Law And More

Reed Smith Slows Down Partner Cash Distribution

Add this initiative to the strategies of "abundant caution" in the legal sector.

In Abovethelaw, Kathryn Rubino reports that law firm Reed Smith is slowing the distribution of cash to partners. Simultaneously Reed Smith makes explicit that its current financial condition is fine. However, it is not forecasting what that could be in the short term and the longer term. 

This move positions Reed Smith to preserve cash. Cash flow is everything. A number of law firms had requested an extension of their credit line.

The overall hope is that initiatives such as this can prevent layoffs. Reed Smith could be enhancing its brand by targeting the "haircut" at partners, not more vulnerable categories of workers. Other firms might analyze this model. 

Many recall The Lost Generation of legal talent during 2008 -2009. Once knocked out of the box those displaced lawyers had a difficult or impossible time at re-entry. As the recovery gained traction, law firms tended to hire new graduates and brandname laterals who were already employed.

The consequences of unemployment in the legal sector can be brutal.

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SPOOKED!

The routine for many adults in America is this: the weekend, then work on Monday.

Monday then becomes the cruelest day of all when there is no work - or there is fear that employees are reporting for duty (including remotely) and will be told they are being laid off.

A pall has descended over America. We wonder if we will be able to shake the current dread of what shoe will be the next to fall. 

Let the experts argue about how to classify this economic catastrophe. 

We experience it as the worst of times. Everyone knows someone who is waiting for the $1,200 to pay the rent. But first they have to negotiate with the landlord to also wait. There is talk of lobbying for some temporary time-out on rent payments. But, come on, property owners have a lot of bills of their own to pay.

Professional services players, ranging from law to public relations, are spooked. 

Major law firm Womble Bond Dickinson just laid off junior lawyers. The worldwide PRovoke/ICCO survey found that almost 77% of PR firms expect a loss of earnings and almost 27% anticipate layoffs.

Yes, governors such as Andrew Cuomo and Michael DeWine are doing great jobs. 

But, how we still suffer. There is no way of predicting if we or our loved ones will die. 

Meanwhile staying at home is an ordeal. A necessary one. But so difficult.

Impossible to envision a life after COVID-19.

Can there be joy again? Happy events to celebrate with a lot of people in the same room, standing close together? 

My grandparents never recovered emotionally from The Great Depression. And my grandmother did survive the Spanish Flu but her health remained precarious. 

No, most will not simply walk into the future without tremendous sadness.

Share on social networks your longing to return to addiction.

People are out there to remind you how bad it had been and how sobriety is so much better. Among those cheering on recovery is journalist Ana Marie Cox. 

A drink for those who can't drink won't make it better. There are also meetings online and on-the-phone. Check the internet for the links to their schedules. 

Sure, fall apart today.

I couldn't rouse my Inner Resilient Self. After walking the dog I went back to bed. When I got out of bed I only took the dog for a short walk versus the long one he loves. I didn't take my new motorcycle to the empty lot to practice. I finished off a large bag of trail mix (high in fat, carbs). 

For the rest of the day I will watch on ION reruns of "Criminal Law."

Now and then the tears come. No one can reassure me that things are going to be okay. At least today.

Tomorrow? That could be better.

It seems like a gigantic conspiracy that the Eisenhower Administration, the guidance counselors at school, the priest for our confirmation, or our parents didn't tell us the Ok, Boomer that life is difficult. The only message we received was a rigid formula for success. Do well in school. Go to college. Dress nicely.

Then the Recession of the early 1970s came. Life wasn't what we had anticipated. But we absorbed that reality and went on to enjoy a sustained boom.

Now, this.  Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal reports the Class of 2020 assumed they were entering a hot job market. Then there has been the COVID-19 reversal of fortune. They, like Ok, Boomer, could have also been sold an inaccurate take on reality: the school message. Meanwhile, the Millennial six doors down is happily employed in the service department at Ford. He fixes cars. 

