Law And More

Yes, Retired Lawyers, You Can Still Afford Quality Dental Care - My Dental Tourism Journey

Yesterday I made my journey into dental tourism.

That was the 90-minute drive from my residence in Sierra Vista, Arizona to Nogales, Mexico. That's right across the border from Nogales, Arizona. Most folks just park their cars on the US side and walk across to Mexico. 

I was kind of a "local."

But in the waiting room at Arizona Dental, there were those from long distances.

One couple traveled in their RV over 400 miles from New Mexico. That was to cut down the bill of $24,000 for dental procedures, estimated by a U.S. dental practice. They were staying in the area, as a kind of vacation, to have all the work completed. They were kind of giddy about all the money they would be saving.

Another couple was from California and had managed to adopt a puppy while in Nogales, Mexico. We all cooed about the little guy. 

I was there to downsize an estimate of about $2,500, none of which was covered by my U.S. dental insurance. I have ditched the dental insurance and plan to have even routine work like fillings, cleanings, and X-rays done in Mexico. 

Yes, at Arizona Dental there is a free connection to the internet. The staff helped me set it up. Therefore, I was able to do work during the several hours I was going to be there.

From the get-go, I felt in safe hands.

Everything was approached in a methodical manner.

First was the panoramic X-ray. The cost was $15, versus the $100-something a dental specialist in the U.S. usually charges at the front end. 

That was first reviewed by a general dentist, then passed along to a specialist for root canals. 

I waited.

Next was a conference with me. Since the whole area surrounding the capped tooth remained infected (I had been on antibiotics) a root canal might not hold. Also, the tooth was cracked. That could have happened through biting down hard. (Avoid that.)

I had been in that pickle about 17 years ago with another capped molar. The pricey root canal didn't do the trick. Back then the extraction by an oral surgeon cost about $1,500. Yeah that was about 17 years ago.

The dentists showed me the X-rays. They explained what I should be seeing on it.

I decided to go with their recommendation: extraction. That would cost $125. That included the numbing. Since Arizona Dental is full-service, it could be done right there. And that afternoon. Hurrah. I did not have to drive back. But had I gone with a root canal and ordering a new crown, there is a lab in town which could produce the crown overnight.

When that was completed, I was shown the cracked tooth and the infected tissue which had been removed. There would be no need for additional antibiotics. However, I could have had the prescription filled steps away from Arizona Dental. In the area are several pharmacies. They also fill prescriptions from the U.S.

With instructions for aftercare, I was on my way.

The dental facility is about 10 steps from the border. Also there are vendors all around hawking colorful trinkets and interesting looking snacks. It was fun to shop.

All I needed to return to the US was to show the border guard my driver's license. No passport needed. Yes, border patrol asked what I had purchased.

I had parked on a side street in Nogales, Arizona so there was no fee for that. 

Will medical tourism be next for me? That's possible.

Also possible is eventually relocating to Mexico. Currently at the Sierra Vista public library I am talking a course in conversational Spanish. When I retire in about four or five years Mexico could provide a comfortable and affordable lifestyle. 

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"Vanessa Bryant v County of Los Angeles, et at." - Grief Is So Hard

"Vanessa Bryant is being asked to undergo 'a physician-ran test on her mental state' to assess and 'evaluate' the extent of her alleged emotional distress regarding the Kobe Bryant helicopter crash images." - Daily Mail, October 17, 2021.

Essentially the defendants are attempting to discern if Bryant's suffering is the result of the original trauma of the death of her husband and daughter or is primarily related to what she contended in her lawsuit "Vanessa Bryant v County of Los Angeles, et al."

She claims that the photos of the dead had been distributed among law enforcement. As a result, she is accusing those in authority loop of negligence, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and the invasion of her husband's right to privacy.

Previously, she had refused a psychiatric evaluation requested by the plaintiff. Also, as many know, psychiatry does involve subjectivity. On the popular series "Chicago Med," the respected psychiatrist Dr. Charles admits that the science is an imperfect one. He is a humble man and and equally humble member of the healing profession.

