Anonymous Lawyer

I wish Sarah Palin were a lawyer, because I'd hire her in an instant, despite the "hiring freeze" that's been keeping us from doing much hiring at all lately (as well as the "salary freeze," the "bagel freeze," and the "no more air conditioning non-freeze"). I know she's been getting battered in the media lately, since her surprise resignation announcement, but she's shown exactly the kinds of skill we like to see in our associates: she's chasing the money. To hell with reputation, to hell with honor, to hell even with sanity. To be a good lawyer, you have to smell the money and get it no matter what it takes, no matter the tortured excuses you have to give, no matter the discomfort and tortured awkwardness of the public statements you have to make. Sarah Palin could see the future: two more years as governor and she would have run her reputation far enough into the ground that the $11 million book deal wasn't going to be there anymore. The offers to host a show on Fox News would be replaced with offers to host a show on Alaska Public Access Television. The speaking opportunities would have moved on to the next obscure public official thrust into the spotlight. No, to capitalize, and to really cash in, she had to act now, not in 2011. She had to jump on the money while it was still there. That's what we did, when we signed forty-six securitization deals in the days before the deals were made illegal. That's what we do, when we secretly slaughter terminated associates before they get a chance to deposit their severance checks. Sarah Palin can smell money. And she's not afraid to come out publicly looking like a fool when privately she can clean up. I'd even give her a couple days of maternity leave next time she has a secret baby. (So what if she doesn't have a law degree? It's not like anyone here has any work left to do anyway.)

We at the firm are mourning Michael Jackson's death this morning. We were one of his many creditors, and are hoping for a speedy liquidation so that we can get our money back. Michael's songs inspired a generation of associates at this firm and others. We've often used his music in corporate presentations to inspire and motivate our attorneys. The messages were, in many cases, quite appropriate to the work we do. Like "Smooth Criminal," which describes many of our corporate clients. And "Beat It," which served as an anthem for partners throughout the firm, when associates would knock on our doors. It's impossible to ignore the relevant words of P.Y.T. (Pay Your Taxes) and Jackson's huge hit concerning the importance of document review ("Black or White"). And finally, of course, the lyrics to his hit song "Billie Jean" inspired countless associates to stay in their offices working for as long as six and a half weeks without a break: "For forty days and for forty nights. The law was on her side." Who could argue with that message?

Of course, it was some of his less-renowned album tracks that were the hidden gems in the Michael Jackson oeuvre. Songs like "Working Day and Night" from his Off The Wall album: "You got me workin' day and night / And I'll be workin' / From sun up to midnight."

And "Lady in my Life" off the Thriller album -- it was obvious to any careful listener that "Lady" was a metaphor for an appellate brief: "While the world goes spinnin' by / And in the glow of candlelight / I will show you you're the lady in my life."

Of course, my very favorite Michael Jackson song was from his later years. "Is It Scary" off his Blood on the Dance Floor album, which described my job as hiring partner with almost savant-like precision:

There's a ghost down in the hall
There's a ghoul beneath the bed
Now it's coming through the walls
Now it's coming up the stairs

There's a spirit in the dark
Hear the beating of his heart
Can you feel it in the air
Ghosts be hiding everywhere

I'm gonna be
Exactly what you wanna see
It's you who's taunting me

>>> Yes, it's me who's been taunting you, worthless associate. It's me. Now get back to work and stop listening to your iTunes.

I have been meaning to explain this past month-long disappearance. I was hiking the Appalachian Trail. I mean, I was visiting a South American country. I mean, I am having an affair. With another law firm. I know it probably doesn't look good for the hiring partner of one firm to be dancing in the arms of a competitor, but I couldn't resist. It started out, as these things often do, with a casual e-mail back and forth about places to hide associates' bodies when you don't want them to be found. But it soon escalated into more than that. Much more than that. And in the end, I hurt my firm, I hurt my readers, and I hurt as many as 40% more associates than I usually hurt in the normal course of business.

I apologize on behalf of all hiring partners, who seem to be particularly prone recently to bizarre behavior. Like my colleague in our New York office, "Partner #9," as the expense reports like to call him, who was busted as part of a ring of attorneys doing unauthorized pro bono work on the firm's time. And my colleague in Illinois, who tried to sell a junior partner promotion to the highest bidder. It's a bad time to be a hiring partner, and I apologize for this indiscretion, along with my other indiscretions which have yet to come to light.

Back to work.

I'm out of town this weekend at an associate's wedding. I hate when my associates get married, but I hate it more when they're engaged. At least once they're married it's all done and they can turn their attention back where it belongs. When they're engaged, they're worrying about planning a wedding (and fake-planning a honeymoon they're never going to get to take) and for months nothing important gets done. Like any of it matters anyway. I understand a big party to celebrate a new job. You spend most of your waking life at the office. But what's the difference who you're married to? It's not like you really even see them. I once went two years without seeing my wife (awake) for more than ten minutes in a row. Sure, part of that was because of her own issues, but a lot of it was because of my work schedule. She was seven months pregnant before I knew we were having a kid. That's what happens when you automatically direct all of her e-mail to the spam folder and all of her voice mail to the garbage.

I really don't know why this associate invited me to the wedding. You would think he sees enough of me at work. You would think I'd be the last person his wife would want there. I'm the guy who takes him away from her. Although maybe she likes it that way. Maybe she's only marrying him for the money. What she doesn't know is that the moment he's back from the honeymoon I keep telling him he shouldn't take, we're going to lay him off. He thinks he's got a pretty sweet deal: lucrative job, new wife, brand new house he just closed the deal on. But just give it a month and see where he is. No job, a foreclosed house, and I'm pretty sure there's not going to be a wife anymore.

