Law And More

The Jell-O "Curse" - Bill Cosby as Spokesperson Was Least of It

Public relations representatives and marketing communications experts warn clients about the downside of human spokespeople and influencers. 

The human kind, as opposed to a made-up mascot, can get involved in all sorts of scandals.

The classic example had been Bill Cosby. America's Dad had been the face of Jell-O.

However, that actually was a small part of the "curse" which has plagued Jell-O.

In the new book "Jell-O Girls: A Family History," Allie Rowbottom chronicles how the purchase of the Jell-O patent in 1899 had brought down extreme suffering to her family. 

It had been her great-great-great uncle who bought the patent for $450. Twenty-six years later it was sold for $67 million.

Along with the wealth that created for her family in LeRoy, New York, there has been a sustained history of premature deaths, suicide, alcoholism, drug use, sexual abuse, mental illness, and a predisposition to cancer. In connecting the dots, Rowbottom theorizes that the boredom generated by privilege helped bring the family down. 

It was Allie's mother Mary who began a memoir about the curse. But she died relatively young from cancer before getting all that organized. So, Allie took that up as a mission.

When a child Allie's mother had been sexually molested by teenage friends of her brother, raped by a cousin, essentially ignored by her parents, and did lose her own mother to cancer when very young. Later she suffered from hysteria, had bouts of drug use and alcoholism, spent time in a psychiatric facility, and was betrayed by her husband.

As Allie tells it, Jell-O has also inflicted a cultural curse on America. After World War II, its commercials reinforced the role of women as stay-at-home housewife and caretaker. Serving creative versions of Jell-O was positioned and packaged as helping those women be perfect in that role.

Later, low-calorie Jell-O was part of the ethos of extreme body consciousness by females. Allie herself got caught up in that and had to receive treatment for an eating disorder. 

In addition, the one-time corporate home for Jell-O - General Foods - also became cursed in complacency. After Philip Morris purchased it to diversify into food, eventually The General, as it was called, was gutted. Later the parts of it which were marketable were merged with Kraft. 

Of course, this isn't the only chronicle of the peril of wealth. In fact, with all the recent suicides in BigLaw, one might wonder if there is any correlation between the high compensation and self-destructiveness. 

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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. 

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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

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Lawyers, Law Students - When It's Time to Take Your Cushion/Mat & Flee

Meditation, yoga, and prayer.

All of these have been and continue to be useful for self-calming, insight, tapping into the unconscious, and even overcoming addictions. 

Media sites for those in stressed out professions such as law regularly post articles on them. 

And, from way back in the 1930s, the 11th step of global Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) hammers how essential meditation and prayer are.

But, there is a stern warning about spirituality overindulgence in the November 2018 issue of OUT. In the Wellness section, the commentary's title is "A Divine Road to Nowhere" (not online). The author is Alexander Kacala. 

The beef is that too many have come to expect spirituality as the total fix-it. Somehow they got the message that a guarantee of everything good comes with the meditation cushion or yoga mat.

In a sense, 21st-century spirituality has become as much a closed system or a seeming cult as Roman Catholicism, Freudian psychoanalysis, the hardening of the philosophy of AA, or America's success ethos.

The classic example is those who bet the ranch on their "spiritual practice." They will even pony up the funds and take a week from their lives for a meditation retreat. Their objective is to land a job after a period of unemployment.

The obvious error is not investing enough resources in figuring out the dynamics of a search for work in 2018. In this year's edition of "What Color Is Your Parachute?" the front part of the book explains how much that game has changed. 

Just last month I had to take my cushion and flee. The premise of the meditation group was that a certain school of Buddhism had all the answers. In addition, I picked up on a threat that not conforming to the tenets would bring down destruction on not only this life but also my next when I am reincarnated. 

I had joined to be able to think more clearly about how to position and package a niche business I was launching. What I wound up thinking was how much the meditation leader reminded me of the nuns in the front lines of the Roman Catholic education system in the 1950s. 

Also, I noted that everyone in the group, with the exception of myself, was unemployed or underemployed. 

Takeaway: Spirituality is a tool. Not a way of life. 

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Robert Bowers, et al. - They Know Massacres Will Deliver Their Message

Mass shootings have become a platform for delivering a statement. Plus, they confer instant celebrity on a former nobody. 

That could be reduced if members of the media did not provide comprehensive coverage of the person, the supposed motivation, and the record of previous aberrant remarks.

Robert Bowers understood the power of promotion. Before the massacre of 11 and wounding of six more in a Jewish house of worship he had been a busy bee on social media. Now, his negative perception of Jews dominates headlines around the world. In addition, he is a somebody.

It's possible that those in the media could agree to provide minimal details about alleged mass murderers. In itself that could be a deterrent. 

Meanwhile, given all the media devoted to Bowers, there are bound to be copy-cat attacks on both Jewish centers and Jewish individuals. Those could fizzle out quickly if members of media just mention them in passing. 

Lives would be saved. The level of anxiety in Jewish communities would lower.

And, perhaps, the epidemic of mass murders could end.