Also, grief is a complex force field. How can even a trained expert separate out its parts?

During the first week of January, just a few weeks after my four-legged son LOV and I arrived in Arizona from the midwest, he could no longer hold up in his battle with congestive heart failure. One overcast Sunday morning I allowed the vet to let LOV go.

To today I am overwhelmed with sadness. And there isn't a day that I live that I don't remember a joy we had shared together. 

My pain of loss is my pain. Bryant's pain of loss is her pain. But understanding it may be beyond the imperfect science of psychiatry. 

This blog passes along wishes for strength for the Bryant family.

 

On the Way to That $6 Million PPP ...

$6 million PPP.

That's likely the takeaway many young people had had this morning. That's when they read the Bloomberg Law interview with Paul Weiss Chairperson Brad Karp. He predicted that's where compensation is heading at his firm for the partners. 

Juniors and seniors in college, law students, and maybe even junior associates could have gotten to thinking: I can head there. And get there.

$6 million gross is probably no longer enough for a house in the Hamptons. But it's nothing to be ashamed of, even though it's peanuts compared to the income of successful startup founders. 

And, so youth could start on the way to a career practicing law in a large firm. Or stick with it despite all the extreme hard work, complex politics, and back in the office.

What they (and many who had headed on that same path before them) might not anticipate is this: encountering that Big Bad Wolf which mauls so many careers. Sometimes temporarily. Sometimes permanently. 

Evidence of that phenomenon: Review the lawsuits against law firms.

There was associate Aaron Charney. The wolf allegedly came in the form of partners' perception of him. As New York Magazine tells that tale, slowly and then more quickly Charney went from being allowed to engage in strategic planning for M&A at Sullivan & Cromwell (big deal for a midlevel) to being frozen out. Put in play was the shocker, at least back in 2007, of litigation by an employee against a Big Law firm. The derailing was temporary. Charney was among the lucky. His career picked right up again. 

Then there had been Sidley Austin 42-year-old partner Gabe MacConaill. The situation at the law firm unraveled. His widow Joanna Litt sums it up this way:

" ... First, his mentor and confidant suddenly announced he was leaving the firm ... It caused a big shake up at the firm ... Gabe, thrust suddenly into an important leadership role, was told in no uncertain terms that the firm was not going to hire any lateral support. Shortly thereafter, the last partner who was senior to Gabe decided to leave, and an associate whom Gabe spent a lot of time mentoring also left. The Los Angeles bankruptcy group Gabe had so deeply cherished and relied on for support had fallen apart."

Meanwhile, MacConaill was managing a complex bankruptcy. He could no longer hold off the wolf. He committed suicide in the law firm parking lot. Litt noted that very few lawyers from his law firm attended his memorial. Mostly it had been staff who had been there.

Former co-chair of Willkie Farr Gordon Caplan, who probably had long whizzed by the $6 million mark, caved to what he described as hubris. The predator within. Caught up in CollegeAdmissionsGate, he wound up in jail and with his license suspended two years. The jury remains out on how much of a comeback he can engineer. 

More typical are the associates I coach. They have been knocked off the partner path. And most admit it was a self-mauling. They might have considered themselves above politics and didn't figure out the moves. Or they might have taken on the power structure, usually in a passive-aggressive format. Most never heal. They really had believed they had a shot at the $6 million. That was even though that when forced out of Big Law they were only pulling down about $300,000. It's a long way from $300,000 to $6 million.

Then there are all the stories no one hears about: What happened to those along the way who made it to the $6 million and more? 

This isn't unique to Big Law, of course. That's the sad part. Professional life shouldn't involve such suffering to do the work we love. It was in my first corporate job that the wolf lurched at me. I was able to get on with my career. But never have I been able to shake the trauma. 

