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  • Lawyers Seek Solace- From Whom?

    June 16, 2009, 12:59 pm
    Unemployed and Struggling Lawyers Seek Solace
    By Jennifer 8. Lee

    This was not supposed to happen. The path: become a star in college, get into a top law school, make law review, then take the job at a cushy law firm (maybe after a clerkship or two). Life was supposed to be a regimented ladder to the vacation home, insulated against economic down and up cycles.

    Until now.

    The recent wave of legal layoffs, rescinded job offers, and even bankruptcies has created the ugliest market for lawyers — particularly in Wall Street-fueled New York City — in more than a quarter century. The bankruptcy opportunities that were supposed to be anti-cyclical to the mergers-and-acquisitions work never materialized.

    Thus, on Tuesday, the ornate wood-paneled meeting room of the New York City Bar Association was flooded with 200 unemployed and underemployed risk-adverse people. (Law is a field where optimism is not a career booster.)
    Still equipped with their BlackBerrys and laptops, Manolo Blahniks and $3,000 suits, they traded stories about “transitioning” and shared their dates of notice against a backdrop of velvet drapes and portraits of Supreme Court justices. Collectively, they wondered, now what?

    Among the recent law graduates and the almost-partners was a sense of bitterness, resignation and even smidgens of hope. “There is a whole cohort of young lawyers who feel like the rug has been pulled out from under them,” said Brian Dalton, the managing editor of Vault.com, a career Web site that co-sponsored the daylong program at the New York City Bar Association, called “Getting Back in the Game: How to Restart Your Career in a Down Economy.”

    “The idea of it as a secure path is being questioned as never before,” said Mr. Dalton, who calls himself a former “generically unhappy lawyer” at a large firm. (As City Room discovered, unemployed, prestige-conscious, risk-adverse people do not like to be interviewed on the record.)
    Of course, some have used the downturn as an opportunity to go on adventures while on partial salaries. But such company-sponsored time off is the exception. At least 10,000 employees at major firms across the country have lost their jobs so far this year.

    In her opening remarks, Patricia M. Hynes [pdf], the president of the New York City Bar, highlighted the organization’s longtime addiction programs. “In these very stressful times, it’s particularly important that lawyers be aware of it,” she said.

    “It’s too depressing,” said David B. Lat, a panelist and the founder of of Above the Law, a popular law blog that has been reporting the bloodbath with a regular drumbeat. (Perhaps it was a sign of gallows humor that his comment drew the first laugh out of the crowd.)

    He noted that his panel, on how to return to big law firms, was supposed to present an optimistic perspective — but said he couldn’t do it. “It’s just hideous,” he said. “Legal services are almost like Miami condos. It’s going to take years years to work off the excess supply.”

    His tongue-in-cheek suggestions for finding work:
    1. Marry the general counsel of a Fortune 500 company.
    2. Be adopted of the general counsel of a Fortune 500 company.
    3. Pull a Rip Van Winkle and wake up when the market has revived.

    Disguised in those flip comments, he said, was an observation that many other panelists emphasized: the importance of knowing the right people. Mr. Lat said that he tells students at law schools that if he did law school again, “I would focus on getting to know my classmates and less on burying my heads in books.”

    But networking has to be done delicately, as he recounted a phone call from a high school classmate he barely knew. The man first asked him for a job, then asked to borrow money, which Mr. Lat found somewhat repulsive.
    “It’s like dating,” Mr. Lat said. “You wouldn’t immediately go up to someone and ask, ‘You want to go back to my place?’ There has got to some prelude.”

    Big law, as it developed, is over. Sessions discussed the opportunities for working at small- and medium-sized firms, as well as starting as solo practitioners. Others noted that business would be generated by the government rather than finance. Obama-era policies, down the road, could create many opportunities.

    “We are going to have more of a regulatory state,” said John J. Cannon III, the hiring partner at Shearman & Sterling, during a morning panel. “Any young lawyer would be well advised to bring themselves completely up to date in the new regulatory environment.”

    But Helen Long, the director of recruiting at the firm of Ropes & Gray, emphasized the importance of attitude. She advised the crowd to “go on a diet of depressing news,” as blogs like Above the Law would color their views of the world.

    “It will not be helping things when you are presenting yourself to others,” she said. “You want to be upbeat.”

