you will receive zen instruction on a weekly basis.
Not every female lawyer wants to, could, or should Lean In. Think about it. If all female JDs were Leaning In, there would be a blow out of extreme ambition, high-powered strategies to maximize money, power, influence, and status, and sidelining of many capable male attorneys.
Yet, that's the rah-rah ethos of our times. CORPORATE COUNSEL reports that five law firms have adopted policies and procedures to help females Lean In. Ironically these same law firms probably also have diversity initiatives. Sending the message that women Lean In undercuts diversity.
The unintended consequence of Leaning In as the prevailing meme in the legal sector is that females who don't Lean In could be punished. They could be perceived as not adequately focused on their career paths. If they are members of Generation X, the term which would have been applied to them would have been "slackers."
Not everyone, female or male, wants to max opportunities or even their potential. In addition, some are neurologically wired so that they have to attend more than others to their emotional and spiritual needs. Sending the message that they better Lean In could set them up for self-destructive behavior, which is already widespread in the legal sector.
The new sandbox players in the legal sector will dominate is predictive analytics. They will leverage that to get the edge. In their marketing communications they will simply say - that will be enough - that they have developed proprietary predictive analytics to assess the success odds of a case strategy as well as key tactics; calculate the amount of damages to put on the table for a settlement; and to select members of juries.
No surprise, reports AM LAW DAILY, the Reinventing Law conference took place in Silicon Valley. In New York or Washington D.C. the settings might have mitigated against the presentation of radical thinking about how to make the business of law more productive and cost efficient. Manhattan's mindset is money and D.C.'s is power. To put the legal sector on a survival track requires a willingness to accept BigData as a major part of the solution.
Already BigData is reconfiguring the business of lobbying and how trading decisions are made. For example, one startup is focusing on improving the assumptions and speeding up the ability to produce information in predictive analytics for institutional investors. If that happens, hedge funds could have a second golden age.
"Where's the proof!" That's the frequent refrain our nemesis will make when we declare we are going to "report" that professional to some proper authority. And that reply is on the money. Our society is one which demands evidence.
Well, as we read in THE NEW YORK TIMES last Sunday, former JP Morgan financial advisor Johnny Burris had that proof. In a highly unethical manner, Burris taped his superiors who demanded he sell more JP Morgan products. The guy landed on his feet, getting another good job at Oppenheimer & Company. We who have been denied our day in the courts of law and public opinion because of lack of evidence can't help but applaud Burris.
Although it seems like something out of a James Bond film, more and more of us ordinary people are wondering how we also can pull off the taping. Will we become a mass of people wearing wires when called into the boss' office about implementing an agenda we know is unethical? Yet, by secretly taping we are also being unethical.
Burris could make a bundle tutoring us on the ins and outs of taping. Recently I had a brutal encounter with the head of administrative services at a compliance search firm in Manhattan. She, I perceived, was abusive, ranging from not connecting me to the manager to hanging up on me. Yet, not being practiced in the art of taping, I have no proof. When I went to the compliance search firm's website and obtained the name of the chief operating officer to pursue my original matter which was a mistake by its accounting vendor, I had to bite my tongue about the behavior of the administrative front lines. Where was my proof?
It's a dirty practice but we gotta admit that it may be a three-cheers for what Burris decided to do and did it.
Women in the legal sector don't know how to become rock stars like women in tech and probably don't want to. Agree?
In tech, women like Marissa Mayer and Sheryl Sandberg dominate multiple conversations, chronicled in great detail in the media. Carly Fiorina is back, this time with microloans, which is very promising space to be in. And, there is every possibility that Meg Whitman can turn around H-P.
Yet, what do we hear from women in the legal sector? Their most prominent representatives have always been fictional. The most recent pop culture female lawyer is Alicia on "The Good Wife." And they stand out for their absence on "Downton Abbey." The barristers are male. Players like Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama are not in the role of lawyer.
We don't hear much from female lawyers and that very lack of presence in the media, at TED conferences, and in politics could be holding them back on the way to equity partner. Visibility is a form of power, right up there with wealth, ability to obstruct, and likability.
I have a hunch female lawyers are not out there with outsize brandnames because they, the mentors who support them, and their firms don't understand public relations. To become in legal circles what Sandberg is in tech ones demands a comprehensive public relations infrastructure. That's a lot more than a few hours with the firm's marketing person about finetuning the web profile, putting out a press release about a win in court, and publishing an article targeted at lawyers not clients.
Female lawyers on the partner track should negotiate that kind of full public relations support. Part of the negotiation would be putting in for fewer billable hours and more minutes on "Jimmy Kimmel," a keynote address at the American Psychological Association (not the American Bar Association), and membership in the World Economic Forum.
Female lawyers as rock stars would create the demand for many more female lawyers.
"Didn't you hear. The White House has threatened that fearless reporter Bob Woodward that he will regret hammering President Obama about sequester."
Buzz like that is priceless. It's irrelevant if it's true or not. All that counts is influential media properties like BUSINESS INSIDER are posting it. Now everyone is leaning in a little closer to hear what Woodward is saying. And that leaning in will go on for a long long time. Lucky devil.
The rest of us would consider it a public relations miracle as well as a lot of fun if we could even get the town dog catcher to seem to threaten us.
So much of the juicy and high-paying parts of law are embedded in oral delivery. In fact, those theatrical performances are what initially attract the verbal to study law.
However, practicing law isn't what it used to be. So, flexible JDs might consider leveraging their skills in oral communications to writing speeches for politicos. It's exciting. It's covered by the media. And it can lead just about anywhere.
The president's well-known Millennial speechwriter Jon Favreau is leaving the White House this March 1. He could be headed to Hollywood to pen screenplays.
Political speechwriting and even the buttoned-down corporate kind is now a sandbox only Millennials can play in. Speakers don't trust those of us over 30 because we might just let an uncool term or phrase get in. Speakers would sound foolish. The media would replay the anachronistic language.
So, you Millennials have the game all to yourself. Volunteer to pen whatever for a local, state, or national politico and an wannabe politico. Eventually you will have the skills, portfolio, and contacts to get in where you want to.
