CanaryInCoalMine

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...

There's that very old joke: Notice those Ivy League seniors who apply to law school. Not to Wall Street. They're high verbal. Likely lousy in math. And down the road as they begin practicing law there'll be another great divide based on talk.  Those in elite firms will adopt sophisticated indirect rhetoric, elegant in language and calm in tone. That's how they'll position and package the firm's services.  In the first go-around, such as the website. That signals what they're about. In contrast, many on Main Street will leverage more direct language, even embedding characteristics of the hard sell. Example: Paul, Weiss, ranking among the top 20 in the Am Law 200, sits in the prime NYC real estate of Avenue of the Americas. One of its practices is listed on its website as White Collar and Regulatory Defense.   No, not White Collar Crime. In contrast, a Main Street kind of law firm lists the practice as White Collar Crime . Oh boy.  Such a negative introductio...

One of those we-all-know is that last March Paul, Weiss chair Brad Karp stated in The Lawyer Monthly :  "Junior Lawyers Will Be ‘Significantly Replaced’ by AI & Tech"  But now we're getting a fresh perspective on this.  Sure, there'll be reduced demand for junior lawyers. But what about those junior lawyers who become wunderkinds at managing AI tool? Everything from strategy to overseeing operations? Actually it's the CEO of AI Harvey Winston Weinberg who created that new lens for sizing up what could potentially play out in not only the Law of Supply and Demand but also mobility and power. In Lawfuel , Weinberg notes:   "Junior lawyers who can drive AI platforms and handle structured risk will move faster than seniors who treat the tools as decoration. That factor will force firms to rethink how they route work and how they evaluate early career performance." What Weinberg predicts isn't unthinkable. It's already a given that if equity partn...

  Way back in 2015, law firm Paul, Weiss was called in by the NFL to investigate the high-profile "deflategate" at the Patriots.  There was an immediate association between sports and that white-shoe firm. Since then, it's significantly increased its legal business in the sports niche, as well as its contacts. It was rumored that when it needed an invitation to discuss the March 2025 Executive Order in a personal meeting with US President Donald Trump, it contacted Patriots owner Robert Kraft.  Paul, Weiss had developed a stand-alone  Sports Practice.  In 2024, its chair Brad Karp told Law.com  that the overall legal issues associated with sports will continue to expand. Driving that are factors ranging from media rights to "nuanced legal judgments and interpreations." In 2025, it was recognized by Law360 as being the Practice Group of the Year in the sports and betting catgegory. Just this week Paul Weiss advised major client Apollo  on establishin...

No one really knows what's happening in global business. The moving parts, intersecting with each other, are being disrupted. In addition to the usual suspects like upstart competition there are conomic uncertainty, geopolitical tensions, generative AI and the cost-efficiency mandate.  Sure, we follow Goldman's David Solomon , tech's Eric Schmidt  and in the trenches GM's Mary Barra. But anyone who's lost a job or a whole career or catapulted to the top understands this new fundamental of professional success: You have to figure out the whole enchilada - macro, micro, technology impacts, education/training, personal branding and myriad other variables - on your own. Smirk, we boomers remember when we obediently followed all that generically packaged career advice of the 20th century. I got my first op-ed published in The Wall Street Journal after waking up about the foolishness of being a female wearing those cute little bow ties.  So here we are in the 21st century...