I've been following the news this morning about the Ropes & Gray associate accused of insider trading as part of an investigation into the Galleon Group hedge fund.

Ropes & Gray released a statement, saying in part: "We are deeply disappointed about this situation, which suggests an extreme breach of this person's duty of trust to our clients and to the firm."

Well, no kidding. It's damn well a breach of the duty of trust to the firm. If an associate here found out some insider information we could use to make a killing, they better not be keeping it to themselves. They ought to tell a partner, tell the whole executive committee, give us all a chance to get in on it. If we can't trust our associates to bring us valuable opportunities to increase our own personal wealth, what do we really need them around for? I've spent years digging through client paperwork looking for information that I could use to make better investment decisions. And for an associate-- not even a partner-- for an associate to be running with this, without making the opportunity available to his superiors.... Well, it was a pretty easy decision to fire him. And it should serve as a warning to everyone else at the firm-- you find a good deal, you bring it up the chain of command and let us all have a piece.

Hey, it's not like I don't tell my associates when I go to mortgage foreclosure auctions and try to feast on the corpses of evicted homeowners. They're welcome to come along and join the fun.

As long as their work is done.

And they carry my briefcase. I hate carrying my own briefcase.

Just read about a lawsuit against PepsiCo, regarding Aquafina water, where the plaintiffs won a default judgment of $1.26 billion because a legal secretary forgot to respond to the complaint.

This is why we have the associates do our secretarial work.

Gosh, what a lesson for firms that actually expect their secretaries to do anything. Of course secretaries can't be trusted to do anything, that's why they're secretaries. That's why we need eighth-year associates, supervising sixth-year associates, supervising fourth-year associates, supervising second-year associates, supervising first-year associates whose only job it is to stamp numbers on papers and sort things in the right order.

If we relied on secretaries to do important things like get me a highlighter or clean my shoes, they'd never get done and we'd lose billion dollar cases.

I don't know what PepsiCo was thinking having a secretary responsible for something. Everyone knows secretaries are only good for bringing in food and taking up space in the cubicles. And sometimes having affairs with, but only when extremely desperate and all of the associates are busy stamping numbers on papers and sorting things in the right order.

I once gave my secretary a task. I was filing a motion, and had woken up the morning it was due with an incredible idea -- instead of numbering our 135 exhibits A through EEEEEE, we should use the Greek alphabet instead, since the judge was Greek, and he'd probably get a kick out of it and therefore be much more likely to rule for our side despite the evidence completely favoring our opponents. So I needed someone to switch all the pages out and replace them with pages labeled with the Greek alphabet. Plus I needed all the references in the brief to be amended. Plus I needed the city's best gyro for lunch, just to get me in the mood.

After an hour of serious deliberation, I decided to send the associate for the gyro, and have the secretary do the re-labeling, because even though the brief had a 5:00 deadline, the gyro needed to be in my office by 1:30 or I'd be eating too late to still be hungry for dinner. So clearly the gyro was priority number one.

Sure enough, down to the wire, the secretary is running around trying to figure out whether beta comes before or after theta, and the associate is dripping tzatziki all over the exhibits binder... and then the secretary threw up, all over exhibit Eta. She claimed it was because the yogurt sauce had gone bad -- I mean, of course I had her taste the gyro before I ate it, just to be sure it wasn't poisonous, that's just part of the job -- but she could have at least avoided vomiting on the papers.

So we missed the deadline, our clients received a default judgment against them, and I had to come up with a phony excuse about how we did everything we could but the evidence just wasn't on our side. They paid the bill, so no harm no foul, but it taught me to never put secretaries in charge of anything, ever again.

Lesson learned.

You may have caught a glimpse of the firm on national television this past Thursday, when we locked an associate inside the compartment of a hot-air balloon and sent her flying across the Colorado landscape. Unfortunately, she somehow escaped before the balloon took off, and when the craft finally landed, she was nowhere to be found. We were hoping she would stay in the balloon, and upon landing take the hint that we wanted her to relocate to the middle of nowhere. Instead, she's still here. And the firm is facing felony charges of attempted kidnapping and unlawful use of a balloon.

In all seriousness, I have to applaud the Heene family for pulling off its plan and getting live news coverage, across the nation, for what was apparently just an elaborate publicity stunt. Back when we were hiring associates, we did everything we could think of to get people to pay attention to us, to find a way onto the national radar screen. And all it would have taken was a hot air balloon. The money we wasted on pens and stress balls and recruiting fairs and full-color brochures. All we needed was a balloon.