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"US v Elizabeth Holmes" - Sure, Trial Delay Benefits the Defense, But Not So Much in Era of Email, Texting

"Human memory is fallible. That’s why defense lawyers like to age their cases — and why prosecutors were so frustrated with the multiple delays in trying Elizabeth Holmes for her role at the failed blood-testing company Theranos. Given enough time, people forget things. That can open the door for reasonable doubt." - Elizabeth Lopatto, The Verge, October 1, 2021.

Of course, that's true. But, as Lopatto goes on to discuss, it's not that true. Not any more when the prosecution can have as exhibits email threads and texts. And that's exactly what the prosecution in "US v Elizabeth Holmes" has been presenting in court.

The skilled lead lawyer from Williams & Connolly Lance Wade is chipping away at the strength of that kind of digital evidence. However, the testimony of the former Theranos lab head Dr. Adam Rosendorff still is damning. It positions and packages Theranos founder Holmes as aware of the flaws in the finger-prick technology. 

The defense strategy had been to place the burden of blame for any funny stuff at the startup on the folks in the lab. Dr. Rosendorff had anticipated that. That's why, despite the NDA he signed banning copying office email to a personal account, he did that.

Right now, Holmes looks culpable. However, the defense hasn't put on its own case yet.

Meanwhile, youth interested in science careers might have second thoughts. Dr. Rosendorff was only pulling down $240,000 at Theranos.

In 2003, my younger sister Anne Murga-Ring, with only a Master degree in public health from a non-elite university, had earned almost $200,000 annually. That was as a vice president in administration for a small hospital in Bayonne, New Jersey. That was not a STEM job. 

STEM may seem sexy. But many career paths in it aren't lucrative. Law and Wall Street often pay more. For example, associates, right out of law school, are being paid $205,000 in entry-level positions in large law firms. They usually aren't bringing hands-on experience into the job. With  one or two bonuses, the annual compensation could approach Dr. Rosendorff's $240,000.

Seven months after I hung out a shingle in communications in 1987 I was grossing the equivalent in 2021 dollars of what Dr. Rosendorff had been earning. And without his responsbility. He also wound up with more than seven years of legal bills.

Those intruding in aka guiding the career choices of youth and career-changers should give them the straight story about earnings, responsibiity, and even legal liability. The worst that will happen to me in communications is that the client is unhappy with the tone of the content marketing and doesn't use me again as a vendor. Yeah, and I was a English major in college. Plus, in my 70s right now, I am still marketable. 

"US v Holmes" is exposing not only the ugly underbelly of the Silicon Valley ethos. It is also blowing up assumptions about STEM.

Dr. Rosendorff didn't have a glam job. Along my career path in communications I have flown on the private jets of so many business leaders. I had taken the ferry from Connecticut to clients in the Hamptons. What I had researched and ghostwritten had been published in establishment media such as The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. 

Reflection: Prevailing memes frequently are platforms for great suffering. The current dominant ones deal with careers.

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Lawyers, Did Your Angst/Depression Start with Chasing High Grades in High School?

Overall, it's a given that suicide is common among high-achievers. The example which haunts the legal sector has been that of Sidley Austin partner Gabe MacConaill in 2018.

Also, it's well-known that mental illness and substance abuse occur at a higher rate among lawyers than professionals in a number of other career paths.

Could this be traced back to how those who wound up practicing law got it in high school that they better achieve high grades? Otherwise their professional possibilities could be limited? 

Researchers at the University of Ottawa found a correlation between youth who strived for top grades in high school and anxiety and depression later in life.

Essentially that could be informally labeled "The Perfectionism Syndrome." Some recall that MacConaill's widow Joanna Litt published a commentary in Law.com. She attributed the suicide to her husband's maladaptive perfectionism. He couldn't do any aspect of his job not perfectly, be it mentoring summers or managing a major bankruptcy.

The Ottawa study conducted by Shari Endleman et al. has been published in the International Journal of Behavioral Development. Here is a copy of that research. And, here is a copy of the University's press release about the study.