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Associate Layoffs - That Shoe Finally Drops in Legal Sector

Junior lawyers and the JD Class of 2020 were holding their breath.

What they feared was that reductions in force (RIFs) would creep over from administrative staff (not needed in remote times) to lawyers.

Well, on Abovethelaw.com, Kathryn Rubino reports that the shoe has dropped. This is the first time during the coronavirus crisis that a major law firm has had a RIF involving associates. 

That law firm is Womble Bond Dickinson.

Yes, it's really happening. Those let go are entering a marketplace as bad or not worse than that of 2008-2009. That's why they don't have the luxury of denial.

Severance and unemployment will run out soon enough. So will their savings, as junior lawyers discovered in The Great Recession.

The lucky ones back then figured out the doc review game, that is how to land, hold, and move on to better assignments in that niche.

Under the pen name "Alex Rich," one former BigLaw lawyer chronicled the how-to on Abovethelaw.com. Later it was discovered that the lawyer-turned-journalist had been Rubino, who is now employed full time at that legal news site. 

In addition, also from the get-go, the in-touch ones were reimagining how they could leverage their education, knowledge base, and skills for making a good living in the longer term. That might be in legal or related to legal. Or, it might not be. For a number of them it turned out to be in compliance, real estate, and marketing communications.

Likely, during this upheaval in their careers, those lawyers who are displaced will have to focus on getting access to all the help, financial and otherwise, that is available.

Once source for that is Paul Weiss' Coronavirus Relief Center. Even before the pandemic became serious in the U.S., Paul Weiss Chairperson Bard Karp saw the future.

In it a lot of people, probably for the first time in their lives, would need to have centralized a kind of UX system where they could speedily and seamlessly get what they needed during the crisis.

Did Karp realize that lawyers themselves would be using the Relief Center? That's irrelevant. What counts is that he was able to mobilize hundreds of lawyers to pull all-nighters pro bono to set up this unique help zone. 

The RIF for associates is only a part of Womble's cost-cutting strategy.

In addition:

•  Some employees have been furloughed
•  Graduated pay cuts across the board for those still left standing. For employees earning more than $100K that will be 10%.

The founder of this blog Jane Genova has extreme empathy for those let go. We are our jobs. When we lose them we lose a piece of ourselves. Grief is appropriate.

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"Good Girls" - Boys Get into Fun of Being Bad

Bad is contagious.

In tonight's episode of "Good Girls" boy-scout Stan turns master criminal. What used to be an amateurish theft ring by one of the escorts he is making more sophisticated.

That's how he purchases a scooter for Ruby who got shot in a botched robbery she, Beth, and Ruby had staged. Like RubStan realizes crime is not only lucrative. It's fun.

Passive Dean blackmails his boss at the hot tub chain. Among what he has on her is sexual misconduct. She forces her male staff to do her.

If she doesn't give Dean the top sales leads he will use his contacts to rat her out to corporate. His plan is to get her job and relocate his family to Las Vegas - and away from Rio. Like Beth, he has done a 180-personality change. She had been the traditional Detroit suburban housewife. 

Then there is all-American-boy Max. He gets mad enough about Rio's offing his girlfriend Lucy that he hatches a plan to kill him. He even gets into learning to shoot a gun. Unfortunately when Beth brings him and Rio together and Max has his shot he wets his pants. He probably doesn't have a future in a life of crime.

As for the girls, it's up and down.

Low self-esteem Annie gets her first taste of being a somebody when the EMTs compliment her on how she did first aid on Ruby's gun shot wound. According to the EMT, she saved Ruby's life. Annie could be on the way to stopping getting into bed with losers.

Since Stan has joined her in a life of crime, Ruby has reassurance that her marriage will hold up. 

Beth, though, is in the penalty box. She made the major strategic error of stealing from Rio. That is, she siphons off too much of the counterfeit money for herself, Annie, and Ruby. She tries to cover it over with fake invoices about the rising cost of ink.

