Law And More

Changing Face of New York Status - But Being Waked at Frank E. Campbell Funeral Home Remains a Purposeful Pursuit

Status isn't what it used to be.

For example, lots of media, ranging from Vanity Fair to the New York Post, have been hard on the competitive everything in the Hamptons. That ranges from old money being pushed around by new money to way too much hard-core socializing. Soon enough, that one-time high-profile playground for the rich and influential could become a symbol for decadence. Soon enough wealth could be setting up cheap plastic lawn chairs by the Hudson River. 

But one bit of status which will probably hold up is the ability to be waked at Frank E. Campbell funeral home. That's where the world paid its last respects to Jackie Kennedy Onassis. And so many other celebrities.

Located on Madison Avenue at 81st Street, its ethos is old-line. Almost WASP sense of frayed. That contributes to its elegance. 

However, the institution keeps up with the times. It offers cremation services. Yeah, those on the network say good-bye to you, then it's a simplified good-bye. No your having to go through that extra step of being lowered six feet into dirt. 

Readers: Can you think of other status touchpoints in New York which will stand up in the test of time and so much change? Please send your thoughts to janegenova374@gmail.com.

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Madonna Badger - She Is So Back (including from all the litigation)

On LinkedIn Updates, ad executive Madonna Badger posts:

"So proud and excited to be a part of the #AdAge Hot List today with our work for #Olay. #Olay has pushed us to empower women with all of the work we do together. This #TokyoOlympics Ad with Aly Raisman celebrates the #PowerofaDream. Thank you Olay, together we really can #faceanything."

Badger is the chief creative officer and founder of Badger and Winters. 

Lawyers might know Badger's name from the litigation generated by the 2011 fatal Christmas morning fire in her Stamford, Connecticut This Old House. Finally in 2018, it was announced that was all done. 

But the larger world knows Badger on an intimate emotional and spiritual level. In that fire she lost her three young daughters and mother and father. Later, her former husband Matthew Badger died of a heart attack at a relatively young age. 

After that tragedy, Badger left her professional life and went out west to heal. We who followed her painful journey weren't optimistic that she could restart her life and ever do the high-powered "Mad Men" kinds of work which had been her brandname. 

But, come back she did.

She married a long-term friend.

There is award-winning Badger and Winters.

And she has extended her brand to advocate for the desexualization of females in advertising. That is to honor her three daughters.

Obviously, Badger is a guiding light for how the rest of us can navigate our current challenges. For my tribe it's been aging. 

Thank you, Madonna Badger, for coming back. We needed that.

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Too Jewish, Too Gay, Too Whatever for a Female - Myth of the Melting Pot

"Jackie Mason, When Told He Was Too Jewish, Stuck With His Shtick" - James R. Hagery, The Wall Street Journal, July 28, 2021.

Jackie Mason succeeded, despite being slapped down with the labeling of "too."

Of course, he must have struggled emotionally. But on a professional level he made it big. And, that's what matters most in America. This is America, not some country with a less careerist ethos.

And, in America, judgments are harsh. Despite whatever efforts could be made on reputation restoration for Bill Gates, he will wind up The Unforgiven. 

That goes back to the self-righteous Puritans. That value system still prevails. Just listen to the tone and language used by Morgan Stanley's Eric Grossman about law firms serving his account circling back to the office full-time. Grossman could have fit in nicely as a Puritan hellfire-and-brimstone minister. 

The majority of those who weren't a perfect fit with American social norms (as well as being from central casting in a professional persona) have suffered. I know that from doing career coaching. For men, for instance, they were "too short" for the perfect executive image in Corporate America, at least back before the era of wildly achieving oddball entrepreneurs. 

There has been and still is the "too gay." Fortunately, America has a good legal system. "Too gay" Sargeant Keith Wildhaber won $2.8 million in damages and $17 million in punitive damages. The jury agreed that the St. Louis police department blocked his promotion because he didn't fit how those in law enforcement should look, talk, walk and more. 