    Indeed, Mr. Lat also suggested an alternative to the bloodletting presenting his blog. “If you are looking for happy news, go to Happynews.com. It’s about dogs being rescued for trees, rainbows and lost kids being found. Happy stuff.”

    http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/20...eek-solace/?hp


    On The Other Hand...

    June 15, 2009
    On a Furlough, but Never Leaving the Cubicle

    By SUSAN SAULNY and ROBBIE BROWN

    Wendy Roberson, a state employee in California, founded the Fun Furlough Fridays Club partly as a joke, but also because she honestly believed that she would be having long-weekend-type fun on her forced time off.

    Not quite. The Fun Furlough Fridays Club? It never met. Instead, Ms. Roberson has found herself working as hard as ever on most Fridays, and every other day of the week. Further, she has come to resent the very idea of a furlough more and more with each paycheck, every one 10 percent less than it used to be, as mandated by California’s budget cutters.

    And she has taken off only about half of the time to which she is entitled.
    “Sometimes it’s just too busy at work,” said Ms. Roberson, whose pay was cut in February as part of the state’s effort to close a multibillion-dollar budget deficit. “You start to feel guilty.”

    In California and elsewhere, people have put their imaginations to work trying to make the best of furloughs — temporary, usually unpaid, leave — ever appreciative that they are a far better alternative than layoffs.

    But for many, the plans to turn the unpaid days into modest holidays spent appreciating the simple things in life like afternoon movies, walks in the park, naps or trips to see Grandma have given way to a different reality.

    Some people take the time off but feel bad about doing so, out of loyalty to bosses and colleagues left to carry the workload. Others work quietly — and sometimes openly — through furloughs, because they fear for the long-term safety of their positions and hope their self-sacrifice impresses the management.

    And some say the message from the management is unclear, leaving employees wondering: Is this real time off?

    “I think it’s a joke,” said Roland Becht, who works at the California Department of Motor Vehicles in San Diego. (More than 200,000 state employees are supposed to have two furlough days each month.) “I’ve tried to schedule furlough time and was denied because we’re short-staffed.”

    American workers are finding themselves at a new frontier, and the rules are being written on the fly. Some companies have strict policies forbidding work during furloughs, or close down for days at a time. Others simply tell workers, however unrealistically, to squeeze in furlough time when they can.

    “In terms of what employers are doing, it’s all over the map,” said Alison Hightower, a lawyer in San Francisco who specializes in employment and labor disputes. “Employers have to think about it ahead of time and clearly tell the employees what they can and cannot do.”

    Trying to cope with budget shortfalls and huge amounts of red ink, governments and companies across the country are turning to furloughs as a cost-saving measure that allows them to retain their employees. Furloughs are being instituted this year at law firms, city halls, states, media companies and myriad other businesses.

    Robert Bruno, a professor of labor relations at the University of Illinois, Chicago, said the furlough experience could be traumatic.

    “A furlough is a dangerous and risky bet because it severs the relationship between an employee and their compensation,” Dr. Bruno said. “A worker’s emotional reaction to a furlough takes control of rational thought.”

    “It begins to look punitive, intentional or not,” he said.

    Ms. Roberson and Mr. Becht were among the few people interviewed for this article who were willing to allow their names to be published. Others asked to have their names and workplaces withheld out of fear of retribution from bosses or colleagues. And some were hesitant to complain openly about their employment situation, given how many of their friends and family members had lost jobs.

    “You’re not sure what they’re watching,” one furloughed man, an online salesman in Chicago, said about his bosses. “Do some people feel that they have to work those hours? Yes.”

    And as more people are laid off or placed on unpaid leave, the burdens rise for those left at their desks.

    Mr. Becht, who has managed to take two of his eight furlough days, said he was often overwhelmed on the front line dealing with customers at the motor vehicle office. He works about an hour of overtime a day to keep up with the crush of customers. Work is more stressful than ever, he said.

    “I really don’t blame the management at our local level,” said Mr. Becht, who took a 9.2 percent cut in pay several months ago. “I understand they can’t let three or four people off when you’re already understaffed.”

    But of the furlough, he added: “It’s not doing what it was designed to do. We were imagining three-day weekends. There was some optimism. It was a trade-off for sure, but people were O.K. The mood now, I would say, is down. People are working in fear because they don’t know what’s going to happen next.”

