Law And More

That Laser-Like Focus on Outcomes - Smirk, Smirk

Success usually comes in through some back door. Not from careful planning of goals and then methodically tracking them.

The same goes for happiness.

That's why it would be a useful experiment for law firms, lawyers, and law students not to set goals this New Year.

Instead, just commit to be totally engaged in your little life. Or, if you are a partner, your outsized life. 

Essentially that's the thinking embedded in the 2016 book "If You're So Smart, Why Aren't You Happy?" Here 2018 is almost over and the book continues to rank high on Amazon: 5,537. 

Its author is University of Texas business school marketing professor Raj Raghunathan. His observations are counterintuitive. The one which is the major stunner is that focusing on goals will not necessarily:

• Generate success
• Bring happiness. 

It's such as shocker because from the get-go our mindset is trained for the goal-orientation box.

We are to identify goals and continually measure progress being made.

The lack of adequate progress demands course correction. Yeah, hire an executive coach. Or, if you are a corporation, bring in McKinsey. 

Those not playing in that sandbox will be labeled losers - that is, until they become our bosses or billionaires. And, unlike most of the goal-setters, they don't wind up depressed and preoccupied with suicidal ideation.

Raj provides the analogy of how children master their little worlds and simultaneously experience joy. They don't approach the cardboard box just unpacked in a move, determine that by sitting in it they will develop skills in X or Y, and then monitor achieving all that. Instead, they simply totally engage with the box. Recall that we all learned in developmental psychology how rapidly children get a hang of how to navigate their universes.

It's that same childlike wonderment that frequently characterizes those entrepreneurs who will make it big, lawyers who are in demand, and nobodies who become influencers in social media.

In contrast are those pain-in-the-ass plodders who keep measuring their supposed progress. When they wind up stuck, which is almost to be expected, we can't suppress the smirk.

The classic example of a non-goal-setter who bumped into amazing success, along with a happy family life, is Abovethelaw's editor-in-chief Elie Mystal.

Probably he didn't start out that way. After all, it takes careful planning to get into and complete Harvard undergraduate and Harvard Law School. That he did do.

Then, it turned out that he hated his practicing law. That's when he had to stop doing what he was told he ought to be doing. He knocked around, working at this and that. 

Along the way, he tried out for a journalism job at Abovethelaw. Effortlessly he made it to the top of that food chain. He also has become a prominent commentator in other media outlets. And he's the loudest voice on the internet combatting racial discrimination. 

Takeaway: Engage, with all your mind and heart. Don't plan outcomes. Success and happiness then will come to you. 

Attention is the currency of the 21^st century. Jane Genova helps you get it for products, services, points of view, causes, branding, careers after-50, and college admission.

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Planet Lead Paint - Shift from Advocacy to (Big) Money

When I was blogging the iconic Rhode Island lead paint public nuisance class action trial, the formal public relations focused on advocacy. That was November 1, 2005 until February 22, 2006. 

The defendants promoted public policies such that the landlords were responsible for making the residue of lead paint safe. Another was that federal and state initiatives had already addressed most of the hazard.

The plaintiff and the child activists supporting them argued that children were not safe where they should be: their own homes.

When I interviewed jurors after the verdict went against three of the defendants, including Sherwin-Williams, one woman hammered that stance. She felt so strongly that children must be safe where they live. 

Years later, the RI Supreme Court threw the whole case out. 

That was then.

More recently, both the California Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review the conviction of the defendants, including Sherwin-Williams, in the west coast version of a lead paint public nuisance class action lawsuit.

As expected, that has opened the door to other municipalities and plaintiff lawyers working on contingency filing similar lawsuits. Currently two have been filed in counties in eastern Pennsylvania. Here are details. More are anticipated, not only in PA but in other states.

This time the rhetoric, on both sides, seems to have a lot to do with money.

For instance Jones Day, representing Sherwin-Williams, contends that lawyers are motivating county officials to file the lawsuits because of the contingency fees. Those can reach one-third of the verdict or settlement. Here those statements, part of Sherwin-Williams' lawsuit to halt those two PA lawsuits, are quoted in Forbes. 

Meanwhile, municipalities can certainly use the lead-paint abatement funds from litigation to fix that problem in older stock housing. Otherwise, homelessness can increase, which can hurt the economy of those counties. In San Francisco, the homelessness situation has discouraged conferences from choosing that city. 