I'd hire the father as marketing director in an instant, if we had any marketing budget left, or anything we were still trying to market. I wouldn't hire him as a summer associate (too entrepreneurial), but I might think about hiring him as a litigator (great liar), if only he had a law degree. Or even if he can pretend he has one and convince the state. Hire his son to do document review; he seems excellent at sitting in a confined space for five hours without going to the bathroom.

A very successful annual firm luncheon yesterday.

We've been trying to figure out how to cut costs in a way that most associates won't recognize as cost-cutting. Trim some expenses that would otherwise be a little too much to bear in this economy.

Killing the annual luncheon would have been obvious. It's a longstanding tradition that every fall we officially promote the associates to the next class with a celebratory lunch. First-years become second-years, second-years become third-years, ninth-years become tenth-years. It's partly our way of apologizing that not everyone can make partner. It's partly our way of making them think we value their contributions.

But lunch is expensive.

So I had the idea to do it on Yom Kippur. With a quarter of the firm observing the holiday (although still in the office of course -- we certainly can't have them taking the day off), we'd save 25% on food costs. Easy. It gave us enough flexibility in the budget to upgrade from the usual Italian buffet to an entire roasted pig. Everyone who was able to eat loved it. And everyone else had an enjoyable time watching, I'm sure.

Cost-cutting doesn't always have to be painful. It just takes some creativity.

Above The Law leaked a memo from Sheppard Mullin about problems in the firm's bathroom. Apparently a few weeks ago, someone urinated on the floor of the women's restroom. Today, "the perp struck again but this time the act was even more disgusting." They've got security cameras to narrow down the suspects.

Reminds me of a similar situation here that prompted a memo I thought I'd dig out of the archives.

FROM: Anonymous Law Firm
TO: All Associates
RE: Mandatory Urinary Catheterization

As many of you are aware, there has been a string of incidents this past week prompting attention from the managing partners. On Monday, we found what we believe was an associate's urine inside a Partners-Only toilet on the 18th floor. On Tuesday, we once again found associate's urine inside the same Partners-Only toilet, as well as evidence that three squares of toilet paper from the very same bathroom had been used without authorization. On Wednesday, we believe there were as many as three instances where associate urine was deposited into the Partners-Only toilet, and up to thirteen squares of toilet paper used. On Thursday, we received a report that there was not only associate urine but also associate feces in the Partners-Only toilet. We deployed a bowel-sniffing dog to match the odor in the bathroom with the odor of each associate, but were unable to find a match.

As we began our investigation, multiple associates made us aware that on the days in question, the Associate Outhouse on the 18th floor balcony was closed for repairs, and they offered the theory that some associates, rather than use the working outhouse on 26, decided to sneak into the Partners-Only bathroom instead.

While we understand the desire for convenient bathroom facilities, and the potential annoyance of walking up eight flights of stairs** to reach the alternate outhouse, this does not excuse the behavior in question. As you are all aware, bathrooms are a privilege not a right.

Thus, while we continue the investigation, we will be issuing mandatory catheters to all associates and closing the 26th floor outhouse until further notice. We have also installed scanners at the door of each Partners-Only facility. You will need to place your genitalia on the scanner before entering the stall. If the scanner recognizes your genitalia as belonging to a partner, the door will unlock and you will permitted access. If the scanner does not recognize your genitalia, it will trap you in position and an alarm will sound. Security agents will be automatically summoned to the restroom and you will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

Thank you for your cooperation.

**The associate elevator is still under repair. We expect it will be another 8-12 weeks before it is operational. In the meantime, we ask that you walk up and down the stairs in silence and single-file to avoid creating unnecessary interruptions.

There was a letter to the editor in the New York Times yesterday:

By taking away the possibility of easy employment in high-paying jobs, the economic downturn may end up helping the current crop of law students.

Very few law students at elite schools make meaningful explorations of the broad array of career choices available to law school graduates. Instead, lured by prestige and a high salary, they march through on-campus interviews to large urban law firms, where a great many end up leading unfulfilled lives.

As the jobs with large salaries disappear, law students will draw on the thoughtfulness, intelligence and perseverance that got them into law school in the first place in order to find employment that they actually find rewarding. They will also find creative ways to pay their loans and other expenses.

