SoHereWeAre

The good versus evil meme plays out over control of the Ministry of Magic. That's the delightful plot and setting for the latest sequel in the "Fantastic Beasts" film series. This one has the subtitle "Secrets of Dumbledore." The good side is represented by Albus Dumbledore and the evil one by Gellert Grindelwald. What hangs this all together is the need to protect the mystical creature Qilin  which can see into souls and foresee the future. Meanwhile Grindelwald has conjured up a fraudulent version of the  Qilin.  Magic, of course, is the way problems are solved and opportunities are seized in the film. Those on the Dumbledore team use white magic. Those on Grindelwald's the toxic kind. But, white magic wins, thanks to the ability to get the  Qilin  to the election to select what leader is pure of heart. Along the way the displays of fanastic whatevers, including the beasts, are amazing. And, like a Shakespearean comedy, the film ends with a wedding. Al...

 "... Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis attacked the company [Disney], saying it 'crossed the line' with its criticism [of 'Don't Say Gay’ legislative bill] ... if the past repeats itself, the bark will likely be worse than the bite." - Hannah Sampson, Yahoo, April 18, 2022.  And things haven't calmed down since.  THE “LINE” KEEPS CHANGING But what had been that “line?” That’s the profound challenge business is encountering in navigating ESG. The raw reality is that the line keeps changing. While that is in play so are careers. Disney announced late this week, reports Deadline , that the Chief Corporate Affairs Officer Geoff Morrell has stepped down from that position for personal reasons. Morell had been in that job less that four months. During those four months Disney has gone into upheaval and it remains reeling. Initially progressives were the front lines pushing for ESG (Environmental Social Governance) values. Then onto the playing field r...

 Recently law firms have been reflecting on the Reuters Legal article about how so many marketing dollars are wasted on what doesn't close a sale.   That focus probably will continue to intensify as some firms begin to feel the financial hits from the deline of M&A and IPOs as well as the stuck litigation niche. An actual recession could also kick in.  Talk of layoffs has begun . And the odds of holding onto a job tend to play out better when lawyers, both partners and associates, bring in new business. You bet, partners also can be forced out. As The Wall Street Journal documented, partnership in a law firm is no longer a job for life. Rainmaking is the platform for employment security. LAWYERS AS CLOSERS The takeaway on that Reuters Legal “expose” is this: There has to be a shift to concentrating on the actual sale. So, yes, back off from those “prestige” ventures such as publishing thought leadership essays and delivering keynote speeches. Instead get out the...

 "The administration has also discussed limiting forgiveness to undergraduate loans [and], excluding those who had taken out loans for professional degrees in fields such as law and medicine, the people said." - Jeff Stein, The Washington Post , April 30, 2022. LAW SCHOOLS The ideas are floating around. But the reality that loans for law-school education have been discussed as what to exclude from the list for forgiveness should worry the deans of law schools. That could mean that current students and alumni have no current hope of having a reduction in loan debt. The message could be sent to potential applicants, already saddled with undergraduate loans which might not be forgiven, to back off from the whole training-to-be-a-lawyer idea. Stop the higher education journey with the college degree. GAME RIGGED FOR THOSE SITTING PRETTY Meanwhile, what could put a kibosh on the whole plan are the statistics from the People's Policy Project. Those document that most o...

 "In the first quarter, Robinhood’s monthly active users fell 10% year-on-year to 15.9 million ... Net funded accounts have held steady, but activity is flatlining: Transaction revenues fell by almost half, and average quarterly revenue per user slumped 61% to $53." - Bloomberg , August 29, 2022. COOL NEW FORM OF ENTERTAINMENT Robinhood had been a multi-dimensional business. Yes, it provided a no-minumum requirement commission-free platform for investment in stocks, options, EFTs, and crypto. That was its mission: democratizing investing. In addition, though, it conjured up a cool hang-out for those who could take on the role of player in the markets. That became a new kind of entertainment. You could have a lot of fun even though you had only about 200 bucks to invest.  PILE-ON OF CHANGE Currently, though, fewer are drawn the Robinhood model. Times have changed. And not only for Robinhood but for many other modes of entertainment. Fewer are going out to the movies. ...

