Law And More

"I did everything I was supposed to do," Winnie Adams - Choosing to break away, be separate

Suffering, especially when it's unexpected, has a way of opening us to out-of-the-box approaches. 

That's exactly what law firms will have to do to make it through the current "economic hell,"  James W. Jones, Managing Director of Hildebrandt International, delivers that radical advice.  In an article on the Law Marketing Blog, Jones is quoted as observing, "This recession is significantly different that [sic] prior recessions and could lead to fundamental changes in the law firm business model."

Fortunately, for newbie JDs, associates and partners many have traveled this road before.  One is Winnie Adams.  She tells THE NEW YORK TIMES reporter Sarah Kershaw, "I did everything I was supposed to do." That didn't prevent suffering.  Her solution: To break away from traditional paths and figure out how to survive separately or out of the mainstream.  Adams was and is a lesbian.

Others who also tried and seemingly succeeded in ending suffering by breaking away include:

•  Steve Jobs [after getting tossed from his company, remade himself his way]
• Arianna Huffington [once an outsider]
• Ana Marie Cox [former Wonkette who had a checkered career before blogging]
• Bob Dilenschneider [fought that influence comes from emotion, not data], and
• Fictional Augie March [Saul Bellow protagonist who survives though schemes.]

How can lawyers, forced by the system to do things as they "are supposed to be done" [high grades, acing standardized tests, admission to the right schools, passing the bar, hired by right firms, billing the most hours], break away?

Start with deconstructing legal models of people and organizations which had done this successfully. Those range from Alan Dershowitz and Bill Marler to Valorem and the Pittsburgh product liability group of Jones Day. Probably the most useful and poignant question is: Why did they choose the road less traveled?  The next is: What was the killer app that brought success?

That's a productive beginning.  Then comes the action piece.  That entails experimentation.  It's usually not pretty.  That's because it usually can't bypass failure and appearing foolish.  Silicon Valley marketing pro and career coach Marsha Keeffer observes, "Here in The Valley, blowing it is considered a necessary rite of passage.  That's because the trauma of losing seems required for winning.  Zen?  Maybe."

The third must-do is leverage leverage leverage what works into your own unique success formulas.  Management consultants W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne call this "Blue Ocean Strategy" or creating your own marketplace space.  If there is a secret to Marler's "ownership" of the food-borne disease category, that's probably it.

Disclosure:  Now and then I do digital assignments for Bob Dilenschneider, Bill Marler and Marsha Keeffer.  Incidentally, my success formula is to do nothing but digital.  Here's my story of suffering and breaking away Download Geezerguts.   

Laid Off not going gently into lousy economy

It was predictable.  And law firms with employment-law practices like Proskauer Rose are going to thrive because of it - no matter what's happening in the economy.  The "it" is the wave of litigation, class action and individual, filed by laid off employees.  They first have to file a claim with the government. But after that, the door is open to lawsuits.

Employment lawsuits would have been a solid business even if the economy hadn't tanked and so many corporations such as Dell and Ethan Allen cut workers loose.  The social contract between employers and the work force broke down in the early 1980s.  Corporate America noticed global competition.  The beginning of the end was transforming full-time jobs with benefits into contract ones without benefits.  Then came reduced employer contribution to medical insurance.  The over-50 professionals were being disappeared. 

No one came up for a new model for the social contract. Employee lawsuits about everything from age discrimination to working conditions began to increase, even during the second Bush administration.  With the Democrats back in the White House the increase will be exponential. 

A sure sign of that is the new President signed the Lily Ledbetter Act into law - and in the media his wife cheered for that victory for women.  According to the Lily Ledbetter Law, employees can sue for perceived wage discrimination with no time limits, no matter how far back the alleged incident happened.  Also, employers can be sued for discrimination which was unintentional.  There's more.  As Carter Wood notes in Pointoflaw.com, "the bill is retroactive, with an effective date of May 28, 2007."

The laid off worker lawsuit explosion is generated, Proskauer Rose lawyer Lawrence Lorber is quoted to say in THE NEW YORK TIMES, "out of desperation as it becomes more difficult to find new employments."  However, the desperate move might prove to be simply a distraction from finding a new job.  The consensus among lawyers is that those kinds of suits are not easy to win. 