Most law graduates already do not expect a starting salary of $160,000 and yet are able to make ends meet. Graduates of elite schools will adjust to the new financial realities and come out better for it.

What an insane, paternalistic point of view. Anyone intelligent enough to read this letter should be offended by it. Poor law students! They used to have so many employment choices! Good grief! First of all, no matter how you feel about law firms, how can you possibly make the argument that a law firm job, at $160K/year, is worse than no job, poverty, and sitting in front of your computer all day desperately sending out resumes? Second of all, is there a SHORTAGE of lawyers for all these other amazing jobs that this guy wants lawyers to find? No! The places people can find rewarding employment? Those jobs are already filled! And when there's a vacancy, you know who ought to get them? The people who would have wanted them enough in the first place not to be seduced by the lure of a law firm job that wasn't right for them. Why should an abundance of choice be blamed for people making bad choices. People who make bad choices deserve the outcomes they get. People who are intelligent enough to get into law school should be intelligent enough to live with the consequences of their decisions. If you can be swayed to come work for a law firm, you deserve the law firm life. And if we hire you even though you won't like it here, we deserve to have you, and to have to deal with you complaining all day.

Here's the problem. What about the law students at "non-elite" schools, who don't have these choices, and have long had to do what this author says. Who had to use their intelligence and resourcefulness to find a job. These graduates who have long been "able to make ends meet."

Well, they're shit out of luck now, because all of those jobs they really wanted are going to be snapped up by "elite" law school graduates who'd rather be working at firms. So all these jobs that probably ought to be filled by people passionate about doing them (instead of just upset they can't work for a law firm and settling for an inferior backup choice) will be filled by the "elite" and everyone else can go sit on the unemployment line.

Taking away choices is great! Law firms are worse than poverty! The recession has vanquished evil from the face of the Earth!

Ridiculous.

Above The Law writes about a legal organization that asks for a family photo along with a resume.

We tried that.

We stopped.

Most of the people we hire? I don't want to see a picture. Have you looked around law school recently? Sitting in front of a computer all day doesn't exactly do wonders for the physical appearance. I don't want to have nightmares. The less I look at the people around here, the better.

And their families? That's the last picture I want. I don't want to know what your kids look like as I'm forcing you to cancel your family vacation. I don't want to know what your wife looks like as I'm telling you to stay late on her birthday. I don't want to know what your dog looks like as I'm forbidding you to go home and feed her even though you had no reason to think you'd be here all weekend and there's no one with a key to your apartment who can go in and give her some food. I don't want to know what you look like in casual clothes. I don't want to know what you look like when you smile. No one smiles here. I haven't seen a smile since 1993. I don't want to see it in a picture.

The only picture I want with an application is a picture of your acceptance letter from a top-10 law school.

There's been some news recently about Kate, a 19-year-old heading to law school at Northwestern.

Much of the reaction on the Internet has been negative -- she doesn't have any life experience, she's too young to be deciding she wants to be a lawyer, she'll find it difficult to make friends....

I say good for her, and we'll save a place for her here at the Firm (assuming, of course, we're hiring again by 2012, and that we've already let the classes of 2009-2011 have their start dates). Getting someone in here whose mother is still making her lunch and picking out her clothes means it's like we're getting a free secretary along with her. Hiring someone without previous work experience means she won't realize working 24 hours a day is unusual. And, she's close enough to an age where spanking is appropriate that it'll be much easier for us to throw office supplies at her without getting an earful in return.

It'll also be easier for senior associates to order her around, since they'll actually be older than her, in contrast to the usual awkwardness of having chronological peers as your boss. And since she probably won't have many friends, she'll be fine with working nights and weekends, and won't have any social obligations pulling on her.

The downside is that (at least as a summer associate) she won't be old enough to drink, which means she'll have to find a new vice to take the edge off. I recommend anti-depressants, but that's just me.

We'd go as young as we can find law school graduates. Want to come work here at 13, 14, 15? Great. Young people have energy. They're still optimistic about the world. They adjust to difficult circumstances. They like to please adults. They're not jaded. They don't care about making a difference in the world. They have good computer skills. They take orders. They don't eat as much. They don't need quite so much salary. Better health-- means lower health insurance premiums. They (usually) don't get pregnant. They're good at text-messaging. They (usually) don't have sex with clients.

There are no drawbacks I can think of. We'd even hire an eight-year-old if she could do the work. Which, of course, most eight-years-old can.