Money will become even more prominent if there is an international economic recession. Today, a headline in The Wall Street Journal reads: Global economic slowdown deepens. That, the article goes on to assert, can put U.S. robust growth at risk. The current stock market is hurting the portfolios of too many. 

As for money and the lead paint defendants, such as Sherwin-Williams, they will require a great deal of it for legal expenses as well as verdicts against them and any settlements. Currently Sherwin-Williams is among the CA trial losers which has to collectively pony up $400 million. 

Those public relations firms officially handling the positioning and packaging of the lead paint defendants will have to transcend platitudes. Money as money has a crass image. 

This is Phase Three of the lead paint public nuisance class action litigation. Together the lawyers and the public affairs experts have to prevent it from mutating into "Another Tobacco" or "Another Asbestos." Yes, the courts of law and the courts of public opinion intersect. 

Litigation Communications

Making points of law, policy issues, and politics accessible and engaging for the public, media, investors, and more. Complimentary consultation. Please contact janegenova374@gmail.com.

 

Cost Control - Quest of 80% of Chief Legal Officers (Source: Altman Weil 2018 Survey)

Of course, quality of service is number-one in assessing outside counsel.

But, that's almost a given in most of the law firms competing for business from chief legal officers (CLOs) .

Currently, found the recent Altman Weil survey of CLOs, the next most important focus is the cost of the service. Eighty percent of CLOs are focused on controlling that cost. Here is the coverage in Law.com. And here is the2018  survey.

Of course, the elite large law firms can usually opt out of this squeeze. That's especially the situation in bet the ranch litigation or negotiations. And that will probably be the way it is for the longer term.

But, aside from that, the door is open for just about any law firm, no matter what its size, to compete for the business via price. That means the unique opportunity for SmallLaw.

The Altman Weil survey indicated that CLOs prefer partnering with actual law firms, not contract lawyers or alternate service providers. 

CLOs now are under the same pressure as heads of other corporate departments to implement cost-efficiency. That's become the holy grail. More businesses are forced to compete on price and they can only do that if their own cost of doing business is low.

In many corporations that began in the early 1980s when U.S. no longer was top dog in international business. The ruthless attention to cost had been initiated by reformers such as GE's Jack Welch and Chrysler's Lee Iacocca. What often resulted was a Stalin-like purge of middle managers. Many were middle aged. In turn, that gave rise to a generation of accidental entrepreneurs. They had no real option but to hang out a shingle.

Because of the critical importance of legal issues, frequently legal departments had escaped much of the pressure from the bean counters.

However, those barbarians are now at the gate. CLOs are being evaluated on their ability to control legal spend. 

Attention is the currency of the 21^st century. Jane Genova helps you get it for products, services, points of view, causes, branding, careers after-50, and college admission.

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Gabe MacConaill - His Widow Joanna Litt Talks from the Heart about "Maladaptive Perfectionism"

On October 14th, brandname  BigLaw bankruptcy attorney Gabe MacConaill took his own life with a gun. He was 42 years and at a partner at Sidley Austin.

At the time he was immersed at Sidley Austin with the bankruptcy of the Mattress Firm. In addition, as his widow Joanna Litt confides on Law.com, he was emotionally and physically overwhelmed.

The umbrella term she uses is "maladaptive perfectionism." That is a syndrome known to destroy high achievers, especially in law and medicine. 

Essentially, maladaptive perfectionism is the loudest voice inside professionals such as MacConaill.

It shouts that good-enough is failure and failure is the end of the world, or at least their professional life.

That inner voice was screaming at MacConaill, discloses his widow, to manage matters at the Los Angeles branch of Sidley Austin which had been hit with partner departures and the exit of one key associate.

There was pressure to up the rankings of the law firm so he assumed he had to do everything right in overseeing the 13 summers.

And, of course, the Mattress Firm legalities were demanding and involved travel from the West Coast to Delaware.

Like so many lawyers, MacConaill would now and then surrender to binge drinking. As we in recovery programs know from experience, in itself, that behavior can trigger the slide into the darkness of clinical depression.