Tort reformers such as Philip Howard might have the last laugh on Ledbetter and other supposed employment protections.  These could play out as poorly for plaintiffs as did public nuisance.  Howard's new manifesto against litigation that doesn't make sense is "Life Without Lawyers."

Lousy economy "could lead to fundamental changes in law firm business model," James Jones

According to two leading experts on the business of law firms, what's ahead is brutal, both short-term and longer-term.  Those commentators are James Jones, Managing Director of Hildebrandt International, and Lucinda Tambourine, Managing Director of Citi Private Bank.  

Short-term, the disaster includes:

• In 2009, a 15% net-income drop from 2008

• Inability to raise rates

• Additional layoffs

• Salary freezes and cost-cutting

• Heavier fee discounting

• Expenses rising faster than revenues.

Longer-term there will be a long wait for any sense of a "recovery."  By time better economic times arrive, there could be, states Jones, "fundamental changes in the law firm business model."  There's more.  Opines Tambourine, "We are in a shift from a decade of growth and expansion to an extended period of reduced demand and resistance to increase in costs of legal services."

Jones recommends firms to "think outside the box."  He predicts they will get on the other side of this period of creative destruction better than firms stuck in the status quo.

"Pecking order among lawyers, the best as the busiest and the most costly," NYT, 1/29/09

The veneration of the billable hour in law firms has led to, what Jonathan D. Glater calls  in THE NEW YORK TIMES, "a pecking order among lawyers."  In that culture, "the best" are identified "as the busiest and the most costly."  They are at the top because they turn in the most billable hours.  Those could add up to about 3000 a year. 

It's a reflection on how old-line a profession law is that this kind of status system would emerge and harden into the standard.  Since the consumer movement of the 1970s, many of us recognized that there was no necessary cause and effect relationship between the busyness and cost of a provider and quality of service.  As we became more media-savvy we also got it that such hard-to-get-in-to-see-them and premium pricing could be simply smoke-and-mirrors.  So, we searched for providers who were not too busy to listen to us, priced fairly, and had a track record for results.

Now here's a research study: What are the track records for the busiest and most costly lawyers vs. those who are less busy and less costly? 

Tracey I. Batt, Esq. - This Jersey Girl is Philip Howard's Dream

In a bylined piece in THE NATIONAL LAW JOURNAL, attorney Tracey I. Batt recounts how the large law firm she onced worked for sicced the Fashion Police on her [subscription required by clip available on Law.com.] A Jersey Girl like myself, Batt might has been fashion-challenged or the firm deficient in Emotional Intelligence.  Whatever, in her commentary there is no mention of suing her former employer or even considering doing that. In addition, her tone is amusement, not bitterness.  She moved on to nonprofit work and seems to love it.

Batt's the path less traveled - not filing a lawsuit - is probably tort reformer Philip Howard's dream.  Head of The Common Good, Howard has spent more than a decade decrying the litigation-obsessed mindset in the U.S.  His first manifesto was "The Death of Common Sense: How Law is Suffocating America."  His second was "The Collapse of the Common Good: How America's Lawsuit Culture Undermines Freedom." His most recent is "Life Without Lawyers: Liberating Americans From Too Much Law."

Howard's next tome might be "Jersey Girl Tracey Batt: A Lawyer's Common Sense."  Here's my [free] e-book on what a Jersey Girl can't help but learn Download CUsersjasneDocumentsjg.

Your Career in Law - Over, What to Do

I can spell a profession imploding miles away. 

In the early 1970s, the profession of being a college professor, at least in the humanities, disappeared.  Denial lasted too long before I tried, failed at and finally succeeded in other career paths. 

In the early 21st century, my lucrative career in speechwriter got disappeared by the technology of PowerPoint, Post-Enron low profiles, and budget cuts from the first of two global recessions which would occur.  Denial lasted for a shorter time.  But there was still that ordeal of trying, failing and eventually nailing down a way to make a good living.  Here is that story, in its raw form Download Geezerguts.