Welcome to the firm, Kate!

I was on a panel this morning, a breakfast for unemployed lawyers through some organization that sprouted up sometime during the recession to help unemployed lawyers network with other unemployed lawyers so they can all pretend they're accomplishing something by talking to each other about unemployment. I like to go to these panels, collect resumes, and sprinkle them around the firm on the desks of associates slightly less qualified than the people whose resumes I collect, just to make the associates a little nervous. "See, there are people out there who we could hire, with just a little more experience than you, just a little better GPA, just a little higher LSAT score (yes, the LSAT score is on a good number of these resumes)." No, seriously, networking is great, I've seen a lot of my former associates at these events and I'm absolutely thrilled to run into them and find out they've had no success in the job market. Perhaps I shouldn't be happy about it-- perhaps it means our firm isn't respected in the industry, that our former associates aren't valued, and that we need to work on our image. But maybe I shouldn't overthink it. It probably just means there aren't any jobs out there, and it's not anyone's fault that they can't find legal work. Except it's no fun to think about it that way, no fun to believe it's all just about the economy, and the fact that all these specialists we trained to do securitization deals and real estate transactions just don't have much value in a world where those deals aren't happening. No, I choose to blame the individual.

That's what I talked about on the panel this morning. "Blaming yourself for the economy, and what you should have done better." That was the title of my talk. 74 slides, where I itemized out a series of things lawyers should have been doing before they got laid off. Not sleeping. Gaining experience in every other area of the law. Going to school at night for an additional degree. Training to be an expert in social media and search engine optimization. Inventing Facebook. And so forth. There were lots of things lawyers could have done to prevent being laid off, or to set themselves up for a fine career even once the legal industry imploded. Not my fault they didn't win that million-dollar Netflix prize for improving their who-likes-what-movie algorithm. Could have been working on it in their spare time. Not my fault they didn't win the lottery. Not my fault they didn't invest in land that ultimately proved to have oil beneath it. None of these things are my fault, or the firm's fault.

For some reason, no one seemed to like my speech.

Day Pitney beat us to it. They've got a "new definition" of their summer program --

"The summer apprenticeship program will be an eight-week course designed to prepare law students for the practice of law through practical, day-to-day applications and on-the-job training. Apprentices will learn by shadowing Day Pitney lawyers and working with firm professionals in one-on-one coaching scenarios."

Yeah, that's called "we're having summer associates replace our secretaries," and we're doing it too. Every summer is shadowing an associate from the distance of, oh, about fifteen feet, in a cubicle, with a phone and a message pad. One-on-one coaching scenarios? Absolutely. "Here's how to pick up my dry cleaning and order my dinner."

Day Pitney says: "The newly designed program expands beyond reading, research, and writing assignments. We want a program that revolves around the key values that we stress for our attorneys."

Exactly. And over here, those key values are obedience, deference, and silence.

In fact, we're expanding our summer program to create year-round apprenticeship opportunities for all of the unemployed law school graduates seeking work. We'll be offering "apprenticeships" in document review this fall, in proofreading this winter, and in janitorial services this spring.

And the great thing about an apprenticeship? We don't have to pay anyone. If you're a summer "associate," we're compelled to give you market pay. If you're a summer "apprentice," we'll give you bagels every Friday and a voucher good for dry cleaning in the firm's laundry center (which will be staffed, of course, by our apprentices).

"We have decided to move beyond the traditional assignment-based summer associate program," says Day Pitney.

Well of course you have. Because there are no assignments to be had.

Jones Day apparently thinks it's better than we are. Or at least one of their partners wrote a memo claiming so. Didn't name us personally, but I'm sure we're one of the firms he's referring to. "[P]rotecting partners' incomes on the corpses of associates and staff," "slash[ing] and burn[ing]" -- I'm pretty sure that's us. Describes our behavior in this economic downturn pretty accurately.

I'd like to argue in our defense. What's wrong with firing staff and associates? What's wrong with protecting partners' incomes? What's wrong with using the recession as an excuse to trim the dead weight and put the firm in the best position to thrive not only when the economy recovers, but right now?

Why not protect our partnership above all else?

Our value is in our partnership, entirely-- sad to say, but staff and associates are fungible. No firm in the top 50 can stand up and say its associates are any better or any different from anyone else's. No matter how discerning the hiring partner wants to think he is, no matter how many times you read a resume or how carefully you evaluate a second-year law student's ability to eat lunch at a fancy restaurant without choking, we're all interviewing the same pool of students and making offers based on four or five twenty-minute interviews and a cursory glance at a transcript.

