CanaryInCoalMine

Nothing associated with the sustainability focus aligns with the priorities of the Trump administration. In addition, Wall Street has backed off from advocating ESG investing. And, come to think of it: In the new world order, is anything sustainable? We roll our eyes remembering the days when consultants promised they could equip a corporation with a "sustainable advantage." So, it's overdue that Paul, Weiss, a source reports to Bloomberg Law , has eliminated its stand-alone sustainability practice. Its co-chair Dave Curran will remain an advisor at the firm.  This shift could represent that Paul, Weiss has become all-business.  Documented  is its outstanding financial performace for 2025: "The firm reported exceptional financial growth in 2025, with revenue up 32% to $2.63 billion and PEP growing 15% to $7.5 million. This performance significantly outpaced the previous year's growth, reflecting the firm's strong market position and client demand for its serv...

Big Law has the opportunity to cash in on the Big Spend in 2026. BTI Consulting found that 61% of clients are increasing their budgets for outside counsel to record levels for next year. Driving that include: Speeded-up pace of business Investors pressures, especially for growth Regulatory changes Complexity of lawsuits  Unknowns in M&A. But the "if" is this: To be the law firm getting the business, BTI hammers, partners have to understand the clients' business. That's because legal issues don't exist in silos. "They bleed into growth strategies, boardroom decisions, investor scrutiny, and brand reputation – raising the stakes across the board." This is nothing new. Old is the joke that sure, you got a win in the lawsuit for the client. And the client went out of business. No that wasn't a strategic bankruptcy.  What's new is that with so many moving parts in the global economy and in business sectors grinding up against each other the risk t...

  "If AI is doing all the legal research and writing you’d normally have junior associates doing, how will those junior associates learn the craft? How will we develop new senior people without a pipeline of junior people in the weeds of the work?" - That's what Nilay Patel discusses on Verge's "Decoder" with LexisNexis CEO Sean Fitzpatrick.  We all know that down the line there'll be significantly reduced hiring of new lawyers because of AI. Chair of Paul, Weiss Brad Karp went on the record in  Lawyer Monthly with that forecast.  However, law firms still have to bring in associate help. And not only to stock the pipeline. For instance, as the demand for litigation services surges, reports Bloomberg Law , some partners are complaining that not enough litigation associates have been hired. Paul, Weiss has hired 50 first-years. That's above what is average in law firms that size of Paul, Weiss. Why that critical need for the input of junior talent?  P...

 It's nothing new that post-bonus season there's the exiting of associates who've been itching to lateral. They only held on for the money. What is new is that watchers of those exits will be sizing up if they're a sign of discontent with the law firm's decision about how to respond to the Trump administration's whatevers. Those range from the Executive Orders to what assignments are being done or not being done for that administration. And it includes both those which cut deals, such as Paul, Weiss, and those which filed lawsuits, like Perkins Coie, contending EQs were illegal. About the latter, some associates could assume that there would have been more opportunity for them had their firm made nice with the current US President. Well, this could be the second shoe to drop.  Before the negotiations, during them and afterward there were high-profile gestures of resistance. Skadden bore witness to the noisy departures of associates who traded off their lucrative...

 It's the way media and influencers operate: They move rapidly from a story to a new one. Note that "Breaking News" and even interrupting a live broadcast for it have become standard. The exception is the Executive Order dealmaking story which broke last March. Critics are still landing prime media "real esate" space to hammer how wrong those negotiations were. And that they never should have been.  The recent platforms range from The Washington Post  to The New Yorker.   Former friend of progressive law firms and fellow Dem Barack Obama, currently a top political influencer, continues to flog what should have been a dead horse. Recall how he correlated the negotiations with partners' needing the money to renovate their houses.  Legal tabloid AbovetheLaw has never relented.  This is unusual in the American brand of capitalism built on pragmatism. Layoffs are positioned and packaged as happening "for business reasons." That's acceptable. And in ...