The study strikes a nerve with just about anyone who had gotten caught up in chasing grades in high school and then in higher education. It's a game. Those determined to succeed in it know they have to discern the rules. The rules include, for example, being able to ferret out what the instructor "wants." Is it original thought or boilerplate? The consequences of not winning through those rules are severe. The academic transcript is there forever. Those "B" grades during the college sophomore slump have to be explained in the application to law school. The admission committee could buy that or not. 

So, what should lawyers do if they find that The Perfectionism Syndrome holds them emotionally and spiritually hostage? The pragmatic approach, unlike how MacConaill approached his career, is to assess when perfect performance is necessary and where it's not. Of course, in preparing legal documents things must be perfect. In other tasks such as supervising summers, maybe not. And does every interaction with a superior, a client, or a prospect have to be perfect? Usually it's possible to smooth over less-than-perfect connections.

It's not rocket science to recognize that a lawyer is a victim of The Perfectionism Syndrome. One junior associate I coached described the pickle she was in as "dancing as fast as I can and still not feeling that was enough." She came to learn to size up the rules of work games she was in. Then she could make decisions about which demanded perfect performance and which she simply could play less intensely. 

Here's an analogy. Those astute in game-playing in my doctoral studies figured out quickly that winning was about course grades, research, and relationships with professors. It was not about the quality of teaching, at least not years ago. So, they didn't strive to be perfect in teaching. Those who assumed they had to excel across the board had a very difficult time in the program and usually wound up not being able to land the kind of job they wanted.

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The Story Is: Why Are Chua/Rubenfeld Selling The House?

The great setup for the Abovethelaw coverage that Yale Law School fallen celebrity professors Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld have put their house on the market is this: Joe Patrice positions and packages The House as a character in the Chua/Rubenfeld downward-trajectory drama. It was there that Chua violated her 2019 agreement with the School to not socialize with students. And it was there that she conducted her gone-so-wrong interviews with media. 

Okay, Patrice has been even more brilliant that usual in putting together the right angle.

But the real story here is: Why is The House up for sale? Do the two need the money? With the empty nest is it time to downsize? Do they plan to establish a home where there will be less media scrutiny? Or, are they planning to leave Yale Law School?

This saga, beginning with rumors of Rubenfeld's alleged sexual misbehavior and worsening with Chua's mishandling of StudentSocializingGate, has been a useful lesson for the less-famous rest of us. It is all easy to blow up a professional brand. And a comeback, which any competent public relations representative can engineer, can be prevented entirely. 

There is no return to where their brands had been to Chua/Rubenfeld.

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Law Firms - The Trauma of Return-to-Office

"You’ve got a different group of people coming back. And the firms that are going to be the most successful will understand that and manage their people well." - Jim Jones, a senior fellow at the Georgetown Law School on Ethics and the Legal Profession, quoted in Abovethelaw, September 23, 2021.

Jones posits that in the past 18 months those who had vacated the offices of law firms 18 months have gone through hell and anxiety. That has been traumatic. And that has changed them.

Therefore, Jones recommends that law firm leadership take this internal shift into account in welcoming back office-returners and helping them become acclimated. 

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Unlike Overenrolled Law Schools, M.B.A. Programs Experiencing Plunging Applications (a bird in the hand ...)

The statistic is well-known: About 55% of law schools are overenrolled for first-year (1L) classes.

Despite opportunities, with just an undergraduate degree, on Wall Street and the excitement of startups, there are those who are opting for the three-year, expensive education for the JD degree. That is even though there are growing warnings of a glutted entry-level job market for the JD Class of 2024. In addition, there could be the beginning of the end of the boom in large law firms. 

What is happening for M.B.A. programs is very different, reports The Wall Street Journal. For the program at Northwestern, applications have been down 20%. At Columbia 6%.

The ethos of HiHo HiHo Off to Work We Go is replacing the old-line blind faith in the more academic education the better.