 " ... he [David Curran] says the biggest challenge is the lack of law school education surrounding ESG. 'We had to put this whole curriculum together at our firm that didn't exist, and the same is true everywhere else,' Curran said. 'There is no course at a law school about this, but we're hoping that in the next 18 months that changes.'" - Anna Sanders, Law360, April 13, 2022. It had been two years and one month ago since David Currant had become The Chief Sustainability and ESG Officer at law firm Paul Weiss. That was for its newly launched Sustainability – ESG practice . The innovation had been the first-ever in the US legal sector. Its mission has been to guide corporate leaders through the landmines of ESG (Environmental Social Governance) values. Here is how Paul Weiss puts it: “We advise on matters such as stakeholder engagement, corporate governance, crisis management, corporate social responsibility, sustainability, diversity and inclusion...

 "'I wish we had done better with lots of things,' [Chief Executive Officer Parag] Agrawal said during the call [an impromptu kind of town meeting with all Twitter employees]." - Insider, April 29, 2022. Earlier the media reported that the chief legal officer Vijaya Gadde wept at a meeting with her people. She reflected that the future was so uncertain. She also expressed her extreme pride in what they had accomplished. The mood among both the leadership and rank-and-file at Twitter seems to be grief. The profound kind when something big is about be lost - forever. Decades ago so many Gulf Oil employees - present and past - experienced exactly that when Chevron acquired it. Intuitively we knew Our Family of Orange had been wiped out.  Although the details are different, what is going on at Twitter and the new film "Memory" could be this: The sense that the very very rich are unstoppable and beyond the norms of society and even justice.  Already Musk ...

 "British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell on Friday lost a bid to overturn her December 2021 conviction on sex trafficking charges, paving the way for her to be sentenced to decades in prison." - Reuters Legal , April 29, 2022 What Judge Alison Nathan decided was that three counts had been supported by testimony and evidence. The juror who did not disclose sex abuse during childhood was ruled to have been impartial. But Judge Nathan did remove two counts. As a result, the upper limits of Maxwell's sentence will be 55 years. Because of the removal, 10 years have been lopped off. The sentencing will be in June 2022. Meanwhile, in some circles there is sympathy for Maxell. Her larger than life father media tycoon Robert Maxwell was reportedly a cruel man. Women tend to marry their fathers. Maxwell could have been attracted to the darkness in Jeffrey Epstein. That could have cast a spell on her. Also, after her father's mysterious death it had been reported she lacked we...

  A big thank-you to Paul Chaney. He conducted an amazing interview for his podcast about my 35 years as an independent player. That will air next Thursday. That interview got me thinking about how much you learn when you are out here on your own. The learning curve is accelerated in comparison with being a wage slave.

 Lawyers have been unusually productive at Wall Street law firm Paul Weiss. AM LAW 100 2022 REPORT In the latest rollout of data about Big Law, the Am Law 100 Report documented this: In the Revenue-Per-Lawyer category, Paul Weiss’ results jumped 21% from 2020. In 2021, that played out to $1,836,000 per-lawyer. DISRUPTION Given that financial performance, Paul Weiss muscled out of the 2021 Top 10 rankings Cahill Gordon and Debevoise. POSITION OF STRENGTH Yes, Paul Weiss does litigation. However, its motherlode is in transactional. That’s its position of strength during these volatile global economic times and as the overall law-firm market is returning to normal after two years of pandemic boom. Brad Karp has been the Paul Weiss Chairperson since 2008. That means he got the law firm through the 2008 – 2009 carnage, making hay of the recovery opportunity, COVID, and current cooling of M&A and IPOs. Editor-in-Chief Jane Genova now and then does freelance assignments fo...

