Law And More

Judge Alex Kozinski Announces Retirement - But, Could He Have Survived Allegations about Sexual Misconduct?

Public relations experts may be asking right now: Could Ninth Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski have ridden out the investigation and bad press related to allegations of sexual misconduct?

The reality is that no one will know.

The same issue hovered over former New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. Some lawyers who had worked with him over the years thought he caved prematurely. But, again, we will never know.

What we do know is that Kozinski has announced his retirement. Here are early details about this development in Abovethelaw.com by lawyer-journalist Kathryn Rubino.

A public relations expert in managing crises by individual brandname players should publish a book with guidelines on how to prevent personal panic as the crisis unfolds and even deepens.

The classic role model for turning around a scandal to his advantage is former Nixon Administration lawyer Chuck Colson. He transformed his stay in prison into a platform for developing a prominent spiritual movement. It ministered to prisoners. When he died, he was not only revered. He was loved by those he served.

Currently, global crisis czar Gene Grabowski, partner in kglobal, hammers that the problem is never the crisis per se. In this seminal op-ed, Grabowski observes:

" ... if you're in business in the 21st Century, you will inevitably know crisis. That's forgivable. Simply put, if you manage your crisis well, you will recover. Conduct yourself poorly, and the consequences will be painful - and expensive."

Meanwhile, members of the legal and business media are watching how superlawyer David Boies manages being outed as allegedly enabling Harvey Weinstein. Here is Ronan Farrow's coverage of that in The New Yorker. And, here is the analysis in Bloomberg how he is positioning and packaging himself.

Get a second opinion about your marketing and advocacy communications. No pressure. No charge. Please contact Jane Genova, janegenova374@gmail.com or @genova_jane.

 

Steve Bannon - Joshua Green Gives Us Some Dots to Connect in "Devil's Bargain"

Political strategist/media personality and former Hollywood player, investment banker, Harvard Business School student, and Navy officer - Steve Bannon - is outsized.

Thanks to his charisma, he can get lots of attention.

An example of that was how his presence and commentary revived Roy Moore's campaign. (Today, we'll find out if that had any real effect.)

Not Being Able to Break the Conservative Code

But, Bannon remains an enigma. At least to a New York liberal such as myself. I never could decode conservatives.

Those frustrating unsolved puzzles include Bob Dilenschneider who had been the personal public relations representative for former Fox News founder Roger Ailes. Now and then I would do assignments for Dilenschneider's public affairs firm. 

"Devil's Bargain"

In his July 2017 book "Devil's Bargain," journalist Joshua Green provides some facts and insight which may or may not help us connect the dots on what Bannon is all about. The book ranks around 15,000 on Amazon, received a five-star rating from 58% of readers, and has generated almost 450 reviews. Here it can ordered from Amazon.

The antics of Campaign 2016 taught us not to trust what we read or hear. So, I'm wary of buying into how Green positions and packages the Bannon saga.

Past as Prologue

Bannon's past may be the platform for how he manages to get things done among conservatives.

His background is blue-collar, Irish Catholic, hard-working and hard-core Kennedy Democratic ethos. That likely gave him a deep understanding of:

• Populism. The working class has an antipathy toward supposed elites. His father started out as an AT&T linesman and only much later made it into middle management.
• Theatrics. The Roman Catholic Church's signature is its drama-filled rituals. Those range from the mass in which a wafer is transformed into the body of Christ to the sacrament of penance in which one's sins disappear.
• Value of an extreme work ethic. That was the family DNA.
• Power of political ideology as bonding force. The love of Kennedy was the group identity.

Zelig (for a while)

As he found outlets for his ambition he seemed to acquire the ability to take on whatever persona would be useful. A type of Zelig, he became a one-of-the-boys Navy officer, Harvard Business School striver, buttoned-down investment banker, and risk-taker Hollywood type.

Green contends that once Bannon didn't need a day job any more he also dropped the need for a persona. He went rogue in everything from how he dressed to how he gave up shaving daily.

Game Theory

But his unique genius has always been game theory.

Immediately he could size up the rules of any game, figure out how to outfox the competition, and, in the process, change that game. For example, he got it that Donald Trump's real game was how to create winning political plays.

According to Green, Trump had been interested in political office for a number of years. Among what he had considered was running for governor but decided against it. 

Forever

Essentially, Bannon could be one of those personalities who get big, are downsized a bit, and always return to the former large size or even bigger. 

Takeaway

The ambitious, and not only in politics and media, can learn much from Bannon's approaches. Those have been classified as Machiavellian. So?

Wise mentors warn  newbies in a certain career path such as law or medicine that it's all a game. Either the entry-level professionals will wrap their head around that and focus on strategy and tactics or they will be knocked out of the box. 