Women, especially those who are lawyers and mothers, are being hammered (despite third-wave feminism) about just about everything. One recent dustup had been in the American Bar Journal about what a lawyer-mother should say or not say about career obstacles. 

As is obvious, the negative assessment of being "too Jewish" or Jewish at all still dominates. Actually, it is escalating.

Again, I know.

Although I am not Jewish, I have been harassed in the midwest and even in looser Arizona because it was and is assumed I am a "New York Jew." Call that "antisemitism lite." The "evidence" used to persecute me in that way include my deep Jersey City, New Jersey accent and Eastern European facial features/body style. (Also, since I grew up in a Jewish neighborhood I fall into Yiddish slang but I cut that out as too dangerous. I don't want my car keyed.)

Incidentally, late novelist Philip Roth focused a lot on ethnic self-hate. He might have been onto something big. That could be the missing piece in trying to figure out how Yale Law School one-time star team Jed Rubenfeld and Amy Chua (Tiger Mom) fell from grace. 

The elephant in the room on this one is this: Can this blatant kind of discrimination change?

Well, those in the front lines of diversity are trying.

Everyman and Everywoman are being encouraged by coaches, therapists, and loved ones to "be themselves." That simulates, of course, the Dove meme that everyone is beautiful.

Also, powerful institutions such as the law firms in BigLaw are bringing issues such as the current antisemitism mainstream and pushing back against them.

For example, at Paul Weiss its chairperson Brad Karp organized about 50 other law firms to come out strongly against antisemitism. Paul Weiss has also been an early adopter in initiatives for nuts-and-bolts social justice. Among the accomplishments has been the COVID Resource Center. Through it, even those COVID victims living paycheck to paycheck can gain access to assistance.  

Maybe the first stop in all this, though, is to dismantle cherished American myths like the melting pot. Yeah sure.

Vividly I recall the nuns at St. Boniface Roman Catholic grade school, based in the tenement district of Jersey City, socializing us children of immigrants to The American Way. That included the all-American breakfast. No more Polish pancakes. Nonono. Guess for me that didn't take. I continue to be sized up as way "too Jewish."

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Lawyers "not in the right headspace" - Saving Lives through Sports (not the ABA)

Simone Biles is the most recent high-profile athlete to, as the AP reports, "not be in the right headspace."

Earlier Michael Phelps had disclosed that he also had drifted into that kind of dark space. He had even contemplated suicide. 

So, what could be happening is that it is from the world of sports that lawyers struggling with mental illness can find insight, genuine compassion, and the inspiration to consider the tradeoffs involved in what could constitute saving their lives.

The thinking on this one might go: If those high-paid, talented, and revered athletes struggle with psychiatric problems maybe it's okay that I do too. Also, like them, maybe I should consider restructuring my life, my work, and even my social network to accommodate my mental illness. But, first, yes, I will talk with someone about this. That first step could be a close friend or a mental-illness expert.

The American Bar Association has tried to provide support. It had, for example, partnered with Hazelden Betty Ford to research mental illness in the legal profession. 

But help from the inside might not be where it needs to come from. After all, inside is danger. Inside licenses can be lost. Inside reputations can go poof. Inside could mean being forced out of the job.

The late 42-year-old partner at Sidley Austin Gabe MacConaill assumed that was exactly how things worked inside BigLaw. In an article in Law.com, his wife Joanna Litt indicated that Gabe had been overwhelmed during both his representation of Matress Firm and his law firm committee work. He didn't dare "get help," not even going to the ER. He was certain if that got known he would be finished. Instead he committed suicide with a gun.

Maybe Biles and Phelps could have given permission to the Gabes to risk all professionally - yes, currently a career is all - to save one's life. No secret: The way many forms of mental illness play out is that situation can evolve, as with Gabe, to life and death.

And, it isn't getting better in the legal profession. Prestigious law firms have been throwing money at junior lawyers. Essentially that looks like a tradeoff for them to sacrifice normal human touchpoints for the demands of serving client needs. In sports the analogy would be serving the needs of the fans. 