Rio is having none of it. When she and her family are out of the house, Rio strips it of all the furniture. Beth will have to get Rio to trust her again.

Overall, the extreme darkness has lifted which hung over the show after good-kid Lucy had been offed. There's lightness again. Stan could become a central character in the show, just as Mary Pat had been. His transformation pulls the audience in. 

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Economy, Leadership, Public's Great Expectations - Suicide of Thomas Schaefer

Financial leadership can be an overwhelming burden during depressed economic times.

Thomas Schaefer might have become overwhelmed by that responsibility.

This finance minister of Germany's Hesse region committed suicide. It was at the railway station of Hocheim, near Frankfurt. The New York Post provides more details. 

The theory is that he anticipated that the population would have outsized expectations of financial help during the economic fallout from the COVID-19 generated downturn. And that he wouldn't be able to fulfill that expectation. 

Schaefer's suicide could represent the beginning of both leaders and the people on Main Street taking their own lives because of uncertain economic times.

No one knows how long the novel coronavirus will endure and how much it will impede economic activity. In itself that uncertainty has a negative pull force on the global equities markets. Those who intended to use their portfolios to pay their children's college tuition or retire might find that door has closed. At least for now.

It was 19th-century writer Charles Dickens who examined the peril of Great Expectations in his novel by that title. That was the time of the economic, technological, social, and cultural upheaval of the Industrial Revolution. 

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Miracles in Time of COVID-19

COVID-19 isn't just a sustained narrative of fear and suffering.

There have been miracles. Big ones, that is, the old-fashioned kinds when people assumed to be dying roared back to a life. Also, there have been profound acts of generosity. 

David Lat is off the ventilator, out of ICU. 

That founder of out-of-the-box legal media site Abovethelaw.com was presumed near-death. Then, last night he posts on his Facebook page that he is breathing on his own. He doesn't assess he is totally out of the words but he is out of the ICU. 

Lawrence Garbuz is back home. 

This Patient Zero in COVID-19 cluster Westchester County, New York spent a month in a medically induced coma. Meanwhile, his hometown New Rochelle went into lockdown and became a media sensation. 

Now, he's back at home.

Michele Jaworski offered to adopt my dog if I die from COVID-19. 

The pandemic is supposed to hit Ohio in mid April and peak in mid May. I confided to my long-term Connecticut friend Michele, a bankruptcy lawyer, that I was arranging to pay a neighbor to find a home for my dog upon my death from the disease.

No way, protested Michele. She would take over that responsibility, pro bono. Also, she assured me that I wasn't going to become infected. Maybe Michele should add to her menu of paid services: 

Dog Rescuer (which she already has been doing, unpaid, for decades and made her birthday a fundraiser for the CT Animal Haven)

Clairvoyant

De-Stresser.

Every day is a bad hair day.

Beauty salons remained closed. I look in the mirror and see a shaggy poodle. 

My angst is having a video interview on Zoom for an assignment for my communications boutique. 

Grandchildren in the residential complex continue to annoy. 

Since schools could be closed forever, they could be here forever.

Pro se (that is, a self-filed lawsuit) I could do a lawsuit contending such visitors to a one-bedroom development (that is, which automatically rules out children and why I moved here) constitute a public nuisance.

Their running soundz like horse hooves.

Their voices aren't modulated.

As in "The Sound of Music," they break into song, outside my window when I am working.

I don't want Cute to Live Here Any More.

I had put in a call to the Toledo, OH police. They assessed the situation as simply "kids being kids." I could make it my mission to challenge that law-enforcement opinion all that way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Well, the weekend is coming to an end. How many more we have to endure at home is totally uncertain. When this is over, I will never again consume more than a half hour a day of television. That will be to take in the ABC News with David Muir.