We're all making the same offers to the same students, and they're choosing us based on whatever intangibles they can pretend set one firm apart from the next, but, really, if you switched our first year associate class with Latham's or Jones Day's or any of the top firms, it's a crapshoot. And once the economy recovers, we'll be able to go out and pluck a whole new batch-- a whole new, younger, cheaper, hungrier batch-- of associates to do the scut work. You think law students are going to be in a position where they're turning down offers anytime soon? You think they're going to care which firms laid people off and which didn't? They're going to be grateful for the jobs. And it's not like they all can't do this work. We're not asking our associates to do rocket science. Any graduate of a decent law school can do everything we ask them to. That's why offer rates for summer associates are 95%+, everywhere. And that's why in good economic times, no one ever gets fired. We can pretend we have the best associates, the best training, the best whatever-- but it doesn't matter even if we do. We just need bodies. Bodies to bill out to clients, bodies to do document review, bodies to burn out and throw away when we're done with them.

So if the associates don't matter-- and, sorry to say, they don't-- why not dump them when we don't need them, save the money, and hire some new ones back later?

The alternative is a fair bit worse. Jones Day may be proud of lowering partners' incomes to save associates, but how happy are the partners about it? How many wouldn't be just as happy keeping their old salaries, or even getting bigger ones after we cut expenses by 30% by firing the idiots we don't need anymore? Truth is, not everyone is so giving. For a lot of us, there's a number we're waiting for-- a number in the bank account that tells us we can finally leave and not worry about our future. The faster you can get me to that number, the more I'm willing to stick around. So why not move over to a firm that's willing to fire people to protect my partner income?

And as far as clients? What do they care? We're service providers. We provide good service, what difference does it make whether or not we're laying off staff and cutting summer programs? In fact, we lower our overhead enough to trim 10% off the bill, and I think they'd be mighty happy with that trade-off.

Associates felt no loyalty to us when times were good. They left in the middle of projects, they went in-house, they switched firms at will. Why do we need to be loyal to them now? How about we reward the people who make the business run, who bring in clients, who actually add value through their own competence and hard work? Partner vs. associate, I choose the partner, every time.

Take that, Jones Day.

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

The New York Times wrote an article yesterday about high-functioning alcoholics. As if it's a problem to be a high-functioning anything. I wish the alcoholics at the firm were high-functioning. The difficulty is that they're low-functioning, sober or not, and the fact that they also happen to be alcoholics is just icing on the cake.

I don't know what the point of labeling is. If someone's high-functioning, why is it anyone's business what they're doing in the six hours a week they're not in the office? I think we've become an overly paternalistic society. It's the end result that matters, not the process. Being a lawyer -- or a doctor, or an astronaut, or a parent, or anything else mentioned in the article -- isn't a test of moral goodness or purity. If someone needs a bottle of gin to get through the day, good for them -- as long as the work doesn't suffer. When the work suffers, then of course it's a problem. But it's a problem whether they're an alcoholic or not. And that's when we stop calling them high-functioning. High-functioning alcoholic is a nonsense term. No one's writing about high-functioning diabetics and how we need to get them help before they eat too many cookies.

I actually wish we had more alcoholics at the firm, if I'm being really honest. Alcohol dulls the senses, dulls the pain. More alcohol and they won't realize what we're doing to them, they won't care that the document review is taking eighteen months and that they're spending years of their lives in basements reading lease agreements. More alcohol and they won't notice when we cut their salaries 10% without telling them, or when we cut health benefits. More alcohol and they'll think they're having a grand old time at our partner-associate cocktail parties while everyone who's sober realizes they're actually torture. More alcohol and they'll sleep in the office, just like we want them to. And it's not like we don't have custodial staff to clean up vomit and incorrectly-placed urine. So I say bring on the high-functioning alcoholics, the more the better, and we'll not only tolerate them but embrace them. In fact, I'll trade the low-functioning pregnant women for them, any day of the week.

Happier news today, at least for incoming associates at one competitor. Stroock is offering $75,000 to incoming associates, as long as they don't show up. Ever. That's a lot of free money for doing nothing. Not that the associates who do show up make us much money anyway. Beats our new "Defer Until 2250" option, where we offer to cryogenically freeze any willing incoming associate for the next 240 years, in the hope that the economy will have turned around by then, and there'll be work to do. Also in the hope we will still be in business. We have a handful of associates I've been trying to push this program on, explaining how much it will help their careers, etc etc. Obviously because I hate them and wish they would go away until I'm long gone.