Much the same dynamics are happening in the career path of law.  Those in, just like the tenured humanities professors in the 1970s, are in.  They will stay in.  They make the profession look good.  It is good.  But the rest of us weren't getting in.  Political and some in-house corporate speechwriters were in and stayed in.  They're still there.  That had nothing to do with me.  I was out.  Even today, I do about 20 percent of the number of speeches that I had done in the 20th century.

So, it's over for many associates, newbie JDs, law students, partners who will be forced out, and staff. Today, Linklaters announced it is reviewing the positions of 150 lawyers and 150 support staff. Fish & Richardson announced it is cutting 30 in staff [subscription required by clip available on Law.com.]  There will be plenty more of these announcements.  It isn't that law firms are simply reducing forces to make it through a bad patch.  It's that they, like all the rest of us, are struggling to operate according to new models.  Yeah, creative destruction, on steroids.

When it's over, it's over.  Denial is a necessary part of that huge loss of a career path.  Then what?  Here is what I have learned with my own two encounters with irrelevance and what I am learning from coaching the unemployed and underemployed:

• It's all about Emotional Intelligence [EI].  All that brain power that got you here won't get you there, that is on the other side of this mess.  We all know the platitude about the C students in college who become the bosses of the A student.  The platitude is on the money.  When the A students were booking it, the C students were finding out what people were about.  Here is my [free] e-book on EI   Download CUsersjasneDocumentsjg.  People will help us if we comport ourselves as human beings.  It's that simple, really.

• Get revenue coming in.  Severance goes fast.  So does unemployment.  Rent out that basement to a student.  Paint houses.  Pick up survival jobs or even good jobs outside the previous professional focus.

• Be ready and willing to make a fool of yourself.  Yeah, read over Steve Jobs's speech on this.  Trial and error are imperative to finally landing something that makes us a good living.  Let them who are still employed turn up their noses.  Caring about that is a luxury none of us can afford.

• Don't look back.  In the Old Testament, Lot's Wife looked back and that was the end of her. 

• The first job leads to a better job, then a much better job.  A startup can grow into something lucrative or be a bridge to a great job.  Keep the dream alive.  You succeeded before. It's highly likely you will succeed again.

• Find a new network. The old law crowd doesn't want you around and being around them can keep you stuck. Anneli Rufus has some insightful things to say on that in "Stuck: Why We Can't (or Won't) Move On."

• Don't measure the present by the past.  Measure the present by what it could be leading to and how much of it you can leverage.

Loss, whether it be of a career, job, or simply the big bucks, is one of the hardest emotional things to navigate through.  But it's doable.  How will you know that you have completed the process?  You will be professionally in-demand.  Others pick up on the power of a survivor. They want what we have.

Ledbetter Becomes Law - Tort Reform Kaput

It's the first bill signed by our new president.  And it's the beginning of the end of almost a decade of tort reform. 

This morning President Barack Obama signed into law the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.  Focused on wage discrimination, it overturns the previous U.S. Supreme Court decision imposing time limits on those kinds of lawsuits. 

The way the bill is configured, statutes of limitations go out the window.  Anyone can sue about any alleged workplace wage discrimination, no matter how far back it may have occurred.  That means that introduced the mess of changing times and changing business practices.  There's more.  Employers can be sued for wage discrimination that is unintentional.

Contrarian Move: Buy Jets

Why not buy a jet or a few of them? Sure, it's a contrarian move that's especially high risk.  In their THE NEW YORK TIMES article on corporate jets Geraldine Fabrikant and Leslie Wayne point out that jet ownership not only can put stress on the balance sheet in these scary times.  In addition, it's become a negative symbol of excess.

However, we know from game theory that often the big winners ignore of break every rule. [A useful read is "Game Theory: A Very Short Introduction" by Ken Binmore.]  In law, a firm might enhance its positioning with clients, prospects, and rainmakers if it buys or leases one or more jets.  That would allow the firm to provide clients and prospects with the convenience of a private jet which is likely not a perk at their companies any more.  In addition, it sends the clear message of excessive success by the firm.