Currently in fields ranging from finance to tech the demand for talent is exploding. In fact, many banks have boosted their entry-level compensation. That is to distract from the routine of long long hours. So, those beginning their careers or in the early stages are going for that. 

This ethos reflects old-fashioned American pragmatism: A bird in the hand is better than one in the bush.

A law degree is three years. Many M.B.A. programs are two years. By graduation time the demand for their skills could turn ugly. That's what some experts are warning the JD Class of 2024.

This is nothing new. When I started my doctoral studies at an Ivy League university, funded entirely by a federal government fellowship, projected was a growing need for university professors in the humanities.

By the time I was working on my dissertation the market had almost totally collapsed. Not only was the degree not marketable. It was treated by employers not involved in academia as ridiculous. We were the Lost Generation of Scholars of the mid 1970s. It took me four years to put together a new career path. That was not a soft landing. Current law students could become the Lost Generation of 2024. 

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"U.S. v. Mattis, et al." - Outrage Can Wear You Out

"Two New York lawyers charged with attacking an empty police vehicle with a Molotov cocktail during 2020 protests over George Floyd's death hope to complete plea discussions with prosecutors within the next two weeks ..." - Nate Raymond, Reuters Legal, September 17, 2021.

Those two are Colinford Mattis, a suspended associate from Pryor Cashman, and public interest lawyer Uroof Rahman. They are dealing with 7 counts. Those include use of an explosive and arson. They face up to a life sentence or a minimum of 45 years. 

They have to get this plea deal done or have to shift to going to trial. Last July the frustrated U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan wanted to start moving in that direction with a March date to begin the trial.

This saga emotionally, politically, spiritually, and legally circles back to the ethos of the late 1960s and early 1970s counterculture. It was perceived back then that an unjust war was going on, along with so many inequities in society. Violence was an accepted weapon for some activists. More common were errors of judgment because those participating in the movement just got plum worn out. 

At the time of that alleged Molotov there had been similar unrest. The nation was outraged by the George Floyd death and the growing gap between the rich and those who couldn't grasp on to the American Dream.

It could be that all that, as well as earlier struggles, tired out Mattis and Rahman. Many of us who had been part of the counterculture feel deep sympathy for the two. 

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Alex Murdaugh Freed to Go to Rehab on $20k Bond - Another Brandname Lawyer Unravels

"The fallen prominent lawyer [Alex Murdaugh], 53, is now in 'financial ruin,' emotionally broken and in the grips of drug addiction, his lawyer [Dick Harpootlian] told a Hampton County judge in arguing for Murdaugh’s immediate release to attend rehab out of state till his next court hearing." - The New York Post, September 16, 2021.

That was granted. The prosecution asked for a $100k bond. But the magistrate set the bond at $20k, with a surrender of the passport. That has enabled Murdaugh to enter rehab for an acknowledged opioid addiction.

Meanwhile his alleged drug dealer and the contract hire for alleged assisted suicide Curtis Smith had to pony up a $55k bond. Reportedly that annoyed Smith.

Both men cried, but in different courtrooms.

Murdaugh's next court hearing is October 25, 2021.

Murdaugh obviously is in a lot of legal trouble. But this is not atypical. Lawyers seem to have a genius for pulling some dark-magic string that sets their lives unraveling. And they are banished from the wonderful life they had lived. 

I have coached a number of them. Most don't know how that all began to happen. But as I analyzed the dynamics of their emotional, spiritual, financial, and professional collapse, substance abuse usually plays a role. That could be drugs. More often it's alcohol. 

However, those substances usually just provide the tipping point. Inside each seemed to be a certitude that he or she had been the smartest person in the room. Of course, they underestimated the forces which could zero in on and report their various points of misconduct. 

Yes, some had served time in prison, just like Murdaugh probably will. Not one of them could bounce back completely from such an ordeal. 

The takeaway for lawyers is to prevent crossing over that line from legal actions which conform with social norms to the land of forbidden fruit. Eve and Adam also assumed they were plenty smart.

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