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Will Legal Sector Turnaround Go in Reverse? - Stock Market Blows Up All Gains in 2018

Will it be Bye-Bye to many positive developments and optimistic planning?

Among what can vanish is the emerging turnaround in the legal sector. That includes, of course, the rebound of enrollment in law schools.

In addition, partners considering retirement might have no choice but to stay-put.

Those searching for a lateral might also stay-put.

Both those clog the pipeline for upward mobility for junior lawyers.

And, how many of those will be cut loose? As part of the carnage after the crash, 6,000 lawyers were put on the street. 

The Drudge Report says it all. Today, Black Wednesday, its headline reads: Red For Year. It links to the CNBC coverage of the 608.01 point drop in the Dow and the 3.1% drop in the S&P 500. For both that plunge blew up all the gains in 2018. 

Clearly investors are spooked. That, in turn, throws public corporations off their game. Given that frame of mind, they could decide not to file those bet the ranch lawsuits or initiate other kinds of "elective" legal action. That will be a body blow to litigation practices, which finally have been recovering. 

The JD Class of 2019 should become very jittery. Will there be a re-run of 2009 when the start date for job offers was deferred and in some cases those offers were rescinded? 

Meanwhile, here in the marketing communications industry, when darkness falls we prosper. Professional service players, be they law firms or management consultants, have to market more and smarter. 

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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The Economic Expert, Robot-Maker, Lawyer, and Law Student Walked into a Bar ...

Feminist Gloria Steinem noticed something. That was that thinking in America tended to be binary.

There were a right answer and a wrong answer.

In her book "My Life on the Road" she patiently explained that what the model missed was the existence of uncertainty. Most of the time, we plum don't know.

And that's exactly what Recode hammers about the number of jobs which will be lost by Artificial Intelligence (AI). No one knows.

It's mere speculation how many jobs, ranging from bottom-feeders like document review to litigation strategic planning, will disappear. 

Of course, there are many with estimates about that number. Citibank and the University of Oxford state that 57% of jobs in the OECD, are at risk. The OECD puts it at 14%.

The reasons we don't know, Recode points out, include:

Not all AI invented will be applied. Just because it's there doesn't mean the business community will incorporate it into operations.

Jobs in the future, just as now, will be configured as a mix of human and tech. Just consider the surge of online purchasing. However, each of those automated sites is backed up by humans at call centers managing everything from questions to botched orders. In southwestern Arizona I was a consultant to one such center serving a home-improvement brand.

There are limits on what we know. Put it this way: No human being and no machine can predict the future. Also, psychics have also been wrong because human beings can change the future they foresee. 

The demand for absolute certainty is what has made supposed expert opinion increasingly laughable. However, tragically, the joke is on those who make professional decisions based on those projections positioned and packaged with such seeming authority. 

Way back in the 20th century, when tech meant the wonderment of the Selectric typewriter, the numbers forecasted growth in demand for college humanities professors. Funding, such as the NDEA IV grants, was created.

I was among those awarded one to study for a Ph.D. in literature and linguistics. By time we - The Lost Generation of Intended College Professors - were completing our dissertations, the market, instead of growing, had collapsed. 

It took many of us about five years to retool for other career paths. Employers to whom we applied for non-academic jobs smirked. Some explicitly told us we were losers to have invested our youth in studying all that. 

There should be more self-confident joking in the legal sector about those loudest voices in the room about the future of work in practicing law. A keynote at a legal conference should start out with "The Economics Expert, Robot-Maker, Lawyer, and Law Student Walked into a Bar …"

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"The House With a Clock in Its Walls" - Message That There's No Need to Run from Pain

For lawyers, their clients, and those who can't afford to be clients, pain is familiar territory.

Promotions often don't happen.

Cases are lost.

And, there's not even a shot at trying to find justice. 

However, those situations don't need to trigger the rest of a life spent in running from the pain. Essentially, that's the message from the sci-film "The House with a Clock in Its Walls." The film is fun-scary, a good fit for the Halloween season.

All three main characters have been running. Pre-teen Lewis has taken refuge into nerdiness. His parents have been killed in a car accident. Now he is living with his long-lost uncle Jonathan in a haunted house in Michigan.

That Jonathan ran away from home and abandoned his relationship with his younger sister when his father rejected his interest in magic. Currently he is a warlock.

Mrs. Zimmerman, a one-time witch, left her magic behind after the death of her husband and daughter. She lives next door to the haunted house and keeps the relationship with Jonathan platonic.

The urgent danger is the coming end of the world. Magician Isaac had lost his footing, including his sense of self, when wandering in the Black Forest during the war. He barters his soul to a demon in exchange for feeling whole again. After the war, he returns to his professional partnership with Jonathan armed with black magic. A piece of that is creating and hiding in the now-haunted house a clock which will go in reverse. When it finished that cycle, history will be eliminated.

The three have to prevent that. In the process they expose their pain to each other. That's the platform for the cooperative effort which locates and dismantles the clock.

Lewis can settle into a life without needing to be the most literate boy in the universe. Jonathan gets it that it was wrong to leave his sister behind. Mrs. Zimmerman regains her magic power. Of course, the warlock and the witch become kissy-face.

