CanaryInCoalMine

 In elite professional services - the McKinseys, JP Morgans, Paul Weisses - very long hours are standard.  On professional anonymous networks such as Reddit, Fishbowl and Glassdoor, you encounter the complaints about those hours. But in actual life there is often boasting about enduring such a brutal capitalistic ritual.  Of course, there are rewards for putting in those hours. For example, Paul, Weiss has been known to go beyond the usual seasonal bonuses. One year it provided off-season bonuses for the "committed," that is those who were able to transform the long hours into myriad billable ones. This year, in addition to the seasonal bonus it added on a special one to be paid before Christmas. For those who "contributed" the most there will also be a discretionary bonus in early 2026. But that's only one kind of award. There can be another: the psychic play-out of belonging, purpose, sense of a professional self, assurance of being needed, ability to overri...

It's become a necessary perk at elite law firms, especially with RTO. Both here in the US and England. That is, gourmet food. Not just snacks but actual meals. Totally or mostly free.  However, that horn of plenty isn't without complainers, reports Brit legal tabloid RollonFriday.  For example:  " ... a Paul, Weiss staffer was clearly not that fussed about their five-a-day: 'Why is everything so healthy? Why isn’t there butter for toast in the morning, or some normal food at lunch'". That healthy fare could be a result of the chair Brad Karp's heart attack in January 2025. After such a traumatic medical event there could be a psychic shift to the mission of protecting the rest of the world's arteries from clogging up. Post my April 2024 stroke for a while I only served healthy in my home. That ended when guests at my place for the SuperBowl seemed not-into-it. My boyfriend did an emergency junk food run and ruckus filled the room. Not a Dorito was lef...

  Despite all the disruptors such as theTrump administration Executive Order and being vilified for the deal cut to lift it Paul, Weiss had an amazing year for revenue and profit per equity partner.   Documented  is that: "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 services." So, it was predictable it would have to be generous in bonus season.   First of all, it matched Cravath on the amount of seasonal bonus for each class year. In addition, it threw in the special bonus which Milbank had awarded. That ranged from $6K to $25K. There's something more. Early in 2026 it will also award discretionary bonuses for those who have been significant contributors.  Observation: The business of an organization can be unbundled from the negative ...

The ambitious need to be so well-connected, right. Access is everything. It beats out the many other sources of power: self-confidence, likability, ability to block, visibility, wealth, the right look and more.  But with the ongoing fallout from our peeks at the Epstein Emails the world is rethinking networking and its tradeoffs. What should law partners at brand-dependent law firms like Paul, Weiss be reviewing? Maybe the new business common sense is that there have to be continual audits on the risks involved in being an insider. Leon Black, Larry Summers, Kathy Ruemmler and even Elisa New may wind up paying a price they never anticipated. Read about this and more in my latest Substack column: https://janegenova.substack.com/p/so-thats-how-the-well-connected-connect.   Thrown off your game, maybe the first time since you started working? You made all the right moves and then the world moved in another direction. Intuitive Coaching. Special expertise with transitions, ...

There's a peculiar tension between law firms Paul, Weiss and Kirkland & Ellis. When the former poaches talent from the latter it's no ordinary transaction. Instead, it seems to take on the aura of almost a spiritual quest.  Chair of Paul Weiss Brad Karp is known to be a competitive guy. Kirkland & Ellis is the world's largest and most profitable law firm. When I coached its alumni they groused about the demanding culture but praised the firm's ability to win big, all the time. The latest raid by Paul, Weiss has been again from Kirkland & Ellis' London office. LawFuel reports: "Paul, Weiss continues its London talent-grab, this time hiring Francesca Storey-Harris as a partner in its M&A and Private Equity groups ..." The coverage contains the usual gush about what this addition brings to the firm. Only time will tell if the investment pays off. Not every partner acquisition produces the new business and the revenue anticipated. Recently Pa...

  The headline in Artificial Lawyer reads:  "‘I’d Rather Use AI Than Give Work To A Junior Lawyer’" Then, the article goes on to observe: " ... if AI is as good as a junior associate’ on a range of entry level tasks, and also super-fast, then there was no reason not to use the tech solution. This was so even if it made errors, because those errors could be corrected very quickly as well, by going back to the AI and running improved prompts." In addition, eliminated is the need to interact with a junior lawyer through, say, mentoring, praise or criticism. That kind of engaging is usually time-consuming as well as stressful.  So, the demand for junior lawyers can really be in peril. The forecast Paul, Weiss chair Brad Karp had made in March 2025 in Lawyer Monthly is in play. Already. Karp predicted that AI would replace a significant number of junior lawyers. The firm would be hiring more technologists and data scientists.  At the time that sounde...