    To make extra money, Ms. Roberson teaches belly-dancing at girls’ birthday parties on weekends, something she has been doing more of lately.

    “I really try hard not to even check my e-mail on furlough days,” she said.

    “That would be cheating myself, because I’m not getting paid to work.”

    http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/15/us...icle%20&st=cse

    The Sad Demise Of "Private Powder"...

    June 14, 2009
    Checkmate at the Yellowstone Club

    By AMY WALLACE
    RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif.

    NINE days after declaring personal bankruptcy — again — a barefoot Edra Blixseth pads excitedly around Porcupine Creek, her 30,000-square-foot estate here. Guests are coming, probably 125 in all. They’re due any minute. The zipper on her sternum-baring cocktail dress is jammed. Do you think it’s too tight? Can somebody help her?

    Porcupine Creek is lavish, with a 240-acre private golf course and a pool guarded by bronze lions. Many visitors have seen all that, plus the automated fountain that splashes at the end of her 1,700-foot driveway.

    But so far, only Ms. Blixseth’s good friends have wandered around the private space inside: the prayer room, the gym, the beauty parlor, the wet room, the cozy massage alcoves and the private theater adorned with murals; then there’s the 18th-century French furniture, the Italian stained glass, the bedroom suite from the Vatican, the ancient Tibetan Tankas. Until this day, she has never hosted a charity event inside her home. Given the circumstances, though, it’s the best she can do.

    “I can’t write a check this year,” she says, referring to her usual gift to a shelter for battered women. Her Gulfstream IV has been grounded. Her jewelry, mostly sold. To help pay the bills, her boyfriend even had to sell his Bentley.

    Edra Denise Blixseth, age 55, is tiny, barely 5 foot 3, but she is at the center of a huge financial mess. According to personal bankruptcy papers her lawyer filed in March, she owes $500 million to $1 billion and has assets of barely half that, almost none of them liquid. Earlier this month, the court approved the sale of one of her most prized possessions — the private ski resort in Big Sky, Mont., known as the Yellowstone Club — to the private equity firm of one of its members for $115 million. Just a year ago, that same buyer, CrossHarbor Capital Partners, had been willing to pay $400 million for the club.

    The Yellowstone Club, a 13,600-acre playground 20 miles north of Yellowstone National Park, may be the world’s lone members-only ski resort. Its pristine natural beauty and remote location have attracted wealthy skiers who prize their privacy, including Bill Gates of Microsoft; Barry Sternlicht, the hotelier; and Peter Chernin, president of the News Corporation.

    In one of the signature, fin de siècle moments of our passing Gilded Age, the Yellowstone Club filed for Chapter 11 protection last November; four months later, Ms. Blixseth followed suit — a club and its doyenne, sucked into a financial downdraft that has wounded even once-untouchable elites.

    Marketed with the phrase “Private Powder,” Yellowstone is the anti-Aspen — luxurious, sure, but discreet and child-friendly. Ask members what makes it so special, and more than one offers this simple fact: There, and nowhere else, the family of the world’s richest man can ski without bodyguards. One club member — who, like many Yellowstone members, requested anonymity so as not to be seen as violating the club’s tradition of not blabbing about one another — recalls Mr. Gates’s saying that his family once tried Vail but their need for security “made us look like jerks. Here, we don’t need it.”

    That’s because the club has long been kept safe by former Secret Service agents, and who can put a price tag on that?

    “Once you ski there, you never want to go anywhere else,” says Burt Sugarman, a Beverly Hills businessman who with his wife, the “Entertainment Tonight” host Mary Hart, was among the club’s first members.

    Steve Burke, the chief operating officer of Comcast, has a place at Yellowstone. As do Bill Frist, the former Senate majority leader; Todd Thomson, the former head of Citigroup’s private banking unit; Robert Greenhill, founder of the investment bank Greenhill & Company; Greg LeMond, a Tour de France winner; Annika Sorenstam, the Swedish golf star; Frank McCourt, the owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers; and about 250 other low-key rich folks.

    Membership has its price: a minimum of $250,000 to join, plus the cost of a $5 million to $35 million mountainside home, plus annual dues of about $20,000, according to members.