 You can read between the lines in financial media. You can feel the bit of jitters when interacting with law firm players. And, you pick up that your own clients, who use high-level legal services, are less and less willing to pay $1,000 to $1,500 an hour. After all, they have a pile-on of new kinds of troubles, ranging from the conflicting ESG narratives to the circling back of COVID in China which disrupts supply chains.  So, right on time, Abovethelaw comes up with an article warning about possible coming layoffs. So as not to hurt the law firm's business - layoffs signal a problem in financial performance - those will likely take the form of stealth layoffs. Stealth layoffs, as most know, are configured as terminations resulting from subpar performance on lawyerly tasks or simply not hitting the magic number in billable hours. Insider documents stealth layoffs are coming. Law.com had already warned about layoffs in general.  Also, as associate fixed compens...

 "Defense attorney Jonathan Laidlaw [for Boris Becker] argued for leniency, saying his client hadn't spent money on a 'lavish lifestyle' but rather on child support, rent and legal and business expenses. Becker, he told the court, has experienced 'public humiliation' and has no future earnings potential." - ESPN , April 29, 2022. Was that defense argument effective with Judge Deborah Taylor in the London Southwark Crown Court? That depends on how Becker assessed the 2 and a half year sentence he received.  The jury found that the 54-year-old former tennis star had played it cute during his June 2017 bankruptcy. Essentially he had transferred thousands of pounds from a number of his accounts to where he hoped they couldn't be detected. That stealth move included putting his ex-wife and an estranged one in the loop. Connect with Editor-in-Chief Jane Genova at janegenova374@gmail.com

 Is the takeover of Twitter in danger?  Lawyers putting out expert opinion on that aren't providing definitive answers, reports Reuters Legal. But, what is unambigous is that Elon Musk crossed some kind of line in putting the knock on the current lawyers at Twitter. That has been banned in the purchase agreement. That is, there would be no disparagement of the social network during the transaction. Reuters Legal point out: " ... Musk criticized Twitter legal and policy chief Vijaya Gadde over the platform's decision to block a New York Post story during the last presidential election, leading other users to pile on. He responded to a tweet accusing senior Twitter lawyer Jim Baker of "facilitating fraud" while he was serving as the FBI's general counsel, amplifying the post. And on Wednesday he turned back to Gadde, posting a meme critical of her and the company's moderation policies." As many know, Musk has a horrific track record for his percep...

 Among many other attributes, Elon Musk is complex. VISIONARY Obviously, the Tesla owner and soon-to-be owner of Twitter Musk is an idea guy. He thinks not only big but visionary. In purchasing the social network he wants to be a game-changer in the concept of free speech. That, he plans to make happen through disrupting the traditional ways content to monitored. USUAL PRIVATE EQUITY PLAYER But that's not mutually exclusive with his focus on financials. Bloomberg reports that sources indicate Musk has discussed cutting costs. That initiative will include jobs at Twitter. It could turn out that this visionary also develops the same kind of reputation many in private equity have. That is, for ruthlessly making lackluster financial performers extreme profit-generators. Those employees who could be put on the street could number not only the rank and file but also the leadership. Musk has been putting the knock on the latter. LEGACY OF TWITTER In the history of business Twitte...

 By June 2023, the estimates go, the Secured Overnight Financing Rate (SOFR) will replace the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR). IN THE MEANTIME For more than four decades, LIBOR had been the benchmark for establishing adjustable rates for corporate debt, mortgages, and loans. That was then. Meanwhile, there is the transition. One piece that has been problematic is what is known as the “tough legacy” contract. Although it doesn’t have a formal definition, it accounts for more than $200 trillion dollars of financial instruments referencing LIBOR. Essentially that kind of contract has no effective fallback provisions that either are downright impossible or pretty near that to amend before the total shift to SOFR. That could trigger litigation. THE LIBOR ACT TO THE RESCUE On March 15, 2022, the Adjustable Interest Rate (LIBOR) Act – the LIBOR Act, for short – was signed into law by US President Joe Biden. That was part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2022 . In t...