In general, the sports world is a lot more glam than toiling like a medieval monk amid paper documents. Stars (or many former stars) in it who step away from all that to, well, what might be saving their lives provide the role models and the nudge lawyers (and law students) could require. They can admit things may be getting pretty dark. And they can make a commitment to save their lives, no matter what that entails. In the medieval world the mindset was all about saving your soul. Now, it has come down to in so many lines of work to balance extreme success with saving your life.

The first round of COVID taught all professional to assess what matters - that is, if we were blessed with being able to continue to live.

The recent activity in the sports world presents a bigger-bang Moment of Clarity or Ah-Ha Experience. The takeaway is this: We all do have a right to live. Success may come with too high a cost in the current speeded-up version of the "Hunger Games" for too many professionals.

Disclosure: I have strugged with clinical depression since age 11. Four members of my family had committed suicide. It required a lot of inner engineering to save my life.

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If It Looks, Sounds and Pushes Back on Management Like the 1930s - From Hollywood to BigLaw and BigBanking

"With supporters ranging from assistants to power players like Adam McKay, the [Hollywood] industry's Democratic Socialists are demanding a fair share for workers (but aren’t necessarily coming for your house in the hills)." - Hollywood Reporter, July 19, 2021.

The focus of the particular cause covered by Hollywood Reporter is how lux hotel Chateau Marmont allegedly mistreats its workforce.

That spirit of revolt on behalf of the working man and the working woman circles back to the days of unionism in 1930s.

No, the Barbarians aren't at the gates. They don't need to be. They will just refuse to come into work, as could play out in BigLaw. 

Meanwhile, what were once the loudest voices in the corridors of power - such as the Wall Street players - are being ignored or heard and then shaken off.

JPMorgan Chase's Jamie Dimon says working in the office in-person is necessary for professional development. So?

Morgan Stanley's Eric Grossman rails against remote work. That could also become a So. In Europe and the U.K., financial types are already positioning and packaging his diatribe as "arrogant" and "tone-deaf."  

In addition, the force field associated with money is losing its hold, isn't it. It's becoming okay to just earn enough money, plus some to invest and sock away for retirement. 

BigBanking tried throwing a lot of money at young analysts so that they would keep working the impossible hours and put up with bullying. Instead, members of Gen Z are opting for more humane organizational cultures.

All that money couldn't save former Apollo head Leon Black from his demons.

Software developer John McAfee lost all of his.

Tireless in his defense of the late Fotis Dulos, (appearing mighty haggard) lawyer Norm Pattis had to return $137,000 of the $250,000 retainer. 

Here's what is obvious: Employers have to extend their focus from the current macro social justice priorities like voting rights to what their own workers want. The odds are that many of those workers aren't quite sure what it is they want or should want. But it's more than diversity. It cuts closer to the bone of what it means to trade one's labor for income. Yes, the  existentialism of work. In medieval times that played out as the vocation of serving God. What will that come to mean now?

Law firm ESG practices such as the broad-based one configured by Brad Karp at Paul Weiss will likely find more clients in some kind of labor issue/public relations pickle. And more of those will quickly fester into crises.

The matter of where work will be done probably shouldn't have become a global controversy. But it did. It was back in April 2020 that Dentons global chairman Joe Andrew flagged that in The Hill op-ed.

Soon enough, other issues related to the nature of work could emerge with that high a profile and grassroots traction. Already law firm Jenner & Block is a busy bee investigating allegations of toxic work places. Could class action lawsuits be filed against certain workplaces for constituting a public nuisance?

Sure, all this could come down to a massive shift in the balance of power between management and employees.  A sign of such a seminal pivot is that New York City fast food workers are liberated from at-will employment. No longer can the McDonald's or the Wendy's terminate for no reason, not in NYC. Here's what Sanford Heisler's website says about that.