    The club, which opened in 1997, was the brainchild of Ms. Blixseth’s former husband, Tim Blixseth. For years they ran it together, installing the caviar bar in the clubhouse, and giving the 75 ski runs names like “Learjet Glades”

    and “Ebitda.” Then in 2005, despite assurances to members that Yellowstone would never take on debt, the Blixseths obtained a $375 million bank loan from Credit Suisse by pledging the assets of the club as collateral.

    That, Ms. Blixseth says, is when the trouble began.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/bu...pagewanted=all


    Checkmate, toots

  • #2
    Re: Lawyers Seek Solace- From Whom?

    Hi Don
    over 10,000 Lie-ers here are up for the chop, notice that this time around the "Untouchables" (Legal/Civil/IT types) are getting hammered!

    Oh Dear
    How sad
    NEVER MIND.
    Mike

    Comment


    • #3
      Re: Lawyers Seek Solace- From Whom?

      My father is an attorney at a large law firm. Combination of real estate collapse, international finance disappearing, and absolutely no M&A has led to large layoffs and salary reductions across the board.

      Comment


      • #4
        Re: Lawyers Seek Solace- From Whom?

        The legal profession is heavily intertwined with the FIRE economy, no doubt about it. It was a nice ride going up . . .

        Comment


        • #5
          Re: Lawyers Seek Solace- From Whom?

          Completing the Quartet:

          We Are Removed...

          June 12, 2009
          Lavish Purchases Stay Behind Gilded Doors, Designers Say

          By CHRISTINE HAUGHNEY

          In the blocks around Bloomingdale’s on the East Side of Manhattan, where ladies who lunch often head afterward to the showrooms of furniture and faucet makers to make their home decorating decisions, it’s fair to say that the recession has dampened the popularity of splurging on $30,000 couches — or at least openly boasting about such purchases.

          But that doesn’t mean all wealthy New Yorkers have heeded the anger of the masses about government bailouts. Public appearances aside, not everyone has stopped spending.

          In fact, opulent renovations continue to thrive. At least that’s the story being promoted by executives at one high-end designer, Clive Christian, whose kitchens, interiors and furniture lines have been selected by Celine Dion, Rod Stewart and a number of European soccer stars, among others, for their liberal use of gold-leaf designs and Liberace-reminiscent chandeliers that drip above enormous kitchen islands.

          Even before the British designer opened its new 7,500-square-foot showroom in the Architects & Designers Building on East 58th Street at the end of May, customers had crowded into the unfinished space to select kitchens, butlers’ pantries and lavish bathrooms, said Jacqueline Weeman, business manager for the New York showroom. By June the showroom had generated $5 million in sales, far surpassing the $3 million in sales that the old Manhattan showroom generated for all of 2008, company officials said.

          At a Champagne reception Tuesday night to celebrate the opening of the Clive Christian showroom, replacing a smaller spot on Madison Avenue, several dozen socialites and decorators turned up to inquire about inlaid ceilings and kitchen islands the length of many Manhattan apartments.

          When asked about the recession’s impact, Robert Hughes, who runs global business development for Clive Christian, replied, “We are removed.” Leaning back on a silk Clive Christian couch, sipping Champagne and munching on peanuts, he said there were plenty of wealthy people still willing to part with their money.


          Not Part of My Vocabulary....


          As Ms. Weeman walked through the lavishly decorated rooms with Mr. Christian’s curly monogram adorning rugs, wallpaper and even bed linens, she said about half of the designer’s new customers who have ordered renovations are from the New York area. Several clients live in Manhattan, two on Long Island and one in New Jersey.

          They include bankers, retired executives and a fertilizer mogul. Only one customer has tried to haggle about the prices: new kitchens cost $80,000 to $300,000, bathrooms $10,000 to $120,000 and wood-paneled rooms $100,000 to $300,000. After she told the reluctant client that discounts “are not part of my vocabulary,” Ms. Weeman said the client relented.
          While the very rich may cut back on how much they publicly display wealth, Ms. Weeman said they are spending more on their private spaces. None of the designer’s clients were willing to be interviewed.

          “It’s a much more intimate purchase,” Ms. Weeman said.

          People are spending money,” he said. “But they’re doing it much more subtly.”

          http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/12/ny...20doors&st=cse

          Comment


          • #6
            Re: Lawyers Seek Solace- From Whom?

            Where's the smiley for the worlds smallest violin?

            Comment

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