Reflection: Will Dr. Shaun Murphy on "The Good Doctor" embrace the game that medicine is?

Get a second opinion about your marketing and advocacy communications. No pressure. No charge. Please contact Jane Genova, janegenova374@gmail.com or @genova_jane.

Massacre at First Baptist Church - Hold the Platitudes

From today onward, those who attend Sunday religious and spiritual services will be peering over their shoulder.

Massacres, even in supposed sacred settings, have become metaphors for these current days of rage.

No one really understands the rage. Everyone now fears it. Come the snow, it could erupt if a neighbor attempts to park in anyone else's cleared-out spot.

We better become a nation walking on eggshells. Those from troubled backgrounds already make a habit of doing that.

Rage, of course, is nothing new. In "Genesis," Cain was enraged at his brother Able.

That volcanic emotion has just become showcased, more and more frequently, with firearms. 

At the small First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs in Texas, 27 were murdered by a gunman dressed in combat gear. Among them were a two-year-old child and the pastor's daughter. Another 24 were injured. The endings of human life nears that of the destruction in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The arrogant and the ones with agendas will tell us what today's massacre was all about. They will even put it in a box, that is, in context. 

But human beings who have grown up in wildly abusive homes or got knocked around as adults more than average know rage exists and that's that. The best one can do is to try to anticipate it. If that doesn't work, then figure out how to duck. 

Getting rid of the guns would be a good idea. But rage-filled human beings can also mow a soul down with words.

You owe yourself a complimentary consultation about your marketing and advocacy communications. Please contact Jane Genova, janegenova374@gmail.com or @genova_jane.

Is Lesson Here: Despondent Should Steer Clear of Manhattan

Manhattan seems to have acquired a grim branding: Suicide City.

The mentally disturbed and those trapped in a loop of despair have access to myriad forms of self-deliverance. They include very tall buildings, bridges, subways, and commuter trains such as Metro North. 

This morning, as the New York Post reports:

"A man jumped to his death from the Trump International Hotel near Central Park ... The incident is being investigated as a suicide, police said." 

In Japan, The Sea of Trees (Aokigahara) serves as the go-to place for someone contemplating suicide. The tragedy there is that the setting is a maze. Those entering who change their mind about self-deliverance might not be able to exit. They perish - involuntarily - within the forest.

Meanwhile, throughout the U.S., the suicide rate has increased to its highest rate in about three decades. As The New York Times rep0rts, from 1999 to 2014, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, the rate increased 24%. 

With the exception of senior citizens, the surge has occurred in every age group.

Yet, the aging aren't being entirely spared.

When I lived in an over-55 complex in New Haven, Connecticut, a few months after I moved in a man in my building jumped out the window during the Christmas season. He died.

Not long after that, another man jumped to his death in another building.

And in my support group, a 60-something executive in an insurance company used his gun in his car to deliver himself from whatever. 

Also, some professions, such as law, have a higher than average rate of suicides. In Kentucky there had been "cluster suicides" among middle aged trial lawyers. 

In Belgium, a Roman Catholic order of clergy, bucking the Vatican, operates psychiatric hospitals which now offer euthanasia for the mentally ill. That approach, which involves careful screening, might be not only a dignified passage. Also, the "pause" could help those low on hope sort out if they really want to give up. 

Despite all the books and studies published on suicide, the thought processes which culminate in that decision are still a mystery. "Night Falls Fast" by Johns Hopkins University professor Kay Jamison just raised more questions. To my satisfaction, no one has connected the dots - not effectively. Since my family seems to carry the "suicide gene," I have been studying the phenomenon for decades.

Maybe the wise move is to steer clear of Manhattan if one is feeling despondent. What really does often lift the darkness is a candid conversation with a trusted friend. 

You owe yourself a complimentary consultation about your marketing and advocacy communications. Please contact Jane Genova, janegenova374@gmail.com or @genova_jane.

 

Suicide & Law - Time for a Global Conversation

In Belgium euthanasia has been legal since 2002.

Currently, a chain of Roman Catholic psychiatric hospitals, operated by the Brothers of Charity, allows that kind of deliverance for the mentally ill.

The official Catholic Church opposes that.

Here are the details from Francis X. Rocca in The Wall Street Journal.

Rebranding Suicide 

The Catholic Church is not alone in positioning and packaging the act of self-deliverance as not-right. In fact, in many jurisdictions in the U.S., those attempting suicide and not succeeding or even having suicidal ideation are swept off to a mandatory stay at a mental facility. After that event, stigma could attach to their lives. 

In addition, those without expert knowledge of how the human body operates or just not lucky, often botch the suicide. Not only is there stigma. They might suffer life-long injuries. One Yale business school graduate, who is bipolar, jumped off a cliff. Instead of dying, he now lacks the mental capacity to re-engineer another suicide try.