When the Trump administration was issuing Executive Orders which would have limited or even prevented law firms from conducting business (e.g. not allowed to enter federal buildings) Perkins Coie resisted.  Perkins Coie used the law to combat the EO. It filed a lawsuit and the EO was blocked. But nevertheless Bloomberg Law describes the aftermath as " a tumultuous stretch."  Bloomberg Law also positions the Perkins Coie merger with London law firm Ashurst as providing "stability" after such a stretch. For Ashurst the benefit of the merger is access to the US legal market. The resulting entity will be the world's 20th largest firm, grossing $2.7 billion. So, things haven't been all that peachy for this front-line resistor. While hailed in some corners as a hero, it endured other kinds of challenges. Meanwhile, for the first law firm to cut a deal with the administration to lift the EO - Paul, Weiss - the number-one challenge has been in the realm of public o...

Right now, Paul, Weiss, along with a number of other Big Law firms, is sitting pretty financially . So far for 2025, for example, revenue at Paul, Weiss is up 32% and Profit Per Equity Partner 11%. 2026 is projected to be a good year. With so much volatility and uncertainty the demand for its sophisticated legal services likely will be sustained.  But, Paul, Weiss chair Brad Karp hammered in a 2021 Bloomberg Law interview the growth mandate. If a law firm isn't growing it could go out of business. To grow, he added, requires lots of money.   In this era of AI, ramped-up global competition among law firms and competition from non-law businesses such as accounting firms it will take more of that money to generate the growth. That will be needed for: Experimenting to trigger innovation, especially in technology Developing, as had Dentons, other kinds of profit centers beyond legal service, and  Restructuring to reduce fixed expenses through more efficient management of...

Today is November 14th. That's a whole week after the November 7th New York bar association event celebrating three advocates for justice.  So, that means it's been seven days after keynote speaker - Brad Karp, chair of law firm Paul, Weiss - had his speech "heckled" by law firm Dunnington Bartholow partner Raymond J. Dowd . Outside the building had been the usual signs protesting Paul, Weiss' negotiations with the Trump administration.  Yet, those developments are still being covered in legacy media . Soon enough the tabloids are likely to have another run at it. What should have been not much of a story has become a big story.  And here we have HeckleGate. The sustainability of that saga is yet one more sign of the surging interest in the collapse of practicing law as a profession. It's a business. Right now, it's the one to be in for Profits Per Equity Partner. Going fast, for instance, is professional decorum.  Dowd contends the heckle wasn't preme...

  In very positive coverage, BusinessInsider describes how law firm Latham conducted its second AI Academy. Wonderful bit of professiional development. The 400+ first-year lawyers were trained in how to manage this tool which clients demand law firms leverage.  But the irony is missed: What will happen to so many of those 400+ as the uses of AI broaden and become standard? One of those big we-all-knows is what thought leader in the legal sector Brad Karp, chair of Paul, Weiss, observed last March in Lawyer Monthly.  He predicted AI will significantly reduce the demand for junior lawyers.  The issue is not that human lawyers will no longer be needed. And, of course, fresh talent is required to ensure continuity of the firm. The realities are these: Fewer lawyers without experience will be hired - and retained during their early years at the firm.  The implications are huge for law schools and overall career planning when in college.        ...

In a poignant snippet during his speech at the bar association gala last night Paul, Weiss chair Brad Karp shared his pain. That was both for his own professional life/personal health and for the elite institution at which he has been a lifer. Bloomberg Law captures that:  "Karp said he had a major heart attack in January, 'and then in March, my firm and I faced something even worse. We were targeted by the current administration in large part because of our lawyers’ high-profile work on pro bono matters. We ultimately resolved that existential threat.'” Despite that intimate sharing, unusual for a seasoned lawyer trained to withhold verbally, some in attendance heckled him. There were also signs vilifying the March dealmaking with the Trump administration.  All this has been a continuation of the default of targeting Paul, Weiss for the controversial negotiations with the White House. Those were to do pro bono work in the public interest. Other firms not only followed in...