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Guess Who's Home? - Lawyer (Westchester Patient Zero) Lawrence Garbuz

Andrew Cuomo is leveraging this development as a symbol of hope in The Time of COVID-19: Lawyer, who had been Patient Zero in the Westchester, New York coronavirus cluster, Lawrence Garbuz  is back home.

His infection had been so severe that for a month he had been in a medically induced coma. The New York Post reports that his case seems to be one of community contagion. 

Among those in the cluster had been his wife, his son, and the neighbor who had driven him to the hospital. 

As Garbuz was fighting for his life, his hometown of New Rochelle was in quarantine. The media made that suburb famous. 

It will probably require months for Garbuz to regain his strength. But he represents a miracle recovery.

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David Lat - Off Ventilator, Transferred from ICU, But Doesn't See Himself Out of Woods, Yet

The media guy he used to be, David Lat used social network Facebook to update the world on his condition. That was late last night.

Essentially, as Law.com reports, Lat is breathing on his own but still requires oxygen 24/7.

The ventilator - well that he no longer needs.

He has been transferred from ICU to a more normal treatment modality.

And, although he rejoices at his improvement he doesn't perceive himself out of the woods. He reminds his followers and fans that he can't do much on his own, needing a nurse to assist him with the most simple tasks. And, only now he can eat solid food.

Also, he shares the reality that there have been those who were perceived to have recovered from COVID-19 and bounced back into the ICU. There, some of them died.

Currently, Lat is a legal recruiter with Lateral Link. His COVID-19 ordeal is being covered on the digital site he founded Abovethelaw.

This blog cheers on Lat in his recovery. 

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Law, Other Professional Services - Perils of Optimism

"Being optimistic about demand recovery is a real problem …" - "Covid-19: Implications for Business," McKinsey, March 2020.

The business impacts of COVID-19 on law and other professional services were sudden.

That's hammered in this Law.com podcast as well as the abrupt announcements about backing off recruiting new lawyers. On Reddit's r/LawSchool, the JD Class of 2020 were on the money to be anxious about their employment situation. 

So rapid were the negative developments that some players in those sectors have taken refuge in magical thinking: Recovery, they rushed into assuming, will be fast and robust. After all, the world economy is fundamentally sound. A bad quarter or two? They got that.

That may or may not be true.

But macro positioning doesn't mean much for the near-term survival of both law firms and those they employ. To make it through this and prepare for the post-coronavirus new world order of business, they likely will have to change. The exceptions, of course, are those law firms already with strong practices in restructuring, bankruptcy, workouts, healthcare, employment, insurance, and cybersecurity.

In advertising, for example, there has been a plunge in demand. For Twitter, notes PR News, that has been 20%. Even the giants like Facebook and Google have taken a hit.

In response, across the board in the communications industries, the survivors have developed fresh menus of services. They include creating materials and communications related to COVID-19, documents Vertical IQ.

But shifting gears takes time. The kneejerk interim reaction remains to cut manpower. After all, according to Paycor, the labor expense can represent up to 70% of the business budget. 

That means this: Employees who sense they will be axed or have been axed can't embrace optimism.

One former client in the legal sector did that in 2008 and ran out of savings and hope. Eventually, she was hired as a paralegal by a small law firm and that's where she still is. 

Another had the opportunity to circle back to his first career path in auto sales. Instead he chased after the past, trying to replicate it. That included seeking out full-time jobs as well as contract work in his specific expertise in law. He also could have developed new expertise in family law but refused to start over again. He was let go from the job he did land and never attracted enough freelance work to support his family. His wife became the breadwinner. 

Being realistic about the short- and long-term entails knowing what the resources are, figuring out how to access them, and doing just that. Yes, for instance, get down cold unemployment benefits, how to take full advantage of outplacement, and negotiating landlord-tenant issues. Regarding the latter, some are obtaining concessions on rent. 