What the members of the Brothers of Charity are doing is rebranding suicide as a reasonable choice.

Suicidal Not "Crazy"

The myth about the suicidal is that they are "crazy." The reality is that they may have carefully assessed their quality of life. They have concluded that, despite so many modes of treatment, their suffering has not abated. Consequently they have made the decision they had been through enough.

When British novelist Virginia Woolf  knew she was headed for another psychotic breakdown she made the decision to take her own life. She wasn't willing to endure a total loss of dignity yet again. Over the decades, many of her fans assessed her choice as hers to make - and enlightened. 

Family Suicide Gene

The families of Ernest Hemingway and Sylvia Plath seem to carry a "suicide gene." Members of my own family have also ended their own lives. Often the method was passive. There were one, even though with nurse's training, who ignored a breast growth the size of a golf ball. An uncle walked home drunk through a bad neighborhood in Jersey City, New Jersey. My mother stopped taking her blood pressure medication.  

Such deaths can generate a traumatic experience for those left behind. But not always. I understood the kind of pain some in my family had struggled with - without relief. As a young child, I bore witness to my mother's rolling around on the floor, as if she were battling demons. The question might be: Why didn't she plan her exit sooner?

Science doesn't know enough about mental illness. Treatments available to ordinary people are often ineffective - and have humiliating side effects.

Global Conversation Needed

The media focus on the Belgium psychiatric hospital program opens a global conversation about how society's institutions, including the legal system, views suicide. That mindset might be as anachronistic as corporate ghostwriters composing drafts of articles for executive bylines on yellow legal pads. 

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Anthony Weiner - At the Devens Federal Medical Facility, He Can Start Networking for His Next

On November 6th, Anthony Weiner will begin his 21-month prison sentence.

Since it's at the Federal Medical Facility Devens, it could be the beginning of his Next. That's because there he can network with guys who are known for cunning and contacts. 

They range from insider trader Raj Rajaratnam to members of the Gambino family. Here the Daily Mail lists many others.

That particular facility houses those with medical conditions (Rajaratnam's is his kidney) and addresses the problems of sex offenders. 

Weiner is not from a wealthy family. He will have to put together a new way to earn a living. His estranged wife Huma Abedin could request child support for their five-year-old son Jordan. But even if she doesn't, Weiner needs to maintain at least a middle class lifestyle so not to bring even more shame to Jordan.

It was in prison that Watergate's "evil genius" Chuck Colson got religion. He left with a new career: spiritual leader.

Also, it was as a guest of the state that upscale snob Jean Harris found her humanity. She had murdered her lover the Scarsdale Diet Doctor. Because of all her good works with women of all backgrounds in prison, Harris received early release for a health problem. 

My uncle Willy Miksza networked his way in prison for "crowdfunding" what he would later need to start up news stands by the PATH train locations in Jersey City, New Jersey. He bought a house for his mother, who, of course, was my grandmother. He had great gifts for all the poor kids back in the old neighborhood.

For hustlers who are flexible, prison can be a fresh start.

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Men, Especially Young Boys, Also Victims of Sexual Assualt

Hopefully, some of those participating in the #MeToo messaging are males. That's the elephant in the room.

According to RAINN, 1 in every 10 victims of sexual assault are males. That might be a low estimate. The odds are that many young boys who are sexually abused might remain silent. 

That reality came out during the investigations of Roman Catholic clergy sex abuse. The boys were too confused and shamed by what had happened to confide those experiences to a caretaker-or authorities. 

In addition, in the rooms of recovery, during discussions, once males re-learn to trust they often share that they had been molested. So do females, of course. The surprise to me was two-fold. One, that so many males also had been taken advantage of. And, secondly, they were still torn up internally by the ordeal. Most were filled with self-hate. I have a hunch that is at the root of addictive behavior.

The continual exposes of sexual exploitation during the past few years should help open the culture. All of us who have been victims, especially as children, now get it that it really is a MeToo trauma. 

During my years of seeking help for clinical depression, it was not until I was 58 that a therapist asked me: Had I been molested as a child? It was then that I finally could stand back and observe the self-hate. Ironically, what it took to become whole was forgiving myself. You bet, both females and males often assume "we were asking for it."

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The 12 Steps - Likely That's Not Road Harvey Weinstein Will Travel

There was a time when celebrities who disgraced themselves entered some version of the 12-step program.

I know.

When I attended those 12-step meetings inside the beltway and the Upper Eastside of Manhattan, in "the rooms" (as insiders refer to the 12 steps programs) were brandnames in politics, entertainment, and business.