The real magic is the ability to embrace pain and let others in. That's especially hard for lawyers who, like Lewis, live life in their heads and locked into words.

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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"Boo Marketing" - Overdue that Regulatory Agencies/Congress Stop Financial Services from Scaring the Jesus Out of Aging

We received a 2.8% boost in our Social Security monthly payment, beginning in 2019.

Medicare only went up $1.50 a month.

At my apartment complex I get 25 bucks off a month because I am a senior.

At Regal Cinema I got to see "A Star Is Born" for peanuts.

Despite the gyrations in the stock market, my investment portfolio is holding up.

The concept of "rational suicide" is catching on. My friends and I candidly discuss how we will off ourselves if we find that we are sliding into dementia. 

And two out of my three businesses have caught fire. When in southwestern Arizona, I was able to pick up three part-time jobs to learn technology "on the company."

Probably no aging population in human history has had it better than my generation of those over-60.

Yet, the financial services types have become downright compulsive in figuring out new and better ways to scare us about tomorrow. I call it "Boo Marketing."

For instance, in MarketWatch, Paul Brandus headlines that "seniors are in trouble." Here is the article.

Essentially his message is that the future is uncertain. Smirk smirk. When was the future not uncertain?

So many in the financial services box trot out that Social Security could be cut back about 21% when I am 89. Mmnnnn. Should I really be in total angst about that now? Let me enjoy the Young Old Age.

For the now, my lifestyle is not only good. From my government entitlements, self-employment, and a side hustle working for someone else here and there I can even continue saving.

Watching my pennies has been fun, rather than emotionally and socially degrading. This month I knocked down my VISA credit card bill by $250 simply by shopping more wisely for groceries. 

The time is overdue for a regulatory agency or Congressional committee to ban the scary commercial messaging that the financial services folks are using. Boo Marketing has to be stopped.

Any individual financial planner or any financial services firm engaging in it should be fined $100,000 for each incident.

If government doesn't do its part on this one then on a grassroots level, we aging must create a version of Nader's Raiders from the late 1960s. Yeah, trap and catch the miscreants. You bet, wire up, fellow seniors.  

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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Stacey Radin's Suicide By Hanging - Lawyers, Be Aware of CopyCat Phenomenon

Extreme success. A New Yorker. Middle-Aged. And, struggling with clinical depression.

Lawyers, if that profile fits you, your colleagues, and/or your loved ones, then recognize that these are The Hanging Times.

In New York City, there has been the third hanging.

High-profile clinical psychologist, best-selling author of "Brave Girls," and animal-rights activist Stacey Radin took her life yesterday. It was by hanging, just like the recent suicides of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain. Both Spade and Bourdain were middle-aged.

Radin was 52. She reportedly battled clinical depression. Here are more details from The New York Post. 

There seems to be a copycat phenomenon in play. Hanging is a relatively  slow, painful way to die. Also, it's not usual for women to take that route of self-deliverance.

According to the website Lost All Hope, suicide by hanging:

Is effective (leads to death) only 89.5% of the time. That means that a botched job could result in permanent brain or physical injury. In contrast, a gun shot to the head is effective 99%.

The process requires 7 minutes. Those can be a period of both physical (difficulty breathing) and mental (reflection on one's life) agony. In contrast, death by a gun requires only 1.7 minutes.

On a scale of 100, the amount of distress is in the 25.5% slot. When using a gun, that's at 5.5.

Clearly, the method of suicide can provide one of the dots on what might have been the mood at the time this decision was made.

Was the person so lacking in hope at that moment that the act was one of impulse? The mindset could have been: I can't take this one more minute. There's a way I can hang myself right here. In a support group, I have heard that line of thinking often.

Was the person full of self-loathing? In clinical depression there is a tendency to turn on oneself. 

And, was the act, in its theatricality, a kind of rebuke to others? There is the thinking that all suicide is homicide. Those committing it are sending a message to those whom they perceive let them down.

A member of my nuclear family left an unfilled bottle of blood pressure medication on the kitchen table. My sister found her in the nearby bedroom dead of a massive heart attack. Some interpreted that as a passive suicide - and act of rage.

Lawyers in all locations, not only New York City, have to recognize the pull power of the hanging ethos in these chaotic times. It is difficult to hold on to anything - a nest egg in a portfolio. a high-powered job, looks when hitting middle age, trust in relationships, and a doable plan for semi-retirement or retirement.

Recently, I asked a 53-year-old colleague who sensed he was going to be forced out of a job, if he planned to kill himself. Maybe because he was stunned, he answered "yes." I made the appointment for him with a cognitive therapist who specializes in displaced professionals. And, as a coach I am helping him navigate the search for how to make a living. He was on the money: He had been forced out. He blamed both his age and that his boss had been fired. 

Full Disclosure: I have been clinically depressed since age 11. What I have observed is that the mood can become so dark that it shifts into psychosis. It took relocating from the New York Metro area for me to finally get the upper hand in battling this monster. OF COURSE, I had sought out many traditional modes of treatment. I could teach a course at Harvard Medical School on all that and more. 

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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