On Monday we're actually going to start offering the same opportunity to our clients. Let us freeze you for two and a half centuries, and then when you're back, your industry will be in much better shape and there'll be so much more that we can provide as far as legal services. Of course for the clients it isn't free like for the associates. No, for the clients we charge a maintenance fee for every hour we keep them frozen. We're trying to think outside the box here -- new products and services, new ways to add value to our clients, new revenue streams. I hear our point man at Chrysler is seriously thinking of taking us up on the offer.

Sad day at a firm much like mine. We've had some layoff-related suicides as well, but at least we're competent enough not to let the news get out. Good grief, if you can't even keep secret a suicide in your building, how can a client ever trust that you won't let his dirty laundry out as well? I would never do business with a firm that couldn't keep its own mishaps out of the press. Even when a former associate came in and shot the entire 32nd floor to death, no one knew. Not even their families -- at least not for about a week, since it's not like they were getting home more often than that anyway. That's actually one of the (endless) benefits of working the associates to the bone: no one realizes when they go missing. No friends, no families, no nothing. They can just fall right off the grid, and besides the 2800 hours a year that we've billed for them, it's like they never even existed.

The ones who kill themselves in the office are always the selfish ones, only thinking about themselves. Do you know how much it costs to get blood out of the carpet? And the casebooks are pretty much unusable once guts have been splattered on their spines. We lost about thirteen hours of document work after the most recent suicide -- he had the gall to leave his latest markup on the desk, right within the splash zone. Couldn't tell what was marked red with the pen and what was red with blood. At least the guy at Kilpatrick Stockton updated his e-mail auto-reply. Be thankful for the little things.

The firm's Board of Directors met this evening to discuss the recent layoffs and additional possible actions we might take to stem the recent economic losses and put ourselves in a strong position should the recovery take longer than expected. No surprise, the Chairman seems to have turned to the bottle to get him through this crisis, and by twelve minutes into the meeting he was already on his fifth glass of wine and slurring his words. By twenty-two minutes in, he was kissing the man next to him after a particularly excellent suggestion about lowering the water pressure in the sinks and the wattage in the hallway lamps so we save on utility costs. By forty-five minutes in, he had taken a prone position on top of the table, and had started undoing his pants. By an hour and four minutes in, he was in the middle of an obscenity-filled rant about "woman lawyers" and how we should just let them the run the whole place since "everyone likes to do business with someone they want to f***." In other words, it was a typical meeting of the Board of Directors.

Being on the Board, sadly, has taken all the majesty out of law firm work. You start out and you imagine the folks in charge must be, in a way, better than you. Smarter than you, wiser than you, somehow more responsible and more important and more worthy of respect. And then you discover they're mostly just the worst examples of everyone else you work with, their flaws magnified by their desire for power and lack of any self-awareness at all that would keep them from spouting off ridiculous solutions for problems that don't even exist. "Why do we even need computers," one director emeritus said tonight. "When I was an associate, we didn't have them, and we did just fine. They're a distraction, they're expensive, and everyone spends all day figuring out how to make them work. What if we just got rid of the computers, went back to paper, and then we could get rid of the entire TI staff too." I think he meant IT staff, but that isn't really the point.

And that suggestion, like every other suggestion at these meetings, is taken completely seriously and put up for discussion and a vote. "I think computers do more than you realize," one guy said. "What if we assigned a subcommittee to put together a report about how computers benefit the firm," one guy offered. "I don't know if computers are the entire issue, but we definitely need to do something about all the beeping and buzzing that goes on in the hallways," added one guy. "I've even heard there are some people with these big screens that plug into their little computers -- is that fair to everyone else?" asked one moron. We eventually voted, 16-5, in favor of keeping the computers.

When Old Man Real Estate went to the bathroom, Baldy piped up asking for an emergency vote declaring him to be the new head of real estate once Old Man Real Estate dies. It passed, but just barely. Old Man Real Estate returned without a hint that his death had been contemplated during his absence, but later I saw Baldy hold out his foot to trip the Old Man. That's a situation that bears watching, it seems.