One joked that he did his 5th step, that is the confession of his transgressions, on national television. He had been a leader in Congress, before his fall from grace. Afterwards, he devoted himself to helping others find their way out of the bottle. 

The traditions of those programs banned the use in public of the specific name of the program, such as Alcoholics Anonymous. But members could note they participated in a 12-step program.

No surprise, back then, Cosmo Magazine recommended that women (even if they didn't have an addiction) who were looking for wealthy husbands join a 12-step group in an affluent area. Greenwich, Connecticut was a common hunting ground.

That was then. The credibility of 12-step programs was high. That was even though the rates of sustained recovery were low. 

Increasingly, there are well-researched articles critical of all those 12-step approaches. The most high profile has been Gabrielle Glaser's article in The Atlantic. Here you can read the comprehensive negative analysis of just about every aspect of that supposed mode of recovery.

Sure, we know that many courts continue to sentence offenders to mandatory 12-step meetings. Also, myriad in-patient 28-day rehabs introduce the 12 steps. 

But, overall, attendance is down at 12-step meetings around the world.

Also, other approaches are generating outcomes better than those of the 12 steps. Those range from pharmaceuticals to block euphoria to cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).

In addition, religious and spiritual organizations provide other approaches to recovery. Weekly, Shambhala Buddhist temples, in a growing number of cities, provide a weekly combo platter of meditation, inspirational reading, and discussion. 

It is unlikely that Harvey Weinstein, even at his most motivated, will seek what he needs in any 12 step program or programs. They range from Sex Anonymous to Emotions Anonymous.

The 12-step brand is too tarnished.

The lackluster results have been made public.

Also, he has access to the most recent research about what would be effective for his unique challenges.

He can hire his personal CBT therapist and a meditation coach.

If he decides a group format is useful for his recovery his team can establish one with Non-Disclosure agreements signed. Of course, it doesn't have to be affiliated with or follow the protocol of the 12 steps. 

Yet, neither his nor anyone else's recovery is a sure bet. Addiction is too complex. Too many of its dynamics are not understood. 

However, those of us who have been entrapped by compulsive behavior and found our way out wish Weinstein the best. He may be more of a victim than any of his victims. Addiction is a painful state of being.

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Silicon Valley - Banished from Branding Paradise

The high-value Silicon Valley branding is facing worldwide threats. 

Europe has been gunning for it, with no reverence for innovation as religion. In a Barron interview, tech thought leader Scott Galloway anticipates a $10 billion fine for one of the biggies, ranging from Google to Amazon. Remember how European regulators went after Microsoft, during another era. 

Meanwhile, here in the U.S., as TechCrunch explains, those tech titans have lost their superhero status. Instead, they are increasingly perceived as the bad guys.

Why has the tide of public opinion turned against The Googles, et al.?

Let us count the ways.

At the top of list is the multi-faceted discrimination. The game is tilted against females, the aging, African-Americans, Hispanics, and often Asians. 

Equally powerful are the threats technology poses to jobs. It's no surprise that in his commencement address to Harvard graduates, Facebook head Mark Zuckerberg championed Universal Basic Income (UBI). Essentially that is a monetary safety net for those whose employment were killed off by artificial intelligence and automation. 

There are also the banana-republic valuations of enterprises which haven't always been correlated with revenues. Sure, Amazon can enact a version of that business model. But others such as Theranos have caused investors major losses. 

Factor in also how little many of the innovations really benefit society. How many new bells and whistles do we need for our smartphone?

Needless to say, the explosion of housing costs around tech locations has banished the middle class from cities such as San Francisco. There is the new segregation.

In order to return from Lost Branding Paradise, Silicon Valley needs to change its values. This is an inside job.

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Surge in Law Firm Mergers Means Redundancies (which means reductions-in-force)

The outlook for manpower in the law-firm niche of the legal sector doesn't look good. That's because of the surge in mergers. Mergers create redundancies. And redundancies provide legal cover for massive layoffs.

In The American Lawyer, Roy Strom reports:

"A report ... [from] legal search firm Fairfax Associates said there were 14 mergers in the third quarter for a total of 49 so far this year."

When an industry consolidates, business as usual ends. Expectations about hiring, promotions, and terminations go out the window. In addition, once consolidation begins, it tends to become standard.

An example is the food processing industry in the U.S. There had once been so many companies, large and small. Currently, General Foods, Kraft, and Heinz are one entity. That entity only needs one set of X or Y macro functions. 

It's also a red flag that, as Abovethelaw's Joe Patrice explains, that there is fundamental market weakness in the legal sector. The industry has not bounced back from the crash. It has not responded effectively to the changing demands of clients. And, technology will continue to eat its lunch, dinner, and breakfast.

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