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.