He should thank me, honestly. We're doing this for his own good. This way he'll really know: does she love me for my money, or is she really this desperate (because he's not much of a catch)? If she stays, he'll know it's not about the money. And that lesson will stick with him for the six unemployed months he's got left before he decides it's better to end it all, ashamed of the shell of a man he will have become. He'll know she really loves him, even if he can't love himself. Even if his whole identity is so wrapped up in the job that he can't recognize he has something most guys at the firm would trade their entire stock portfolios for.

It's hard to find love when you're working 90 hours a week. Of course, it's not like most of these folks would find anyone even if they were working half that amount. The law doesn't attract the kinds of people who are the marrying types. The kind who can compromise and sacrifice and remember to leave the toilet seat down. Lawyers have to win every time. And in a marriage, you can't. At least not in a happy one. I can count the people here in successful marriages on the number of fingers the plaintiff in the suit against the chainsaw company we're defending has left. That's zero. No successful marriages. I can count the number of unsuccessful marriages by the number of surgeries the plaintiff has had. Nineteen. And that's just in my department.

I know it's traditional to give a gift when you go to a wedding, but I always figure my presence is good enough. Besides, my gift is on its way. Two weeks severance. Heck, it's a lot more money than anyone else is going to give them.

It's extraordinarily frustrating when things don't work out the way you hope they will. I thought swine flu was going to be a real issue, something that was going to become an actual epidemic, and potentially solve some of our problems here, but apparently no such luck. I thought it could wipe out some associates, keep us from having to pay severance, keep the profits per partner from falling the estimated 2% they're going to fall this year, keep everything status quo, keep the good life in the hands of those of us with the skills and talents to make ourselves successful. But, no, no one here has the swine flu, no one here seems like they're going to get the swine flu, and we're stuck with all of them, earning their bloated salaries until we finally pull the trigger and then they'll be earning their bloated severance for a mind-boggling seven more days. Why we need to give one week of severance, I'll never understand. It's one thing to pay them for the rest of the day, after we fire them. That's just the humane thing to do. But if I were laid off, I'd have a new job by the next morning, so I really don't understand the business justification for an entire week of severance.

Swine flu was going to fix things. Weed out the weak. And, incidentally, cancel out all the life insurance we provided our associates, since we were forward-thinking enough to list "diseases of animal origin" in the exceptions clause (along with suicide, cancer, accidental death, heart disease, and other medical-related causes). We need epidemics every once in a while. Plagues, famines, droughts. Things to test us, and give us an excuse to thin the ranks. How else can we do it without being subject to criticism on the Internet? How else can we do it without hurting our future recruiting prospects? How else can we do it without having to actually write that impossible e-mail telling someone he no longer has a job? I needed swine flu to do my dirty work for me. I needed it to make the hard decisions, and help me pick whose sick kids don't get medical coverage anymore.

But now it's over and no one here died and I'm stuck in exactly the same place I've been for months. This world is a screwed-up place.

New plan. We don't want to lose out on young legal servants should the economy turn around and clients actually decide they want to waste money on our fancied-up busy work that they could do in-house for a tenth of the cost. So instead of paying our first years to go away, we're merely going to slash salaries and turn the first-year associate job into a comprehensive curriculum to train them to be good associates once everything gets better.

So we're cutting the salaries from $165K to $16,500 and instituting a set of modules through which our associates will rotate, be trained, and become experts.

Four weeks of Google searching
Four weeks of coffee making
Four weeks of comma finding
Four weeks of bill padding
Four weeks of conference call scheduling
Four weeks of smiling in the corner of a meeting room and never saying a word
Four weeks of handshakes
Four weeks of lunch-fetching
Four weeks of stapling
Four weeks of making excuses for why we need to delay the proceedings
Eight weeks of lying
Two weeks of intense lunch
And two weeks when we tell them they have vacation time but we actually call them into the office every day for "emergencies" that will really just involve them sitting in a bathroom stall counting the number of times the toilet flushes, for a comprehensive study on our water usage tracked by hour, day of the week, and outside temperature.

This will prepare them well for life as an associate once we again need associates, and will also keep us from getting the bad publicity layoffs provide. See, it just takes some outside-the-box thinking. Which of course, being lawyers, we're terrific at. How else can we explain record-setting profits per partner even in this economic climate?

To: All Associates
Re: Summer Lunch Policy

Please note the following changes to our summer lunch policy. Be aware that these changes are unrelated to the firm's current economic situation, which, as we discussed during everyone's "salary realignment meetings" last week, is quite excellent, and our unwillingness to back that up with any sort of documentation is entirely due to our new environmentally-motivated "paper(and printer)less office" policy and not due to the numbers on our balance sheets, or the fact that we can no longer afford toner. Instead, we are amending the lunch policy to reflect that in today's health-conscious society, it doesn't make sense to eat lunch more than once a month. Also, in today's overpopulated society, it doesn't make sense not to take advantage of our laid-off associates in a new "alumni lunch" program, details at #6 below. We appreciate your attention to these important matters.

1. The per person lunch cap will be revised from $80/person to $.80/person.

2. Summers will share entrees at a rate of 40 summers: 1 entree.

3. Each summer is entitled to one lunch credit per month. Additional lunch credits can be purchased at a rate of $100/credit, cash only, from my office.

4. Each associate is entitled to take any particular summer associate to lunch no more than zero times.

5. Approved restaurants include the following: [end of list]

6. Our new "alumni lunch" program will consist of former associates returning to the firm during the lunch hour, under the false pretense of getting their jobs back. They will be slaughtered and served to summer associates in conference room 23B. Please direct all summer associates who ask about summer lunches to this conference room. Advise them that they should provide their own flatware.

7. Partners are exempt from the new rules and will continue to spend an unlimited amount of money on food they won't even enjoy.

Thank you,
The Partnership