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Paul Hastings and Shinyung Oh, 2008 - The Extreme Shaming of an Associate, Then of the Law Firm Itself

The vilification of Paul Hastings for how it designed its where-work-will-be-done and the tone-deaf way it announced that had not been its first passage through the corridor of extreme shame.

In 2008, reported the American Bar Association Journal, there had been the global outing of how Paul Hastings allegedly terminated associate Shinyung Oh. Among other media, The Wall Street Journal also ran with that story. 

Six days after her miscarriage, Paul Hastings ended the employment with this associate. Not long before that, she had been given a mediocre performance review. However, not long before that mediocre review, she contended that a partner had informed her that she was in good shape on her career path.

Therefore, she interpreted the termination not associated with how she did her job. Rather, for her, it was a case of a stealth layoff. The firm, she claimed, was downsizing. However, as we all know, announcement of formal layoffs could send the signal that Paul Hastings might have been struggling financially. 

Shinyung Oh was determined not to slide out the door with her tail between her legs. We baby boomers would put it this way: The Man wasn't going to not only take her livelihood but also inflict extreme shame on her.

She transmitted a firm-wide email. In it, she told her side of the story. That might have been analogous to Martin Luther's nailing his 95 Theses (or so legend has it) about what was very wrong with Roman Catholicism to the church door in 1517.

Shinyung Oh's bold act resonated in every corner of the professional work. Come on, who among us hasn't perceived we were treated unfairly by a powerful employer? At the time, we might have decided we had no option but to exit with our tail between our legs. Now, there was a new model out there. Currently, it has become a necessary rite of passage to discuss one's termination on social media. 

Over the years, there are those in media and blogging who have continued to follow Shinyung Oh's story. Today, Shinyung Oh is an associate marriage and family therapist at Solana Beach, California. Interestingly her LinkedIn Profile does list as a former job her employment at Paul Hastings.  

Currently we are following Paul Hastings' second journey through the corridor of shame. Just like it may never shake the Shinyung Oh incident completely it might never shake off the arrogance and rhetoric of its recent activities regarding the place of work. "Doing a Paul Hastings" could become a standard way of describing a supposed successful organization doing so many things very wrong.

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COVID Circles Back, Client Preferences About Where Work Will Be Done, and The Future of Work - Law Firm Leadership Navigating Whole New Territory

Globally, the pandemic has circled back. That has included locations here in the United States, documents The Washington Post.

The implications are huge for law firms already struggling with back-to-work policies. Those, as Paul Hastings had learned, have to be designed and communicated in ways which hit all the human touchpoints. One amazing consequence of COVID is that it is making verboten corporatese in law firm leadership rhetoric. The new model is how Chuck Palmer of Troutman Pepper's Altanta Office approaches this landmine of a subject. 

Meanwhile, Morgan Stanley informed law firms that it encourages those representing it to return full-time to the office. That has been made public. "Encouragement" is code for "What The Client Fully Expects."

Not public, at least not yet, could be the mandates from other major clients for where they want want their projects, transactional and litigation, to be done. In professional services, be it practicing law or managing reputation restoration for a brand, it's totally about The Client. That's the ATM machine, put bluntly. In addition, of course, is the ethos of the extreme satisfaction of providing outstanding service. 

Therefore, law firms in general face a new challenge.

More specifically, those which had had Morgan Stanley as a client in the past or continue with that relationship in the present may have to go back to the drawing board. In a major way.

That covers the territory of policy decisions on where work will be done and the health and safety precautions implemented. Those could range from erecting plexiglass to requiring masks to imposing social distancing. Then there is the risk of not positioning and packaging all that in internal communications with employees in a ham-handed way. Horror: Being reported in the media to be "Doing a Paul Hastings."

The law firm leaders in the loop right now on that one could include Brad Karp of Paul Weiss and Richard A. Rosenbaum of Greenberg Trauig. Morgan Stanley had been a client. Maybe still is.

The space law-firm chairpeople are currently feeling their way through could be without precedent. They are answering to so many constituencies on this location of work situation: clients, prospective clients, the partnership, associates/staff and their families, media and commercial real-estate businesses. 