Ironically then, the Paul Weiss Coronavirus Relief Center, developed by lawyers on a pro bono basis, could mean salvation for lawyers themselves. Those include members of the JD Class of 2020. 

Here is how the creator of that platform - Paul Weiss Chairman Brad Karp - describes that comprehensive guide on what help is out there and the buttons to press. Needing so much help is new to too many in this era of COVID-19. 

Karp did anticipate the scope of the pain that the pandemic would inflict on workers. That's why he mobilized hundreds of lawyers, pulling all-nighters pro-bono, to develop speedy seamless ways through the mazes of accessing what's needed for today, tomorrow, and, unfortunately, perhpas a few years. 

Let's talk turkey. The big lesson from The Great Recession for those in professional services was that income is everything. The more of it the better.

That could mean choosing a decent-paying survival job rather than the 12 weeks left on unemployment. One former client in public relations took an interim job in a call center which provided medical benefits, which he needed for his family. His attitude was good. Eventually he became a supervisor. Then he was promoted to a position in corporate. At that time, he became a client again and was able bypass the age bias.

In contrast, optimism about the fast return of the status quo has destroyed so many. It could do just that again. 

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Feuds, Ranging from Farrow/Allen to Dershowitz/Boies: Refuge from Exhaustion of COVID-19

Cain and Able

Families of Romeo and Juliet

Jack O'Dwyer and the PRSA

Harry/Meghan and The Firm

And, the Farrow Clan and Woody Allen.

Feuds are a mainstay of civilization. In difficult times they are solid platforms for gossip. Nice distraction.

In this era of COVID-19, we need lots more of that. Less Netflix. Less following the news and emails from marketers about the pandemic. Less  losing trust in leadership (with the exception of Andrew Cuomo and where is Joe Biden). 

Along the way, feuds can provide lucrative work for those in public relations and law. Those sectors, just like most of professional services during the pandemic, need the business. The Ford mechanic in my residential complex is among the very few currently making a good living. (I have been saved by those taking out sponsored content on my three syndicated blogs.)

What is most titillating about feuds is this: Entities such as the New York Post take sides, with great passion. That's lots of fun. I had enjoyed supporting O'Dwyer against the PRSA. Most of us who drift into the loop have fairly boring lives. 

Usually both those sides claim they have the upper hand. 

But in the latest round between the Farrows and Allen, the latter might be winning. Not only did he get his memoir "Apropos of Nothing" published. Most know the story of how Hachette backed out and Arcade rode to the rescue. 

In addition, the book is doing well. On Amazon, it ranks a wonderful high: #529. Of the 66 reviews, 76% give it a 5. Only 4% give it a 1.

Most importantly, it allows Allen to raise questions about Saint Mia, supposedly Mother Earth and Global Do-Gooder.

That mirrors how Christopher Hitchens was able to raise questions about Mother Teresa. Many recall his iconoclastic book "The Missionary Position."

No, that didn't destroy Mother Teresa. But it performed enough brand deflation that when she died, around the same time as Princess Diana, the world didn't kick into universal mourning. Interestingly, when Hitchens himself died there was universal mourning.

In the U.S., Allen might be, to borrow that term from "John Wick 3," excommunicado.

 But his work is doing well enough in Europe.

He did extricate himself from Mia. Anyone from what might be a dysfunctional family system understands how difficult that is. I  broke away twice, only to go back, with great regrets. The bonds can be the jaws of spiritual death.

His marriage seems stable.

He can continue to do what he loves: Make films.

And, he made it to age 85. No self-destruction through the usual suspects.

The peril to the new front line of the Farrow faction - investigative reporter Ronan Farrow - is that the dynamics can become all-too-consuming.

The attention shifts from work per se to maintaining the feud.

The branding becomes cartoonish as it tends to do in so many human conflicts. Think about one-time superlawyers Alan Dershowitz and David Boies. They duke it out like out-of-shape former prize fighters. 

Sad, also.

Talented Ronan can wind up that way. 

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