When Litt suggested that her husband deal with the stress by going to the emergency room, he observed that would be the end of his career. Tragically, he decided to end his life instead. Amid the twisted value system of maladaptive perfectionism, ironically that made sense.

May MacCaill enjoy eternal rest and this blog passes along wishes of strength and hope for his widow Joanna Litt.

The author of this blog has experienced a number of suicides in her own extended family. In 2003, West Hartford, Connecticut cognitive therapist Amy Karnilowicz helped rescue her thinking from maladaptive perfectionism.

The mind can be an evil trickster, casting fatal spells.

Litigation Communications

Making points of law, policy issues, and politics accessible and engaging for the public, media, investors, and more. Complimentary consultation. Please contact janegenova374@gmail.com.

 

21st Century, Campus Gun Violence - 20th Century, Verbal Violence in Colleges/Universities

iGens have been socialized how to manage a threat of or an actual gun attack in college.

Of course, many of them won't be able to shake off the memory of lock-ins as standard and losing classmates who had been at the wrong place at the wrong time. In The Atlantic, Ashley Fetters describes that current ethos. 

However, higher education, just like many other institutions in society, was never really a safe setting.

Baby Boomers such as myself vividly recall the verbal violence that faculty, administration, and upper classmen could and gleefully did inflict on us. I don't recall any instance in which we had even tried to push back. 

The time was before students had pounded into them that they had rights.

Unless a parent had been a lawyer - rare, since many of us were first-generation college - we didn't even know the legal language to associate with that kind of abusive behavior.  One is: the deliberate infliction of emotional abuse. 

Of curse, lawsuits against the miscreants and the institution itself for negligence in allowing that were unthinkable. We assumed that kind action would imprint a black mark on our credentials - and soul.

In addition, as yet, there wasn't the assertiveness industry to provide us with set phrases, facial expressions, and body language for responding to the abuse. No one had tutored us to use expressions like "That was unnecessary" when authority figures were inappropriately critical or just going about happily doing random target practice. 

The attacks, so routine, left their marks on our psyches.

It wasn't until I was in cognitive therapy in 2003 that I got it how many bits of trauma had become embedded in my sense of self. Their large number was due, in part, to the blind faith in higher education. We were told: The more education the better. So, we piled up the degrees - and absorbed the verbal violence. 

When an institution, as with education, is so critical to one's success, those needing it will probably always be at high risk. People have to continue going to school, even through it's marked as a setting for copycat mass shootings which transform the troubled into celebrities. Years ago, we got it the first week of college that tongue lashings and put-downs were part of the curriculum. 

Litigation Communications

Making points of law, policy issues, and politics accessible and engaging for the public, media, investors, and more. Complimentary consultation. Please contact janegenova374@gmail.com.

 

Southern Poverty Law Center - Questions of What Is a "Hate Group" and Should That Really Matter

In many circles, being actively against alleged hate groups puts you on the side of the angels. That's so much the situation that being known for that can be, well, profitable. 

In The Washington Post, David Montgomery reports that the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLA), which lists 953 active hate groups, raised $132 million last year. That had been significantly more than the previous year.

SPLA started up in 1971 to support lawsuits associated with alleged racial bias. Legal advocacy remains a core mission. 

However, it also has made it its "business" to identify, disclose, and monitor hate groups. That certainly seems noble. 

But, as Montgomery explains, there is increased questioning of the criteria used to label an organization a hate group.

What was clear last night on "20/20" was that the ideology of groups against gays and Jews helped trigger the murder of Blaze Bernstein. Those kinds of groups should be outed and investigated. 

However, human experience surely shows that groups with strong opinions much of the rest of society disagrees with aren't necessarily hate groups.

The classic example could be the Roman Catholic Church which has long forbidden its members from using artificial means of contraception - and, of course, abortion. Many others disagreed and continue to disagree with that. However, despite its myriad flaws, the Roman Catholic Church is not a hate group. 

Needless to say, it hurts one's brand to be declared a hate group. Also, that can put the organization or the individual on the radar of law enforcement. In addition, labeling whatever as a hate group can dance on the edges or right into the heart of defamation. 

Given the influence of the WaPo analysis it might be good business sense for Richard Cohen, SPLA president, to back off vigilance of supposed hate groups and channel more resources, including staff attention, to legal advocacy. 