I know this can be a unique branding strategy.  Good times and bad, one of my clients flys high, including leasing a jet.  Maybe there's no cause-effect relationship, only a correlation.  But even in the worst of times, his professional services firm has plenty of business.

Often, when there is little to lose, a contrarian move is worth the risk. 

Paradise Lost: 6th Bay Area Firm - Morrison & Foerster - Does RIF

It could be called a tale of two coasts. 

Here in the Northeast it's the Darien, Connecticut region which had the rug pulled out from under it.  Those wonderful Wall Street jobs, which employed about a fourth of the wage-earners here, were eliminated.  They're not coming back.  The unemployed sit in the YMCA gym like deer in the headlights.  They have no idea about What's Next.  Paradise has been lost.

On the left coast is the magical Bay Area, where the most innovative worked and lived.  Six law firms have done Reductions in Force [RIFs].  The latest is Morrison & Foester which cut 53 attorneys. Given the overall glut of lawyers, especially those out of work, the jobs are not likely to come back.  No one in the legal business is sticking the old neck out to predict when there could be a stabilization in revenues.  What every one seems to agree on is one thing: The good old boom days in law ain't coming back. Paradise is lost and there's no template in law for regaining any semblance of it. 

Since attorneys are not the high flyers in earning power that Wall Street types are, they might migrate denial faster than the investment bankers.  After all, they lost less, probably have lots less socked away, have law school loans to pay off, and so will focus on What's Next in a more timely manner.

What's Next professionally for both groups is as much an enigma as much of the global economy.  Those skills which are transferable aren't in much demand.  Their temperaments and mindsets have been shaped for the unique requirements of their previous work.

It's a question mark how they will earn a living.  What's not an unknown is that the lion's share will have to start over again.  But they might not have to stay where they begin long.  A job leads to a better one, then a much better one.  A startup business can grow or lead to a very good job. 

In my coaching over the past 18 months I have found that the punch in the stomach the unemployed received has rendered them incapable of dreaming.  They see the $40,000 beginner job, not the potential three years down the road.  I tell them my own story Download Geezerguts. 

Some then believe it's possible and probable to regain professional paradise.  Most, I observe, have settled in or, as we now call it, are "stuck."  Just last week I have been giving them a copy of Anneli Rufus's "Stuck: Why We Can't (or Won't Move On."  My fingers are crossed that this book will show them that, yes, they're stuck, not healing, paying it safe, or enjoying life.  

Equality of Sacrifice - Can that turn around BigLaw

There are glimmers of what's called The Equality of Sacrifice in Big Law.  Associates's getting laid off is being balanced out by partners's having to pony up funds to keep the firms afloat.  These take the form of outright hand-outs and loans.  As Ashby Jones explains in THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, law partnerships don't have the same options for getting money as publicly traded enterprises. So, there's no option but putting the muscle on partners, just as they are cutting associates loose.

But more may be needed to turn around BigLaw.  When everyone had written off Chrysler as a goner in the late 1970s, Lee Iacocca came along.  He brought with him The Equality of Sacrifice.  Desperation did the trick.  Everyone pitched in and sacrificed.  Iacocca took one buck as an annual salary.  UAW members gave up plenty.  We white-collar took out our own trash, kept our cubes tidy, and many of us agreed to be contract vs. full-time employees.  Sooner than anyone expected, Chrysler was not only in the black.  It paid off its government-guaranteed loans years early.

BigLaw can cut the brass's compensation, radically.  Associates can save each other's jobs by going part-time or on-contract.  Regarding the latter, a hiring freeze would be put in effect for all full-time positions.  If newbie JDs want to join the firm, it will be as a contract worker, with few or no benefits.  Empty space can be leased to other professional-services firms.  Marketing can be done digitally, which saves money and frequently boosts effectiveness.  Yeah, and cancel the cleaning services.

Even in the most self-absorbed, zero-sum environments, The Equality of Sacrifice can harness the strength of the group toward survival.  I know.  Chrysler transformed many of us, including me, from careerists to the selfless front lines for saving jobs of the auto industry and its suppliers.  Perhaps human beings are hardwired toward a cause.