And, as McKinsey and Co highlights in a recent article about the ramifications of a hybrid workplace, so much about work is changing and will go on mutating. The article opens with: "Once in a generation (if that), we have the opportunity to reimagine how we work." 

It's not a giant leap in thought leadership to posit that what the chairpersons of law firms are deciding is shaping The Future of Work.

This transcends even the importance of clients.

Given America's brand of capitalism and its favoring the legal system to resolve disputes, large law firms are powerful institutions. Currently, their influence is bursting out beyond the traditional boundaries of the business of law.

Actually, that had been put in play by how Karp at Paul Weiss approached social justice. That mission became embedded in the branding. What law firms are "all about" is reconfiguring as rapidly as other factors in the world of work. 

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M.B.A. Programs Circle Back to Campus - Investment in Relationship-Building

"Columbia University, Boston University, Stanford University, New York University and University of California, Berkeley, among others, are recalling virtually all business-school students to campus this fall for in-person classes. The hope, deans say, is to restore the traditional two-year M.B.A. experience to its pre-pandemic norms, with the in-person networking, socializing and overseas trips that students say make the expensive management degrees worthwhile." - Patrick Thomas, The Wall Street Journal, July 15, 2021.

Yes, it's about building relationships.

That's the key value of disrupting a life for about two years, including perhaps even leaving a job, and investing the big bucks in the M.B.A. program.

This decision to restart M.B.A. programs back on campus, in-person, also highlights the perception, at least among graduate business school deans, of the importance of in-person interaction. The networks created during those two years with all constituencies will be the platform for the future career. Those who will be in the loop range from classmates to professors to guest speakers.

Part of this phenomenon of the power of in-person human interaction has been explained by the scientists who had researched mirror neurons.

What they documented is that humans influence each other cell by cell. When we are in the presence of each other those neurons fire. The classic example of that dynamic is that females in the same setting will find that their reproductive processing gets in-synch with that of each other. 

Given this phenomenon, yes, law students should lobby for as much in-person instruction and special events as possible.

What's on the network also shapes the trajectory of a career in law. So, you bet, invest in developing that resource for the long game.

Global chairperson of Dentons Joe Andrew had headed the Democratic National Committee. He is known for his political persona and has been a regular contributor to the political publication The Hill. Currently he is disrupting the traditional business of law. Recently he broke with the conventional mores of law firms by funding Dentons advisory service through private equity. 

Chairperson of Paul Weiss Brad Karp, documents Bloomberg Law, is among the most well-connected players in both the legal sector and the Biden Administration. It was on the platform of that ability to connect that he had been able to mobilize thousands of lawyers in myriad law firms to pitch in pro bono and collectively invent the Coronavirus Relief Center. From the early days of COVID to this time of the Delta variant that online tool has enabled victims to access information about and resources for help.

Of course, the realities of how we affect each other, cell by cell, are nothing new. From the beginning of civilization mums have been situating their offspring in the right groups. When psychiatrists are asked by clients about a relationship, the usual answer will be: Observe who his or her companions are. That will tell you just about everything you need to know. And, in Roman Catholic grade school, the nuns kept hammering the danger of "bad companions."

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POTUS EO on Competition - Ethos of "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington"

Earnest

Visionary

And, in terms of implementation through more than a dozen federal agencies, a test of the political and management skills of the Biden Administration.

That's the Executive Order on Competition, which you can read here. Its 72 initiatives cover everything from non-compete clauses imposed on low-wage workers to mergers. 

The platitude applied to sum up its ethos is to circle back to the priorities of "trustbuster" Teddy Roosevelt.

However, the more insightful way to capture what it is about is to resurrect the spirit and the messaging of "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington."

Essentially that 1939 film, directed by Frank Capra, celebrates the power of doing the right thing on behalf of Everyman (or what Joe Biden refers to as the "little guy). The movie's protagonist Jefferson Smith represents the ultimate whistleblower about what has gone so wrong in America. 