It's old hat in worldclass cities like New York that the address of your building creates your signature brand. Classic was the aura public affairs firm The Dilenschneider Group unleashed with its location in the MetLife Building. It rented half a floor. As a contractor to DGI I found it useful to my own boutique to be spotted on the elevator or lobby.  But in this era of so much economic, technological and political disruption - sometimes called the  "post-American" world order  - that branding function isn't enough to be moving the needle in the directions businesses have to head toward. So, the template for leasing a building has to go way beyond any halo effect.  Among the immediate needs is putting together the unique employee experience. RTO is here to stay. And in the post-American world order, with the ramped-up technical competition from China, most employees will be spending more hours in-person on the company site. That probably will never beome as brutal ...

In the 1970s, I wrote speeches for Fortune 50 executives which had the tone and word choice of Kannon Shanmugam's recent remarks about decisions made by both the Trump administration and law firms. They were low-key and embedded with safe language.  Shanmugam heads the US Supreme Court practice at Paul, Weiss.  Bloomberg Law reports: “'These attacks are regrettable,' he [Shanmugam]  said  at Pepperdine University’s Caruso School of Law in Malibu, California, last month. 'If institutions have problems, we should try to fix those problems rather than destroy the institutions.'” Those institutions, he noted, include not only law firms but also universities and the courts. Recall when in that seminal BBC interview Prince Andrew described his involvement with Jeffrey Epstein as " not something that was becoming of a member of the Royal family. ”  The world gasped. What about Shanmugam's  leveraging the term "regrettable."  In essence, Shanmugam didn...

  A May 2025 business profile on law firm Paul, Weiss documents: "The firm reported exceptional financial growth in 2025, with revenue up 32% to $2.63 billion and PEP growing 15% to $7.5 million[8]. This performance significantly outpaced the previous year's growth, reflecting the firm's strong market position and client demand for its services." It's easy to conclude: Those lawyers must be very quite ambitious.  But, maybe not. At least not all of them. And, maybe none of the stars. See, the concept of "ambition" is ambiguous.  A perceived overabundance of it as with Josh Shapiro and Jill Biden can be a negative. On the other hand, being sized as not having enough of it can mean never entering any of the big games, like Wall Street. Or allowed to marry into wealth. More to the point, as a coach I have observed that what propels exceptional performance leading to a rapid rise to the top of a profession might not be ambition per se.  Sometimes it's si...

Notice that those analyzing the Trump administration delve directly into their power strategies. Not the 20th-century default of putting the key movers and shakers on the couch. That is, engaging in psychobabble about them such as "They seem needy/egotistical/narcissistic."  Also, those discussions of power are out in the open. About 10 years ago Stanford Graduate School of Business star professor Jeffrey Pfeffer still was describing the role of power in the workplace as a kind of dirty secret. Sort of taboo to talk about. Well, there's no longer any secret. Bios of chair of elite law firm Paul, Weiss Brad Karp blast that he's a power broker in New York City, heavyweight fundraiser in politics, former lobbyist and has the contacts to get invited to places like the White House. In college Karp majored in political science, not psychology or economics. Before going to law school he toyed with the option of heading straight to a career in Congress.  But that doesn't...

  The very founding of Paul, Weiss represented a stand against antisemitism. To today, the law firm is in the front lines of opposing this horrific form of bias. In that it has bonds with the Trump administration which has a mission of combating antisemitism in higher education.  But, what's obvious is that societies haven't figured this one out. We don't know how to prevent it. History also demonstrates that harsh penalities can drive it underground, intensifying the determination of the haters. The scope of discrimination and acts of violence are increasing. In America more of Jewish heritage have taken steps to mask that identity . What might provide a way to understand that we don't understand the dynamicss the 1961 film "Judgment in Nuremberg."  It is avalable on the free streaming platform Tubi. Set in 1947, two years after WWII, it is a fictional version of the third of 12 trials of those associated with the Nazi regime. Overall, the world and especial...

  A  Reddit posting asks what ages people most quickly. That was 16 hours ago and already 4.3K responses have come in. Obviously this issue is of interest. Recall the Cat Stevens' 1977 song "Forever Young." Stevens nailed one of the traits most important in America and increasingly in white-collar survival. Well, responses to that Reddit post frequently finger as a factor in accelerated aging this: stress.  That's embedded in being a lawyer, reaching all the back to jumping through the hoops of good grades, scoring high on the LSAT, landing that first job and surviving in that job. Climbing the ladeder and achieving stardom, of course, put in-place myriad additional hoops.  Research - here and here - confims that on the average lawyers age faster than those in lines of work such as academia, science, creative fields, the helping professions and spiritual outreach. An early sign of that early aging is what is known as the "associate 20." That is the weigh...