Extreme stances on issues can be just that: extreme. And that is the end of the story. Progress in so many aspects of civilization has been triggered by oddball views which were put out there with great intensity. In the 1960s, lawyer Ralph Nader was perceived as off for making consumer rights a matter of law - and branding.

The concept of hate groups might be reframed to be groups or individuals recommending violence as a method of self expression or reform.

Litigation Communications

Making points of law, policy issues, and politics accessible and engaging for the public, media, investors, and more. Complimentary consultation. Please contact janegenova374@gmail.com.

"Bad Times at the El Royale" - Gene Grabowski Type Crisis Communications Provides Emotionally/Morally Satisfying Resolution

A PTSD Vietnam veteran dies in peace.

The film tape FBI agent Laramie Sullivan (played by "Mad Men" Jon Hamn) is burned, remaining secret forever.

A cult leader is terminated. 

Suffering human beings take that shot at redemption. 

And, two underdogs get to enjoy funding for a whole new life.

That's the emotionally and morally satisfying ending for film noir "Bad Times at the El Royale."

Set in 1968, when California was full of infinite promise and Nevada was the only BigCasino game around, the movie focuses on seven strangers who arrive at the lodging which has seen better days.

Only two will get out alive.

And those two have been able to snatch redemption from a lifetime of suffering. Salvation includes the money from a 1956 bank robbery to start their lives over, this time on their terms.

Those two blessed humans are make-believe Roman Catholic priest Daniel Flynn (played by Jeff Bridges) and striving African American singer Darlene Sweet (payed by Cynthia Erivo). Since the counterculture was just getting off the ground then Sweet experiences extreme racial abuse and bias.

But it is Sweet who provides the exit strategy. She does this through the kind of wise crisis communications made iconic by kglobal partner Gene Grabowski. As Grabowski hammers, communication represents 80 percent of the manager's job. Sweet proves herself a brilliant manager. Here is one of Grabowski's thought leadership essays on the transformational power of communications Download CommunicationTrainingGeneGrabowski. 

It is Sweet who provides the template when to hold and when to hold with the strongman cult leader.

She overlooks Flynn's shady past, enlisting him as an ally.

She rallies the tormented veteran Miles Miller (played by Lewis Pullman) to kill once again.

Later when he is wounded, she convinces the fake priest Flynn to help Miller's passage by facilitating the final confession.

With his death Miller finds peace for having slaughtered 120 in his past.

She makes legit taking the bank robbery money.

It is her decision to burn the tape which could have undone faith in a deceased former leader. 

And, it's clear that Flynn will have human caring as he continues to slip into that horrific abyss of dementia.

Before arriving at El Royale, he had spent 12 years in prison for the robbery and had lost a brother as the result of it. The odd morality of the noir film makes audiences cheer that he has not only found a friend. He is freed from financial angst.

All the flashpoints in "Bad Times at El Royale" should get those on the front lines of community, business, and personal crisis to reflect on how they communicate. In his new series "FBI," Dick Wolf might incorporate some of kind of communication training Grabowski recommends for those accountable for managing a world which no longer has absolutes. 

Litigation Communications

Making points of law, policy issues, and politics accessible and engaging for the public, media, investors, and more. Complimentary consultation. Please contact janegenova374@gmail.com.

 

Respect in the Recruitment Process - Time for a Public Policy

Tone-deaf.

That's the best way to describe the recruitment policies of an established organization dealing with economic development.

I had applied for a contract position rewriting content. Quickly I received a response. I had been selected to create sample content. That would be paid. 

And that was the good part. 

Now for the bad part.

I was explicitly informed that several applicants, including myself, had been chosen to downsize a policy-heavy document. I assume that in addition to word reduction it should be made engaging. The one applicant whom, they judged, was the best writer would be contracted to work with them on a long-term basis. The rest would be throw-backs. 

Insulting?

That's what I thought.

The powers that be at that organization could have simply indicated there was a paid trial assignment. That would have made good business sense.

After I thought about all that and wound up not participating I recalled slaving in my pre-teen days in the contests to name Lassie's puppies. That had been a popular Sunday night series on network television.

Back then the contest was a useful exercise for children to understand the concept of competition. The adults in the family agreed with that and gladly provided the 2-cent stamps to mail the entries.