 The three were at Kirkland & Ellis together, then Sidley. Now, they found a new home together at Paul, Weiss. Law.com documents that the co-head of Sidley's leveraged finance practice Nicholas Schwartz, along with Mark Adler and Julie Ann Lamm, have joined  that Wall Street powerhouse. This signals Paul, Weiss is back aggressive in poaching. Its recent signature move had been multiple raids of K&E's London office.  Confidential tips, bylined articles welcome. Please contact Jane Genova at janegenova374@gmail.com Thrown off your game, maybe the first time since you started working? You made all the right moves and then the world moved in another direction. Intuitive Coaching. Special expertise with transitions, reskilling and aging. Psychic/tarot readings, upon request. Complimentary consultation with Jane Genova (Text 203-468-8579,  janegenova374@gmail.com ). Yes, test out the chemistry. Zero risk.

  We progressives feel it: Hope. That's the most powerful motivation force. And the decisive wins by Dems in Tuesday's elections have brought it back. Influential Axios headlines with: "The resistance revitalized" Then Axios goes on to say: "A half-dozen scattered elections did overnight what  President Trump  himself couldn't do in 10 months: revitalized the Democratic resistance, instantly and profoundly." That's a sea change from where we were last March.  I had grown up in the Hudson County, New Jersey Frank Hague political machine and had worked in Barcelona, Spain during the Franco regime. I sensed resistance was not only useless. It was too dangerous. I witenessed what happened to dissenters. More recently I exited the Unitarian Chruch because it was leveraging sermon time to pitch resistance. The whole gestalt came across to me as crazy. I even told the minister he was going to be arrested. Plus, with so much economic bad news I needed tradi...

New York technology lawyer Anna Gressel had been a litigation partner at Paul, Weiss for less than a year.  In a profession which tends to move slowly in upward mobility, reports Bloomberg Law , Gressel catapulted from that to co-leading Artifical Intelligence at Freshfields. Along with Freshfields' London-Giles Pratt she will oversee about 150 tech and data labor lawyers.  It was chair of Paul, Weiss himself - Brad Karp - who hammered the importance of talent skilled in technology to law firms. During an interview with Lawyer Monthly last March, he predicted demand for entry-level lawyers declining because of AI. The shift in demand will be to those expert in technology and data. That played out at his own law firm, but not how he might have anticipated it. Obviously, law students should pay attention to the direction in which the Law of Supply and Demand is moving. Gressel present that emerging model. Her success has been meteoric. Confidential tips, bylined articles welco...

  It's palpable, even among establishment players like Bill de Blasio who also had been a NYC mayor and who endorsed Zohran Mamdani. That is, the return of hope. Ironically the leader who promised us that hope wasn't audacious - Barack Obama - snubbed Mamdani. Were Obama's political instincts off? Or, is he getting old? Just as when JFK was elected US president, with the Mamdani win the torch has been passed to another generation. The new generation could blow it, as some claim we Boomers did. But at least they're willing to veer from the status quo. Note that status quo Andrew Cuomo lost.  That veering might also happen for some progressive law firms.You know, the ones which negotiated with the Trump administration to lift the Executive Orders. The EOs, the firms argued, could have shuttered their businesses. Paul,Weiss was among the dealmakers. Actually it was the first to make a deal with the White House. The law firm's business was saved. In fact, it's thriv...

It happened again. Another Kirkland & Ellis partner leaves, poached by another law frm. This time it's private equity M&A expert Nick Appleton . He joins Simpson's London Office in corporate. Depending on how the counting is done, 13 to 16 partners from K&E's London office went to work for Paul, Weiss. The raids were high-profile. And, among the 200 who made partner at K&E in 2024 about 10% left. For the 2023 204 partner class 21% left.  This year, K&E didn't disclose the number of new partners. That eliminates calculations of what percentage will be gone in a year or two. Recently there was reported K&E partner flight from the Greater China offices . The number is estimated to be 10. No coicindence, K&E changed compensation policy to attempt to penalize too-soon-leavers. Abovethelaw reports: "While equity partners at the firm already had 55% of their annual compensation deferred until the following year, the new policy allows Kirkland...