 Abovethelaw's mission is informing and advocating for law students and junior lawyers. So both groups should pay attention to ATL's exclusive posting by Kathryn Rubino. It's about Paul Weiss, along with Sullivan & Cromwell, using peer-to-peer recruitment in law schools. ATL reports: " ... [The 3Ls who] already accepted offers at the firms have been given the authority to wine and dine 1Ls as part of the firm’s recruitment." Unlike how many of us understand peer-to-peer processes, this one has a commercial aspect and professional stakes.  The standard peer-to-peer model is non-commercial and oriented to providing selfless service. Well-known is that of Alcoholics Anonymous. Dating back to 1935, the program is based on one alcoholic reaching out to another, carrying this good news: Remission of that deadly disease is possible. The AA 12 Traditions prohibit commercializing any aspect of that. During the altrustic counterculture ethos of the late 1960s peer-to-p...

  Former clerk for current SOTUS Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson Matteo Godi had already been working as an associate (start date January 2021) at prestigious Paul, Weiss when Politico broke a story in February 2022. It was how Godi:  " ... embarked on a Wikipedia editing spree over the past week, bolstering the page of his former boss while altering the pages of her competitors in an apparent attempt to invite liberal skepticism ..." Well, despite that development Godi managed to hold onto his job at PW. I had a hunch why but I was a features, not investigative, journalist so I couldn't dig up sources to confirm. Twice I contacted Godi for a statement. Once he hung up on me. The other time no response. In July 2025 Godi moved on from PW to being Assistant Professor at USC Gould School of Law. Here is his LinkedIn Profile  documenting that change.  So, that's where he landed. And again he faces having to start all over again in climbing the ladder. Just a different on...

  Back in 2022, there were those "monster profits"in Big Oil. That generated lots of transactional work for large law firms. At the top of the list was M&A.  Now, as  crude prices plunge  and there are no signs of a recovery, Big Oil is conducting mass layoffs and could eventually cut the dividend. This is a scary time for labor and investors. In addition, contractors are also being financially undone. One vendor I coach has been trying to collect on a $75,000 invoice for months. But  Big Law  which has as major clients large oil corporations may not experience too much pain. History shows that a downturn in the oil patch ususally results in a shift of work for law firms. Not a collapse. For example, in its article on the the oil recession in 2016 -  "The 7 Stages of Grief"  - Kirkland & Ellis described fewer M&A assignments and more work in restructuring. Crude prices had dropped from $100 a barrel to $30. Of course, the disruption, t...

For decades. the metaphor of the global economic devastation generated by Smoot-Hawley has been tossed about.  During the second Trump administration, which is committed to tariff reform, the references to Smoot-Hawley have become talking points. Most admit, though, that there are major differences in economic, business and political institutions between then and now.  However, the almost 900-drop in the Dow on Friday, after the administration's proposal about tariffs in China, has intensified focus on the possible fallout from intensified protectionism and trade wars. That force field of concern is being called "Smoot-Hawley 2.0." Most successful law firms got there by anticipating what could be coming down the pike. So, many have already been, as the saying goes, getting their ducks in a row. at least as much as they can and as quickly as they can.  For example, since cross-border M&A would probably get more antitrust scrutiny and involve litigation it was likely pr...

  Recall those annoying three Dems who decided to question some law firms who had made deals with the Trump administration about pro bono assignments. Was any of that work illegal, they asked. The askers were Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT)  Senator Adam Schiff (D-CA)  Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD)  Well, Paul, Weiss, along with Skadden and Kirkland & Ellis, answered: No.  Law.com reports: "The three firms said their agreements with the president do not run afoul of any laws or ethical standards, arguing that the agreement does not restrict the pro bono work they do ..." Does this assertiveness by the law firms signal that they sense that the controversy about that dealmaking has peaked and is imploding as a force field?  Meanwhile so many new flashpoints have broken out in the politics of America. The Dow plunge yesterday with the re-activation of the tariff war was downright scary. More oridinary people are interested in the stock marke...