We adjourned after a seventy-three minute discussion about pencil sharpeners and whether it was appropriate to spend the extra twenty-two cents per box to buy pre-sharpened pencils. We deadlocked at 9-9, with 3 abstainers, so it's been tabled until next time.

Anonymous Daughter just forced me to watch a video on YouTube of an unattractive British woman singing very loudly. Apparently this Susan Boyle video has been seen by tens of millions of people and is captivating the world. This is why we ban YouTube in the office. I don't know what the big surprise is that a 47-year-old unemployed, unattractive woman can sing well. What else can she possibly have to do with her time other than practice? She has no job, no family... if I had no job and no family, I could be a terrific singer too.

What bothers me is all the attention she's getting. It's giving failures hope. I'm sure I have associates watching this video and thinking: "Things could work out for me, too. I could leave this job and follow my dreams and even though I'm very unattractive and have few friends and no family, I could find success doing something I love instead of being stuck in the office 90 hours a week doing mindless document searches and redrafting agreements that exist in virtually identical form on pretty much everyone's hard drive in the entire firm."

I can't have people thinking like that, especially in this economy. More than ever, now that we only have what seems like seventeen associates and half a staff member firm-wide, we need their eyes on the real prize: imaginary partnership. We need them focused on feeling like they could somehow do enough to impress me and my colleagues and force our hands into making them junior partners. Obviously that won't happen, especially in this economy, but we need them to feel like it could, and be hungry for it, and not just watching unattractive people sing loudly and get applause. I know they miss applause. I miss applause. But adulthood isn't about applause. It's about fear and worry and economic insecurity motivating all your decisions. Not passions and dreams. That's for the unemployed.

I received an invitation today to an associate's wedding. I don't know why any of my associates would think I would want to see them socially, or be part of their lives. I don't know why any of them would think I even approve of a wedding when all it will mean is they have less time to spend focused on their work. And now, even though of course I'm not going to attend, I have to give a gift. I feel like it's a shakedown for a present. He knows I'm not going to come to his wedding. He knows there's nothing I'd less like to do than come to his wedding, yet still he invited me. I'm not going to take the bait. I'm not only not going to give a gift -- I'm going to call his bluff and actually go to the wedding -- and still not give a gift. Hopefully he'll spread the word around and no one else will ever invite me to their weddings. Who would be marrying this guy anyway? His fiancee must be a real winner... he's one of my worst associates.

An e-mail from one of our offer-rescinded summer associates somehow made it through my spam filter and ended up in the pile of e-mail printouts my assistant prepares for each morning for me to read in the bathroom. The unemployed 3L wanted to draw my attention to a recent post on the Volokh Conspiracy and the discussion in an Above The Law post and its comments.

Apparently there's some rumblings that despite at-will employment, there might be a breach of contract claim if we never hire, as opposed to hiring and then immediately firing. Something about health insurance, as if an unemployed law student's health is actually worth any money to insure. What's the difference if he gets sick, it's not like he's adding anything to society. Anyway, I took the e-mail printout to the one guy left in our internal legal department, and he laughed and threw it in the trash.

Nonetheless, I thought it could provide for a little bit of fun this afternoon. So I called the unemployed 3L and told him I received his e-mail, had considered it carefully, and wanted to invite him down to the office to chat. Three hours later, after he bought a last-minute ticket to fly down from the Bay Area, hustled to the airport, and took a cab straight here, I sat him down on my office couch and handed him a key card and a stack of paperwork.

"You're hired," I said. He beamed. "We don't want to get sued, and I want to thank you for pointing out the error of our ways. You will make a fine associate here at the firm."

"Thank you, sir," he said.

"Wait, can I see your key card for a second?" He handed it over. "Thanks. You're fired."

"Excuse me?"

"At-will employment. We hired you, lived up to our employment agreement, no questions there... and now you're fired. And, by the way, if you'd like to pay $775 a month for our crappy health insurance plan, you're welcome to take those COBRA documents with you and file the paperwork."

"But you just hired me."

"And then we fired you." I reached into my pocket and pulled out a $50 bill. "Oh, here's your salary for the twenty seconds you were employed. I even threw in a bonus for a job well done. You billed as many hours in those twenty seconds as some of our associates have billed all month -- good for you."

"But I just paid six hundred dollars to fly here."

"Doesn't seem like a very smart thing to do in this economy...."

"But---"

"Oh, I'm sorry. I have a client meeting. Gotta run."

Sometimes it's just too easy.