In the Capra world, those noble causes win out. Like now, back then it was a time of crisis. The background for "Mr. Smith" was The Great Depression. Now, the times are about the uncertainties of the Post-COVID economy (along with the return of COVID), surging inflation and hardened polarization.

Watching "Mr. Smith" this weekend can be uplifting. Downright inspiring. 

However, this weekend the little guy whom Biden is determined to help could be wondering what really will play out from the 72 initiatives. And how much will it improve the life of the little guy? 

Go to various "listening posts" around America, such as the check-out lines in Walmart (I take in what those I coach say), and it's likely that what will be picked up is the sense of powerlessness.

The tone and content mirror the resignation of those who endured the Frank Hague political machine in the mid 20th century. What resonates in my consciouness is the mantra: You can't fight City Hall. The residents of Hudson County, New Jersey, such as my immigrant family, accepted their powerlessness. Everything from jobs to getting your mother in a nursing home had been determined by the Machine.

Does the Biden Administration have the little people behind this EO? Do the people believe things can change?  Or will the loudest voice in the corridors of power be those of entrenched interests? The lobbyists reportedly are already busy conjuring up counterstrategies.

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Klinedinst Model - Will SmallerLaw's Flexibility Attract BigLaw Associates Who Don't Want Back-in-Office (that and other ah-ha moments)

The 70-lawyer Klinedinst, with five locations, essentially has provided the remote option to all employees, reports the American Bar Association Journal. 

That policy resulted from surveying the employees. The firm will officially open in early September. Those who want to be in the office can return but back there there will be a hoteling arrangement. 

This kind of flexibility, points out the article, is frequently not available, at least not right now, in BigLaw firms. For example, it's back in the office full-time or on a hybrid basis for many of those large law firms. Paul Hastings' seemingly tone-deaf communication about the policy was flamed by Vivia Chen at Bloomberg Law. Here is an excerpt from that Paul Hastings memo:

“This return to office is as important for helping to nurture and strengthen our sense of culture, teamwork and collaboration as it is for serving clients at the highest levels.”

There seems to be a total lack of the emotional touchpoints in the Paul Hastings communication about how wrenching this transition will be for many employees, especially those with dependent-care responsibilities or long commutes. 

Obviously, what's palpable is what might have once been considered unthinkable: Will associates seeking the max in flexbility let go of the BigLaw scene and go for a job in SmallerLaw? 

Over and over it has been voiced in so many different contexts this reality: COVID changed us. The "us" could be a lawyer or the waitress in a mom-and-pop restuarant or a communications strategist/content-creator like myself. 

That change continues to unfold and in ways that might even surprise the professionals themselves. A shift has occurred. Some would label it "The Great Ah-Ha Moments" or "That Moment of Clarity."

For example, the miracle of not contracting COVID (I was in a very high risk category) pushed me to assess how much money I really needed. That was to make ends meet now and to ensure, even with inflation (which is back with a vengeance), that I could continue to do that when I am unable or unwilling to work. 

Shock, to myself and those on my professional network, I decided to engage more with my blogging and social media (I am a paid influencer) than with pitching for and doing so many client assignments.

A tipping point in that, as I reflect on in the 15th anniversary celebration post of this blog, has been that the powerful, both institutions and people, seem to respect my thinking. In a career power can be the loudest voice in the room. No, not money.

In fact, it had been Brad Karp, Paul Weiss chairperson, who took that thinking seriously, before I myself had been able to. The Ah-Ha Moment came with the BigBang.  Through investing more intellectual horsepower in blogging perhaps I can sustain that power force-field. I have to assume that Karp has been an effective mentor in the legal sector. 

The same kinds of Great Ah-Has can occur to associates in BigLaw. $200,000+ could downsize in importance in how they see their worlds, particularly after they pay off student loans. That could result in a flood of talent into SmallerLaw.

What remains shocking: COVID actually is resetting the values of The Professional Class.

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