No, I never did win the prize: 1 of Lassie's puppies. But I salute the producers of "Lassie" for socializing children to the realities beyond the farm where Lassie lived. With my relatives who worked in sophisticated Manhattan I analyzed what my entries might have lacked. The reverse engineering came up with the need for me to be more creative in the choice of names but still remain within the box of warm and fuzzy dogville. 

Now, I am simply puzzled why a reputable organization would lack respect for communications talent. The more enlightened approach would be to simply position and package the competitive element as a necessary screening whatever.

Can those who create public policy make this happen? 

Takeaway: Don't continue with a process that treats professionals like children. 

Hope: Public policies will mandate gig workers be treated with respect. 

Attention is the currency of the 21^st century. Jane Genova helps you get it for products, services, points of view, causes, branding, careers after-50, and college admission.

In addition, this blog welcomes sponsored content.

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Right to Change One's Date of Birth - Court in Netherlands Will Rule on Emile Ratelband's Lawsuit

In the Netherlands, 69-year-old Emile Ratelband sued local authorities. It was because the powers that be there refused to change his date of birth on official documents.

He requested that the "clock" officially be rolled back 20 years. He had been told he had the body of someone much younger than his nearly 70 years.

With his date of birth changed, he was convinced that he would have an easier time getting dates on Tinder and being hired for work. 

In his lawsuit he argued that transgenders can officially change documents about their sexual identity. The same right should extend to modifying the date of birth legal material. The court accepted the complaint and will rule in about four weeks. Here are more details from the Daily Mail. 

Ratelband's approach is only one kind of solution to the age issue. Another would be to forbid mediums of all kind from disclosing age. Currently, age is regularly provided in the news media and all over the internet. 

Some are old enough to recall when it had been standard procedure in newspapers to identify the race of the persons arrested for crimes. Then, that was banned. Today, of course, it seems unthinkable that such a practice was common place.

Ageism is a serious problem in western societies. And, unlike bias based on race, disability, gender, sexual orientation, or ethnicity, employers are still able to get away with it on a regular basis. Many of them have it down to a science how to blow off older job applicants in perfectly legal ways. 

As for Ratelband's Tinder activities, he may find it difficult to develop meaningful relationships with women 20 years younger. They are part of a whole different generation. He may have the body of middle aged man. However, internally he has all the emotional wear and tear of someone who has experienced 69 years of life. 

Attention is the currency of the 21^st century. Jane Genova helps you get it for products, services, points of view, causes, branding, careers after-50, and college admission.

In addition, this blog welcomes sponsored content.

Free consultation janegenova374@gmail.com

Network Television Is Old-Line Medium - Like Megyn Kelly, Alec Baldwin Allegedly Ignored That

Like Megyn Kelly's NBC Sunday evening talk show, Alec Baldwin's ABC one has poor ratings.

Both can't connect with the audience in a talk-show format.

And the selection of their guests seems all wrong.

And, also like Kelly, Baldwin's behavior embarrassed the television.

For Kelly it was the blackface remark on the third section of the "Today" slot. For Baldwin it was the alleged punch thrown over a parking place.

For a while, gawkers watched Baldwin seem to be penalty-free. Kelly's Sunday show was put in limbo. Then, later she was yanked off the air from the "Today" slot. Currently she is negotiating her exit package with NBC.

Now the shoe, at least the first one, has fallen.

The New York Post reports that "The Alec Baldwin Show" has lost its 10:00 P.M. Sunday slot. Beginning November 18th, it will be replaced with reruns of "Shark Tank." Then, on December 8th, it will start up again in a Saturday 10:00 P.M. schedule. 

How long it will last is uncertain. But given its poor ratings and the reputational trouble Baldwin is in he could find that he could be pushed, as was Kelly, into broadcast oblivion. 

Unlike cable television, the television network cannot tolerate controversial behavior of its stars. 

If Baldwin is banished from Network Paradise, will he, also like Kelly, become an Untouchable? Fox isn't having her back. 

Network television hasn't changed much from its early days when on-air personalities had to be squeaky clean. It's an old medium. 

Attention is the currency of the 21^st century. Jane Genova helps you get it for products, services, points of view, causes, branding, careers after-50, and college admission.

In addition, this blog welcomes sponsored content.

Free consultation janegenova374@gmail.com