There's a stunner of a long shelf life for the controversy surrounding law firms' decisions about how to navigate the spring 2025 White House Executive Orders.  Also, oh boy, has the hyperbole been sticky. For example, there are the tone and language in the June 2025 complaint filed with the New York Supreme Court Appellate Attorney Grievance Committee. It's about the nine law firms which negotiated deals with the Trump administration. The situation is described in the complaint as: " ... watching this Greek tragedy play out"  In addition, amidst all the drama there's downright wrong information. Bloomberg Law reports: "  The complaint, filed by a group of law professors ..." If you go to the actual  complaint you see that law professors were not the only filers. There were also practicing lawyers such as Julia Sullivan.  But that's all mostly irrelevant, at least that's how we businesspeople see it.  The key point here is that, from the get...

  With so much turmoil in Big Law during 2025 we should be beyond being stunned. Those earlier shocks, ranging from Executive Orders to a US Government Shutdown , should have made us immune to being surprised. But to use the cliche, Never Say Never. Now the legal sector is reeling, primarily with speculation, in response to the news that Kirkland & Ellis isn't disclosing details about the Partner Class of 2025. Traditionally that number, usually large, used to be what K&L gushed about. This year, it is totally closed mouth, claiming the lack of transparency represents a strategic shift. The loudest noise about this development is the hunch that the law firm fears the announcement will be quickly followed by one about the rapid exits of those partners. That's been a pattern.  Media  notes: "Among the 200 names announced in 2024, at least 20 lawyers, or 10%, were not on the firm’s website this week, according to a Law.com analysis ... Among the 205 names announced i...

  The pain is already settling in for some businesses as the government shutdown continues. Startups are not immune. Many of their strategies and daily transactions involve actual government agencies.  Paul, Weiss provides guidance on its website on how its clients and other businesses can navigate those situations with select government agecies. They are: SEC Antitrust Merger Review at DOJ and FTC Commmittee on Foreign Investment in US and US Outbound Investment Program IRS. Meanwhile, for ordinary citizens the good news is that today their payment from the Social Security Administration, if scheduled for second Wednesday of the month, arrived in their direct deposit accounts.  Eventually, Main Street lawyers might have a surge of business if the government proposal to overhaul the disability part of Social Security payments goes through. SSI recipients who are age-eligible for "regular" Social Security, for example, might face being shifted to that. The monthly payme...

  Is positive coverage in legal trade media, like most sector awards and a well-done website, mere "window dressing?" That is, it doesn't move the needle much or maybe not at all in winning new business?  I asked ChatGPT that specific question. First of all, it informed it that is an issue law firm leadership and CMOs debate. Then it got granular: "Coverage in those outlets [Bloomberg Law and more] rarely wins new business directly — few general counsel read a Law.com quote and immediately call the firm. " ... this is largely an “insider” audience, not the CEOs, CFOs, or public-sector decision-makers who usually hire outside counsel." But, sure a story that does wind up impacting business development can start in Bloomberg Law. Then it makes its way to the outlets which the C-Suite pores over such as The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Forbes, Bloomberg News and major regional publications.  For example, legal media track the prominent...

 In 2022, in a BusinessInsider  interview chair of Paul, Weiss Brad Karp alluded to the generation gap with some Generation Z associates. They're the group born between 1997 and 2010. Come March 2025 and that issue became almost a cruel joke - on Gen Z. AI, The Disruptor, had come.  The Lawyer Monthly headlined with: "Junior Lawyers Will Be ‘Significantly Replaced’ by AI & Tech Experts, Says Paul Weiss Chair" But a law firm's concern about a generation gap hasn't ended. AI, along with the cost-efficiency movement, economic uncertainty and geopolitical tensions, had made entrepreneurship the only real way Gen Zers could make a good living.  That career route can catapult them into early success. None of that long grunt phase of climbing someone else's ladder. The co-founder of AI Harvey Winston Weinberg was 30 last year. A former junior lawyer, Weinberg has already achieved extreme wealth. Paul, Weiss partnerd with Harvey to be the first law firm to produc...